Hanging onto hope
Commentary
Object:
Advent is, for the church, a solid hook in the vast, uncharted, chaotic voids of space, allowing us to tether and take our bearings from at least one point, which is neither shifting with the currents nor dependent on our own powers to establish it. Advent is the place where Archimedes can set the fulcrum of his lever and move earth and the planets in a meaningful way because there is a critical unmoved position from which everything else is to be measured. Advent is that date on our calendars penned in by God, not us, indicating a promised encounter we might often doubt, but which cannot be erased from the pages of time.
We once promised one of our daughters that we would be making a visit to see her, over 5,000 miles away from where we live, at a certain date in the future. She counted on our arrival, made plans to greet us, house us, feed us, and show us around her world. How could she be so certain that we would be there when we promised? Because she knows our character. She has learned to trust us and trust in us. True, the "fickle finger of fate" might raise all manner of obstacles and perhaps even void our plans but not if we could help it. Our word is as good as gold with our daughter. She trusts us. She was confident we would be there. She arranged her life by that promise.
How much more should we expect God to keep promises? In the spare evidence of these days, when we are roiled by circumstances and challenged by materialistic denials of any First Cause, religious trust seems foolish. Except... except that God made a promise. And we have seen God's character in Creation and in the divine affairs with Israel and in the testimony of Jesus. So we wait....
Jeremiah 33:14-16
On the old Hee Haw! television show there was always a segment where frustrated people lamented their bad fortunes: broken families, lost wealth, rotten marriages, overdrawn bank accounts, crippling diseases, frustrated careers, and so forth. Periodically Buck Owens and Roy Clark would interrupt the sad stories with a recurring chorus:
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
If anyone had the right to sing that song, it was Jeremiah. He was a prophet from birth (Jeremiah 1:5), but increasingly against his will (Jeremiah 12) because of the woe and vexation it brought (Jeremiah 37-38). He was alienated from his family and friends, forced (as Abraham Joshua Heschel would put it) to hear the screaming of heaven against his sensitive prophetic ears, beaten, tortured, imprisoned, starved, and nearly broken. He believed the best about God, people, and the future, and yet kept experiencing the worst. After the torturous months of Babylon's final siege of Jerusalem and the havoc it caused among the residue of once-proud Israelite society, Jeremiah was finally given a choice to march along with the deportees in relative comfort and protection on the long trek to Babylon. Or he could stay with the leftover lost, last, and least in the ruins of the fallen city. Jeremiah chose the latter, hoping to finish his days in a quiet pastoral ministry to the forgotten.
Then things turned really weird. These remaining homeless fought among themselves and started at every whisper that the foreign forces would return for one more murderous sweep. Governor Gedaliah was murdered (Jeremiah 41) and in the chaos that followed, Jeremiah was bound and taken to Egypt where he died, perhaps by murder.
So no one can hear the word of the Lord through Jeremiah without believing its authenticity and the voice of heaven that is speaking. Everything Jeremiah did and said as an adult happened at the cost of his own safety and welfare.
And that is the power behind the few verses of our pericope today. In a time of disaster, in an age of hopelessness, in a scene of destructive social collapse, the word of Yahweh comes through the mouth of Jeremiah: "The days are coming..." In this looming age, the fallen branch of David's royal family (see 2 Samuel 7) would rise again to rule in righteousness and glory. God's promises that Israel would be the divine sign to the nations would actually take place, and the world would be set right.
In his day, few would believe Jeremiah's words. And we might not either, standing in the darkness of Advent's early hours, while viewing our world through the lens of the morning newspaper or the latest rant of political blogging. Except for one thing. While all of God's bright promises have obviously not yet come to pass, Jesus did appear. We wait in the lengthening Advent gloom, but not without confidence. Jesus came, a brief and shining light. History has verified the prophet's message, and so we trust Jesus will return again to make all things new.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Soon after the Jerusalem council of Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas were eager to visit the Galatian congregations and inform them personally of the good outcomes in this early Christian theological debate that affected them so deeply (Acts 15:36). But tensions soared between the pair of evangelists as they argued whether John Mark should be invited along (Acts 15:37); after all, he had suddenly "deserted" them on their first mission journey. In the end, Barnabas felt a family obligation to give it a try with Mark again, while Paul chose a new partner named Silas to join him in these travels (Acts 15:39-41).
