I Thessalonians 5:12-24
“Ready for Community”
December 11, 2011 - Third Sunday in Advent

         What do you need to do before Christmas? We need to put up a Christmas tree, bake some cookies, and write some cards. Your list may include buying gifts or cleaning house. Then there are all the regular tasks, like work and meals and laundry. In this season, our lists grow long, whether on paper, on our phones, or in our minds. Being ready for December 25 is no simple thing.

         Add in a list of spiritual preparations and it feels overwhelming. Daily or weekly Advent prayer, devotion, or Scripture reading. Acts of generosity and kindness for those in need. Wrestling with your sins. Whatever is on your spiritual Advent list only adds to the tension and possibly the frustration of being ready for Christmas.

         Now our text for today gives us another list. As we heard at the end of verse 23, Paul’s list of expectations for the Thessalonian church was to prepare them not for celebrating Christmas, the first Advent of Christ, but His return, the second Advent.

         Just before our text, in chapter 4 and beginning chapter 5, Paul paints a graphic picture of Jesus coming again: sudden, cosmic, world-changing. Then he closes I Thessalonians with a list of preparations for Christ’s return.  In fact Paul gives three lists, each a short, memorable catalogue of how to live in readiness for the Day of the Lord. There’s one list in verses 14 and 15, another in verses 16 through 18, and one in verses 19 to 22.

         Look those lists over and you find a different emphasis from last week’s passage. Like Paul in verse 23, Peter called us to be personally and individually holy. But Paul is more after another side of our readiness for the Lord’s return. He is not concerned so much with individual preparation and character as with how we are together ready for the Lord. Peter asked us to prepare by being holy individually. Paul asks us to prepare corporately. Being good individuals is important. But we must also be ready by being a good community.

         When I joined the Scouts I had to memorize a list of guidelines. There was the Scout Law: “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent;” the Scout Motto: “Be prepared;” the Scout oath: “On my honor I will my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physi­cally strong, mentally awake and morally straight;” and the Scout slogan, “Do a good turn daily.”

         Those are the lists for being the Boy Scouts of America. They were written to be remembered. Paul wrote his lists for the church to be remembered: “Respect your leaders, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them,” was meant to stick in our minds. God wants us to recall those directions regularly. They make us the Church of Jesus Christ.

         In addition to all the memorization, I learned other things about the Scouts. I discovered the Scoutmaster was in charge, but I also had to respect and follow a smart aleck blond kid named Kim, the leader of the North Star Patrol. And all our patrols took direction from an older boy called the Senior Patrol Leader. There was an Assistant Scoutmaster and a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. There was a Quartermaster, a Scribe, and even a Chaplain. All those leaders helped make us a genuine troop of Boy Scouts.

         So Paul began his lists for church order in verse 12 with respect for leadership. There was some friction in Thessalonica. Leaders were being treated with less than the love called for in verse 13. So Paul reminded them to give proper respect to those who worked hard to guide the church.

         We don’t have any exact description of church order. Paul doesn’t say whether there are to be “bishops” or “elders” or “deacons” or even “pastors.” In the New Testament it looks like different churches did it different ways. What is clear is that the Holy Spirit called some in the Church to be teachers and leaders. These Paul said to “esteem highly in love because of their work.” Our own Covenant denomination aims at churches having truly called and gifted pastors and leaders who can be esteemed in love.

         At the end of verse 13, Paul begins a more general list that makes it clear the responsibility for church order belongs to everyone. Last week, over the Great Plains on a plane home from Chicago, our pilot suddenly came on the speaker, “Everything is fine, but if you will look out the left side and below us you will see two B-52 bombers.” We all peered out the windows and saw two big aircraft flying together a few thousand feet beneath us. I thought about all the skill that kept those two planes flying parallel and about the air traffic control which allowed our Airbus 320 to share the sky with them.

         In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis compares relationships among human beings to a fleet of ships sailing together in the same direction. Today he might have thought of aircraft flying in formation. Two dimensions of readiness make that smooth traveling possible. Lewis says,

“The Voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order.  As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other.”

