November 28, 2021 “Time for Love” – I Thessalonians 3:9-13

I Thessalonians 3:9-13
“Time for Love”
November 28, 2021 – First Sunday in Advent

Two months ago we were anxiously awaiting our journey to England to see our one-year-old grandson in-person for the first time. Now we are awaiting with great anticipation the arrival for Christmas of our youngest daughter and her husband. Like Paul, Silas, and Timothy in our text today in verses 9 and 10, in regard to the Thessalonians, Beth and I pray earnestly for opportunities to see our children face to face. Like children ourselves before Christmas, we count the days to go before those hoped for visits become reality.

We love our children and now our grandchild that much. Just thinking about them brings us joy. Our text from I Thessalonians 3 opens this morning with the apostles’ joy in thinking about their friends, their spiritual children, in the church at Thessalonica. Verses 9 and 10 tell how they pray in God’s presence, asking night and day for the time when they will be able to visit and see that congregation again.

As much as you and I might gripe about Zoom or Skype or e-mail or texting, it’s all still far better than nothing. To see those we love, even on a tiny screen, is at least a kind of face to face encounter. But there was none of that in the first century. As we’re told at the beginning of the letter, Paul, Silas, and Timothy together wrote this letter to the church in Thessalonica. At the beginning of this chapter we learn that Paul stayed in Athens by himself and sent off his helper Timothy to check on the Thessalonians. In verse 6 you can see that Timothy has just visited there and brought back a report.

They were separated from believers in the north of Greece by only a few hundred miles, but that was a huge distance then. They were concerned that Christians in the churches they planted were falling away or getting mixed up about their faith, as happened in Corinth. Some of Paul’s converts had turned against him, and that worried him as well, just as you and I might wonder if a relative or friend we haven’t talked to in a while has some resentment or issue with us.

Fortunately, our text is based on Timothy’s return with a good report. The Thessalonians were standing fast and still held Paul in warm esteem. Verse 9 is relief and thanksgiving to God at that news. They cannot thank God enough for the joy of the good news that their relationship with the Thessalonians is still strong. It’s like our tea time last month with old friends in England. It was good just to confirm that we are still friends, still able to share our common love of books and God’s church and faith in Jesus.

Yet Paul and Silas must have still wanted, like Timothy, to see them with his own eyes, hear their voices with his own ears, break bread with them around the Lord’s Table, and continue to instruct and guide them in person. Writing letters and sending messengers is fine, but being there would be so much better. Showing toys and reading stories to our grandson over Skype is wonderful, but being there was so much better. Even having just been there, we miss him so much.

On-line instruction has been around a long time. Colleges for years have slowly increased the number of classes offered over a computer. But suddenly last year it was all on-line. Teachers and students from kindergarten to graduate school were dismayed. It happened to some of you, whether teacher, student or parent of a student. Everyone, including your pastor, was looking at a screen and talking into a camera. Some of us still attend Bible study on Zoom. This month your church council talked about having a meeting in-person, but decided to stick with Zoom. For those who live out in the country, it’s better than a long drive in the rain and dark. But it’s also not the same. We miss sitting around a table together, looking each other in the eyes.

Verse 10 says they wanted to look their Thessalonian students in the eye and discover whatever it is they are lacking or missing in their faith. They wanted to be there in person to offer whatever help or instruction or encouragement was needed to build them up into the saints they will be in the Lord.

Like you and I wait for opportunities to be in-person with those we love, Paul and the others waited to be there in Thessalonica. As I said, they prayed for it. Then in verse 11, “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.”

That phrase “direct our way” is a little misleading. It’s not as if Paul and Silas and Timothy didn’t know how to get to Thessalonica. They had been there. No, the problem is the way was blocked. At the end of chapter 2, verse 18, we read “For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way.” We don’t know for sure what he meant by that. It may have been an illness or disability he calls a “thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan,” in II Corinthians 12. Whatever it was, it prevented the journey. The road was blocked. Paul could not go where he wanted.