It was probably late in 49 AD when Paul and Silas left Syrian Antioch. They traveled overland to the communities in central Asia Minor where Paul and Barnabas had established Christian congregations about eighteen months earlier. At Lystra they were joined by Timothy (Acts 16:1-2), a promising young man whose mother was Christian but whose father was not. Together, as a growing company of itinerant preachers, they had in mind to go further north in Asia Minor (Acts 16:6-8) to new areas where Jewish settlements in Hellenic cities might give them an open door for talking about Jesus.
While pondering their options at Troas, Paul may have had some medical problems, for the text of Acts 16 shows a shift at that point from third-person references to first-person recollections. Obviously, doctor Luke joined them there. It was also in Troas that a divine directive came to Paul in a vision, and the company headed across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia. At Philippi they found a small group of Jews worshiping at the river's edge on a Sabbath (Acts 16:13), and when Paul spoke about Jesus, a new Christian congregation was formed in the home of Lydia (Acts 16:14-15).
Paul and Silas stayed there for some time, but eventually encountered trouble when a young fortune-teller began to follow them, shouting out to the crowds about them (Acts 16:16-17), perhaps in a mean-spirited or nasty manner. Paul became grieved by her evident demon possession and exorcized her (Acts 16:18). Her masters were upset and threw Paul and Silas into prison (Acts 16:19-24). At midnight an earthquake rocked the place and led to the jailer's conversion (Acts 16:25-34). In the morning, the Roman citizenship of Paul and Silas was discovered, and the magistrates were beside themselves in efforts to undo the unlawful treatment these two had received (Acts 16:35-40).
It was on to Thessalonica for Paul and Silas and their team (Acts 17:1-9). For three weeks Paul preached about Jesus in the Jewish synagogue there. When Gentiles swelled the crowd of Christ-believers, some Jews became jealous and formed a mob to disrupt civic life. The uproar caused city officials to arrest leading members of the new Christian congregation, and the group sent Paul and Silas out of town that evening under the cover of darkness. With brief stops in Berea (Acts 17:10-15) and Athens (Acts 17:16-34), Paul eventually arrived in Corinth, where he met Aquila and Priscilla for the first time (Acts 18:1-3). This couple would become fast friends with Paul, keeping in touch for the rest of his life.
Although Paul would spend the next year and a half in Corinth, at the outset his heart remained back in Thessalonica. Already when he was traveling through Athens he worried about how the fledgling Thessalonian congregation was faring (1 Thessalonians 2:17-20) and sent Timothy back to find out more and make a report (1 Thessalonians 3:1-5). Paul had already traveled to Corinth by the time Timothy caught up with him, and was elated at the good word brought (1 Thessalonians 3:6-10). With emotions running high, Paul dashed off a letter of appreciation and encouragement to his new friends (1 Thessalonians).
Most of this short letter is given to expressions of praise for the great testimony already being noised about from those who watched the great grace and spiritual energy of this newborn congregation. Paul rehearsed briefly the recent history that brought them together, and his aching heart after they were so quickly "torn away" from one another (1 Thessalonians 1-3). Only then does Paul spill some ink on a few notes of instruction. While most of what Paul says is typical exhortation toward quiet and godly living, one other topic suddenly jumped out with surprising clarity and doctrinal development. The central message of Paul's missionary preaching focused on the resurrection, which was for Paul the astounding confirmation of Jesus' divine character. This was the undeniable proof that Jesus was the Messiah, and that words and teachings had ushered in the new age of God's final revelation and redemptive activity.
