Keeping Christ in...Christians--December 20, 2023
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." [1 Thessalonians 5:16-24]
Maybe you've seen it before. You know, the internet memes and signs that say, "Before you worry about keeping Christ in Christmas, how about we first keep Christ in Christians?" There's a good deal of truth in a sentiment like that... maybe more than we would like to admit at first.
We live in a time when church folk easily get baited into somebody's culture war nonsense at this time of year, letting ourselves get prodded into manufactured outrage about where you "can" or "can't" say "Merry Christmas," or what kinds of public displays we can have, or whether or not to feel offended by someone saying "Happy holidays" or "Seasons greetings." And what ends up happening is an awful lot of church-going folks end up acting petty, spiteful, and angry, all while thinking they are doing it to come to the defense of poor baby Jesus, but ending up doing the opposite. We end up looking like the opposite of Jesus (anti-Christ), all because we've let somebody rile us up into thinking we are being persecuted or our faith is being silenced... and instead we end up missing an opportunity to actually respond like Christ to the situation at hand.
What I love (but also find myself perpetually challenged by) about the New Testament, especially these early letters like what we call First Thessalonians, is that the focus is where it should be--on keeping Christ in Christians first, and not letting the early church get steered off course into picking a nonsense fight with an ambivalent culture. Paul absolutely wants his readers to take the coming of Christ seriously, and he believes with equal conviction that the community of Jesus' followers has a calling to live, speak, act, and love in Christ-like ways. He just doesn't expect that the rest of Greco-Roman society is going to cater to their preferences or celebrate their Lord's birth (or anything else about Jesus--the rest of the empire just sort of looked cockeyed at Christians for being so weirdly devoted to a crucified homeless rabbi). Instead, Paul points his congregations to the kind of thing that really matters: how we wait, watch, and witness for Christ with the days we are given.
And what's additionally fascinating (and a little mind-boggling, honestly) to me is how much here Paul describes a way of life. Paul has almost nothing to say about what modern-day church experts call "evangelism strategies." There's nothing about how to get some stranger on the street to "accept Jesus as their personal savior" (largely because that's not at all how the New Testament-era church thought about such things). And there's not even a pitch for inviting pagan friends to church (even if we have reason today to invite friends, neighbors, and strangers to worship with us, in our day).
Instead, what Paul offers is a way of life aimed at two things: how to live in the waiting for Christ's coming, and how to embody the character of Christ in the mean-time, regardless of how many or few people join the church as a result of seeing it. Both of those go together, by the way; in fact, each only makes sense in light of the other, in Paul's mind. We live differently right now because we are waiting for Christ's coming, and Christ's coming is the grounds for our commitment to the strange sort of life we are called into. One only makes sense in light of the other.
The Christ-shaped way of life that Paul has in mind here is fed by joy and gratitude in relationship to God, an openness to whatever God might speak through prophets old or new, the practice of peace, and a refusal to answer evil in the world with more evil. And we live in this way, prayerfully and peaceably, both because it is consistent with the character of Jesus and because we are assured of his coming again. In other words, the same Jesus we are expecting to come in glory is the same Jesus whose way of life shapes our own. The Christ for whom we wait is also the Christ on whom we pattern our actions, words, and love now.
See, for Paul, the way to show the world we are Christians who expect Christ's coming again is simply to reflect the character of Jesus in the mean-time. Paul has no use or interest in making a fuss about whether the rest of society looks Christ-like enough or participates in our particularly Christian celebrations or festivals. He is just interested in seeing us share Jesus' joyful and peaceable way of life; that is our best evidence that Jesus is alive and moving in the world. While other folks might be fussy about wanting the wider culture to acknowledge Jesus or might insist that all of society pay some lip service to Christian lingo, Paul is just interested in getting disciples of Jesus to act in ways that point to Jesus. He's trying to keep Christ in Christians themselves, rather than spending his energy on coercing the empire to go along with it all.
I'll bet that's our goal as well, for the same reason. The question to ask on this day is simply, " How will we show forth the way of Jesus in our lives right now?" Now, it may be that Jesus will come and make all things new between the time I write these words and when you read them... or it may be that I grow old and go to my rest for many many years before Jesus comes again. Either way, the best way, according to Paul, to spend my day and my energy is to keep my eyes on Jesus and live in the ways that reflect his love in the world.
That seems like the beginning of an adventure that will take us the rest of our lives...
Lord Jesus, keep your presence knowable in us, for our own sake as well as for the world's.
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