Show me your ways
Commentary
I have to admit that I have absolutely no interest in preserving the institution of the church. The community, that's another thing.
Institutions are idolatrous. That is, by their very nature they demand total allegiance, for they exist solely through the investment of their members. They have no life of their own, but derive their existence from the life of the human beings who take part in them. They brook no rivals; they demand conformity. Institutions are humorless because if they do not take themselves seriously, they will cease to exist. Give your life to an institution, and it will take your life away from you.
Communities, on the other hand, are life-giving. Communities exist for the sake of their members. Rather than taking your life, they remind us that life is bigger than any one of us. They demand not conformity but diversity, since it is in encountering those who differ from us that we learn to accept that life is not our own, but derived from an ultimate source. A community can look at itself and laugh at the absurdity of its diversity, because it holds itself loosely, recognizing that it exists not in and of itself but for a larger purpose. A community is created by God and, in the case of the church, exists to acknowledge that God. The church as a community differs from the church as an institution in that the one reflects for us the image of God, while the other pretends to be God.
Our lessons today trace a path out of idolatry into the service of a living God, who cannot be contained by any created thing, let alone an institution. In each lesson, the community plays a vital role in calling human beings away from idolatry and toward God, but the moment communities become institutionalized, they pull the other way. We will never escape idolatry without the help of other people; we will always have to resist the tendency of communities to re-form themselves as idolatrous institutions.
Exodus 33:12-23
The story of Moses begins shortly after the people of Israel made the vital mistake of trying to institutionalize their community in the shape of a golden calf (cf. Exodus 32:1-35). Not content to be a community-in-waiting, they convinced Aaron to fashion a substitute for the living God whom Moses had gone up the mountain to meet. In the absence of any certainty, they attempt to create their own. It was Genesis 3 redux -- the pattern of sin, dialogue, and new covenant is quite similar to the Bible's opening chapters. In some ways, Israel was in an even more precarious position than Adam and Eve, because their existence as a people was predicated on being the people of the Lord; without the Lord, they were no people.
Moses takes on the role of intercessor, as the one person who has "found favor" with God. Note that the usual rule in the biblical writings goes by the wayside in God's address to Moses; more often than not, the second-person pronoun "you" in the Bible is plural, reflecting God's commitment to the community rather than the individual, but here God speaks to Moses personally, omitting any reference to the community. "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name" (33:17). This distresses Moses to no end, for it indicates that the community has lost its binding principle, its election by God. God has gone so far to call Israel, "Moses' people": "Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land ... I will send an angel before you ... but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people" (vv. 1-3). Moses realizes that if the peoples' leadership is delegated to an angel, Israel will no longer be unique, it will have lost the primary mark of its existence: "If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth" (vv. 15-16). In his objection, Moses emphasizes not just his own closeness to God, but identifies himself with the people.
Rather than deny his close relationship with God, Moses seeks to capitalize on God's "favor" for the sake of the people (vv. 12, 13, 16, 17, 19). He asks God to lead Israel personally, not through an unknown intermediary: "See, you have said to me, 'Bring up this people'; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people" (vv. 12-13). The narrative moves forward via the keywords "favor," "see," "face," and "know." English translations tend to obscure the subtlety of Moses' intercession, as he attempts to get God to "see" (r'h variously translated as "see," "consider," and "show," vv. 12, 13, 18) that God's "face" (paneh sometimes translated "presence," vv. 14-16) is crucial to Israel's existence, for it is the face that Israel presents to the world (v. 16). Moses wants to translate God's intimacy with him (expressed by the verb yd' "to know," vv. 12, 17) into confirmation both for him ("show me" in v. 13 reflects yd') and the world (yd' again in v. 16, "How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us?"). God finally relents and agrees to lead the people, as a result of Moses' persistence (vv. 14, 17).
Moses isn't done yet: "Show me your glory" (r'h again, v. 18). Moses wants to see the essence of God. This is not an unreasonable request, because it has already been granted once, when Moses and the leaders of Israel "saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank" (24:10-11). However, Moses is asking for an even greater intimacy that cannot be granted -- for safety's sake! "You cannot see my face (again paneh); for no one shall see me and live" (33:20; the contradiction with 24:10-11 is never fully resolved). Moses is personally denied the very "face" he had requested for Israel, as a reminder that the "favor" (hen, vv. 12, 13, 16, 17) he has been given is the sovereign gift of one who is by nature "gracious" (the cognate hnn, "to show favor," v. 19). Moses cannot see God's "glory," but only God's "goodness," as embodied in the divine name (v. 19). This is symbolized by God's care to shield Moses from his "face" and reveal only his "back" (vv. 21-23; the promise but not the action is narrated). As close as Moses is to God, there is a differentiation between creature and creator that cannot be bridged. No created thing can substitute for the creator without harm to creation.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul writes to those who have "turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God" (1:9). The Thessalonian church was composed primarily of Greeks, who needed instruction concerning exactly what it meant to worship God rather than idols. In pagan religion there was little connection between religion and morality (in comparison with Judaism); they were two separate spheres of existence. Even the worship of idols was not considered pejorative in Roman circles, as it was in Judaism; for a pagan audience, it would be news that there was a difference between idols and a living God (v. 9). Thus there was nothing in the Thessalonians' background that would prepare them for life as Christian believers. Paul and his colleagues must provide it for them in person or by letter.
Thus Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy take an existing literary form, the letter of friendship, and transform it for Christian purposes. The transformation is not limited to a Christianization of the opening greeting (v. 1); ancient letters often began with a prayer for the reader's well-being, along with a thanksgiving and supplication to the gods. Here the convention is changed to emphasize the spiritual condition of the recipients, reflecting the main themes of the letter, including the importance of the community for a continued life moving away from idolatry and toward God (vv. 9-10); the significance of the works produced by faith and love (cf. 2:1-16); the response of witness that comes with being chosen by God (cf. 2:17--3:13); the importance of moral exemplars for Christian growth (cf. 4:1-12; 5:12-24); and the ultimate reality of judgment and salvation in God's long-term timeframe (cf. 4:13--5:11).
The multiple authorship is crucial to Paul's exemplary purpose. We tend to speak of "the letters of Paul" as if he did not explicitly and specifically acknowledge his co-writers, in this case Silvanus and Timothy. Paul worked as part of a team, and we should take the multiple authorship of his letters seriously. It is "we" and not "I" who directs thanks to God for this community (v. 2). It is "we" and not "I" who acknowledge God's choice of these people (v. 4). Most importantly, it is "we" and not "I" who serve as moral examples of the Christian life (v. 5), because it is the whole community and not just the individuals who reflect the glory of their Lord (v. 6). Thus the Thessalonians, who imitate not just the apostles but also their Lord, can be examples to others (v. 7).
The primary focus of imitation, however, is not moral but evangelical. Their example, in which they follow that of the apostles, is that "the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you" (v. 8). This is their "work of faith and labor of love," the indication that "he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction" (vv. 4-5). Thus their report (about the Lord and their own community) goes out throughout the region (vv. 8-9). The message about the messengers confirms their message.
The letter opening does not neglect the prominent eschatological theme that reverberates throughout (cf. 2:19; 3:13; 4:13-18; 5:1-11). The logical consequence of the turn from idols to a living God is to recognize that the risen Lord is still alive and scheduled for return (v. 10). The purpose of the return is to "rescue us from the wrath that is coming" (cf. 2:16; 5:9), and the purpose of the community is to "wait for his Son from heaven" by working to become the people of God. This end-times focus probably explains the reference to "persecution" (v. 6, literally "in deep tribulation"). This probably does not refer to any organized persecution of the Thessalonian church, but to the inherent cultural and personal discomfort that comes with moving from idolatry to worship of the living God; they were moving to a new way of being, at odds with their neighbors. Such "tribulation" was commonly thought to be a sign of the end (cf. 2:2, 14-16; 3:3-4; cf. Matthew 24:9, 21, 29; Mark 13:19, 24; Revelation 7:14), but in fact it came with the territory of believing in a dying, rising, and living Lord (cf. John 16:33; Romans 5:3; 8:35; 12:12; 2 Corinthians 1:4, 8; 2:4; 4:17; Philippians 1:17; 4:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:4, 6; Hebrews 10:33; Revelation 1:9; 2:9-10). Distress and persecution follows from the imitation of Christ, and it represents a share in the suffering of Christ; the new converts in Thessalonica would need a reminder that this too is part of following the example of their Lord.
