Proper 24 / Pentecost 22 / Ordinary Time 29
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
The faith, love, and hope Paul celebrates among the Thessalonians are virtues we do well to cultivate today.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 33:12-23
Moses Intercedes For The People, And Sees The Glory Of The Lord
Confronted by Moses with their sin in worshiping the golden calf, the people repent and mourn (v. 4). In the tent of meeting, Moses intercedes before God on behalf of the Israelites: "Consider too that this nation is your people" (v. 13b). Moses argues that no one will know that he has received the Lord's favor, unless in fact the Lord does accompany him and the people as they journey onward (v. 16). For the sake of Moses, the Lord relents, and pledges to go with him and the people (v. 17). Moses then asks, "Show me your glory, I pray" (v. 18). The reply is that Moses may see everything but God's face, for he cannot see the Lord's face and live (verses 19-20). The Lord instructs Moses where he can find a certain cleft in the rock, where he can hide and see the Lord's back, his eyes shielded by the Lord's hand. Thus, Moses will behold the glory of the Lord, and still survive (verses 21-23). The Lord, in this passage, is both present and mysterious. God graciously accommodates to our human need for religious experience but shields us from the full display of divine glory, which would be too much to take. For Christians, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is another example of how God self-reveals to us.
New Testament Lesson
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Learning The Faith By Example
Greeting the Thessalonians in apostolic fashion -- "Grace to you and peace" -- Paul includes his close associates Silvanus and Timothy as coauthors of his letter, which is his earliest (v. 1). Silvanus is probably the same person as Silas, mentioned in Acts. An important part of Christian ministry is constant prayer, and this is certainly part of Paul's self-concept as he speaks of his constant thanksgiving and intercession (verses 2-3). Paul is grateful for these Christians' faith, hope, and love (v. 3). The apostle may have made the first contact with the Thessalonians, but they were receptive to the message because God had chosen them in advance (verses 4-5). God prepared the ground for the evangelists, and Paul is grateful that this particular garden is bearing much fruit. The Thessalonians are "imitators" of Paul and of God, and their example has been visible throughout the region (verses 6-10). This is somewhat in contrast to the account of Paul's visit to Thessalonika in Acts 17, in which the people were far from united in their support, but this letter is evidently directed to the loyal faction. The concepts of imitation and example are prominent in this passage. The Thessalonians have come to the faith because of the example of Paul and his associates, whose faith they imitated. Paul, in turn, commends them for providing a similar good example for others throughout the region. "Imitation," here, has positive connotations. For us, the word may carry a sense of insincerity (as in "imitation" foods, which are rarely as satisfying as the original) but that is not true here. We learn best by example, and example is the best evangelistic technique of all.
The Gospel
Matthew 22:15-22
Taxes To Caesar?
One of the thorniest theological questions in first-century Judaism was that of how believers ought to relate to the foreign occupiers. Messianic expectation focused on the day when Israel would once again be free to determine its own destiny, but for the present, people had to get by somehow under Roman occupation. Matthew tells us the Pharisees, in sending a delegation to deferentially question Jesus about paying taxes to the emperor, were in fact trying to trap him (v. 15). Included in the delegation are some Herodians -- representatives of the Hellenistic Jewish king, a Roman puppet. Their question presents Jesus with a loyalty litmus test, which they think will put him on the horns of a dilemma. If he opposes paying Roman taxes, he can be accused of sedition; yet, if he speaks in favor of taxes, he will lose some of his support from the radical Zealot element. Jesus is aware of his questioners' ulterior motive and receives them with some hostility (v. 18). He does answer their question but in an unconventional way. He asks them to produce a coin with the emperor's picture on it (v. 19). The silver denarius was very likely inscribed, "Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus." The "Pontifex Maximus" title -- used today to refer to the pope -- celebrates the emperor's role as pagan high priest. Many faithful Jews would not carry such a coin, for they considered it an idolatrous image. The fact that Jesus' questioners can so easily produce it is embarrassing for them, for it identifies them as collaborators. Once Jesus has established that it's the emperor's picture on the coin, he says, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" (v. 21). His statement is situational and heavy with sarcasm. It is not meant to be taken, as some have taken it, as a definitive declaration on the separation of church and state.
Preaching Possibilities
For the Christians of Thessalonika, a letter's arrival is a major event -- especially if the letter comes from Paul, that wise teacher who lived for a time in their town and told them of Jesus Christ. The Thessalonians gather round, while someone who can read breaks the wax seals, unrolls the papyrus, and begins to speak aloud. "Grace to you and peace," Paul begins. His favorite salutation! Paul goes on to speak of gratitude: "We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
This is no business correspondence. That formal reserve, that cool politeness, is completely absent. No, this is more of a personal letter from a beloved pastor to the people he used to serve.
Even as he writes with affection, Paul is still teaching. In these early lines of the letter, we can discern -- if we look hard enough -- some powerful truths about how we ought to live our lives.
Three things Paul finds to commend, among the company of the faithful in Thessalonika, their "work of faith," their "labor of love," and their "steadfastness of hope."
