Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I Thessalonians 1:1-10


I Thessalonians 1:1-10

1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.

2 We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 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; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. 9 For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.



The theme of I Thessalonians 1:1 is the identification of the senders and receivers of the letter. Paul identifies himself and two others as the senders of this letter. Silvanus shared in evangelizing Corinth (II Corinthians 1:19, Acts 18:5), evangelizing Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9), and bringing the Apostolic decree to Antioch (Acts 15:27, 32). He may have been a Roman (Acts 16:37). Timothy is one in whom Paul had complete trust. They worked as a team as they introduced the gospel. They joined him in the initial work in Thessalonica and continue to join him in prayer and concern for the Thessalonians and their ongoing life as a Christian community.  He addresses the people as “church,” the Greek word “ekklesia” suggesting an assembly or gathering. To refer to this group as a gathering of the Thessalonians is unique, for he usually writes to the churches or church “in” a certain place. This gathering centers around the presence of the God of Israel as the Father and Jesus Christ as Lord. He concludes the address with a common Greek greeting in referring to Grace and a common Jewish greeting in referring to peace (shalom). However, given the Pauline context, the first part of the greeting will suggest the gift of God in Jesus Christ. The second part will suggest the power of God in Christ to protect, save, and bless the people of God. It will suggest the rabbinic practice of associating it with righteousness, mercy, and joy. While such a greeting is familiar to people who read the New Testament and many official church documents since, Paul is the first person to use the words in this combination. We have already learned that this gathering of people exists only in relationship to the God of Israel as their Father and to Jesus Christ as their Lord. It begins with the implied promise of grace and peace.

The theme of I Thessalonians 1:2-10 is that of thanksgiving in prayer, congratulating them for becoming examples, and identifying the message of the gospel. H. Richard Niebuhr said, “The great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there.” This passage is going to remind us of some basic truths, like the importance of gratitude, prayer, faith, hope, love, and the message of the gospel. None of this is new. It will raise the question of whether radical belief in them would change our experience of the vitality Christian life and community.

            This segment begins with the reminder of the co-authorship of the letter. The authors give thanks. We ought never to underestimate the power of giving thanks. The authors begin with their offering of gratitude to God for the people gathered in Christ in Thessalonica. They mention the people in their prayers, even constantly remembering them. I want to spend some time reflecting with you on what they remember about this congregation. What later tradition would call the theological virtues are alive and well among these people.

First, the church is the place where people offer faith without embarrassment. “Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief,” said Oscar Wilde. There is an old saying to the effect that Christianity is always only one generation away from extinction. I do not know who first said that, but the truth of the statement is evident. Without the passing of the knowledge about Christ and the testimony of faith from parents to children, from elders to youth, from those convinced of the faith to those who have not yet been persuaded, Christianity would eventually either die out altogether or be reduced to a curious historical phenomenon.

Second, the church is the place that nourishes hope without delusion. Certainly, there are ample reasons to lose hope in life. In fact, it is easy to preach in a despairing, for in the day-to-day it often seems so much more credible than hope is. There is generally plenty of evidence around us to encourage and engender despair. Nevertheless, the church understands that hope does not have its root in what happens in the present moment. The hope the church shelters believes in the biblical promise of the coming rule of God. It guards this hope while facing the tragic character of life and without attempting to explain tragedy away as the will of God. Hope is not some sort of dreaming that those of us with strong enough gumption muster up from some inner core. Rather hope is an ultimate belief that when all else fails, when every other support gives way, our lives remain in the hands of God.  God has given us the church to support our hope. The task of the church is to nourish hope, for if left out on its own, hope is vulnerable. It seems unrealistic to expect the church to be the kind of community where everyone is very certain about hope, but the church is a community where we have enough evidence from experience to warrant a decision in favor of hope.

Third, the church is a place that exercises love without limits. Jesus told us to love our neighbor. He was not talking about emotions but about behavior. He was talking about acting in ways that support the well-being of others. When we really grasp its meaning, we realize that none of us does it perfectly. However, love is a driving force in the church that will not leave us at peace if we exclude and ignore people in need. We are all in need, rich and poor alike.