         Smooth sailing (or flying) among human beings depends both on good internal order (i.e. personal morality or holiness) individually and on a collective, communal effort to stay in good order in relation to each other.

         Our text is a description of the proper order of a Christian community. Look at the second half of Romans 12 and you will see a similar list. Paul was repeating what must have been his regular teaching about how to be together as a church. If you like, these are the first church by-laws. They tell us how to fly together in order to be ready for Jesus’ return.

         So the end of verse 13 says “Be at peace among yourselves.” In this season the word “peace” is often heard, in a kind of wistful, dreamy tone. Paul tells us that peace is to be a present reality here and now in the Church. Christ brought peace to the world and the place it is to be most visible is in the community that bears His name. The rest of Paul’s list is how do this first thing, how to be at peace among ourselves.

         Verse 14 recognizes that the Body of Christ, the church, is not a collection of perfect people. There are idlers who need admonishment. Paul’s term is military, suggesting ne­glect of duty. There are fainthearted people who need encouragement. There are the weak who need help and care. And because we’re not perfect we can all get on each other’s nerves. So patience is needed with everyone.

         The list continues in verse 15 with a basic Christian rule drawn from Jesus’ own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. Do not repay evil for evil. Payback isn’t how it’s done in the church. Instead “always seek to do good to one other,” and, says Paul, to everyone else. Just listening to and obeying that one single direction makes a huge difference in how we live together and how people see Christians.

         The story of Julio Diaz recently resurfaced on the Internet. In March 2008, on his way into a diner in the Bronx, Julio was accosted by a teenager with a knife who wanted money. Julio gave him his wallet, then as the kid began to walk away said, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.” In the end the boy went into the diner with Julio, they had dinner together, and the wallet was returned. That’s how Christians act, with each other and with people around us.

         Verses 16 through 18 are a short, simple list: “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; give thanks in all circumstances.” Easy to say and hard to do. It is practically impossible to be constantly joyful, to pray without stopping, and to be grateful whatever the situation. But Paul says, “this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

         This little list is exactly why it’s not just about what you or I do. It’s about how we live together. When I can’t be joyful, maybe you can. When you don’t have the time or heart to pray, I might. He may not be able to be thankful right now, but she can be.

         We rejoice and pray and give thanks like nurses changing shifts or soldiers trading watches during the night. Not one of us could stay the whole course with perfect joy. Nobody can pray 24/7. There’s no one who’s thankful all the time. Yet together we can cover it, just like together we cover the shifts for the Warming Center.

         John Donne wrote about the community we experience as people united by Christ in the church. Just before those famous lines which begin, “No man is an island,” Donne wrote this:

        The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated… God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.[1]

         What is done by the church is done by every one of us. Donne says it about baptism and burial. Paul says it about joy and prayer and thanksgiving. Our action in community is our preparation for the day when we are all perfectly united in our Lord, like pages in a book. All our scattered stories will be bound together in the Lord’s library. By uniting us within the church, God makes us ready to be together when Christ comes back.

         In his third list, verses 19 to 22, Paul directs us to maintain the foundations of church community. Pay attention to the Holy Spirit and to the Word of God spoken prophetically. Yet test everything to be sure it really is the Spirit, really is God’s Word. That’s the only way we will be able to do what Paul says in verses 21 and 22, “hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” It’s why we teach Sunday School, why we study the Word on Tuesday evenings and Friday mornings here. It’s to keep us ready.

         Getting ready for Christmas often seems more than we can do. Remember that Christmas is a gift. It comes whether we are ready or not. The same is true for being a church. It’s more than we can do to create a worship service every week, to maintain a building, to care for children in the nursery, to minister to the homeless, to give to missions, to study the Bible, to pray for those that need prayer, and to be loving and patient with everyone while doing all that. So Paul concludes by reminding us that community is a gift.

         Verse 23 is a prayer that God Himself, “the God of peace,” will sanctify us entirely. It’s God’s work to makes us a community that will be ready for Christ. It’s His work to forgive our sins and give us love for each other. As Donne says, it’s His work to put all the pages of our lives together in one holy and good book. And in verse 24, Paul says that it will be done because, “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do this.” May you and I be willing and ready for him to do it.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj