Harsh Words
Sermon
I watched my very first horror film at the age of sixteen. I went to the pictures on a date and watched Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". I was so utterly terrified, that the image of the woman being knifed in the shower stayed with me for years, and I wasn't particularly keen ever to see another horror film. But since then, of course, I've seen no end of films containing varying degrees of horror and I suppose I've become immune to some extent, for when I watched "Psycho" again more recently, it seemed incredibly tame.
Which only goes to show that it's all relative. Scenes that horrified in the sixties are so restrained in comparison to the horror dished up nowadays, that mostly we tend to laugh rather than tremble when we see those early films again. But that's films. And no matter how horrific they are, none of them prepared us for the horror that we watched on our screens on September 11th, the horror that happened in front of our eyes in real life.
It sometimes seems as though the Old Testament is full of real-life horror. There are stories of blood and thunder to rival anything seen at the cinema. Blood and thunder, moreover, which mostly is not only condoned by God, but actually ordered by him. The New Testament, by contrast, seems quite different. From the time of Jesus, the mood of the Bible seems to change from blood and thunder to gentleness and love. But that's at first glance, and those who delve a little deeper might find that it's an assessment which may not be entirely accurate.
There's actually a great deal of love and gentleness in the Old Testament, but you have to know where to look. And perhaps it doesn't leap out quite as much as the blood and thunder does, to our modern way of thinking and to our very different culture. In the primitive days of the Old Testament life was very much concerned with tribal warfare as different tribes jostled each other to gain territory, for ownership of land was of paramount importance to life itself. Way back in the beginning of the Old Testament God promised Abraham land and seed, the two prerequisites for survival in those primitive times. You needed land to grow food, and a large family, preferably sons, to work the land. That way you survived. So the surprising thing about the Old Testament isn't the blood and thunder which was necessary for survival in primitive times, but that sometimes the Old Testament displays incredible love and gentleness, way beyond anything any other tribes of the day would have expected.
And although it's fairly well tucked away, the New Testament too has its fair share of blood and thunder. But perhaps the harsher passages in the New Testament are heard less often than the gentler passsages, and are particularly difficult to accept in our present culture where we expect and tend to cultivate (as far as possible) love and peace rather than war and aggression.
Today's Old Testament reading from the book of Isaiah is full of love. God rejects the sacrifices of his people because they don't come from the heart. "When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers," says God. "I will not listen; your hands are full of blood." But then God goes on to spell out exactly what he does want from his people, and what his own particular concerns are. He says, "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." Gentle, concerned, loving words from one of the more poetical books of the Old Testament, but from a time some 800 years before Jesus was born.
By contrast, today's New Testament reading is much harsher. The writer assures the Thessalonians that "God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and ........ this will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord...." Powerful stuff, and not only very harsh in its condemnation of non-Christians, but also somewhat at odds with the way Jesus treated people who rejected him. When Jesus sent out the seventy two evangelists, he told them, "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you" (Luke 10:5-6). And on another occasion, we're told that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village (Luke 9:51-56).
But despite this, even Jesus himself used harsh words when the occasion warranted it. He often warned that judgement will come at the end of time, and when that happens the wicked will be thrown out like so much rubbish while the good will find themselves in God's presence (e.g. Matthew 13:49-50). The writer to the Thessalonians takes this statement of Jesus and applies it to the situation in which the Thessalonians find themselves.
This second letter is thought to have been written at a time when the church in Thessalonica was suffering persecution. At first, scholars thought the letter was written by Paul himself, probably shortly after the first letter to the Thessalonians, which was written around AD51. But many scholars now believe that this second letter is a "pseudepigraph" - a letter written in Paul's name to maintain church traditions in a later period, perhaps during the last two decades of the first century. At any event, whoever wrote it and whenever it was written, the Thessalonians were facing persecution. The verses in today's reading, based upon the words of Jesus in Matthew 13, are used by the writer to encourage the suffering Christians. By contrasting the assured future of the Christians with the awful things that will happen to the persecutors when Jesus returns, the writer hopes to strengthen the frightened Christians and encourage them to keep the faith.
My problem tends to be not so much with the idea that terrible things will happen to some human beings at the end of time, but more with who those human beings might be, for Jesus was somewhat enigmatic on this point. I can quite see that those who constantly and deliberately put themselves outside God's presence in any way they can, might find it difficult to recognise God when they come face to face with him. But Jesus doesn't seem to be referring to these people when he talks about the sheep on the right hand or the goats on the left (Matthew 25:32-33).
Jesus seems much more concerned with those who think they are good and fail to realise that they fall short in very basic ways. He told the story of the ten bridesmaids to warn those who weren't ready to meet with God, and the story of the lazy servant to warn those who don't use their God-given gifts as they could, and the story of those who met strangers and prisoners and widows but did nothing for them to warn those who simply failed to notice human need (Matthew 25).
And Jesus reserved his strongest judgement for those he considered to be hypocrites. These were often high officials, and even more often were religious officials, which should serve as a warning to all of us church people. Our practice of our religion must come from the heart if we're to meet God after we die.
So there are harsh words in the New Testament just as there are in the Old Testament, and today's epistle reading contains some of them. But they're there for our benefit. Unlike that rich man who failed to notice Lazarus the beggar at his gate day by day until it was too late (Luke 16:19-31), it isn't too late for any of us. Our God is good and loves us more than we can ever imagine. All we have to do is to open our hearts to him and allow him to work in us that which he wishes and longs to work in us, so that we become whole people who will instantly recognise God after death because we've met him so often in this life.