Faith, hope, and love -- or, as we have it here, faith, love, and hope -- form a familiar trinity. To each of these great words Paul attaches another: A noun that serves as a sort of gangplank for us, as we seek to come on board.
First, there's the work of faith. That may seem almost a contradiction in terms -- at least for children of the Reformation. If you've studied anything at all about Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, you probably remember that his watchword was "justification by grace, through faith." Faith, Luther proclaims, is not some work that Christians need to perform. We're sinners, every last one of us, and we could never learn to practice faith as the Lord would have us do it. No, the faith we possess is a free gift of God: procured, for those who earnestly repent of their sin, by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and by his rising again.
So what's Paul getting at when he writes to those Thessalonians about "the work of faith"? He's making a very practical and worthwhile point. His point has to do with how we come by faith in the first place.
Think back to how you first received the Christian faith. Was it something you were taught -- or something you caught?
Very likely, faith, in the first place, was something you caught. Faith was something you heard and saw practiced by people who were important to you. You learned by imitating. Sure, there were times when you studied the faith in a formal way -- when, perhaps, you learned the particular content of Christian beliefs, memorized some theological terms and began to find your way around the Bible. Yet, very likely, you were already a Christian (or at least an aspiring one) when you did that.
What you witnessed those spiritual mentors of yours doing, early on -- and, what Paul, for his part, applauds the Thessalonians for -- was working your faith, practicing it, enacting it. Paul remembers before God, in his prayers, how the Thessalonians enacted their faith -- how they made it real.
This runs hard up against the popular wisdom of today. Ask people to describe what faith is, and they'll probably begin by telling you what they believe. They'll maybe recite the Apostle's Creed or begin laying out some other list of ideas they've pondered and studied and have come to accept as true.
But that's not faith -- not faith in its totality, anyway. Did you know that throughout the Bible the most common form in which the word "faith" appears is as a verb? Every once in a while, you do run across faith as a noun, but far more often it's a verb: an action.
Faith is a verb. It's something we do, something we decide to do -- not a static body of ideas we believe. That's what Paul means by the work of faith. He's not commending the Thessalonians because they've become learned theologians. No, he's proud of them because, in the hurly-burly of everyday life, they've figured out how to put their faith into practice. They have worked Christianity and have found that it works for them.
"What we need," wrote Episcopal Bishop James Pike, some years back, "is fewer beliefs and more belief. When the disciples said, 'Lord, increase our faith,' they did not mean, help us to believe more things than we now believe. What they meant was, where our faith is weak, make it strong, or help us to make it stronger."
Once there was a Western missionary in the Congo, who had to walk across her village one night, very late. An elderly Congolese man named Papa Jean showed up at the door of her bungalow, to show her the way.
Papa Jean held up a smoky kerosene lantern. No other lights could be seen in the village at that late hour. The darkness was thick and foreboding. The howls of wild animals could be heard, emerging from the nearby jungle.
"That lamp doesn't give much light, does it, Papa?" the missionary remarked nervously.
"No, it doesn't," Papa Jean admitted. "But," and he smiled at this, "it shines as far as I can step."
We can ask no more of faith than this: that it shines as far as we can step. Such is the work of faith. Such is faith that works.
Paul also commends the Thessalonians for their labor of love. Most of us are familiar with the phrase as it's commonly used to describe a person's favorite project or hobby. A labor of love is the fly-fisherman burning midnight oil to tie that one last fly; or the cyclist carefully disassembling her bicycle, oiling the parts, and putting it back together again.
Yet, that's not the labor of love Paul has in mind. Of the several different Greek words for love found in the New Testament, the highest and most honorable form is agape. Agape is selfless, self-sacrificing love for others. It's the kind of love Jesus demonstrates on the cross.
Does it seem odd, here, that Paul describes love as a labor? The word he uses for labor is kopos -- a word that means "difficult toil." It's a far stronger choice than the milder ergon, meaning deed or act, which is what Paul uses to describe the "work of faith." Love is not only work. It's hard work. It is this difficult, demanding labor for which Paul commends the Thessalonians.
There are times in life when love comes easily. There are times when love is something we fall into -- a giddy, glamorous, gratifying experience. Such moments are to be cherished and celebrated, certainly. Our Christian faith celebrates the kisses, the hugs, the "sweet nothings" that lovers delight in sharing.
Yet, Christianity is also an earthy, practical faith. The wisdom of our faith is that, even in the strongest marriage or intimate friendship, there comes a time when the going gets tough, when hard-working love must truly rise to the occasion. Love is a feeling, of course, but love is also a choice. It's a decision, a commitment. It is, in a very real sense, a labor on behalf of the other.
Novelist Flannery O'Connor writes of love as something that "is hard and endures." "Marriage," writes theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a Nazi prison cell to his niece, who's getting married, "is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and humanity.... It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."
That's why, in this era of continuing sexual revolution, the Christian church still says to men and women, "It's not enough simply to live together. You need commitment. You need to have exchanged those vows. Until you have, you have not begun to demonstrate the labor of love."
