God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. … My sermon is entitled Caught, Clothes and Courage,
and my focus is our Epistle (1st Thessalonians 5:1-11). Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within
your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit
enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we
pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
“Stay safe.” We
heard that expression many times since April 2020, when Covid took many
people’s lives. We took many precautions to keep ourselves safe. People wore
masks and got injections. We kept our distance and our hands to ourselves. If
we got Covid, we stayed home and rested. After we recovered, we isolated. We
took precautions to “stay safe.”
In other areas, we
take precautions to keep our families and ourselves safe. In addition to
hygiene, we are faithful to necessary prescriptions and supplements, diet and
exercise. We hear that we should take self-defense lessons or firearms classes.
In addition to insurance and smoke detectors, companies encourage us to install
surveillance systems, burglar alarms or fireproof safes. Municipalities
frequently issue emergency alerts to our cell phones. Actors and athletes
advise us to invest in gold. We want to keep our families, ourselves, our
communities, properties and investments safe.
No matter how many
precautions we take, the element of surprise catches us like a thief in the
night. On October 8, 1871, the most devastating forest fire in American history
swept through northeast Wisconsin, claiming 1200+ lives. On May 31, 1889, the
Johnstown Flood killed 2,200 Pennsylvanians. On September 1, 1923, earthquakes
led to fires and explosions that killed nearly 143,000 Japanese. The Indian
Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, took the lives of 225,000 people. On September
11, 2001, none of us felt safe. The Great Depression, the closing of the steel
mills in the 70’s, and the pyramid schemes of Bernie Madoff robbed us not only
of money, but a way of living. Everyone caught unaware. Stay safe?
Two thousand years
ago, Paul of Tarsus wrote to the Thessalonians, “For you yourselves are
fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
(1 Thess 5:2) This does not tell us when Jesus will come, but rather how.
“Thief in the night” is something Jesus spoke about in the Gospels. It stresses
suddenness and unexpectedness as well as unknown timing, and has a sense of
threat for the unprepared.[1]
Paul frequently used
the term – “the day” – which he adopted from the Old Testament tradition of “Day
of the Lord.” This “day” denotes the completion of the kingdom of God and the
end of all attacks upon it. It is a “day of punishment” (Isa 10:3), and a day
of the Lord’s wrath (Eze 7:19). The entire concept in the Old Testament is dark
and foreboding.[2] On the
other hand, the New Testament idea is saturated with elements of hope, joy and
victory. It is the Day of Christ, the day of His coming in the glory of His Father,
which we will hear in next Sunday’s Gospel (Mt. 25:31ff.). So, Paul saw “the
day” as the moment Christ brings the final redemption and judgment to earth.
The irony of this verse is that Paul uses the phrase “you know” or “You are fully
aware” and yet the timing is unknown.
Friends, you are
aware that Christ will come again, just as you are aware that your life could
change or end in an instant. Some time may pass before that happens, but you
know that it will happen. Knowing this, I leave you with a question to ponder
before I move to my next point. As you look back on the first time that you
became aware that your life could change or end in an instant, what did you
learn about living as a Christian in the world right now?
Clothes. Earlier
this month, Cindy and I showed up to help a group of church members to clean
the church and grounds. I wore an older pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a ball
cap. Everyone said, “I’ve never seen you dressed like that.” We all have
different clothes for various activities. We have work clothes and workout
clothes, night clothes and day clothes. And when we lived in Chicagoland, we
would sometimes go to Walmart after church and see people dressed in loungewear
as well as their Sunday go to meeting clothes.
Paul’s words in vv
6-7 reminded Christians in Thessalonica that they were to be different than
others in that Greek city. Just as your clothing differs between night and day,
Christian thought and morality must differ from the secularists’ in the world.
Paul urged his readers to prepare and to be ready, and so he used the analogy
to be ready for the Parousia, the Day Christ returns.
When Paul wrote, “since
we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith
and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation,” he meant that
daytime people (Christians) must be ready to battle the enemy. The armor
imagery, which Paul also uses in Ephesians 6:14-17 is directly from Isaiah 59.
Now, we all know that certain clothing is needed for certain tasks. Unless you
are Happy Gilmore, you don’t show up at a golf tournament in a hockey sweater.
Christians must be dressed and ready for the time Christ returns.
