Wide Awake

Wide Awake

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11[1]

We have all kinds of ways of avoiding the hard truths that beg for our attention.  We lose ourselves in the images that play out on our television screens or in the world of social media.  We distract ourselves by overusing alcohol or caffeine to get through the day.  Or we become workaholics, keeping busy every waking minute.  Or we just go shopping.  Somehow spending money on something, on anything, seems to make us feel like everything’s really just fine. Anything not to have to pay too much attention to what’s really going on in our world, in our nation, in our State, and in our town.

We use these and many other distractions to keep from having to face many painful truths. Children are abused, and their lives are put in danger. Girls and young women are at risk of being “trafficked” like consumer goods. People live on the edge of literally losing everything, clinging to jobs that have little or no future. Families are coming apart at the seams. Morality seems to be a quaint relic of a by-gone era. And when widen our gaze, we find that there are wars raging all over the world, wars that spread violence like an epidemic and leave in its wake thousands of victims, mostly innocent, left to fend for themselves in refugee camps that are bursting at the seams.

I think St. Paul knew how hard life can be. He had been through countless hardships, mostly because of his commitment to follow Christ and to proclaim the good news. Part of the message he proclaimed was the promise that one day Christ would return and finish the work of redemption. One day he would set right all the wrongs in this world. One day he would make all creation new again, as it was at the beginning. As you can imagine, that hope was something the early Christians clung to for dear life. In fact, they held onto it so tightly, some of them got their priorities confused and became almost obsessed with the idea that Jesus would return any day.

Paul reminded them, as Jesus had said before him, that their attitude toward that great day of restoration was to be one of watchfulness. He contrasts that with the observation that most of the people in his world were living as if they were either asleep or drunk. They had no sense that their life choices were self-destructive. They had no awareness whatsoever that there could be anything different or better than the life of satisfying their own selfish desires. When you think about it, it doesn’t sound like much has changed. It seems like many people in our world today are simply hurtling head-long from one day to the next, hardly giving any thought to what they’re doing or where they’re headed or what their future may be. And as a result, their lives consist of one tragic misstep after another. And they go on living that way, seeming not to notice the warning signs on the path they’ve chosen.

The Apostle calls those of us who follow Christ to wake up from the fog and the haze of living like that, a life that he says is lived essentially in darkness. He says it this way, “for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thess 5:5-6). The challenge here is for us to forego the approach of going through life with “eyes wide shut.” Instead we are to “wake up.” Essentially, I think, what it takes for us to wake up and be watchful is to pay attention.  We are called to live intentionally.

That means that we have to approach the challenges of life in a different way than most people do. We seem to prefer the fine art of distraction, avoidance and denial to facing the truths about modern life. Paul had a different idea about all that. He called the believers of his day action. He told them to “put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). Here he returns to the foundation for all Christian living: faith, hope, and love. We can open our eyes to the pain in this world and invest our efforts for God’s purposes only as we have the faith to trust that God has something better in store for us.  We can “wake up” to the harsh realities all around us only as we hold onto the hope that God’s new world is dawning in our lives today.  When we can approach life with this kind of faith and hope, then we can we take the risk of loving those around us, all those around us, even those who are difficult to love, especially those who are seemingly “unlovable.”

When we neglect to live out the faith we profess, we’re living like we’re asleep. There are plenty of times when I’d much rather just close my eyes to the truth that can be painful. But our Scripture lesson reminds us that we are called to something different. We can no longer afford to linger in the various distractions that allow us to turn a blind eye to the hurts and injustices in our world.  We cannot continue to blame those who are different from us simply because it’s easy.  We cannot continue to ignore the suffering around us because it is too painful to watch.  We cannot continue to indulge our selfishness just because it feels good.  To do so is to go through life as if we’re walking in our sleep. But the faith, and hope, and love that Jesus Christ inspires in us has the effect of calling us to serve, “wide awake” to the realities of our world.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 11/19/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Caring Deeply

Caring Deeply

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8[1]

We live in a time that seems devoid of risk-takers. To be sure, there are plenty of people who engage in risky behaviors, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people who set off on journeys of exploration without knowing for sure whether they would make it back safely. I know there are some of them, but I don’t see too many people “boldly going where no one has gone before.” Even NASA, which seemed to embody that spirit for so many of us for so long, is retreating from manned space flight to sending robotic devices to take all the risks for us.