Furthermore, the urgency of Paul's missionary endeavors was predicated on his understanding that Jesus had gone back to heaven only briefly and would be returning to earth very soon -- probably next week, but maybe next month. It was the generous grace of God that provided this brief window of opportunity, allowing Jesus' disciples a chance quickly to tell others the good news so that those who believed would also reap the benefits of the looming messianic age. Neither Paul nor God wanted anyone to be destroyed in the judgments that were still ahead.
The response of the Thessalonian church to this insistent focus on Jesus' imminent return apparently echoed back to Paul through Timothy's report in a way he had not expected. Rather than energizing the new believers in Thessalonica with anticipations of divine vindication after the painful struggles they had recently endured, some had instead become deeply discouraged. In the few intervening weeks or months since they had come to faith in Jesus under Paul's passionate preaching, several members of the congregation died. The grief of those who survived was heightened because they supposed that their lost loved ones had come so close to sharing in the powers and perfections of the new age, only to succumb to death virtually on its threshold. They assumed that the dead were excluded forever from the messianic kingdom.
Paul corrects this mistaken notion with a brief eschatological teaching. Jesus will return soon, to be sure, and those of us who are alive when that happens will enjoy renewed direct interaction with him. But those who have already died will not be left behind. Their bodies will be raised and restored, just as happened with Jesus on resurrection morning. Assurance of this comes from "the Lord's own word," according to Paul. Although none of the gospels records this exact teaching from Jesus, evidently it had become part of the oral tradition already being passed along from one believer to another.
Luke 21:25-36
Words can stir us to courage but only when they are grounded in confident expectation and hitched to unshakable values or realities. Who would not rally around the "I have a dream..." speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in which he paints the colors of freedom? Who would not feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940: "Let us... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "
Courage, as faith's activator, is the call in Jesus' words to us today. He sits with his shell-shocked disciples in the temple precincts, sensing the profound disturbance at his words that this marvelous place of holiness and beauty will soon lie in rubble, but pointing them to a larger cataclysm that will shake the whole earth as eternity finally sears into time.
We've been there with the disciples, haven't we? Famed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembered a terrible day during World War II. He was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous Dachau death camp. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living," if indeed he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted "yes!" against the "no" of defeat and the gray "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
Advent often reminds us of our similar need. The grayness of our bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms us. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
With David (Psalm 43:3), we shout, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave me alone. Give me some sign. Light a candle in the window and take me home.
Advent reminds us of the power in Jesus' words to his disciples. God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
Still, sometimes it seems there's no getting away from a bad thing. In the mid-1800s, Dutch immigrant pastor and community leader Albertus Van Raalte watched his little colony in western Michigan disintegrate under the ravages of disease and death. One Sunday morning, in the middle of his congregational prayer, he broke down. Sobbing and throwing his hands toward the heavens, he shouted, "Oh God! Must we all die?"
Certainly there are times when each of us goes through that agony. It's one thing to experience trouble and torment when you've been living an ungodly existence. You know then that you're getting what you deserve. But it's quite another thing to be close to God and still to feel such pain and frustration each day. The specter of death bumps against us in the marketplace. And if we run for cover, it follows us right into the caves of refuge. Too often we wear Van Raalte's tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes, shouting toward heaven, "Oh God! Is there no relief?"
Because we know these pressures, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength, peace, and confidence that are part of our return to Advent anticipations. We need to remember again the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty, pain, spite, injury, and death. We need to learn anew that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows the miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace, joy, and harmony.
Application
There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville's great epic Moby Dick where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (ch. 119). His obsession with the White Whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine Providence might be unleashing furious anger against this ill-fated quest. But Ahab is a fighter, and with clenched fists amid the lightning bolts and against the raging thunder he yells a taunt at the Creator who chastens his cause: "I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance."
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: "But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee..." He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short -- the one who could "rend the heavens" and "set twigs ablaze" and "cause water to boil" and "cause the nations to quake" and make "the mountains tremble" slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God, upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Alternative Application
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. Paul's letters to the Thessalonian congregation occurred early in his ministry, with both epistles most likely penned in 50 AD. These writings are very short and do not spell out a fully explored eschatology. But in their brief exhortations they contain some of Paul's most direct and explicit eschatological teachings.
First, it is clear that the emphasis in Paul's preaching was on the resurrection of Jesus. This was the confirmation that Jesus was the messiah foretold by the prophets. It was also the most profound sign that the new messianic age had arrived. Since the messianic age was part of the promised "Day of the Lord," a time of divine judgment was sure to soon arrive.
Second, Jesus' first coming brought the beginnings of the blessings of the messianic age, but it delayed the judgments of God for a time so that the followers of Jesus could spread the news of salvation far and wide. Splitting the "Day of the Lord" in two was an act of kindness on God's part, providing more opportunity for people to respond in faith. It also placed upon the church a missionary urgency. The reason Jesus left his followers behind during the gap between his ascension and return was to send them as ambassadors of hope to the nations.
Third, the return of Jesus was imminent and likely to take place within weeks or months. This was the expectation that made any trials, persecutions, or difficulties endurable. Knowing that one can outlast an opponent, no matter how nasty or strong, gives great resilience to hang on and survive with dignity.
Fourth, all who trusted in Jesus when he returned would share in his glory and power. But so too would those who had believed in Jesus and then died before Jesus had made his return. This teaching profoundly changed the burial habits of Christians, and altered expectations at dying. Rather than closing doors, death opened them. Many early Christians welcomed death by martyrdom, knowing that through this act they were immediately secure in resurrection hope.
Fifth, the gap that had been widening since Jesus' ascension required explanations for the delay of his return. These came in three major expressions. Some saw in it evidence of divine grace, in which God was not bringing final judgment until more people could respond to the gospel message in faith. Others declared the delay as a tool for testing the faithfulness of those who said they believed in Jesus. A final group called to mind Jesus' words about signs that would appear before the final days and were certain that a number of specific events must still take place prior to his return.
Intertwined together, these eschatological expectations became hardwired into the church and infused it, for Paul, with a missionary urgency and an uncompromising ethic. The church must speak to everyone with loving passion about Jesus and was responsible to live in a profound moral simplicity that assessed every behavior by the question, "What should we be doing when Jesus returns?"
We once promised one of our daughters that we would be making a visit to see her, over 5,000 miles away from where we live, at a certain date in the future. She counted on our arrival, made plans to greet us, house us, feed us, and show us around her world. How could she be so certain that we would be there when we promised? Because she knows our character. She has learned to trust us and trust in us. True, the "fickle finger of fate" might raise all manner of obstacles and perhaps even void our plans but not if we could help it. Our word is as good as gold with our daughter. She trusts us. She was confident we would be there. She arranged her life by that promise.
How much more should we expect God to keep promises? In the spare evidence of these days, when we are roiled by circumstances and challenged by materialistic denials of any First Cause, religious trust seems foolish. Except... except that God made a promise. And we have seen God's character in Creation and in the divine affairs with Israel and in the testimony of Jesus. So we wait....
Jeremiah 33:14-16
On the old Hee Haw! television show there was always a segment where frustrated people lamented their bad fortunes: broken families, lost wealth, rotten marriages, overdrawn bank accounts, crippling diseases, frustrated careers, and so forth. Periodically Buck Owens and Roy Clark would interrupt the sad stories with a recurring chorus:
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
If anyone had the right to sing that song, it was Jeremiah. He was a prophet from birth (Jeremiah 1:5), but increasingly against his will (Jeremiah 12) because of the woe and vexation it brought (Jeremiah 37-38). He was alienated from his family and friends, forced (as Abraham Joshua Heschel would put it) to hear the screaming of heaven against his sensitive prophetic ears, beaten, tortured, imprisoned, starved, and nearly broken. He believed the best about God, people, and the future, and yet kept experiencing the worst. After the torturous months of Babylon's final siege of Jerusalem and the havoc it caused among the residue of once-proud Israelite society, Jeremiah was finally given a choice to march along with the deportees in relative comfort and protection on the long trek to Babylon. Or he could stay with the leftover lost, last, and least in the ruins of the fallen city. Jeremiah chose the latter, hoping to finish his days in a quiet pastoral ministry to the forgotten.
Then things turned really weird. These remaining homeless fought among themselves and started at every whisper that the foreign forces would return for one more murderous sweep. Governor Gedaliah was murdered (Jeremiah 41) and in the chaos that followed, Jeremiah was bound and taken to Egypt where he died, perhaps by murder.
So no one can hear the word of the Lord through Jeremiah without believing its authenticity and the voice of heaven that is speaking. Everything Jeremiah did and said as an adult happened at the cost of his own safety and welfare.
And that is the power behind the few verses of our pericope today. In a time of disaster, in an age of hopelessness, in a scene of destructive social collapse, the word of Yahweh comes through the mouth of Jeremiah: "The days are coming..." In this looming age, the fallen branch of David's royal family (see 2 Samuel 7) would rise again to rule in righteousness and glory. God's promises that Israel would be the divine sign to the nations would actually take place, and the world would be set right.
In his day, few would believe Jeremiah's words. And we might not either, standing in the darkness of Advent's early hours, while viewing our world through the lens of the morning newspaper or the latest rant of political blogging. Except for one thing. While all of God's bright promises have obviously not yet come to pass, Jesus did appear. We wait in the lengthening Advent gloom, but not without confidence. Jesus came, a brief and shining light. History has verified the prophet's message, and so we trust Jesus will return again to make all things new.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Soon after the Jerusalem council of Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas were eager to visit the Galatian congregations and inform them personally of the good outcomes in this early Christian theological debate that affected them so deeply (Acts 15:36). But tensions soared between the pair of evangelists as they argued whether John Mark should be invited along (Acts 15:37); after all, he had suddenly "deserted" them on their first mission journey. In the end, Barnabas felt a family obligation to give it a try with Mark again, while Paul chose a new partner named Silas to join him in these travels (Acts 15:39-41).
It was probably late in 49 AD when Paul and Silas left Syrian Antioch. They traveled overland to the communities in central Asia Minor where Paul and Barnabas had established Christian congregations about eighteen months earlier. At Lystra they were joined by Timothy (Acts 16:1-2), a promising young man whose mother was Christian but whose father was not. Together, as a growing company of itinerant preachers, they had in mind to go further north in Asia Minor (Acts 16:6-8) to new areas where Jewish settlements in Hellenic cities might give them an open door for talking about Jesus.
While pondering their options at Troas, Paul may have had some medical problems, for the text of Acts 16 shows a shift at that point from third-person references to first-person recollections. Obviously, doctor Luke joined them there. It was also in Troas that a divine directive came to Paul in a vision, and the company headed across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia. At Philippi they found a small group of Jews worshiping at the river's edge on a Sabbath (Acts 16:13), and when Paul spoke about Jesus, a new Christian congregation was formed in the home of Lydia (Acts 16:14-15).
Paul and Silas stayed there for some time, but eventually encountered trouble when a young fortune-teller began to follow them, shouting out to the crowds about them (Acts 16:16-17), perhaps in a mean-spirited or nasty manner. Paul became grieved by her evident demon possession and exorcized her (Acts 16:18). Her masters were upset and threw Paul and Silas into prison (Acts 16:19-24). At midnight an earthquake rocked the place and led to the jailer's conversion (Acts 16:25-34). In the morning, the Roman citizenship of Paul and Silas was discovered, and the magistrates were beside themselves in efforts to undo the unlawful treatment these two had received (Acts 16:35-40).
It was on to Thessalonica for Paul and Silas and their team (Acts 17:1-9). For three weeks Paul preached about Jesus in the Jewish synagogue there. When Gentiles swelled the crowd of Christ-believers, some Jews became jealous and formed a mob to disrupt civic life. The uproar caused city officials to arrest leading members of the new Christian congregation, and the group sent Paul and Silas out of town that evening under the cover of darkness. With brief stops in Berea (Acts 17:10-15) and Athens (Acts 17:16-34), Paul eventually arrived in Corinth, where he met Aquila and Priscilla for the first time (Acts 18:1-3). This couple would become fast friends with Paul, keeping in touch for the rest of his life.
Although Paul would spend the next year and a half in Corinth, at the outset his heart remained back in Thessalonica. Already when he was traveling through Athens he worried about how the fledgling Thessalonian congregation was faring (1 Thessalonians 2:17-20) and sent Timothy back to find out more and make a report (1 Thessalonians 3:1-5). Paul had already traveled to Corinth by the time Timothy caught up with him, and was elated at the good word brought (1 Thessalonians 3:6-10). With emotions running high, Paul dashed off a letter of appreciation and encouragement to his new friends (1 Thessalonians).
Most of this short letter is given to expressions of praise for the great testimony already being noised about from those who watched the great grace and spiritual energy of this newborn congregation. Paul rehearsed briefly the recent history that brought them together, and his aching heart after they were so quickly "torn away" from one another (1 Thessalonians 1-3). Only then does Paul spill some ink on a few notes of instruction. While most of what Paul says is typical exhortation toward quiet and godly living, one other topic suddenly jumped out with surprising clarity and doctrinal development. The central message of Paul's missionary preaching focused on the resurrection, which was for Paul the astounding confirmation of Jesus' divine character. This was the undeniable proof that Jesus was the Messiah, and that words and teachings had ushered in the new age of God's final revelation and redemptive activity.
Furthermore, the urgency of Paul's missionary endeavors was predicated on his understanding that Jesus had gone back to heaven only briefly and would be returning to earth very soon -- probably next week, but maybe next month. It was the generous grace of God that provided this brief window of opportunity, allowing Jesus' disciples a chance quickly to tell others the good news so that those who believed would also reap the benefits of the looming messianic age. Neither Paul nor God wanted anyone to be destroyed in the judgments that were still ahead.
The response of the Thessalonian church to this insistent focus on Jesus' imminent return apparently echoed back to Paul through Timothy's report in a way he had not expected. Rather than energizing the new believers in Thessalonica with anticipations of divine vindication after the painful struggles they had recently endured, some had instead become deeply discouraged. In the few intervening weeks or months since they had come to faith in Jesus under Paul's passionate preaching, several members of the congregation died. The grief of those who survived was heightened because they supposed that their lost loved ones had come so close to sharing in the powers and perfections of the new age, only to succumb to death virtually on its threshold. They assumed that the dead were excluded forever from the messianic kingdom.
Paul corrects this mistaken notion with a brief eschatological teaching. Jesus will return soon, to be sure, and those of us who are alive when that happens will enjoy renewed direct interaction with him. But those who have already died will not be left behind. Their bodies will be raised and restored, just as happened with Jesus on resurrection morning. Assurance of this comes from "the Lord's own word," according to Paul. Although none of the gospels records this exact teaching from Jesus, evidently it had become part of the oral tradition already being passed along from one believer to another.
Luke 21:25-36
Words can stir us to courage but only when they are grounded in confident expectation and hitched to unshakable values or realities. Who would not rally around the "I have a dream..." speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in which he paints the colors of freedom? Who would not feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940: "Let us... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "
Courage, as faith's activator, is the call in Jesus' words to us today. He sits with his shell-shocked disciples in the temple precincts, sensing the profound disturbance at his words that this marvelous place of holiness and beauty will soon lie in rubble, but pointing them to a larger cataclysm that will shake the whole earth as eternity finally sears into time.
We've been there with the disciples, haven't we? Famed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembered a terrible day during World War II. He was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous Dachau death camp. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living," if indeed he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted "yes!" against the "no" of defeat and the gray "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
Advent often reminds us of our similar need. The grayness of our bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms us. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
With David (Psalm 43:3), we shout, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave me alone. Give me some sign. Light a candle in the window and take me home.