Armor, however, is
not enough. What protects a believer is the hope of salvation. If you have no hope or no trust that God will
make things right one day, then your faith is fragile and you can be
overwhelmed by problems and injustices of the present. Hope protects against
that. Paul’s converts needed hope and faith fulfilled by love not only for
Christ, but also for one another; and in order for that to occur, they had to
accept an identity that made them look more like Jesus Christ. As believers, we
grow in our identity with Christ, beginning with our Baptism.
As we grow in our
identity with Christ, Paul reminds us that God has not destined us to suffer
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 9). God
provides believers with the necessary equipment – the means of grace through
Baptism and Lord’s Supper – so that we will obtain the final gift of salvation.
For Paul, hope was
not an emotion or a sunny outlook, nor was it reducible to information about
the future. Hope is the God-given habit of mind that produces joy in the midst
of suffering. It is characterized by patience, providing confidence that God
has conquered death through Christ. In other words, hope looks forward to a
glorious future, but also offers a changed life in the present. Knowing God
reframes how we know reality. Hope brings a new way of life, one that is lived
in light of our final end.[3]
Paul makes it very
clear that Jesus Christ died for us so that we might live for him (v. 10). As
believers, we benefit from Christ’s death for his death is for all of us, that
is, it is vicarious. Paul made this clear to the Thessalonians, and reworded it
more clearly in Romans: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die,
we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the
Lord’s. To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of
the dead and of the living.” (14:8-9).
Now, before moving
to my next point, let me ask you some questions. Are you pleased with yourself?
Is your spouse and are your family members pleased with you? Is God – Father,
Son and Holy Spirit – pleased with you? My friends, even though we begin each
Divine Worship by confessing our sins and receiving absolution, know this: God
is pleased with you. God delights in you. You may not go through every moment
of every day saying to yourself, “God is pleased with me.” But the fact that
God is responsible for creating you, and sent his Son to suffer, die and rise
to life again, is a constant reminder that He is pleased with you. You may not
feel the love of the Holy Spirit being poured into your heart every second, but
it happens here every week when you hear God’s Word and receive God’s
Sacraments. This is no gimmick, but each time you put on your day clothes, tell
yourself that God is pleased with you.
Courage. Knowing
that, I turn to my third point, Courage. The word courage comes from the root
word for heart. So, when Paul writes, “encourage one another and build
one another up” (v. 11), he knows that his converts were already doing that,
or else he would not have added, “just as you are doing.”
He already saw
that Christian men and women checked in with one another. They made an active
effort to go over and ask each other, “How are you doing?” The Thessalonian
Christian was under fire from unbelievers, but it was not dysfunctional. So,
building on what he already knew, Paul encouraged them to be mutual
encouragers. As Christians, we do not build up ourselves. We build up each
other. Encouragement is an action done in relationship with one another. It is
a group-building, team-building, community-building exercise. It is why we
begin each Worship Service by exchanging the Sign of Peace. From there it
continues throughout our Liturgy – our work of worship.
From here, we can
mutually encourage one another wherever and whenever we see one another. It’s
why we send emails when someone is sick or has passed. It’s why we publicly
recognize what a member has done for the congregation. It’s why we thank
veterans and first-responders. You can think of many other places where we
encourage each other to be faithful to Jesus Christ – at home, at work and
school, in the neighborhood and gathering places galore. One of my exercises is
to visit those men and women from our congregation who cannot be with us on
Sunday. Some of them have passed, but the time I spent and spend with them
encourages me. They were – and are – deeply grateful to receive God’s Word and
Sacrament. They tell me that with joyful tears.
Friends, this
week, we celebrate Thanksgiving. For us, it is a true Christian holiday, and
the first person to recognize the need to proclaim Thanksgiving as a day devoted
to God was President George Washington. On November 3, 1789, Washington set
November 26 as a day that we would unite to most humbly offer our prayers
and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to
pardon our national and other transgressions.[4]
Despite our differences and divisions, let us see this week as a time to
encourage each other to offer God our prayers and seek our pardon. Let us no
longer say, “Stay safe,” but rather, “Stay faithful!” and when we
do, may the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep our hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1]
See Mt 24:43; Lk 12:38-39; 2 Pt 3:10: Rev 3:3; 16:15.
[2]
See Isa 2:12; 13:6,9; 34:8; Ezek 13:5; 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:11; Amos 5:18; Zeph
1:14; Zech 14:1.
[3]
Nathan Eubank, First and Second Thessalonians. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic
(2019), p. 122.
[4]
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091
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