You may see things differently, but to me it feels like we’ve decided these are the days for playing it safe. We do everything we possibly can to minimize the risks we take in every aspect of our lives. We want guaranteed outcomes, assurances of protection, and hedges to minimize any potential exposure to loss. Any kind of loss. But the problem is that life is full of losses. To protect ourselves from loss, we have to refuse to be vulnerable to the people around us, to life itself. Choosing to live that way is really choosing to avoid life altogether. Yes, if we take risks, if we make ourselves vulnerable, we’re going to get hurt. We’re going to lose something or someone we cherish. But to refuse to do so is to choose not to live at all.

When you pay attention to the story of St. Paul’s life and ministry in the New Testament, I think you’d have to conclude that he took a different approach to life. While he may have started out on a relatively safe path, after he met Jesus Christ his life was anything but safe. As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, it seems as if Paul was constantly going from the frying pan into the fire as he went from town to town preaching the gospel and planting churches. Paul was nothing if not a risk-taker, making himself vulnerable in just about every way possible—even risking his life at times for the sake of the gospel and the people he served.

In our lesson for today, Paul mentions the fact that he had been “shamefully mistreated” at Philippi just before coming to Thessalonica. If we read the story in the book of Acts, we find that he was arrested and thrown in jail, although it was illegal to do that to a Roman citizen without due cause.  Again, we have to remember that jails in St. Paul’s day were a far cry from jails today! I think it would be more accurate to say he spent the night in the city dungeon. I’m not sure how eager I would be to get back to the work of preaching the gospel and serving the church if it meant spending time in jail, let alone a dungeon! And yet, Paul seemed to take it all in stride. He continued to take the risk of serving Christ.

If you think about all that St. Paul had been through, I think it’s amazing that he continued to press on from place to place. When St. Paul came to Thessalonica, a city he’d never visited before, he says, “we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition” (2:2). Just exactly what that opposition was, we may never know for sure. The book of Acts mentions opponents who followed Paul from place to place, stirring up opposition against him, gathering crowds to run him out of town. Despite all of that, the Apostle kept right on proclaiming the Gospel in every new city he visited.

I don’t know about you, but I find it amazing that Paul was able to keep on going despite all the opposition and even outright attacks he faced. I think he gives us an idea of why he would do so when he says, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves” (1 Thess. 2:8). It was his genuine love for the people he was serving that kept him going in the face of overwhelming odds. The fact that he “cared deeply” for them was what motivated him to keep taking the risk of putting himself out there, serving no matter what the cost, sharing God’s love for all whom he encountered on his travels.

I think part of the reason why he was willing to make himself so vulnerable was because of his commitment to practice what he preached. In another letter he says, “we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2). His commitment that his private life would be consistent with his public life made it possible for him to share himself so openly with the people he served in churches all over the world of his day.

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s difficult to take this approach to life. Most of us cannot say that we perfectly embody the model of aligning our private lives with the part of ourselves we present to the world. Most of us cannot say that our public lives are a shining example of discipleship to Jesus Christ.  When we feel vulnerable in these ways, our natural tendency is to withdraw and protect ourselves. But that’s not the example Jesus set for us, nor did Paul. They offered themselves freely because they were motivated by something deeper and more powerful than a desire for safety. They served because of the heartfelt love and concern they had for others. I think their example can help us today: we, too can take the risk of making ourselves vulnerable and choose to serve others no matter what the risk may be because we care deeply for the people around us.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/29/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

The Good Fight

The Good Fight

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11[1]

Like many of you, I still remember one of my first plane trips. I was 17, and I flew from Corpus Christi to Dallas to see my Great Aunt. I had received a neck injury in a car accident, and she was an orthopedic surgeon, so she insisted that she treat me. That flight was very relaxed. It seems that the airlines went out of their way to make people feel comfortable. The plane was only about half full. The whole experience made me think that this was the only way to travel. In fact, I remember thinking that to myself.

As many of you know, I recently flew to Calgary, Alberta, to visit my son Michael and his fiancée and her family. I can’t say those flights were particularly pleasant. These days the airports are jammed with people. It feels like you just about have to strip down to your skivvies to get through security. And then they pack you into the planes like sardines. Nothing like the relaxed and pleasant experience flying used to be. I can certainly understand why people who have to travel for their jobs are called “road warriors.” It seems like you have to fight for food, you have to fight for a seat on the plane, and then you have to fight for what little space you have. I’m glad I don’t have to do that much travelling!

I think many of us would say that life itself is a battle these days, not just travel. We fight to make ends meet. We fight to find a job, and then sometimes we have to fight to keep that job. We struggle with relationships to find the right person to spend our lives with, and then sometimes we have to fight to keep that relationship together. We fight to make a better future for our children, and then sometimes we have to fight to keep them headed in the right direction. And just about the time we think we’ve got it made, everything changes, the ground we’re standing on falls away from us, and we find ourselves fighting just to hold on until life settles into a new “normal.”

I think St. Paul knew how hard life can be. He had been through countless hardships, mostly because of his commitment to follow Christ and to proclaim the good news. Part of the message he proclaimed was the promise that one day Christ would return and finish the work of redemption. One day he would set right all the wrongs in this world. One day he would make all creation new again, as it was at the beginning. As you can imagine, that hope was something the early Christians clung to for dear life. In fact, they held onto it so tightly, some of them got their priorities confused and became almost obsessed with the idea that Jesus would return any day.

Paul reminded them, as Jesus had said before him, that their attitude toward that great day of restoration was to be one of watchfulness. He contrasts that with the observation that most of the people in his world were living as if they were either asleep or drunk. They had no sense that their life choices were self-destructive. They had no awareness whatsoever that there could be anything different or better than the life of satisfying their own selfish desires. When you think about it, it doesn’t sound like much has changed. It seems like many people in our world today are simply hurtling head-long from one day to the next, hardly giving any thought to what they’re doing or where they’re headed or what their future may be. And as a result, their lives consist of one tragic misstep after another. And they go on living that way, seeming not to notice the warning signs on the path they’ve chosen. They’re sleepwalking through their lives.[2]

The Apostle calls those of us who follow Christ to wake up from the fog and the haze of living like that, a life that he says is lived essentially in darkness. He says it this way, “for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thess 5:-6). Essentially, I think, what it takes for us to wake up and be watchful is to pay attention.[3] We are called to live intentionally. And throughout the ages, spiritual teachers have reminded us that one of the most important ways of doing that is to develop a discipline of prayer.[4]

But St. Paul also calls believers to wage the battle of life in a different way than most people do. It seems that aggressiveness, demanding our way, being assertive or even pushy, having a competitive edge, are all part and parcel of what we think it means to win the battle that life has become. Paul had a different idea about all that. He told the believers of his day to “put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). The Apostle knew that you can’t fight “the good fight,” you can’t wage the battle for God’s purposes in the world without using “the weapons of righteousness” (2 Cor. 6:6-7).[5] 
And here he returns to what seems to be the foundation for all Christian living: faith, hope, and love. We can invest our lives for God’s purposes only as we have the faith to trust that God will fulfill his promises of a new world.[6] We can fight the good fight only as we hold onto the hope that one day that new world will become a reality, and in fact it already is dawning in our lives today.[7] Only when we hold onto faith and hope can we take the risk of loving those around us, all those around us, even those who are difficult to love, especially those who are seemingly “unlovable.”[8] When we have the clarity to see through the haze so many in our culture are sleepwalking through and determine to live our lives in the way of faith, hope and love, then we’ll be “fighting the good fight.”

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[1] ©2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 11/16/2014 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, In the End--the Beginning: The Life of Hope, 82. He characterizes the “sleeping” that Paul refers to by saying “Our eyes are open but we don’t see; our ears are open but we don’t hear.”  He continues, “we no longer perceive the real world. We see only our dreams and think that our wishful thinking about reality is reality itself. But this again means that we don’t live wakefully in reality; we are asleep in the agreeable dreams of our fantasy world.”

[3] Cf. Moltmann, In the End, The Beginning, 84. He says, “The early Christians prayed standing, looking up, with arms outstretched and eye wide-open, ready to walk or to leap forward. We can see this from the pictures in the catacombs in Rome. Their posture reflects tense expectation, not quiet heart-searching. It says: we are living in God’s Advent. We are on the watch, in expectation of the One who is coming, and with tense attentiveness we are going to meet the coming God.”

[4] Cf. Moltmann, In the End, The Beginning, 83: “When we pray, what we are seeking is not our own wishes; we are seeking the reality of God, and are breaking out of the Hall of Mirrors of our own illusory wishes, in which we have been imprisoned.” See also Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, 43: “Spiritual wakefulness demands only the habitual awareness of him which surrounds all our actions in a spiritual atmosphere ....”; and Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 68-69, where he says that is the “discipline of prayer” that helps us to come back again and again to “the active presence of God at the center of [our] living.” 

[5] Paul lists them as “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,  truthful speech, and the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:6-7).  Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.4:7: he says that “the armour ... which the Christian is to take and put on is a freedom and power which is neither proper nor available to man by nature, which surpasses him in all its aspects” but it is nevertheless “appropriated to him as a freedom and power” which we must take up. He continues, “What a man puts on when he becomes a Christian is according to Col. 3:10 and Eph. 4:24 no more and no less than—after the putting off of the old—the new man who is created κατὰ θεόν* (according to God) or κατʼ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν* (according to the image of the one who created him)” (translations added).

[6] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 337: “The expectation of the promised future of the kingdom of God, which is coming to man and to the world to set them right and create life, makes us ready to expend ourselves unrestrainedly and unreservedly in love and in the work of reconciliation of the world with God and his future.”

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 107-109, where he discusses the idea that Paul “sets salvation ‘in the mode of hope’” by pointing forward to the resurrection of the death and the annihilation of death itself, but also sees the signs of this hope already in the healing ministry of Jesus.

[8] Cf. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 338: “Faith can expend itself in the pain of love, ..., because it is upheld by the assurance of hope” in God’s promised future. Cf. also Paul Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, 209: “As Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.--and the Buddha and Jesus long before them--realized, our best ‘weapon’ for changing the hearts of our oppressors or enemies is to love them. ... Only in this way will liberation come not just for the oppressed but also for the oppressors.”

Sharing Ourselves

Sharing Ourselves

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8  [1]

These days it seems like we’re all trying to protect ourselves from something. Whether it’s crime, or a financial scam, or the latest health scare, it seems that we’re always protecting ourselves from something or someone. And when we go into that protective mode, our “walls” go up, our suspicions are high, and we close ourselves off from those around us. Don’t misunderstand: I realize there are aspects of our world that are frightening and even dangerous. But the question we face as people who practice the Christian faith is how we are going to respond to those concerns. It seems to me that we can either withdraw from everything or everyone around us, or we can find the good in life and open ourselves up the way St. Paul did.

I think that, as we look at our lesson from St. Paul for today, it’s all too easy for us to think of him as “St. Paul the Apostle.” We may even unconsciously envision him as having a halo of holiness visible around his head. But the reality is that St. Paul was a human being, subject to all the trials and hardships and fears that we are. I might even say that because he was constantly putting himself out there for the sake of the Gospel, he may have faced even more challenges with the dangers he faced. After all, as he tells us elsewhere, at one point in his ministry he had actually been pelted with stones and left for dead! I think many of us might re-think our career choice after experiencing something like that.

