Tuesday, 25th August 2020

Collect

God of our Holy and righteous ancestors; accept us as a living sacrifice and transform us by your Spirit, that, being members of one body, we will offer our gifts in Christ’s service, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God , now and forever. Amen.

Eucharist Readings:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-17         Psalm 96:7-13        Matthew 23:23-26

Thessalonica was one of the towns in Macedonia, the northern part of modern Greece, visited by Paul and his companions, Silas and Timothy, during his second missionary campaign. After being forced to leave Philippi, Paul spent a brief time here, and he gained a few converts from Jewish and Greek attenders at the synagogue and established a church. Opposition from Jews who did not respond to the message forced the missionaries to leave sooner than they would have wished, and maybe this increase in opposition may have been part of the reason why a group developed in the church who believed that they were living in the very last days. They claimed support for this belief from a statement which assumed to come from Paul himself, and several commentaries /theologians would argue that it was a misinterpretation of Paul’s words and that Paul told them that before the day of the Lord could come much had still to happen.

This reading, instruction about the day of the Lord, the major teaching section of the letter is difficult to understand for two reasons. Firstly, it is Paul’s  reply to problems that had risen in the church due to misunderstandings of his teaching and secondly,  the language is cryptic for people who do not know what he said orally to the readers verse 5 (Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?)

Paul is alarming the Thessalonians (us)  of the misleading and the false teachings but also reminding them(us) that they should not be easily rattled (unsettled), but rather to stand firm in the teachings they received from Paul and his companions. There are still many things to come, things they would be unsure of, ..verse 3 ‘Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way , for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs, and the man of lawlessness is revealed…He will oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’ temple , proclaiming himself to be God. Much of what he says echoes the teaching of Jesus in the discourse of Mark 13, and like Jesus he warns strictly against being misled by false teaching.

There is also a warning for Christian believers not to start out to a path that leads to disaster, and here Paul is addressing all believers, my brothers and sisters, (the Greek word for brothers and sisters adelphoi, and refers here to all believers, both men and women) , as part of God’s family. It is, however, overshadowed by an inspiring statement of Paul’s conviction that this should not happen to the readers. Any uncertainty about their own salvation should be overcome by a recollection of their Christian status.

Also, in this passage there is almost a kind of synopsis of the Christian life. According to William Barclay the outline of a Christian life is as follows.

• It begins with God’s call and we could never even begin to seek God unless he already found us,
• it develops in our effort, the Christian is not called to dream, but to fight, not to stand still, but to climb, not only called to the greatest privilege but also to the greatest task

Paul’s teaching in this chapter was meant to warn his readers that the end was not as near as they thought and to encourage them to stand fast despite the dreadful event that still lay ahead. It’s message to Christians today is that  we should not be concerned to identify ‘signs of the end’ but should be alert to the moral and spiritual issues which arise in terms of persecution and temptations to abandon faith in the Lord and his coming.