My guess is that many of us can relate to Paul’s blocked road this morning. As I thank God for our trip to England, my heart aches to know that some of you have had to cancel trips to be with those you love, while others of you are waiting uncertainly to see if you will be able to go where you’ve planned. Over and over, the pandemic, a “messenger of Satan” if there ever was one, has blocked our way. We’ve been blocked from seeing each other’s faces completely even when we’re together. We were blocked once again from celebrating a Thanksgiving meal after church last Sunday. Over the last 18 months we’ve been blocked from attending classes, family gatherings, shopping, haircuts, and football games. Some of that has returned, but not all of it. And it’s all different.

Some of you have been blocked in more painful ways and not just by the pandemic. Our two friends from Haiti have been separated from their husbands and are waiting to be able to see them again. Some of you lost loved ones in the pandemic and were blocked from attending or even holding a memorial service for them. Some of you have seen business decline or been unable to hire enough employees or see enough clients and have been blocked from making the living you need.

So we do a lot of that waiting and praying, anxiously and earnestly, just like Paul waiting for his chance to go to Thessalonica. We keep asking, “When will it end? When will we be able to put away the masks and sit shoulder to shoulder in church? When will be able invite as many friends as we like into our living room without any worries? When will all the restrictions be lifted?” And there is no answer. Just as for Paul and his friends, the road remains blocked. That’s why we need to move with Paul on to verses 12 and 13.

Paul saw his waiting in a larger context. His blocked hopes for a journey up the Grecian coast were only a small reflection of a larger hope. As he waited to see those fellow saints, those beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord, he was waiting with them to see the Lord Jesus come back. His immediate and unfulfilled hope was subsumed and taken up in a greater hope for Christ’s return.

This horrible pandemic is also an opportunity to join in that greater hope. Yes, some of us have learned to navigate learning technology a little more, but we’ve also been given a chance to learn to wait. Waiting well is one of the key disciplines of Christian life. All our smaller hopes and dreams, all the lesser waits we endure, are training us to wait well for Jesus. Waiting for the doctor, waiting for the job, waiting for the one who doesn’t come home—it will all make sense, it will all be resolved, it will all be fulfilled and made right and made good… when He comes. That’s why we observe the season of Advent in His church.

Verses 12 and 13, then, are no longer focused on Paul and the apostles, but on the manner in which both they and their readers will wait for the Big Day. They no longer deal with how Paul or his friends are feeling separated from the other churches they cannot currently visit. No, those last verses of the chapter are about how all Christians are to wait through the days until Jesus comes back.

Paul turned from his own need to be with the Thessalonians to a concern that they would be with him in a deeper and stronger way. He wanted them to join him in waiting not just for a happy meeting as he stepped off a ship in the port of their city or walked up the road to knock on their door. He wanted their company in the greater journey toward the day of the Lord.

How to wait for the Lord is the subject of both this text and our Gospel reading today. In Luke 21, verse 34, Jesus warns us against bad ways to wait for him, with hearts “weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life.” Our Lord knew us well. It’s very tempting to wait through the pandemic just binging television shows, eating or drinking too much, or in constant fear for our self or others. Yet Jesus asks us to learn to wait better than that, to wait knowing that this time too is His time.

For Advent this year, we are using the theme, “The Fullness of Time.” It comes from a text we don’t often remember at Christmas, but it’s full of the Christmas message. Galatians 4:17 says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…” Advent is partially about remembering that people before Jesus waited too. They waited praying anxious and earnestly for that fullness of time when God would finally, finally, after not just months, but after hundreds of years, send them salvation, would come Himself to set them free from their enemies and from sin.

When we’re waiting, whether it’s for someone to arrive or for a trip to begin or simply for a nurse to call our name, we often try to “fill” the time. We watch television or read or find some work to do. Paul wants us to know that as we wait for the time to be full once again, for the time when Jesus comes at last to heal this world, to remove all evil from it, to make it completely and truly His kingdom—as we wait for all that—there is a way He would like us to fill that time, to make it full.