Finally, Paul speaks of steadfastness of hope. That, too, may sound like a strange choice of words, for hope -- to the popular imagination -- is a light and airy thing. It just doesn't seem to match up with a ponderous word like "steadfast." Steadfast is what most of us want our bank to be: solid, immovable, invincible. As for hope, to many people it's the stuff of insubstantial daydreams: "I hope I win the lottery," "I hope we have spaghetti for dinner," "I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas."
To use the word "hope" as a synonym for "dream" or "desire" is one thing; but that's not how Paul uses it. The Greek word hupomones can also be translated "patience, endurance, fortitude, perseverance." Christian hope demonstrates this character of solidity, of reliability, of standing fast.
Hope is at its strongest when it doesn't get its way. A patient in the hospital may hope her tumor will shrink under radiation therapy, but if, when treatment's done, the doctor still detects a mass on the x-ray, it doesn't mean all hope is gone. No, what it means is that the patient can, if she chooses, demonstrate the kind of hope that stands resolute in the midst of suffering and confusion -- making no demands of God, other than that God continue to be present.
"Hope," says Vaclav Havel, playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia, "is the conviction that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." That's an example of a truly steadfast hope.
Another person who thinks that way is cancer doctor Bernie Siegel. "There is no such thing," Siegel writes, "as a false hope." Any degree of hope, however insubstantial it may seem, is a mighty weapon to use against suffering or despair.
There's an old Jewish story about a man who's traveling on foot through desolate country in the midst of a thunderstorm. It's night, and there's no moon. Everything's dark as dark can be. Every once in a while there's a flash of lightning followed by a rolling peal of thunder. For a split second, the lightning illuminates the road in front of the traveler.
"The fool looks at the lightning," the old tale goes; "the wise person looks at the road." We can frequently choose in this life how we're going to have hope. We can allow ourselves to be dazzled by the lightning flash, or we can ready our eyes for the moment when the lightning throws all around us in sharp relief, and we can glimpse the path in front of us.
Here is a hope that's more than escapist fantasy. This hope is strong, steadfast, firmly grounded. It derives not just from the inner, psychic strength of the individual, but also from God and other people who are outside of us.
Enacted faith, hard-toiling love, and stubborn hope -- what an odd trilogy Paul sets forth here! It's odd according to the ways of the world; it certainly brooks no illusions in recognizing the hard realities of life. Yet in a time of crisis or difficulty, it's exactly the kind of approach that's likely to succeed. The Lord does not always lift suffering from the shoulders of his people, but always God accompanies them through it.
Ultimately, it's Jesus Christ who makes all things possible. After listing "work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope," Paul includes the little phrase, "in our Lord Jesus Christ." That phrase is far from incidental. The body of Christ is a spiritual reality. It is both the gathered community and the presence of the Lord himself by the power of the Holy Spirit. The risen Lord, Jesus, is a vastly bigger reality than our small minds can comprehend. It is in him, co-eternal with God the creator, that all of us "live and move and have our being."
Faith, hope, and love all find fulfillment in Jesus Christ. It is in him we place our trust. It is he who makes all things possible!
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we ask you
for hardworking faith,
for persevering love,
for steadfast hope.
There are times when we doubt
we possess such priceless gifts.
Yet, we hear the scriptures telling us that we do.
We do!
May we learn to live into the gifts
you have already given
in such abundance. Amen.
To Illustrate
They say letter-writing is a lost art. There just aren't that many people who practice it anymore.
Who's got the time? Why, so many of us are rushing to and fro, frantically trying to fit it all in. Who could possibly sit down at a desk, pull out a sheet of stationery, and a nice pen... open the inkwell, angle the page (as our penmanship teacher taught)... stare off into space a moment, pondering what to say... then, put pen's nib to paper, and allow the thoughts to flow? The feelings, too… Let them flow like blood, emotion liquefied then absorbed into paper, indelibly, a twisted, loopy line on a page, fit for a friend to read.
"Why bother?" many of us would say. Why bother, when you can flip open your cell phone... tap out a text message... hit the "enter" key and send your email sailing off into cyberspace? It's fast, cheap, and easy -- it's quite unlike anything the apostle Paul could have dreamed of.
Imagine, for a moment, his world. Imagine the Mediterranean Sea, rimmed by little seashore communities so isolated they call them "city states." The population's a fraction of what it is today. Transportation is uncertain, at best and set foot aboard a ship, and you're taking your life in your hands.
News, in that world, travels slowly and sporadically and mostly when a merchant ship comes to call. If you're one of those unusual people who can read -- and if you're of a high-enough social class, and actually know someone else outside your city to correspond with -- you just may have the rare privilege, once or twice a year, of receiving a letter.
***
The place was a suburb of Detroit. The speaker, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Elie Wiesel. The subject of this great Jewish writer's address: "After Auschwitz, Can We Still Believe?"