The church must not shrink in its faith, hope, or love.

The authors offer such gratitude because God has chosen or elected them as a community that belongs to Christ.[1] He uses language familiar within the Jewish tradition. In Deuteronomy 33:12, the text refers to the tribe of Benjamin as “the beloved of the Lord” and that “the beloved rests” on the shoulders of the Lord. Nehemiah 13:26 refers to King Solomon, in spite of his sin, as “beloved by his God.” To this group of largely Greek people, these authors affirm that God values and loves them. They can have this confidence because of their message of the gospel, referring to the basic plan or economy of salvation. Yet, clearly, they are not identifying the gospel as simply a doctrine. This gospel did come in proclamation and therefore in the preached word. However, it also came with signs of divine activity, enthusiasm, and mighty works. The gospel came to them in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. The point here is that the apostolic message mediates the glorifying of Jesus by the Spirit, for its content goes out in the power of the Spirit.[2] This gospel does make known the once-for-all act of salvation in Jesus Christ, of course. However, the authors indicate that the act of proclamation is itself an act of salvation on the part of God.[3] The authors are thankful for the extraordinary change that has taken place in the lives of these people.

How many local congregations and established denominations witness a weakening of spiritual conviction? Such convictions appear necessary to generate the enthusiasm and energy necessary to sustain vigorous communal life. If we lose the will or the ability to teach the message of the gospel to the next generation in such a way that develops a sense of allegiance, the death of Christianity is near. The church needs to admit that secularity has been powerful. Would it be possible to say that the church largely accommodated secularity when it needed an apologetic? Is it possible that segments of the church retreated into a ghetto of Christian doctrine in the attempt to create a bubble within which the church can breathe, but also require surrender of thought? Theologians may not have seen the danger. Along with them, bishops, pastors, and lay leadership may not have seen the danger. Re-thinking the message of the gospel in light of the challenges of modern and secular life was not a task that many thought of as important. If church has become little more than a tip of the hat to God and Jesus on the one hand and the Golden Rule on the other, church and discipleship hardly seem worth the effort. If the church is simply a tool for a progressive or conservative political agenda, then forget the church and serve your favorite ideological idol. The challenge today is that in order to regain lost vitality, directly addressing the theological issues would seem an important part of the strategy. Such an address will need to provide compelling answers to the questions of why Christ and the community of followers of Jesus still commands special attention from people so embraced by the secularity of the age.[4]

The authors now appeal to the example the authors set while with them. They imitated the authors as well as the Lord. Fred Craddock once wrote, “If the messenger is not believable, neither is the message.” We need to keep in mind that we grow in faith, hope, and love by seeing them active in the lives of people. We need the teaching, of course, but we also need to see its effectiveness in the lives of some people. Therefore, we all require the role modeling of people like Paul, Silvanus, Timothy and the Thessalonians, as well as the examples of countless saints that we encounter over the course of our lifetimes. There is no stage in life in which any of us is exempt from the necessity of growing and maturing in our faith, hope, and love. Every stage on which we live our lives will need mentoring.  At the same time, there is usually an opportunity for us to be a good example to someone coming along behind us.

It seems like people are straying away from the church and going back to God (Lenny Bruce). If the church is shrinking in faith, hope, and love, it might be because the role models are no longer there. If the church is shrinking in its vitality, it has lost a sense of the vibrant presence of God. It must develop a clear identity, a compelling purpose, and a coherent direction that arises out of that identity and purpose. We are social beings, of course, and the church remains an important source of such social interaction for many persons. Yet, if it does not meet the spiritual hunger of the age, it will justly die.[5]

The authors seem amazed that, in spite of persecution, they received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit. The persecution of these people arose from the religious beliefs dominant in the first century. We will discuss that in a moment. It reminds us that people never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions (Blaise Pascal). Further, as important as the signs of power were, what impresses the authors is their reception of the word. Their reception of the word allowed them to become examples to all the believers in the area of present-day Greece. The fact that the word of the Lord has sounded forth from them is what impresses the authors. The result is that people in the area know of their faith in God. The people in the area tell the authors of the welcome this gathering of people in Thessalonica has offered to the authors. We can see how important changed lives are for the growth of faith, hope, and love. Changed lives are one form the word of God takes.