Matthew 22:15-22
The situation is much more dangerous when the leaders of the community are those who have turned from the living God to idols. In the case of the Pharisees and the Herodians who tried to entrap Jesus, the idol was clearly the institution that had come to substitute for the community. In their attempt to preserve the institution, they failed both the community and the God who formed it. Having nothing to contribute to the community, they can do nothing but try to bolster an empty institution the best they know how -- by giving their lives to it, and demanding Jesus' life to preserve it.
Though the Pharisees present themselves as extremely poor models for imitation, they nevertheless have disciples of their own, and in Matthew's version of the story, they send these poor lambs into a verbal joust with Jesus. The Herodians who accompany them are otherwise unknown, but presumably were followers of that Jewish leader (there is no particular evidence for the hypothesis that the Herodians would have been invested in the opposite side of the issue as the Pharisees, for example, that they wanted to hear Jesus say "It is lawful," while the Pharisees believed "It is not lawful"). The irony here is that the question is not one of Jewish law at all; they simply ask Jesus his opinion on a political issue, in hopes that he will trip up -- it is the original "Gotcha" question, along the lines of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" The unpopular Roman poll tax amounted to a day's worth of forced labor for the Romans (on top of all the other local and imperial taxes levied), and were Jesus to affirm it, his status among the people would be compromised. But it was a greater danger to deny it in public, since that could be taken as open sedition by the Romans. The mini-Pharisees think they have Jesus in a difficult situation.
But Jesus exposes their hypocrisy simply by asking for the coin used for the tribute tax, a silver denarius bearing the image and title of the emperor. They produce one from their own pockets (Jesus and his disciples conspicuously traveled without cash). If it were unlawful to give tribute to the emperor, why were they carrying his graven image? Did not their possession of his coinage signify their participation in a spiritual realm where the emperor was considered to be the Son of God? The coin would have burned their hands, if their question had been in any way honest. Jesus can handle the coin, however, because he sees it for what it is -- a created thing that takes its value from those who wield it. For Jesus it is relatively insignificant; he can hand it back to the emperor without any loss to himself. More important is to give back to God that which belongs to God.
"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" (v. 21). The pronouncement is hardly to be taken as guidance for political philosophy. It serves rhetorically to stop the conversation and shut the mouths of the insincere (v. 22). For those who have ears to hear, however, it does not end the conversation but opens it up. The issue of what belongs to the emperor is clear enough; it can be held in the hand or put in the change pocket. The issue of what belongs to God is less clear, since there is no prop or visual aid. What does belong to God? It would be more to the point to ask if there is anything that does not belong to God. In effect, Jesus is inviting his listeners to turn from idols -- which can consist in any created thing we give our allegiance to -- to the living God.
You may have seen the proposed simplified IRS form; it has two lines, the first of which asks, "What is your income?" while the second says, "Send it in." Jesus' answer turns the joke on its head. The truth of the matter is that no matter what you try to hold back, you always end up sending all of yourself in. The choice is clear enough: Will you send what you have to the emperor (or whatever creature holds your interest that day), or will you send everything that is you to God? Only one choice is life-giving, because we can never truly belong to a created thing, but only to the God who gives us life and breath and being.
Application
Idolatry and faith are not two separate conditions but different places on the same continuum. As created beings, we are always oscillating somewhere between these two poles. Being creatures and not the Creator, we will always be in need of something outside of our selves to make ourselves complete. Ideally, we will find our center in the Creator, the one who made us with the God-shaped hole in the heart. However, the problem with grasping the Creator is that there is nothing to grasp. Like Moses, we find ourselves staring at God's backside, seeing a fleeting glimpse of goodness were we hoped to find a confirming glory. The face of God eludes us. How much easier to grab creation, that which can be seen and held and counted.
The gross idolatry of the glutton or the miser or the "sexaholic" may not appeal to the refined tastes of religious folk, however. We are more than aware of and on guard against the sins of the flesh. We may fail to realize, however, that the things of the spirit are our own creations, too. We may attempt to accumulate for ourselves attitudes and attributes of our own making, so that we come to trust in our own righteousness, our own virtue, our own intellectual accomplishments. Any created thing can become an idol. Yes, even the church itself.
There is no easy fix for idolatry, and its subtler forms are even harder to fight against. But the very nature of idolatry precludes our ever escaping it completely. Faith is therefore a process. We choose the living God over the idol, again and again, one day at a time. We find ourselves looking down at Israel from the mountain, oblivious to the golden calf we hold in our own hearts. We smirk at the retreating Pharisees, until we look down to see that the emperor's idolatrous image is still in our hands. We stumble, we confess our sins, and we get back up. We turn from idols to worship the living God. This is the life of faith.
And this is where the community is so crucial to the process. You remind me, by the simple virtue of being you, that I am not God. God has called you, a fellow creature, to be in community with me, even though we may not agree on theology, politics, social issues, or much of anything else. Our agreement may be an institutional concern, but it is not a communal concern. Our difference is our gift to one another; it calls us away from the worship of our "creatureliness" by reminding us that God made us all to be different. God cannot be contained by any one creature. Simply looking at you calls me out of idolatry and toward the living God. This indeed is the life of faith.
An Alternative Application
Exodus 33:12-23; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. Prayer is a powerful force. God was ready to leave Israel to its golden calf. Moses, however, would not let the people go. He capitalized on his own favor with God in order to call God back to the people. He appealed to God's own nature as gracious and merciful, counting on God's own self-identification: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Exodus 33:19). If God is sovereign in this favor and mercy, then there is no reason that God could not extend it to those who had proved themselves unworthy of it. Moses' example proved to subsequent believers, like Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy that intercessory prayer was worth a try.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 96:1-9 (10-13)
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 24)
Psalm 96 oozes with the confidence of worshipers who triumphantly proclaim, "Our God reigns!" The image, here, is that of a king, enthroned with all the pomp associated with his exalted office. Those worshipers who are privileged to have a private audience with this mighty Lord are thrilled to simply dwell for a few moments in the presence of such greatness.
Among the most notable characteristics of this mighty celestial monarch is glory. "Glory" is an interesting word in English. There's no other word that can stand in for it. Honor, praise, power, splendor, radiance, magnificence, grandeur -- line up the synonyms, you won't find one that can take glory's place. "The glory of God" ... it rolls trippingly off the tongue, as natural (to those of us reared on the language of the church) as breathing.
Yet as familiar as "glory" is to anyone who's ever listened to a sermon or opened a hymnbook, it is also a neglected word. "Glory" bespeaks God's power and our insignificance. The literary scholar Amos Wilder is all too correct as he writes, "The church today has widely lost and all but forgotten the experience of glory which lies at the heart of Christianity."
I have to admit, from my experience, that this is one area in which Protestants may be at something of a loss (compared with Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox). So eager were the Protestant reformers to strip their churches of any and all idolatry, that they thoughtlessly discarded many good and faithful attempts by artists to capture a vision of glory. In the ancient churches of Europe, we can still see some of these glorious visions.
I am thinking of the cathedral of Chartres in France -- where merely to cross the threshold is to pass from noonday heat to mysterious coolness, from glaring sunlight to an otherworldly vision, sealed in the rich hues of the medieval glassmaker's art.
I am thinking also of the little churches of Ravenna, Italy -- squat and plain on the outside, but inside filled with the most glorious mosaics in all the world, each tile as bright and colorful as the day the artist set it in the grout 1,500 years ago. At the center of one of the Ravenna churches is the majestic image of Christ Pantocrator, ruler of the universe, arms outstretched to embrace the world; and leading up to it, on the walls of the nave, are twin processions of male and female saints and martyrs from the book of Revelation, "casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea."
The memory comes to my mind, too, of entering the little chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, for choral "Evensong." Listening to the choirboys sing -- and watching, by flickering candlelight, the rows upon rows of carved angels on the great reredos above the altar seeming to ascend and descend, as they must have appeared to Jacob in his vision of a ladder to heaven -- seemed to me like the boundary between earth and heaven had grown thin.
Lacking the visual magnificence of ecclesiastical art, Protestants are perhaps more apt to glimpse the glory of God in nature. Many have stood at the edge of a natural wonder like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, and have sensed God's greatness and our smallness. Charles Lindbergh -- who knew, perhaps more than any other American, what it's like to receive the world's glory -- remained awed to the end of his days by a simple experience of being alone in nature: "Lying under an acacia tree with the sounds of the dawn around ... I became more aware of the basic glory of life. Not life as applied humanly to man alone, but life as diversified by God on earth with superhuman wisdom. I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes." (A remarkable thing to say, for someone who loved airplanes as much as "Lucky Lindy!")
God's glory: it's a vision that sustains faith.
Institutions are idolatrous. That is, by their very nature they demand total allegiance, for they exist solely through the investment of their members. They have no life of their own, but derive their existence from the life of the human beings who take part in them. They brook no rivals; they demand conformity. Institutions are humorless because if they do not take themselves seriously, they will cease to exist. Give your life to an institution, and it will take your life away from you.
Communities, on the other hand, are life-giving. Communities exist for the sake of their members. Rather than taking your life, they remind us that life is bigger than any one of us. They demand not conformity but diversity, since it is in encountering those who differ from us that we learn to accept that life is not our own, but derived from an ultimate source. A community can look at itself and laugh at the absurdity of its diversity, because it holds itself loosely, recognizing that it exists not in and of itself but for a larger purpose. A community is created by God and, in the case of the church, exists to acknowledge that God. The church as a community differs from the church as an institution in that the one reflects for us the image of God, while the other pretends to be God.
Our lessons today trace a path out of idolatry into the service of a living God, who cannot be contained by any created thing, let alone an institution. In each lesson, the community plays a vital role in calling human beings away from idolatry and toward God, but the moment communities become institutionalized, they pull the other way. We will never escape idolatry without the help of other people; we will always have to resist the tendency of communities to re-form themselves as idolatrous institutions.
Exodus 33:12-23
The story of Moses begins shortly after the people of Israel made the vital mistake of trying to institutionalize their community in the shape of a golden calf (cf. Exodus 32:1-35). Not content to be a community-in-waiting, they convinced Aaron to fashion a substitute for the living God whom Moses had gone up the mountain to meet. In the absence of any certainty, they attempt to create their own. It was Genesis 3 redux -- the pattern of sin, dialogue, and new covenant is quite similar to the Bible's opening chapters. In some ways, Israel was in an even more precarious position than Adam and Eve, because their existence as a people was predicated on being the people of the Lord; without the Lord, they were no people.
Moses takes on the role of intercessor, as the one person who has "found favor" with God. Note that the usual rule in the biblical writings goes by the wayside in God's address to Moses; more often than not, the second-person pronoun "you" in the Bible is plural, reflecting God's commitment to the community rather than the individual, but here God speaks to Moses personally, omitting any reference to the community. "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name" (33:17). This distresses Moses to no end, for it indicates that the community has lost its binding principle, its election by God. God has gone so far to call Israel, "Moses' people": "Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land ... I will send an angel before you ... but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people" (vv. 1-3). Moses realizes that if the peoples' leadership is delegated to an angel, Israel will no longer be unique, it will have lost the primary mark of its existence: "If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth" (vv. 15-16). In his objection, Moses emphasizes not just his own closeness to God, but identifies himself with the people.
Rather than deny his close relationship with God, Moses seeks to capitalize on God's "favor" for the sake of the people (vv. 12, 13, 16, 17, 19). He asks God to lead Israel personally, not through an unknown intermediary: "See, you have said to me, 'Bring up this people'; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people" (vv. 12-13). The narrative moves forward via the keywords "favor," "see," "face," and "know." English translations tend to obscure the subtlety of Moses' intercession, as he attempts to get God to "see" (r'h variously translated as "see," "consider," and "show," vv. 12, 13, 18) that God's "face" (paneh sometimes translated "presence," vv. 14-16) is crucial to Israel's existence, for it is the face that Israel presents to the world (v. 16). Moses wants to translate God's intimacy with him (expressed by the verb yd' "to know," vv. 12, 17) into confirmation both for him ("show me" in v. 13 reflects yd') and the world (yd' again in v. 16, "How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us?"). God finally relents and agrees to lead the people, as a result of Moses' persistence (vv. 14, 17).