Jews and Gentiles alike filled the massive synagogue to listen to the memories of a man who, as a boy and then a teenager, survived the death camps. For nearly an hour, Elie Wiesel spun story after story of horror and bleak despair. He told of family members separated from one another forever, of prisoners who went mad and threw themselves onto the electric fence, of lives hopelessly confused and shattered, even years after their liberation. In solemn, respectful silence, the audience relived the speaker's pain.
Finally, he stopped talking. His eyes dropped to the floor. There was no sound at all in that huge auditorium, for what seemed an eternity. Then, slowly, Wiesel repeated the title of his talk: "After Auschwitz, can we still believe?"
He shook his head slowly, sadly. "No, no," he said. "But, we must!"
***
When I stand here in this sanctuary and look into the faces of a bride and a groom, so often I can sense the sheer joy and exhilaration they bring with them on their wedding day. Then I go into the wedding prayer from the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship and come to the line that says, "Give them courage, when they hurt each other, to recognize and confess their fault..." and I feel like some kind of wet blanket!
The prayer doesn't say if they hurt each other, but when. Hurting each other in marriage is a given. It's going to happen. No amount of pre-marital counseling, no quantity of common interests, no intensity of fervent prayer will head off that outcome. It's simply what happens when two sinful people come together in intimate relationship.
***
There's a huge quilt that hangs in a hospital somewhere in a ward specializing in breast cancer. Its words celebrate a hope that's truly steadfast. Note how important, in this little poem, a sense of community -- of shared hope -- is to this cancer patient:
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Lost and hopeless feelings accompany me daily.
Pain and confusion are my companions.
I know not where to turn.
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Hold my hand and hug me.
Listen to all my ramblings.
Recovery seems so far distant.
The road to healing seems like a long and lonely one.
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Stand by me and offer me your presence, your heart, your love.
Acknowledge my pain, it is so real and ever present
I am overwhelmed by sad and conflicting thoughts.
Lend me your hope for a while; a time will come when I will heal.
And I will share my renewal, my hope, and my love with others.
***
Clarence Jordan, founder in 1942 of Koinonia Farm in South Georgia, said that "faith is not a stubborn belief in spite of the evidence." Instead, "faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences."
***
The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. [Man] is the judge: God is in the dock. [Man] is quite a kindly judge: If God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease; he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God is in the Dock.
-- C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 244
(In English law courts, the "dock" is an enclosure in which the accused sits during a trial.)
***
"There in the wasteland where you had not thought to find life, you will suddenly find the signs of God's renewal, blooming and flowering and bursting forth from the dry earth with great energy, God's energy. In the driest month, you find on the branches' tips new shoots of life. Under the rock in the desert will sprout a flower, a delicate bud of the new life."
Those are words of former Haitian president and Roman Catholic priest John-Bertrand Aristide, speaking of resurrection hope. He knew what he was talking about.
In 1988, as Father Aristide was presiding at mass in his church, a riot broke out. Government soldiers stormed the church and set the place on fire. They murdered unarmed worshipers.
One of the victims was a young pregnant woman who had been stabbed by the soldiers. Somehow, even as the assassins rampaged through the church, someone managed to spirit the woman away to a hospital.
Father Aristide writes, "Everyone in Port-au-Prince had heard the story of the attack against the young mother and the unborn child. And that night, after the massacre, the criminals went to the university hospital, searching the maternity wards. They heard the woman had survived, and they wanted to finish her off, to show the people that there was no hope in the world." They searched the maternity wards but never found that woman.
By some miracle of God, she had been taken to another hospital far away. She gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section, a girl slightly wounded, but otherwise healthy and undamaged. She named that child Esperancia, which means "Hope."
Father Aristide says, "The baby's birth showed that the assassins, the criminals, the police, the Army, the president, and all the president's men could not put an end to Hope in Haiti; they could not destroy us with their knives and spears... The child called Hope is the new generation of my country."
-- adapted from Jean-Bertrand Aristide, In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti, trans. Amy Wilentz (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1990), pp. 64-65
***
One of the church's great proclamations of abundance is marriage. All is focused on a single other -- but the truth is that, far from being not enough, that one person is more than enough. Just pause and wonder for a moment at the mystery of another person -- another mind, another imagination, another myriad of experiences, energies, enthusiasms, and enjoyments. Could one ever exhaust that person? And to embody the truth that the good of one partner in the marriage can never be in conflict with the good of the other, we call them one flesh. The two people become one body. What is good for the hand is good for the foot. What hurts the knee can never be good for the ear. They are one flesh and the things that are good for them are things they each can have. This is the politics of love: not the calculation of how each partner can get a fair share out of life together in this world of scarcity, but the discernment of how the gifts they have been blessed with may be enjoyed for their mutual flourishing and the service of others.
This is what marriage gets down to. Not a zero-sum game, in which one person sacrifices his or her career, friends, creativity, or deepest needs so that the other can be the hero, or the star, or never lose the argument. Instead, marriage is an adventure in which a new body can bring together what neither of two people could have been apart. The only thing that might stop them would be the idea that they could somehow get there on their own.