This section concludes with a condensation of the preaching (scholars would call it the kerygma) of Paul. The condensation is hardly complete, for the important teachings regarding the cross and justification by grace are not present. However, it does indicate some important themes of the early preaching of Paul. First, they turned to God from idols. Christian mission has taken to all nations the summons to turn or convert to the God of Israel.[6][7] Second, they serve a living and true God. Paul had a vigorous stress on monotheism. As long as people believed in many gods, it would be difficult to raise the question of the totality of the world and the totality of a human life. To move to an affirmation of one God also points us toward a discussion of the totality of the world and of human life. Israel moved from the belief that it had “one god,” monolatry, to the affirmation that only one God exists, monotheism, preparing the way for the preaching of the team led by Paul. In addition, Greek philosophical theology made such preaching intelligible to non-Jews.[8] Thus, any Christian mission to the Jewish people must begin by recognizing that they already believe in the one true and living God. Christian mission at that point would say that this God, the God of Israel, has offered a definitive revelation of who God is in Jesus Christ.[9] All of this should remind us that a general idea of God is the presupposition of ascribing qualities based on divine revelation. In this case, of course, Paul is proclaiming the message of the gospel that includes the notion that the God of Israel, the living and only true God, is also the Father of Jesus Christ. Third, note that in the first letter that we have from Paul, he stresses Jesus as being the Son of the Father. However, when the preaching of Paul included the idea of waiting for the Son from heaven, it reminds us that basic to the Gentile mission was the belief in one God entering a world of popular polytheistic ideas. Yet, reconciling this belief with the Christian confession of the divine sonship and deity of Jesus Christ would be a central theme of the message of the gospel and a problem in early Christian thought as it developed beyond Paul.[10] Fourth, of course, the phrase reminds us that Paul had a vigorous Christology that stressed the coming again of the risen Lord. Paul affirms that the Father raised Jesus from the dead. Fifth, this Jesus rescues us from the wrath that is coming. The role of the returning Christ is the salvation of believers from future judgment that puts the present age to an end.[11]
I may well start re-reading the letters of Paul in light of the various missionary teams he led. I want to find a more prominent place for gratitude in my life and in my prayers. I want to see more faith, hope, and love in my life and in the communities of which I am a part. Seeing the proclaimed word showing up in changed lives in such a way that transformed individuals and communities make an actual difference in the world would be my prayer and guide my action. Seeing election, the notion of God choosing for a divine mission, would be a worthy way to see the world. Many of us could agree with such matters. Yet, I wonder about some of the rest. Do we turn from idols? Do we believe that the God of Israel is the one living and true God? Some writers today would answer in the negative. In our post-modernity, monotheism seems totalistic and imperialistic. Some even argue for a re-birth of polytheism that would lead to tolerance. Do we really believe Jesus is the Son of the Father? Many today argue that Jesus was one among many spiritual leaders from whom we can learn. Do we have a vigorous Christology rooted in the Father, the God of Israel, raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead? For obvious reasons, many theologians, bishops, pastors, and laity wrestle with whether this happened. Do we really believe that divine judgment or wrath is coming, from which the returning Christ saves us? Most of us have done enough reading in the scientific account of the universe that this statement is incredibly naïve. For many of us, to continue believing such things would require some re-thinking. Yet, something tells me that Paul and his team believed these things so deeply and personally that the belief reorganized their lives. After we do our re-thinking, we will do the same.


[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 456.
[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 395.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 458.
[4] Though addressing a different issue, this paragraph receives inspiration from Benton Johnson, Dean R. Hoge, and Donald A. Luidens, "Mainline Churches: The Real Reason for Decline," First Things, March 1993, p. 18. 
[5] - David A. Roozen and Kirk C. Hadaway, Rerouting the Protestant Mainstream, Nashville: Abingdon, 1995, p. 86.
[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 245.
[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 393.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 72.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 475.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 278.
[11] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 400; Volume 3, 613.

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