But St. Paul didn’t do that. In fact, he seemed to constantly be going from the frying pan into the fire as he went from town to town preaching the gospel. In our lesson for today, he mentions the fact that he had been “shamefully mistreated” at Philippi just before coming to Thessalonica. If we read the story of Paul’s visit to Philippi in the book of Acts, we find that he was arrested and thrown in jail, although it was illegal to do that to a Roman citizen without due cause.[2] I don’t know about you, but I wonder how willing I would be to go on preaching the gospel after spending a night in jail. I’ve never been in jail, so I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that jails in St. Paul’s day were a far cry from jails today! I think it would be more accurate to say he spent the night in the city dungeon.[3]

And yet, after all that he had already been through, when St. Paul came to Thessalonica, a new town he’d never visited before, he says, “we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition” (2:2). Just exactly what that opposition was, we may not be able to know for sure. The story in the book of Acts mentions opponents who followed Paul from town to town, stirring up opposition against him, gathering crowds to run him out of town. Again, I find it amazing that Paul didn’t just sail away to a quiet place where he could just make tents in peace! But that’s not what he did. He kept right on proclaiming the Gospel because he was compelled by the love of Christ and the calling he had received from God.

What I find even more amazing is that, after all that Paul had already been through at the hands of his opponents in a wide variety of places, he says that he cared so much for the Thessalonians that he was “determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves” (2:8). It seems to me that it’s one thing to share the Gospel. That was taking a great risk in and of itself. But St. Paul went even further in sharing himself with them. He cared for them deeply. He opened his heart to them. And in doing so he made himself vulnerable. But I wonder if that’s not one of the reasons why the gospel took root so well in the hearts and minds of the people there.

We may be tempted to think that St. Paul’s experience doesn’t really have anything to do with most of us. After all, he was an apostle. What can the life of an Apostle teach those of us who are ordinary human beings? Maybe his life and example relate to pastors, but how do they relate to those of us who aren’t walking around with visible halos? Well, I think St. Paul himself answered that question on a number of occasions. He often instructed the people in the churches he was writing to follow his example, because he was striving to follow the example of Christ. In other words, St. Paul didn’t see himself as an example of someone with a special vocation. Rather, he saw his life and work as an example for all believers to follow.[4]

So it seems to me that what it comes down to is how we will respond to the example St. Paul and many others like him have set for us. They faced dangers and criticism and opposition--and many still do today. I think we have to determine what we will do with the dangers and criticism and opposition we face as we seek to live out the Christian faith and share the gospel with those around us. Our natural inclination may be to withdraw into our protective shell and hide from what we fear in our world. But it seems to me that if we’re going to follow the example of St. Paul, in fact if we’re going to follow the example of Christ, we’re going to have to find a way to get past our fears and our tendency to want to protect ourselves. If we want to share the gospel with those around us in our community, if we really want to share the gospel with them, we are going to have to find a way to get past our protective walls. We are going to have to be willing to risk our safety and open our hearts to the people around us. We are going to have to make ourselves vulnerable and share not only our faith but our very hearts and lives with them. It’s a bit scary to do that in our day and time, but I think the only way we can genuinely share our faith is if we share ourselves.[5]

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[1] ©2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/26/2014 at Hickman Presbyterian Church in Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 24-25: “The outrage ... lay not so much in their being subjected, Roman citizens though they were, to treatment from which Roman citizens were legally exempt, as to their being publicly stripped and flogged without any inquiry into the charges brought against them.”

[3] Cf. L. Gregory Bloomquist, “Subverted by Joy: Suffering and Joy in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians,” Interpretation 61 (July 2007): 274-75. He says, “Prison in antiquity was not a ‘holding cell,’ but a place to impose greater suffering on the wrongdoer than the wrongdoing itself had caused. We would be shocked by the length of imprisonment for crimes that today would be considered matters either for fines or for a short jail sentence. And we would be shocked by the conditions of the prisons—overcrowding, hunger, chains, filth, inadequate clothing, illness and death.”

[4] Cf. 1 Cor. 4:16, 11:1; Eph. 5:1; 1 Thess. 1:6.  See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:576.

[5] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 127: “All human relationships, …, are meant to be signs of God’s love for humanity as a whole and each person in particular. … Jesus reveals that we are called by God to be living witnesses of God’s love.”