Advent reminds us of the power in Jesus' words to his disciples. God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
Still, sometimes it seems there's no getting away from a bad thing. In the mid-1800s, Dutch immigrant pastor and community leader Albertus Van Raalte watched his little colony in western Michigan disintegrate under the ravages of disease and death. One Sunday morning, in the middle of his congregational prayer, he broke down. Sobbing and throwing his hands toward the heavens, he shouted, "Oh God! Must we all die?"
Certainly there are times when each of us goes through that agony. It's one thing to experience trouble and torment when you've been living an ungodly existence. You know then that you're getting what you deserve. But it's quite another thing to be close to God and still to feel such pain and frustration each day. The specter of death bumps against us in the marketplace. And if we run for cover, it follows us right into the caves of refuge. Too often we wear Van Raalte's tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes, shouting toward heaven, "Oh God! Is there no relief?"
Because we know these pressures, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength, peace, and confidence that are part of our return to Advent anticipations. We need to remember again the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty, pain, spite, injury, and death. We need to learn anew that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows the miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace, joy, and harmony.
Application
There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville's great epic Moby Dick where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (ch. 119). His obsession with the White Whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine Providence might be unleashing furious anger against this ill-fated quest. But Ahab is a fighter, and with clenched fists amid the lightning bolts and against the raging thunder he yells a taunt at the Creator who chastens his cause: "I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance."
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: "But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee..." He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short -- the one who could "rend the heavens" and "set twigs ablaze" and "cause water to boil" and "cause the nations to quake" and make "the mountains tremble" slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God, upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Alternative Application
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. Paul's letters to the Thessalonian congregation occurred early in his ministry, with both epistles most likely penned in 50 AD. These writings are very short and do not spell out a fully explored eschatology. But in their brief exhortations they contain some of Paul's most direct and explicit eschatological teachings.
First, it is clear that the emphasis in Paul's preaching was on the resurrection of Jesus. This was the confirmation that Jesus was the messiah foretold by the prophets. It was also the most profound sign that the new messianic age had arrived. Since the messianic age was part of the promised "Day of the Lord," a time of divine judgment was sure to soon arrive.
Second, Jesus' first coming brought the beginnings of the blessings of the messianic age, but it delayed the judgments of God for a time so that the followers of Jesus could spread the news of salvation far and wide. Splitting the "Day of the Lord" in two was an act of kindness on God's part, providing more opportunity for people to respond in faith. It also placed upon the church a missionary urgency. The reason Jesus left his followers behind during the gap between his ascension and return was to send them as ambassadors of hope to the nations.
Third, the return of Jesus was imminent and likely to take place within weeks or months. This was the expectation that made any trials, persecutions, or difficulties endurable. Knowing that one can outlast an opponent, no matter how nasty or strong, gives great resilience to hang on and survive with dignity.
Fourth, all who trusted in Jesus when he returned would share in his glory and power. But so too would those who had believed in Jesus and then died before Jesus had made his return. This teaching profoundly changed the burial habits of Christians, and altered expectations at dying. Rather than closing doors, death opened them. Many early Christians welcomed death by martyrdom, knowing that through this act they were immediately secure in resurrection hope.
Fifth, the gap that had been widening since Jesus' ascension required explanations for the delay of his return. These came in three major expressions. Some saw in it evidence of divine grace, in which God was not bringing final judgment until more people could respond to the gospel message in faith. Others declared the delay as a tool for testing the faithfulness of those who said they believed in Jesus. A final group called to mind Jesus' words about signs that would appear before the final days and were certain that a number of specific events must still take place prior to his return.
Intertwined together, these eschatological expectations became hardwired into the church and infused it, for Paul, with a missionary urgency and an uncompromising ethic. The church must speak to everyone with loving passion about Jesus and was responsible to live in a profound moral simplicity that assessed every behavior by the question, "What should we be doing when Jesus returns?"