And if that's the end result, I'll accept any harsh words in order to reach that point.
Which only goes to show that it's all relative. Scenes that horrified in the sixties are so restrained in comparison to the horror dished up nowadays, that mostly we tend to laugh rather than tremble when we see those early films again. But that's films. And no matter how horrific they are, none of them prepared us for the horror that we watched on our screens on September 11th, the horror that happened in front of our eyes in real life.
It sometimes seems as though the Old Testament is full of real-life horror. There are stories of blood and thunder to rival anything seen at the cinema. Blood and thunder, moreover, which mostly is not only condoned by God, but actually ordered by him. The New Testament, by contrast, seems quite different. From the time of Jesus, the mood of the Bible seems to change from blood and thunder to gentleness and love. But that's at first glance, and those who delve a little deeper might find that it's an assessment which may not be entirely accurate.
There's actually a great deal of love and gentleness in the Old Testament, but you have to know where to look. And perhaps it doesn't leap out quite as much as the blood and thunder does, to our modern way of thinking and to our very different culture. In the primitive days of the Old Testament life was very much concerned with tribal warfare as different tribes jostled each other to gain territory, for ownership of land was of paramount importance to life itself. Way back in the beginning of the Old Testament God promised Abraham land and seed, the two prerequisites for survival in those primitive times. You needed land to grow food, and a large family, preferably sons, to work the land. That way you survived. So the surprising thing about the Old Testament isn't the blood and thunder which was necessary for survival in primitive times, but that sometimes the Old Testament displays incredible love and gentleness, way beyond anything any other tribes of the day would have expected.
And although it's fairly well tucked away, the New Testament too has its fair share of blood and thunder. But perhaps the harsher passages in the New Testament are heard less often than the gentler passsages, and are particularly difficult to accept in our present culture where we expect and tend to cultivate (as far as possible) love and peace rather than war and aggression.
Today's Old Testament reading from the book of Isaiah is full of love. God rejects the sacrifices of his people because they don't come from the heart. "When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers," says God. "I will not listen; your hands are full of blood." But then God goes on to spell out exactly what he does want from his people, and what his own particular concerns are. He says, "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." Gentle, concerned, loving words from one of the more poetical books of the Old Testament, but from a time some 800 years before Jesus was born.
By contrast, today's New Testament reading is much harsher. The writer assures the Thessalonians that "God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and ........ this will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord...." Powerful stuff, and not only very harsh in its condemnation of non-Christians, but also somewhat at odds with the way Jesus treated people who rejected him. When Jesus sent out the seventy two evangelists, he told them, "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you" (Luke 10:5-6). And on another occasion, we're told that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village (Luke 9:51-56).
But despite this, even Jesus himself used harsh words when the occasion warranted it. He often warned that judgement will come at the end of time, and when that happens the wicked will be thrown out like so much rubbish while the good will find themselves in God's presence (e.g. Matthew 13:49-50). The writer to the Thessalonians takes this statement of Jesus and applies it to the situation in which the Thessalonians find themselves.
This second letter is thought to have been written at a time when the church in Thessalonica was suffering persecution. At first, scholars thought the letter was written by Paul himself, probably shortly after the first letter to the Thessalonians, which was written around AD51. But many scholars now believe that this second letter is a "pseudepigraph" - a letter written in Paul's name to maintain church traditions in a later period, perhaps during the last two decades of the first century. At any event, whoever wrote it and whenever it was written, the Thessalonians were facing persecution. The verses in today's reading, based upon the words of Jesus in Matthew 13, are used by the writer to encourage the suffering Christians. By contrasting the assured future of the Christians with the awful things that will happen to the persecutors when Jesus returns, the writer hopes to strengthen the frightened Christians and encourage them to keep the faith.
My problem tends to be not so much with the idea that terrible things will happen to some human beings at the end of time, but more with who those human beings might be, for Jesus was somewhat enigmatic on this point. I can quite see that those who constantly and deliberately put themselves outside God's presence in any way they can, might find it difficult to recognise God when they come face to face with him. But Jesus doesn't seem to be referring to these people when he talks about the sheep on the right hand or the goats on the left (Matthew 25:32-33).
Jesus seems much more concerned with those who think they are good and fail to realise that they fall short in very basic ways. He told the story of the ten bridesmaids to warn those who weren't ready to meet with God, and the story of the lazy servant to warn those who don't use their God-given gifts as they could, and the story of those who met strangers and prisoners and widows but did nothing for them to warn those who simply failed to notice human need (Matthew 25).
And Jesus reserved his strongest judgement for those he considered to be hypocrites. These were often high officials, and even more often were religious officials, which should serve as a warning to all of us church people. Our practice of our religion must come from the heart if we're to meet God after we die.
So there are harsh words in the New Testament just as there are in the Old Testament, and today's epistle reading contains some of them. But they're there for our benefit. Unlike that rich man who failed to notice Lazarus the beggar at his gate day by day until it was too late (Luke 16:19-31), it isn't too late for any of us. Our God is good and loves us more than we can ever imagine. All we have to do is to open our hearts to him and allow him to work in us that which he wishes and longs to work in us, so that we become whole people who will instantly recognise God after death because we've met him so often in this life.
And if that's the end result, I'll accept any harsh words in order to reach that point.