-- Samuel Wells, "More than Enough," The Christian Century, June 15, 2004
The faith, love, and hope Paul celebrates among the Thessalonians are virtues we do well to cultivate today.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 33:12-23
Moses Intercedes For The People, And Sees The Glory Of The Lord
Confronted by Moses with their sin in worshiping the golden calf, the people repent and mourn (v. 4). In the tent of meeting, Moses intercedes before God on behalf of the Israelites: "Consider too that this nation is your people" (v. 13b). Moses argues that no one will know that he has received the Lord's favor, unless in fact the Lord does accompany him and the people as they journey onward (v. 16). For the sake of Moses, the Lord relents, and pledges to go with him and the people (v. 17). Moses then asks, "Show me your glory, I pray" (v. 18). The reply is that Moses may see everything but God's face, for he cannot see the Lord's face and live (verses 19-20). The Lord instructs Moses where he can find a certain cleft in the rock, where he can hide and see the Lord's back, his eyes shielded by the Lord's hand. Thus, Moses will behold the glory of the Lord, and still survive (verses 21-23). The Lord, in this passage, is both present and mysterious. God graciously accommodates to our human need for religious experience but shields us from the full display of divine glory, which would be too much to take. For Christians, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is another example of how God self-reveals to us.
New Testament Lesson
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Learning The Faith By Example
Greeting the Thessalonians in apostolic fashion -- "Grace to you and peace" -- Paul includes his close associates Silvanus and Timothy as coauthors of his letter, which is his earliest (v. 1). Silvanus is probably the same person as Silas, mentioned in Acts. An important part of Christian ministry is constant prayer, and this is certainly part of Paul's self-concept as he speaks of his constant thanksgiving and intercession (verses 2-3). Paul is grateful for these Christians' faith, hope, and love (v. 3). The apostle may have made the first contact with the Thessalonians, but they were receptive to the message because God had chosen them in advance (verses 4-5). God prepared the ground for the evangelists, and Paul is grateful that this particular garden is bearing much fruit. The Thessalonians are "imitators" of Paul and of God, and their example has been visible throughout the region (verses 6-10). This is somewhat in contrast to the account of Paul's visit to Thessalonika in Acts 17, in which the people were far from united in their support, but this letter is evidently directed to the loyal faction. The concepts of imitation and example are prominent in this passage. The Thessalonians have come to the faith because of the example of Paul and his associates, whose faith they imitated. Paul, in turn, commends them for providing a similar good example for others throughout the region. "Imitation," here, has positive connotations. For us, the word may carry a sense of insincerity (as in "imitation" foods, which are rarely as satisfying as the original) but that is not true here. We learn best by example, and example is the best evangelistic technique of all.
The Gospel
Matthew 22:15-22
Taxes To Caesar?
One of the thorniest theological questions in first-century Judaism was that of how believers ought to relate to the foreign occupiers. Messianic expectation focused on the day when Israel would once again be free to determine its own destiny, but for the present, people had to get by somehow under Roman occupation. Matthew tells us the Pharisees, in sending a delegation to deferentially question Jesus about paying taxes to the emperor, were in fact trying to trap him (v. 15). Included in the delegation are some Herodians -- representatives of the Hellenistic Jewish king, a Roman puppet. Their question presents Jesus with a loyalty litmus test, which they think will put him on the horns of a dilemma. If he opposes paying Roman taxes, he can be accused of sedition; yet, if he speaks in favor of taxes, he will lose some of his support from the radical Zealot element. Jesus is aware of his questioners' ulterior motive and receives them with some hostility (v. 18). He does answer their question but in an unconventional way. He asks them to produce a coin with the emperor's picture on it (v. 19). The silver denarius was very likely inscribed, "Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus." The "Pontifex Maximus" title -- used today to refer to the pope -- celebrates the emperor's role as pagan high priest. Many faithful Jews would not carry such a coin, for they considered it an idolatrous image. The fact that Jesus' questioners can so easily produce it is embarrassing for them, for it identifies them as collaborators. Once Jesus has established that it's the emperor's picture on the coin, he says, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" (v. 21). His statement is situational and heavy with sarcasm. It is not meant to be taken, as some have taken it, as a definitive declaration on the separation of church and state.
Preaching Possibilities
For the Christians of Thessalonika, a letter's arrival is a major event -- especially if the letter comes from Paul, that wise teacher who lived for a time in their town and told them of Jesus Christ. The Thessalonians gather round, while someone who can read breaks the wax seals, unrolls the papyrus, and begins to speak aloud. "Grace to you and peace," Paul begins. His favorite salutation! Paul goes on to speak of gratitude: "We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
This is no business correspondence. That formal reserve, that cool politeness, is completely absent. No, this is more of a personal letter from a beloved pastor to the people he used to serve.
Even as he writes with affection, Paul is still teaching. In these early lines of the letter, we can discern -- if we look hard enough -- some powerful truths about how we ought to live our lives.
Three things Paul finds to commend, among the company of the faithful in Thessalonika, their "work of faith," their "labor of love," and their "steadfastness of hope."