Moses isn't done yet: "Show me your glory" (r'h again, v. 18). Moses wants to see the essence of God. This is not an unreasonable request, because it has already been granted once, when Moses and the leaders of Israel "saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank" (24:10-11). However, Moses is asking for an even greater intimacy that cannot be granted -- for safety's sake! "You cannot see my face (again paneh); for no one shall see me and live" (33:20; the contradiction with 24:10-11 is never fully resolved). Moses is personally denied the very "face" he had requested for Israel, as a reminder that the "favor" (hen, vv. 12, 13, 16, 17) he has been given is the sovereign gift of one who is by nature "gracious" (the cognate hnn, "to show favor," v. 19). Moses cannot see God's "glory," but only God's "goodness," as embodied in the divine name (v. 19). This is symbolized by God's care to shield Moses from his "face" and reveal only his "back" (vv. 21-23; the promise but not the action is narrated). As close as Moses is to God, there is a differentiation between creature and creator that cannot be bridged. No created thing can substitute for the creator without harm to creation.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul writes to those who have "turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God" (1:9). The Thessalonian church was composed primarily of Greeks, who needed instruction concerning exactly what it meant to worship God rather than idols. In pagan religion there was little connection between religion and morality (in comparison with Judaism); they were two separate spheres of existence. Even the worship of idols was not considered pejorative in Roman circles, as it was in Judaism; for a pagan audience, it would be news that there was a difference between idols and a living God (v. 9). Thus there was nothing in the Thessalonians' background that would prepare them for life as Christian believers. Paul and his colleagues must provide it for them in person or by letter.
Thus Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy take an existing literary form, the letter of friendship, and transform it for Christian purposes. The transformation is not limited to a Christianization of the opening greeting (v. 1); ancient letters often began with a prayer for the reader's well-being, along with a thanksgiving and supplication to the gods. Here the convention is changed to emphasize the spiritual condition of the recipients, reflecting the main themes of the letter, including the importance of the community for a continued life moving away from idolatry and toward God (vv. 9-10); the significance of the works produced by faith and love (cf. 2:1-16); the response of witness that comes with being chosen by God (cf. 2:17--3:13); the importance of moral exemplars for Christian growth (cf. 4:1-12; 5:12-24); and the ultimate reality of judgment and salvation in God's long-term timeframe (cf. 4:13--5:11).
The multiple authorship is crucial to Paul's exemplary purpose. We tend to speak of "the letters of Paul" as if he did not explicitly and specifically acknowledge his co-writers, in this case Silvanus and Timothy. Paul worked as part of a team, and we should take the multiple authorship of his letters seriously. It is "we" and not "I" who directs thanks to God for this community (v. 2). It is "we" and not "I" who acknowledge God's choice of these people (v. 4). Most importantly, it is "we" and not "I" who serve as moral examples of the Christian life (v. 5), because it is the whole community and not just the individuals who reflect the glory of their Lord (v. 6). Thus the Thessalonians, who imitate not just the apostles but also their Lord, can be examples to others (v. 7).
The primary focus of imitation, however, is not moral but evangelical. Their example, in which they follow that of the apostles, is that "the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you" (v. 8). This is their "work of faith and labor of love," the indication that "he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction" (vv. 4-5). Thus their report (about the Lord and their own community) goes out throughout the region (vv. 8-9). The message about the messengers confirms their message.
The letter opening does not neglect the prominent eschatological theme that reverberates throughout (cf. 2:19; 3:13; 4:13-18; 5:1-11). The logical consequence of the turn from idols to a living God is to recognize that the risen Lord is still alive and scheduled for return (v. 10). The purpose of the return is to "rescue us from the wrath that is coming" (cf. 2:16; 5:9), and the purpose of the community is to "wait for his Son from heaven" by working to become the people of God. This end-times focus probably explains the reference to "persecution" (v. 6, literally "in deep tribulation"). This probably does not refer to any organized persecution of the Thessalonian church, but to the inherent cultural and personal discomfort that comes with moving from idolatry to worship of the living God; they were moving to a new way of being, at odds with their neighbors. Such "tribulation" was commonly thought to be a sign of the end (cf. 2:2, 14-16; 3:3-4; cf. Matthew 24:9, 21, 29; Mark 13:19, 24; Revelation 7:14), but in fact it came with the territory of believing in a dying, rising, and living Lord (cf. John 16:33; Romans 5:3; 8:35; 12:12; 2 Corinthians 1:4, 8; 2:4; 4:17; Philippians 1:17; 4:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:4, 6; Hebrews 10:33; Revelation 1:9; 2:9-10). Distress and persecution follows from the imitation of Christ, and it represents a share in the suffering of Christ; the new converts in Thessalonica would need a reminder that this too is part of following the example of their Lord.
