Words for Worship

Ministry Today

I don’t know if you were watching

the recent snooker championship

on telly recent.

 

For if you were –

you’d have heard

an amazing fact.

 

Because one of the commentators

suddenly said

of a Scottish player –

well, as Robert Louis Stevenson

invented the steam locomotive –

may be we should call him

the flying scot.

 

Proof in any was needed

that sports reporters

are people

who hang out

with journalists.

 

Yet we can give rise

to an equally massive

if less obvious gaffe

if we say

that the gospels

were the first documents

written in the New Testament.

 

Because, it was actually

the letters of Paul

that were first penned.

 

Therefore as our new sermon series,

I want to spend a few weeks

looking at

Paul’s genuine letters

to see what they tell us

of the effects of Jesus

not 20 centuries ago

but his potential impact

for us today.

 

And while I’ll call

our talks together

your sincerely Paul,

we could also call them

Hi there.

 

Because Paul

took the ancient world’s

traditional extended salutation

and made them

a message in themselves.

 

Take this example

from one his earliest missives –

it is his first letter to the Thessalonians.

 

Here to read to us………

1 Thess 1.2-10

 

 

ANTHEM

 

Now it has to be said –

I have often thought

that Paul’s letters

survived simply

because when they turned up –

people said

Oh not him again

and stuffed

the envelope into a wine jar.

 

Actually, this accords

with some of

the modern thinking

on Paul

as an angry loner.

 

Yet the salutation

just heard

say that he was much more.

 

His letters are more

than the sort

that appears

in The Times

signed disgusted of Tunbridge wells.

 

For in his preamble

he makes clear

he is talking to

the ‘church of Thessalonica’.

 

Now  – back then –

church was

a new fangled word.

 

Yet church stood, stand

And will ever stand

for all the people

all of the time.

So let us approach

what he went on to say

with not the dispassionate hear

t of the student

but the open mind

of the universal church member.

 

Here then to read to us

what Paul wants to say

here and now is………..

1 thess 5.3-9

HYMN………………….

Tell me what were you doing

in 1988?

 

Remember that was the year

when a Nazi document

implicated Kurt Waldheim

in Jewish deportations;

at sea

piper alpha was destroyed

and then

the Lockerbie disaster occurred.

 

On a lighter note

the film

the last emperor

won nine Oscars.  

 

Now tell me

what was happening in your lives

at that time?

 

And the important point

is we remember things

about that year

very well.

 

This is important

for Paul was writing

to the Macedonian town

of Thessalonica

only 20 years after Christ’s crucifixion.

 

In other words,

the life, teaching

and happenings

surrounding Jesus the carpenter

was fresh in people’s minds.

 

Therefore,

When we read this epistle,

We are as close

to the historical Jesus

as we can get.

 

Yet a first reading

of the letters

to the Thessalonians

is a bit disappointing.

 

For it seems

to offer no novel insights.

 

In fact, to the modern ear

it seems

to focus rather too much

on Christ’s second coming.

 

We find this strange

because the promised return

of Jesus today

either seems

a niave fairy tale

or the plot

for some pretty far out religion.

 

However, there is

no doubt about it

that in

the first few decades

after Christ’s death

the belief

that he would soon return

and start

the supernatural perfecting

of the earth

and all on it

was very much alive.

 

So much so,

the Thessalonians

were sitting about

in idleness

waiting for the great day.

 

Paul therefore

has to warn

that when indeed

the Lord returns

he will expect to see

his servants

hard a work upon his business.

 

So now some two millennia

after Christ’s death

how are to sensibly

take something

from the promised dramatic

return of our Saviour?

 

Even if we cannot

fully understand the concept,

what does the second coming

teach us today?

 

Looking back at 1988,

it has to be said

that it suffered

it fair share of tragedies.

 

None more so than

when  Seventy-five people

were killed

and three-hundred and forty-six injured

in one of the worst

air show disasters

in history

at Germany's Ramstein Air Base.

 

It happened

when three jets

from the Italian air demonstration team,

Frecce Tricolori,

collided,

sending one of the aircraft

crashing into

the crowd of spectators.

 

Here then is a painful reminder

that events can occur

in all our lives

unexpectedly

which can then change them

permanently.

 

And it is when

we experience

these apparent catastrophes

that the second coming

starts to speak to us.

 

For in his son’s precipitous return

we see the nature of God

in his dealing with his creatures.

 

We see that he is not always

one for gradual change,

he does not necessarily

act over long periods

and he is not afraid

of the radically different.

 

And it is this promising side

of God

that gives our sense of expectation.

 

For he doubtlessly sees

the ruthless heartlessness

of Tan Shwee

and his cohort of Burmese generals,

he does not turn

a blind eye to Mugabe

hiding in Zimbabwe

nor is he blind

to thousand and one in justices

and unhappiness

without the intention

to act precipitously and decisively.

 

And to prove my point,

1988 was the year

in which perestroika started

which would herald the fall

of the Soviet Union.

 

Who then would predict

the pulling down

of the iron curtain,

peace in Northern Ireland

and an apartheid free South Africa?

 

Let us pray for God’s sudden intervention

is all that is wrong

at the moment

and then wait

with a sense of expectancy.

 

 

We tend to believe

that slowly

the world is getting better

and perfection

is just round the corner.

 

However, it was John Bell

on the radio on Monday

who warned to the contrary.

 

For he said that

the whole of creation

suffers from fault lines.

 

The earth has fault lines

and their result are quakes

whose appalling consequences

we have seen in China.

 

Human society

has its fault lines

with knife crime,

teenage pregnancy

and youth offending

on the rise.

 

And who cannot claim

to have fault lines

in their personalities

and relationships.

 

Therefore, no matter

how long delayed

and how ridiculed

by non-believers,

the eventual return of Christ

with powers beyond this universe

is the only ultimate hope

or all who have gone before,

for us alive at the moment

and all the generations yet to be born.  

 

And so the second coming

has another great message

to teach us

and that to hold fast

to sense of hope.

 

But the future coming

of the Lord once more

to his kingdom

has also a huge warning to us.

 

The very warning

that Paul gave

to the Thessalonians.

 

Because, they had entered

a state of laziness

due their hope and expectancy

of the immediate coming.

 

We too have often display

similar idleness –

this time due to the delay

and our scepticism.

 

And so we must redouble

our efforts

as the thief in the night phrase

rings in our ears.

 

Let us go about

our Masters business

as if his finger

is about to point at us.

 

Let us strive

for the best

for others

in their distress.

 

Let us help

with each and every

interim divine intervention

to defeat injustice

and exploitation

and misery.

 

Let us go about

the business of Christ’s church

to ensure it remains

a jewel worthy

of our Lord’s praise

on his return.

 

Moreover, let us heed

Paul’s personal advice

to us

which is –

be self-controlled,

put on faith and love

as a breastplate

and the hope of salvation

as a helmet.

 

Because to be so prepared

is be ready not just

for the future

but the here and now.

 

Paul was very concerned

about his seedling church

as Thessalonica.

 

And there was a very good reason

for that.

 

For that ancient city

through the conquests of Alexander

been the hinge

between east and west.

 

Therefore, the successful planting

of the Church there

bode well

for the faith

spreading east

to entrance  the orient

and west

to capture Rome itself.

 

Yet, in teaching

Christ’s gospel

in this bell weather community

Paul did not bother

with all the complex theology

and legalism

of the church of today.

 

He kept himself

to one supreme message –

that Christ and died,

Christ had risen

and Christ will come again.

 

Maybe that is all

we too need

to teach today.

 

For if do so preach

we offer

the possible impossibility

of history being rewritten.

 

We reopen Auschwitz,

Ramstein and Lockerbie

to salvation,

we reopen piper alpha

and sehshan to healing

and we reopen

this  and that,

he and sh

and you and me

to perfection.

 

 

 

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

 

Amen

 

Offering

 

HYMN…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Thessalonians