Faith, hope, and love -- or, as we have it here, faith, love, and hope -- form a familiar trinity. To each of these great words Paul attaches another: A noun that serves as a sort of gangplank for us, as we seek to come on board.
First, there's the work of faith. That may seem almost a contradiction in terms -- at least for children of the Reformation. If you've studied anything at all about Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, you probably remember that his watchword was "justification by grace, through faith." Faith, Luther proclaims, is not some work that Christians need to perform. We're sinners, every last one of us, and we could never learn to practice faith as the Lord would have us do it. No, the faith we possess is a free gift of God: procured, for those who earnestly repent of their sin, by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and by his rising again.
So what's Paul getting at when he writes to those Thessalonians about "the work of faith"? He's making a very practical and worthwhile point. His point has to do with how we come by faith in the first place.
Think back to how you first received the Christian faith. Was it something you were taught -- or something you caught?
Very likely, faith, in the first place, was something you caught. Faith was something you heard and saw practiced by people who were important to you. You learned by imitating. Sure, there were times when you studied the faith in a formal way -- when, perhaps, you learned the particular content of Christian beliefs, memorized some theological terms and began to find your way around the Bible. Yet, very likely, you were already a Christian (or at least an aspiring one) when you did that.
What you witnessed those spiritual mentors of yours doing, early on -- and, what Paul, for his part, applauds the Thessalonians for -- was working your faith, practicing it, enacting it. Paul remembers before God, in his prayers, how the Thessalonians enacted their faith -- how they made it real.
This runs hard up against the popular wisdom of today. Ask people to describe what faith is, and they'll probably begin by telling you what they believe. They'll maybe recite the Apostle's Creed or begin laying out some other list of ideas they've pondered and studied and have come to accept as true.
But that's not faith -- not faith in its totality, anyway. Did you know that throughout the Bible the most common form in which the word "faith" appears is as a verb? Every once in a while, you do run across faith as a noun, but far more often it's a verb: an action.
Faith is a verb. It's something we do, something we decide to do -- not a static body of ideas we believe. That's what Paul means by the work of faith. He's not commending the Thessalonians because they've become learned theologians. No, he's proud of them because, in the hurly-burly of everyday life, they've figured out how to put their faith into practice. They have worked Christianity and have found that it works for them.
"What we need," wrote Episcopal Bishop James Pike, some years back, "is fewer beliefs and more belief. When the disciples said, 'Lord, increase our faith,' they did not mean, help us to believe more things than we now believe. What they meant was, where our faith is weak, make it strong, or help us to make it stronger."
Once there was a Western missionary in the Congo, who had to walk across her village one night, very late. An elderly Congolese man named Papa Jean showed up at the door of her bungalow, to show her the way.
Papa Jean held up a smoky kerosene lantern. No other lights could be seen in the village at that late hour. The darkness was thick and foreboding. The howls of wild animals could be heard, emerging from the nearby jungle.
"That lamp doesn't give much light, does it, Papa?" the missionary remarked nervously.
"No, it doesn't," Papa Jean admitted. "But," and he smiled at this, "it shines as far as I can step."
We can ask no more of faith than this: that it shines as far as we can step. Such is the work of faith. Such is faith that works.
Paul also commends the Thessalonians for their labor of love. Most of us are familiar with the phrase as it's commonly used to describe a person's favorite project or hobby. A labor of love is the fly-fisherman burning midnight oil to tie that one last fly; or the cyclist carefully disassembling her bicycle, oiling the parts, and putting it back together again.
Yet, that's not the labor of love Paul has in mind. Of the several different Greek words for love found in the New Testament, the highest and most honorable form is agape. Agape is selfless, self-sacrificing love for others. It's the kind of love Jesus demonstrates on the cross.
Does it seem odd, here, that Paul describes love as a labor? The word he uses for labor is kopos -- a word that means "difficult toil." It's a far stronger choice than the milder ergon, meaning deed or act, which is what Paul uses to describe the "work of faith." Love is not only work. It's hard work. It is this difficult, demanding labor for which Paul commends the Thessalonians.
There are times in life when love comes easily. There are times when love is something we fall into -- a giddy, glamorous, gratifying experience. Such moments are to be cherished and celebrated, certainly. Our Christian faith celebrates the kisses, the hugs, the "sweet nothings" that lovers delight in sharing.
Yet, Christianity is also an earthy, practical faith. The wisdom of our faith is that, even in the strongest marriage or intimate friendship, there comes a time when the going gets tough, when hard-working love must truly rise to the occasion. Love is a feeling, of course, but love is also a choice. It's a decision, a commitment. It is, in a very real sense, a labor on behalf of the other.
Novelist Flannery O'Connor writes of love as something that "is hard and endures." "Marriage," writes theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a Nazi prison cell to his niece, who's getting married, "is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and humanity.... It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."
That's why, in this era of continuing sexual revolution, the Christian church still says to men and women, "It's not enough simply to live together. You need commitment. You need to have exchanged those vows. Until you have, you have not begun to demonstrate the labor of love."