Matthew 22:15-22
The situation is much more dangerous when the leaders of the community are those who have turned from the living God to idols. In the case of the Pharisees and the Herodians who tried to entrap Jesus, the idol was clearly the institution that had come to substitute for the community. In their attempt to preserve the institution, they failed both the community and the God who formed it. Having nothing to contribute to the community, they can do nothing but try to bolster an empty institution the best they know how -- by giving their lives to it, and demanding Jesus' life to preserve it.
Though the Pharisees present themselves as extremely poor models for imitation, they nevertheless have disciples of their own, and in Matthew's version of the story, they send these poor lambs into a verbal joust with Jesus. The Herodians who accompany them are otherwise unknown, but presumably were followers of that Jewish leader (there is no particular evidence for the hypothesis that the Herodians would have been invested in the opposite side of the issue as the Pharisees, for example, that they wanted to hear Jesus say "It is lawful," while the Pharisees believed "It is not lawful"). The irony here is that the question is not one of Jewish law at all; they simply ask Jesus his opinion on a political issue, in hopes that he will trip up -- it is the original "Gotcha" question, along the lines of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" The unpopular Roman poll tax amounted to a day's worth of forced labor for the Romans (on top of all the other local and imperial taxes levied), and were Jesus to affirm it, his status among the people would be compromised. But it was a greater danger to deny it in public, since that could be taken as open sedition by the Romans. The mini-Pharisees think they have Jesus in a difficult situation.
But Jesus exposes their hypocrisy simply by asking for the coin used for the tribute tax, a silver denarius bearing the image and title of the emperor. They produce one from their own pockets (Jesus and his disciples conspicuously traveled without cash). If it were unlawful to give tribute to the emperor, why were they carrying his graven image? Did not their possession of his coinage signify their participation in a spiritual realm where the emperor was considered to be the Son of God? The coin would have burned their hands, if their question had been in any way honest. Jesus can handle the coin, however, because he sees it for what it is -- a created thing that takes its value from those who wield it. For Jesus it is relatively insignificant; he can hand it back to the emperor without any loss to himself. More important is to give back to God that which belongs to God.
"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" (v. 21). The pronouncement is hardly to be taken as guidance for political philosophy. It serves rhetorically to stop the conversation and shut the mouths of the insincere (v. 22). For those who have ears to hear, however, it does not end the conversation but opens it up. The issue of what belongs to the emperor is clear enough; it can be held in the hand or put in the change pocket. The issue of what belongs to God is less clear, since there is no prop or visual aid. What does belong to God? It would be more to the point to ask if there is anything that does not belong to God. In effect, Jesus is inviting his listeners to turn from idols -- which can consist in any created thing we give our allegiance to -- to the living God.
You may have seen the proposed simplified IRS form; it has two lines, the first of which asks, "What is your income?" while the second says, "Send it in." Jesus' answer turns the joke on its head. The truth of the matter is that no matter what you try to hold back, you always end up sending all of yourself in. The choice is clear enough: Will you send what you have to the emperor (or whatever creature holds your interest that day), or will you send everything that is you to God? Only one choice is life-giving, because we can never truly belong to a created thing, but only to the God who gives us life and breath and being.
Application
Idolatry and faith are not two separate conditions but different places on the same continuum. As created beings, we are always oscillating somewhere between these two poles. Being creatures and not the Creator, we will always be in need of something outside of our selves to make ourselves complete. Ideally, we will find our center in the Creator, the one who made us with the God-shaped hole in the heart. However, the problem with grasping the Creator is that there is nothing to grasp. Like Moses, we find ourselves staring at God's backside, seeing a fleeting glimpse of goodness were we hoped to find a confirming glory. The face of God eludes us. How much easier to grab creation, that which can be seen and held and counted.
The gross idolatry of the glutton or the miser or the "sexaholic" may not appeal to the refined tastes of religious folk, however. We are more than aware of and on guard against the sins of the flesh. We may fail to realize, however, that the things of the spirit are our own creations, too. We may attempt to accumulate for ourselves attitudes and attributes of our own making, so that we come to trust in our own righteousness, our own virtue, our own intellectual accomplishments. Any created thing can become an idol. Yes, even the church itself.
There is no easy fix for idolatry, and its subtler forms are even harder to fight against. But the very nature of idolatry precludes our ever escaping it completely. Faith is therefore a process. We choose the living God over the idol, again and again, one day at a time. We find ourselves looking down at Israel from the mountain, oblivious to the golden calf we hold in our own hearts. We smirk at the retreating Pharisees, until we look down to see that the emperor's idolatrous image is still in our hands. We stumble, we confess our sins, and we get back up. We turn from idols to worship the living God. This is the life of faith.