Verse 12 says, “And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.” Love is that with which God means us to full the time. Love is what will make it full.

Marilynne Robinson’s sequel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead is titled Home. It’s set in the same little Iowa town as the first book. A father, a retired pastor, is waiting for his wayward son to come home. He’s waited twenty years. Waiting, he’s grown old. So his daughter Glory has come home to take care of him and help him wait.

Glory wonders if there is any point to her life. She has a Master’s degree, but she’s left her teaching career. She came home after a long, failed engagement. She is single, living in the house she grew up in, taking care of her aging father. She’s waiting for something too, but she has no idea what it is. Yet the love she demonstrates by cleaning and cooking and helping her father get dressed helps him wait. When her brother finally comes home, her love helps him also. He begins to discover what his messed up life is about. Glory’s care and love makes everyone’s waiting better, easier, even a bit joyful.

You and I are called to a love that helps each other wait. Your love to one another has helped those waiting for jobs, those waiting for babies to be born, and those waiting for health to return. You loved us and each other as we’ve waited to see family again. You loved each other while we waited to return to in-person worship. You’ve loved those who are waiting to graduate and those waiting to die. You’ve loved and cared and made the waiting better until Jesus returns.

Still there are temptations and distractions lurking as we wait. It’s easier to go shopping than to patiently save money for some good cause. It’s tempting to go find somebody new to love rather than wait out and work through a troubled relationship. We want to take off these stupid masks before it’s safe to do so. That’s why Paul calls not only for love. To the petition for love from God, verse 13 adds, “And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” The apostles prayed for Christians to have strength to wait well, strength to wait without giving up, without giving in to the evils of this world.

So the Church has made the season before Christmas a school for waiting. That’s the reason for changing the colors, and for not putting up all the Christmas decorations here in our sanctuary this Sunday after Thanksgiving. It’s the reason we’re not singing Christmas carols or setting out beautiful poinsettias quite yet. We’re learning to wait both in the pandemic and in our traditional Advent worship. In both cases what we wait for goes beyond the immediate rewards of normal life or “normal” worship.

As Christians we anticipate and long for Christmas because it speaks so much to us of a truth those apostles said twice in the same words here. In verse 9 they speak of joy over the Thessalonians “before our God.” Then in verse 13 his prayer is that they will be blameless and holy “before our God and Father…” That “before” means in front of, in the presence of God.

Waiting to see and be in the presence of sisters and brothers in Christ, they wait in God’s presence. Then they look forward at the end of verse 13 to being in His presence “at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Like them, we are waiting for a deeper, better, complete realization of what we already have. We wait in God’s presence for God’s presence. Jesus came as Emmanuel, “God with us.” In His promise to return, Jesus means to be God with us forever. So we wait.

I read a story this week about a Presbyterian church leader who visited a sister church in a Soviet block country not long after the Berlin Wall came down. Relations between that nation and the U.S. were still strained. But that church woman went anyway. Her plane was late. Customs took longer than expected. It was a long drive up into a mountain community and snow started falling along the way. Finally arriving in town they asked directions to the church and worried about finding their way in the dark. But as they continued on they saw a long line of lights ahead. Drawing near, they saw one by one the members of the church, each bundled up against the cold and holding a candle. They followed those lights to the door of the church.

When that woman from America met the host pastor, she asked through an interpreter, “How long were you planning to wait out here in the dark and the cold?” He answered, “Until you came.” That is waiting which abounds in love, waiting which sheds the light of Christ’s love in the darkness while we wait for Him, as we say at each Communion service, until He comes.

Waiting times are hard. We ache for friends and family we miss. We ache for each other’s sadness when the waiting is prolonged. Like the apostles we pray most earnestly for the waiting to end, for the time to come to be in the presence of those dear ones. But like the apostles and our Lord say to us, waiting is a time for shining our lights, for demonstrating the love of Jesus to each other and to all. Wait well. It’s a time for love.

Amen.