Finally, Paul speaks of steadfastness of hope. That, too, may sound like a strange choice of words, for hope -- to the popular imagination -- is a light and airy thing. It just doesn't seem to match up with a ponderous word like "steadfast." Steadfast is what most of us want our bank to be: solid, immovable, invincible. As for hope, to many people it's the stuff of insubstantial daydreams: "I hope I win the lottery," "I hope we have spaghetti for dinner," "I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas."
To use the word "hope" as a synonym for "dream" or "desire" is one thing; but that's not how Paul uses it. The Greek word hupomones can also be translated "patience, endurance, fortitude, perseverance." Christian hope demonstrates this character of solidity, of reliability, of standing fast.
Hope is at its strongest when it doesn't get its way. A patient in the hospital may hope her tumor will shrink under radiation therapy, but if, when treatment's done, the doctor still detects a mass on the x-ray, it doesn't mean all hope is gone. No, what it means is that the patient can, if she chooses, demonstrate the kind of hope that stands resolute in the midst of suffering and confusion -- making no demands of God, other than that God continue to be present.
"Hope," says Vaclav Havel, playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia, "is the conviction that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." That's an example of a truly steadfast hope.
Another person who thinks that way is cancer doctor Bernie Siegel. "There is no such thing," Siegel writes, "as a false hope." Any degree of hope, however insubstantial it may seem, is a mighty weapon to use against suffering or despair.
There's an old Jewish story about a man who's traveling on foot through desolate country in the midst of a thunderstorm. It's night, and there's no moon. Everything's dark as dark can be. Every once in a while there's a flash of lightning followed by a rolling peal of thunder. For a split second, the lightning illuminates the road in front of the traveler.
"The fool looks at the lightning," the old tale goes; "the wise person looks at the road." We can frequently choose in this life how we're going to have hope. We can allow ourselves to be dazzled by the lightning flash, or we can ready our eyes for the moment when the lightning throws all around us in sharp relief, and we can glimpse the path in front of us.
Here is a hope that's more than escapist fantasy. This hope is strong, steadfast, firmly grounded. It derives not just from the inner, psychic strength of the individual, but also from God and other people who are outside of us.
Enacted faith, hard-toiling love, and stubborn hope -- what an odd trilogy Paul sets forth here! It's odd according to the ways of the world; it certainly brooks no illusions in recognizing the hard realities of life. Yet in a time of crisis or difficulty, it's exactly the kind of approach that's likely to succeed. The Lord does not always lift suffering from the shoulders of his people, but always God accompanies them through it.
Ultimately, it's Jesus Christ who makes all things possible. After listing "work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope," Paul includes the little phrase, "in our Lord Jesus Christ." That phrase is far from incidental. The body of Christ is a spiritual reality. It is both the gathered community and the presence of the Lord himself by the power of the Holy Spirit. The risen Lord, Jesus, is a vastly bigger reality than our small minds can comprehend. It is in him, co-eternal with God the creator, that all of us "live and move and have our being."
Faith, hope, and love all find fulfillment in Jesus Christ. It is in him we place our trust. It is he who makes all things possible!
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we ask you
for hardworking faith,
for persevering love,
for steadfast hope.
There are times when we doubt
we possess such priceless gifts.
Yet, we hear the scriptures telling us that we do.
We do!
May we learn to live into the gifts
you have already given
in such abundance. Amen.
To Illustrate
They say letter-writing is a lost art. There just aren't that many people who practice it anymore.
Who's got the time? Why, so many of us are rushing to and fro, frantically trying to fit it all in. Who could possibly sit down at a desk, pull out a sheet of stationery, and a nice pen... open the inkwell, angle the page (as our penmanship teacher taught)... stare off into space a moment, pondering what to say... then, put pen's nib to paper, and allow the thoughts to flow? The feelings, too… Let them flow like blood, emotion liquefied then absorbed into paper, indelibly, a twisted, loopy line on a page, fit for a friend to read.
"Why bother?" many of us would say. Why bother, when you can flip open your cell phone... tap out a text message... hit the "enter" key and send your email sailing off into cyberspace? It's fast, cheap, and easy -- it's quite unlike anything the apostle Paul could have dreamed of.
Imagine, for a moment, his world. Imagine the Mediterranean Sea, rimmed by little seashore communities so isolated they call them "city states." The population's a fraction of what it is today. Transportation is uncertain, at best and set foot aboard a ship, and you're taking your life in your hands.
News, in that world, travels slowly and sporadically and mostly when a merchant ship comes to call. If you're one of those unusual people who can read -- and if you're of a high-enough social class, and actually know someone else outside your city to correspond with -- you just may have the rare privilege, once or twice a year, of receiving a letter.
***
The place was a suburb of Detroit. The speaker, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Elie Wiesel. The subject of this great Jewish writer's address: "After Auschwitz, Can We Still Believe?"
Jews and Gentiles alike filled the massive synagogue to listen to the memories of a man who, as a boy and then a teenager, survived the death camps. For nearly an hour, Elie Wiesel spun story after story of horror and bleak despair. He told of family members separated from one another forever, of prisoners who went mad and threw themselves onto the electric fence, of lives hopelessly confused and shattered, even years after their liberation. In solemn, respectful silence, the audience relived the speaker's pain.