And this is where the community is so crucial to the process. You remind me, by the simple virtue of being you, that I am not God. God has called you, a fellow creature, to be in community with me, even though we may not agree on theology, politics, social issues, or much of anything else. Our agreement may be an institutional concern, but it is not a communal concern. Our difference is our gift to one another; it calls us away from the worship of our "creatureliness" by reminding us that God made us all to be different. God cannot be contained by any one creature. Simply looking at you calls me out of idolatry and toward the living God. This indeed is the life of faith.
An Alternative Application
Exodus 33:12-23; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. Prayer is a powerful force. God was ready to leave Israel to its golden calf. Moses, however, would not let the people go. He capitalized on his own favor with God in order to call God back to the people. He appealed to God's own nature as gracious and merciful, counting on God's own self-identification: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Exodus 33:19). If God is sovereign in this favor and mercy, then there is no reason that God could not extend it to those who had proved themselves unworthy of it. Moses' example proved to subsequent believers, like Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy that intercessory prayer was worth a try.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 96:1-9 (10-13)
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 24)
Psalm 96 oozes with the confidence of worshipers who triumphantly proclaim, "Our God reigns!" The image, here, is that of a king, enthroned with all the pomp associated with his exalted office. Those worshipers who are privileged to have a private audience with this mighty Lord are thrilled to simply dwell for a few moments in the presence of such greatness.
Among the most notable characteristics of this mighty celestial monarch is glory. "Glory" is an interesting word in English. There's no other word that can stand in for it. Honor, praise, power, splendor, radiance, magnificence, grandeur -- line up the synonyms, you won't find one that can take glory's place. "The glory of God" ... it rolls trippingly off the tongue, as natural (to those of us reared on the language of the church) as breathing.
Yet as familiar as "glory" is to anyone who's ever listened to a sermon or opened a hymnbook, it is also a neglected word. "Glory" bespeaks God's power and our insignificance. The literary scholar Amos Wilder is all too correct as he writes, "The church today has widely lost and all but forgotten the experience of glory which lies at the heart of Christianity."
I have to admit, from my experience, that this is one area in which Protestants may be at something of a loss (compared with Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox). So eager were the Protestant reformers to strip their churches of any and all idolatry, that they thoughtlessly discarded many good and faithful attempts by artists to capture a vision of glory. In the ancient churches of Europe, we can still see some of these glorious visions.
I am thinking of the cathedral of Chartres in France -- where merely to cross the threshold is to pass from noonday heat to mysterious coolness, from glaring sunlight to an otherworldly vision, sealed in the rich hues of the medieval glassmaker's art.
I am thinking also of the little churches of Ravenna, Italy -- squat and plain on the outside, but inside filled with the most glorious mosaics in all the world, each tile as bright and colorful as the day the artist set it in the grout 1,500 years ago. At the center of one of the Ravenna churches is the majestic image of Christ Pantocrator, ruler of the universe, arms outstretched to embrace the world; and leading up to it, on the walls of the nave, are twin processions of male and female saints and martyrs from the book of Revelation, "casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea."
The memory comes to my mind, too, of entering the little chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, for choral "Evensong." Listening to the choirboys sing -- and watching, by flickering candlelight, the rows upon rows of carved angels on the great reredos above the altar seeming to ascend and descend, as they must have appeared to Jacob in his vision of a ladder to heaven -- seemed to me like the boundary between earth and heaven had grown thin.
Lacking the visual magnificence of ecclesiastical art, Protestants are perhaps more apt to glimpse the glory of God in nature. Many have stood at the edge of a natural wonder like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, and have sensed God's greatness and our smallness. Charles Lindbergh -- who knew, perhaps more than any other American, what it's like to receive the world's glory -- remained awed to the end of his days by a simple experience of being alone in nature: "Lying under an acacia tree with the sounds of the dawn around ... I became more aware of the basic glory of life. Not life as applied humanly to man alone, but life as diversified by God on earth with superhuman wisdom. I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes." (A remarkable thing to say, for someone who loved airplanes as much as "Lucky Lindy!")
God's glory: it's a vision that sustains faith.
