Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. David Williams; 07.05.2015
Scripture Lesson: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
Summer has rolled around again, meaning that the battle against clutter in my house has again reached a fever pitch. During the school year, there’s a respite, as the kids are off at school and there’s a moment or two to catch your breath.
But in these weeks of summer, with two teenage boys around more of the time, the house--and their rooms--descend into a deeper chaos, one that they attempted to remedy last week with a huge cleanout. Meaning, of course, that all those boxes full of stuff that they no longer need are gone from their floors and closets, and now inhabit the storage room in our basement.
Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.
As fiercely as I try to get stuff moved out of that basement storage room, it seems to remain filled with the things and the memories of a lifetime. Every few months or so, we go through, and clear stuff out. Some things continue to have meaning, and so back they go into boxes and crates and storage bins. Other things no longer carry any of the weight of identity, and so we set them aside.
Some of those memories are older than others. Like the little brown workbook that I come across, every time I shuffle back through one particular box filled with old letters and school records. I hold on to it because it’s the oldest written thing I have, the first record I have of my having taken pencil to paper.
And I remember having written it. I was four, or maybe five, and attending the Riverside Farm Nursery School in Nairobi, Kenya. Once a week, I needed to produce a journal of my thoughts for that week, along with drawings that represented the events described in that journal. I remember that it was a big production, a significant amount of work, a huge assignment. I remember being stressed out as I tried to come up with words enough to fill the journal.
Meaning, I needed to write a single coherent sentence, which typically was shorter than the one I’m reading to you right now. And that, looking at that little page, is what makes it so bizarre. That’s me. I remember it as me, and remember writing it as me. I remember padding out my word count by adding in a clause about how many weeks it would be before I traveled back to America.
But looking at it now, at the haphazard spelling, that memory seems bizarre. That was me, writing that out. I remember it as a thing that I did. And sure, my handwriting isn’t much better now. But it is clearly a small child writing, in language that is that of a child.
But that’s the reality of how we are, as we grow. We add to ourselves, bit by bit, piece by piece. We both change and do not change, with the change more easy to measure than the spirit of our not-changing.
The dynamics of change and identity are a vital part of understanding the nature of love, and the nature of every person and every community that hopes to live out its best identity.
Paul’s first letter to the small church at Thessalonika is all about a community that had figured out how it was supposed to be. It’s an important letter, because in many ways it is one of the earliest memories of the Christian movement. 1 Thessalonians is the first of the written records of Christian faith, at least the earliest one that remains. Paul wrote it somewhere between 40 and 50 CE, making it at least ten and maybe twenty years older than the oldest of the Gospels.
I really like this letter, because it’s not abstract theology. It’s kind of a love letter, between Paul and a community he really cared for. It’s consistently positive, hopeful, and practically affirming, a letter that shows a deep and personal connection between the Apostle and those to whom he was writing.
It’s enough of a personal letter that it acknowledges that even though they’re a lovely little gathering, they’re not perfect. At times they get lazy, and at times they just can’t, really, they just can’t. Paul knows this, and he loves them anyway. Have patience with yourselves, Paul says, from the heart of the patience that is grounded in love.
So here, as Paul wraps things up, a sweet letter of encouragement and support to a community that got it, he pitched out a batch of maxims and sayings about how to live, each of which rests on the radical compassion that is so central to the Gospel.
Those moral orders begin before the passage we just heard, as Paul gently but firmly challenges those who heard him to push themselves, to hold themselves to the standard he saw in Christ. He presents them with maxims, plain and simple measures of what it will mean to live out the life that Jesus taught.
“Be at peace among yourselves.” “Never pay back evil for evil, but show good to one another and to all.” “Give thanks in all circumstances.”
More than anything, he challenges those he loves to do two things. First, to always challenge themselves, testing everything against the goodness that they know. That part of faith is essential if we’re going to grow in faith. It’s the part of faith that the ancient church knew as metanoia, which we translate as repentance. Healthy, growing personhood is not a static thing. It involves continual self-assessment, a testing of ourselves against the transforming, radiant love of God. Those things that stand opposed to our ability to love one another need to be set aside, and given no power to guide our lives.
Second, in that testing, to know that there are parts of ourselves we should hold on to, things that are worth carrying forward with us. Those good things are moments in our story of ourselves that help develop us, help build us up as persons, that give a gracious integrity to our story.
Finding that balance is essential if we are to have healthy souls, if those souls are to exist at peace together, and if, together, we are to continue to grow. That goes well beyond our learning how to spell, or to string together sentences. It reaches deeper into us than that inevitable clearing out of the clutter of material stuff that fills our lives.
Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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