Finally, he stopped talking. His eyes dropped to the floor. There was no sound at all in that huge auditorium, for what seemed an eternity. Then, slowly, Wiesel repeated the title of his talk: "After Auschwitz, can we still believe?"
He shook his head slowly, sadly. "No, no," he said. "But, we must!"
***
When I stand here in this sanctuary and look into the faces of a bride and a groom, so often I can sense the sheer joy and exhilaration they bring with them on their wedding day. Then I go into the wedding prayer from the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship and come to the line that says, "Give them courage, when they hurt each other, to recognize and confess their fault..." and I feel like some kind of wet blanket!
The prayer doesn't say if they hurt each other, but when. Hurting each other in marriage is a given. It's going to happen. No amount of pre-marital counseling, no quantity of common interests, no intensity of fervent prayer will head off that outcome. It's simply what happens when two sinful people come together in intimate relationship.
***
There's a huge quilt that hangs in a hospital somewhere in a ward specializing in breast cancer. Its words celebrate a hope that's truly steadfast. Note how important, in this little poem, a sense of community -- of shared hope -- is to this cancer patient:
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Lost and hopeless feelings accompany me daily.
Pain and confusion are my companions.
I know not where to turn.
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Hold my hand and hug me.
Listen to all my ramblings.
Recovery seems so far distant.
The road to healing seems like a long and lonely one.
Lend me your hope for a while; I seem to have mislaid mine.
Stand by me and offer me your presence, your heart, your love.
Acknowledge my pain, it is so real and ever present
I am overwhelmed by sad and conflicting thoughts.
Lend me your hope for a while; a time will come when I will heal.
And I will share my renewal, my hope, and my love with others.
***
Clarence Jordan, founder in 1942 of Koinonia Farm in South Georgia, said that "faith is not a stubborn belief in spite of the evidence." Instead, "faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences."
***
The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. [Man] is the judge: God is in the dock. [Man] is quite a kindly judge: If God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease; he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God is in the Dock.
-- C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 244
(In English law courts, the "dock" is an enclosure in which the accused sits during a trial.)
***
"There in the wasteland where you had not thought to find life, you will suddenly find the signs of God's renewal, blooming and flowering and bursting forth from the dry earth with great energy, God's energy. In the driest month, you find on the branches' tips new shoots of life. Under the rock in the desert will sprout a flower, a delicate bud of the new life."
Those are words of former Haitian president and Roman Catholic priest John-Bertrand Aristide, speaking of resurrection hope. He knew what he was talking about.
In 1988, as Father Aristide was presiding at mass in his church, a riot broke out. Government soldiers stormed the church and set the place on fire. They murdered unarmed worshipers.
One of the victims was a young pregnant woman who had been stabbed by the soldiers. Somehow, even as the assassins rampaged through the church, someone managed to spirit the woman away to a hospital.
Father Aristide writes, "Everyone in Port-au-Prince had heard the story of the attack against the young mother and the unborn child. And that night, after the massacre, the criminals went to the university hospital, searching the maternity wards. They heard the woman had survived, and they wanted to finish her off, to show the people that there was no hope in the world." They searched the maternity wards but never found that woman.
By some miracle of God, she had been taken to another hospital far away. She gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section, a girl slightly wounded, but otherwise healthy and undamaged. She named that child Esperancia, which means "Hope."
Father Aristide says, "The baby's birth showed that the assassins, the criminals, the police, the Army, the president, and all the president's men could not put an end to Hope in Haiti; they could not destroy us with their knives and spears... The child called Hope is the new generation of my country."
-- adapted from Jean-Bertrand Aristide, In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti, trans. Amy Wilentz (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1990), pp. 64-65
***
One of the church's great proclamations of abundance is marriage. All is focused on a single other -- but the truth is that, far from being not enough, that one person is more than enough. Just pause and wonder for a moment at the mystery of another person -- another mind, another imagination, another myriad of experiences, energies, enthusiasms, and enjoyments. Could one ever exhaust that person? And to embody the truth that the good of one partner in the marriage can never be in conflict with the good of the other, we call them one flesh. The two people become one body. What is good for the hand is good for the foot. What hurts the knee can never be good for the ear. They are one flesh and the things that are good for them are things they each can have. This is the politics of love: not the calculation of how each partner can get a fair share out of life together in this world of scarcity, but the discernment of how the gifts they have been blessed with may be enjoyed for their mutual flourishing and the service of others.
This is what marriage gets down to. Not a zero-sum game, in which one person sacrifices his or her career, friends, creativity, or deepest needs so that the other can be the hero, or the star, or never lose the argument. Instead, marriage is an adventure in which a new body can bring together what neither of two people could have been apart. The only thing that might stop them would be the idea that they could somehow get there on their own.
-- Samuel Wells, "More than Enough," The Christian Century, June 15, 2004
