November Texts (Sermon)

“November Texts”

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/19/17

         Along with April, October is one of my favorite months. A reckless gala of the summer’s richness and vitality, October hits us with a sensory overload: reds, yellows, oranges, cobalt skies – Christmas decorations. As the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun, cooler air wicks away humidity. It’s not cold yet, but the sun feels a little kinder on our skin. It shines a little more gently in our eyes.

         Then comes November. The extravagant flame-out of October has been reduced, for the most part, to some tarnished gold high in the hickories and the darkening burgundy of white and red oaks. As the surrender to brown and gray quickens, November becomes a kind of circumstantial text calling us to prepare for even shorter, colder days. With heat pumps, electric blankets, and a warming atmosphere, we’re less vulnerable to winter than folks were a century ago. Still, while so much of the life around us turns dark and brittle, and sinks into the cold pillow of winter, wouldn’t it be nice, in worship, to hear brighter, more heart-warming texts than we’ve been hearing from Matthew and, now, from 1Thessalonians?

         Sure, I can pick any passage I want. There’s nothing obligatory or sacred about the lectionary. On the other hand, there is method to the lectionary’s madness. By design, November texts unsettle us. They call us to self-examination. They dare us to confess our personal, ecclesiastical, and cultural brokenness and our need for redemption.

I promise to get to 1Thessalonians, but bear with me through a kind of big-picture approach.

November texts prepare us for Advent texts, which prepare for the good news of the Incarnation. Central to Advent is the prophecy of Isaiah, the prophet to exiles in Babylon. Isaiah speaks such re-orienting words as, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” and “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” And Isaiah’s inspiring words have to push through a curious and disturbing phenomenon.

         The Israelites have been in exile for about three generations. So, many among the vanquished and displaced are forgetting their defining stories and rituals. Fewer and fewer Israelites are feeling like exiles, because more and more, Babylon feels like home. The modern psychological term for this is Stockholm Syndrome; captives identify with and even bond with their captors. And it’s easy to see why new generations of Israelites might adopt Babylon. It’s a place of wealth, abundance, and opportunity – a place that feels like it’s in a perpetual April-to-October loop. But the Hebrew’s story makes it clear that riches and power are not signs of God’s favor. Indeed, overabundance usually blinds us to true blessedness. It renders us too greedy and fearful to live as blessings for others.

         It’s no surprise, then, that Isaiah’s prophecy spans the careers of several prophets from Isaiah’s school. It takes a long time for his good news to burrow beneath the numbness and complacency of exile and to re-awaken spiritual memory.

Re-awakening to deep-time memory is not only a long process, it can be painful, too. It’s kind of like coming in on a bitterly cold day and running warm water over your icy fingers. The water hurts because your brain can’t handle the abrupt change of signal from cold to warm. The pain is necessary, though. Severe frostbite can cost us hands and feet, noses and ears.

For Israel, Jeremiah is the warm water being poured over their numbed memories. And his words hurt. “My anguish, my anguish!” cries Yahweh. “My heart is beating wildly’ I cannot keep silent…For my people do not know me, they are stupid children, they have no understanding.” (Jer. 4:19, 22)

         The psalmist’s lament also calls Israel to re-awakening: “By the water of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion…On the willows there we hung our harps…How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:1-2, 4)

         In the same way that Jeremiah and the psalmist prepare Israel for Isaiah’s hopeful prophecy, the November texts of Matthew and 1Thessalonians sting us. They call us to prepare for the re-awakening texts of Advent.

Like Jesus, Paul never shies away from truth-telling. And he seems to know how tempting it is to get comfortable with Babylon’s promises and creature comforts. Offering a Jeremiah-like warning to the Thessalonians, Paul writes: “When they say, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” For Paul, “they” refers to Rome, the next in a long line of Babylons and Egypts.

The apostle writes to the Thessalonians in about 50AD – right in the thick of the era known as the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. Paul seems to know that the empire’s brand of peace and security can act like sub-freezing temperatures. It can cause spiritual frostbite. It can make us believe that if our material surroundings are benefiting us, then ‘God is in the heavens, and all is right with the world.’ Paul compares such self-centered thinking to thievery, darkness, drunkenness – actions for which there are inescapable consequences, at least in the short run.

Paul dares us to imagine something different. He dares us to imagine lasting peace and security, which is a gift from God, not empires. We experience lasting peace and security by consciously participating in God’s presence and activity in this world, here and now. True peace and security come not through conquest, not through intimidation, but through determined, even death-defying faith, hope, and love.

There you go again, Preacher, talking your pie-in-the-sky nonsense. You have no clue what it takes to win and keep security. You have to fight fire with fire!

I hear you. And I do understand that this is a frighteningly dangerous and uncertain world. I also know that Paul’s situation is even more tenuous than ours, and still he says, “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

November texts challenge us to acknowledge all the signs of approaching winter – daylight diminishing, colors fading, cold hardening the ground, “wars and rumors of wars,” “nation…[rising] against nation…famines and earthquakes in various places” (Mt. 24:6), real fears pressuring us to live by the sword.

But even November texts come to us as gospel, as promises of spring, as witnesses to Easter. I trust that God intends these texts to awaken in us an irrepressible restlessness, a hunger and thirst for belonging as well as righteousness. They sting us with memories of our true home. And living at home, while in exile, means living in a kind of terrifying fearlessness. Home for us is following Jesus, “who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

I suppose each of us has to decide for ourselves what Paul means when he says to “encourage one another and build up each other.” As for me, even if I sound tiresomely consistent, come what may, I can do no other – unless despair overcomes me – than to live, and die, and lead any congregation I serve by what I consider to be Jesus’ example: non-violent, welcoming, transforming love.

For those times when my encouragement of you fails to meet that standard, I ask God’s and your forgiveness. May the Spirit then challenge me with November texts and return me to a radical grace that I cannot create, but only experience and bear witness to.

And ultimately, from that love, and from that grace, there “will be no escape!”