Love, In The Mean-Time--December 6, 2024

Love, In The Mean-Time--December 6, 2024   

"And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints." (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)

It's not about building a bomb shelter or hoarding emergency food rations inside your bunker.  

It's not about stockpiling ammo to fight off some ominous enemy like on a zombie-apocalypse TV show, either. 

Nobody in the Bible is what you might call today a "doomsday prepper." No, if you ask the leaders of the early church how to be ready for the coming of Jesus, they will tell you to grow in love and to let your life stand out with the kind of countercultural goodness we call being "holy."

And mind you, it's not that the apostle Paul or the church to whom he was writing in Thessalonica didn't think Jesus was coming back.  They fervently believed and deeply hoped that they would live to see "the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" within their lifetime!  In fact, long before we had hymnals, creeds, or catechisms, one of the earliest common expressions of the first-generation church was the single-sentence Aramaic acclamation, "Maranatha!" which meant, "Our Lord, come!" (See 1 Corinthians 16:22.)  From our earliest existence, Christians have centered their faith on the assertion that Jesus is coming in glory--and yet, just as surely, those first Christians understood that love was the way to best prepare for his coming. 

Nobody was training in a militia to fight off invading evil enemies in the name of Jesus. Nobody was stockpiling resources for a life underground behind a vault door inscribed with a cross like a talisman.  Nobody was urging the Christian congregations to withdraw from the world or to show open hostility to outsiders who did not share their faith in Jesus.  In fact, just the opposite--Paul prays for the Thessalonian church to "abound in love," not just for their own in-group members, but "for one another and for all."  And whatever Paul had in mind when he prayed for their hearts to be "strengthened in holiness," it didn't look like animosity or fear toward the world around them.  It looked like decency in times that were awfully indecent.  It looked like a willingness to stand out by practicing integrity and honesty even when others only seemed to care about making a buck.  It looked like the commitment to share good things with neighbors in need around them, even when the surrounding culture thought it looked foolish. In other words, the early church certainly expected Jesus' coming to happen soon, but they knew they were called to spend their time on holy love in the mean-time. 

Today, while there is a lot beyond our power to change or fix in the world, you and I do have the ability to choose what we are going to do with the day in front of us. (It's rather like the well-known exchange from The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo tells Gandalf he wishes he didn't have to face the dark times they were living through, and Gandalf replies, "So do I... and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”) That's very much how the early church held their hope for Jesus' coming together alongside the hostility and rottenness of the wider world in which they lived.  They didn't live in fear or anger toward the rest of the world, nor did they conclude that their actions toward others didn't matter because Jesus was coming soon.  They were willing to stand out (which is what holiness does to you) in the ways that they loved. And as a result they knew what to do with the time that had been given to them, whether Jesus came back the very next day or they lived their whole lives out before his coming in glory. The same choice is put to us on this day: with whatever time we are given, will we dare to point to Jesus in the ways we love... in the mean-time?

Lord Jesus, grow love in us as we look toward the day of your coming in glory.