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Years ago, when I lived in West Virginia, I used to drive over to Virginia the Sunday before American Thanksgiving to meet my brother at my grandmother’s so that we could get up early the next morning and go hunting on opening day of Deer Season. We would get up 3:30AM-ish to drive to his piece of mountain property near Vesuvius, VA. Then, we would hike in and take our stands before sunrise to await any deer passing through. Now, I need to admit that I lost my nerve to pull the trigger on anything a long time ago. I went with him mostly just in case he shot something. I could help him drag it out. He was way overweight and not in the best of shape. There’s nothing worse than getting your deer then suffering its revenge of giving you a heart attack dragging it out.
I enjoyed those mornings standing under a tree in the crisp cool air as the sun came up, watching and waiting. The critters and birds all begin to wake up and rustle and wrestle about. The light in the woods goes through its shades of blues and greens and purples and pinks. Then, as the sun makes its way into the sky the darkness fades away to become only shadows of trees. It begins to warm and everything glistens with the dew – a new day. Once the sun was up we would hike out and cap the morning off by stopping at a little convenience store in Vesuvius, VA for a very salty country ham biscuit.
Please allow me to step back and be a bit theological and metaphorical about things and have a look at our reading from 1 Thessalonians. Paul says we belong to the day. A new day dawning, when you’re out in the woods like that a new day dawning can be an absolutely beautiful moment. Metaphorically, theologically, we, Jesus people, belong to that beauty. Day brings with it the hopes of a new day to live and enjoy and accomplish something. We belong to that hope. Day brings with it the end of the darkness of night and all the uncertainties, fears, and lack of safety. Thieves do their thieving more readily at night under the cover of darkness. People who wish to party and carry on tend do it at night. It’s less shameful that way and it doesn’t interfere with the day’s work. We belong to daylight’s security and sobriety. We, the Jesus people, we belong to the day.
Paul talks about the day in the sense of the Day of the Lord. The Day when God the Father will finally say, “Enough!” and send the Jesus the Son back from Heaven to Earth in the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit to put things to rights. That Day, like a thief in the night, will come with surprise; but not unexpectedly. Paul indicates that it will be like the labour pains pregnant women go through. Those pains are beyond description and every pregnant woman knows they’re coming. For those who live for the night, for the darkness, that Day will not be pleasant. They will know what it is to be put to rights. It’s like waking up the morning after a party and realizing the mess that needs to be cleaned up and remembering the ass you made of yourself or worse and realizing all you’re going to have to do to fix what you’ve done.
Paul uses the word Wrath. It’s an interesting word in Greek. It’s where we get our word orgy, but in Greek it isn’t a sex party. It is a very passionate anger. We have difficulty (or at least I think we should have difficulty) squaring up a loving God with a wrathful God. There are End Timer’s out there who paint the picture of a wrathful God coming in very impassioned anger like Godzilla to Tokyo and destroying everything and sending all the wicked people to a fiery Hell to suffer forever and ever.
Well, I’ve grown to have a lot of difficulty with that image of God’s wrath. I am under the impression that what God does when he comes and is passionately angry at these humans he has created is to hold us accountable, not to act vengefully to destroy us, but to heal us. The judgement of God will in the end be restorative, healing, rather than retributive (you get what you deserve). The Bible is clear that at the Resurrection everybody will be raised and everybody will face judgement. Everybody will stand in the presence of God fully able to feel the fullness of God’s love but along with feeling that love comes the piercing self-awareness of “Oh my God, look what I’ve done; look what I’ve been; look how I’ve wasted the life you’ve given me.” That’s feeling naked and ashamed; wanting to hide but there’s nowhere to hide from the love of God. To me, that’s how I make sense out of all the metaphorical language the Bible uses to talk about what we call Hell. I say “what we call Hell” because the word Hell and the ideas we associate with it do not appear in the Bible in its original languages. That’s a topic for another day.
In Christ, we who belong to him get a taste of judgement now, a taste of the love of God that exposes our brokenness and heals us. The result of this judgement isn’t condemnation, rather it leads to our salvation. The Greek word we translate as salvation can be translated interchangeably with healing. God’s judgement saves us by healing us of the disease we call sin. We can jokingly say “God’s going to get you for that” but what we are really saying is that when God “gets us”, God heals us. It doesn’t feel nice to go through it. God’s saving judgement digs up a lot of shame and emotional pain and we have to eat some crow, but the resultant healing is the beauty of a new day.
In the end, when the Day of the Lord comes and the night of the way things presently are comes to its expected and hoped for end, God will save and heal his whole creation from the effects of our disease we call sin. Until then, since we belong to the day, we have the responsibility to live now accordingly. Paul gives some guidance. He says, “Let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” Let’s look at these briefly.
By saying “Let us be sober” Paul isn’t necessarily referring to abstaining from alcohol and other substances; though avoiding substance abuse is always a good idea. He means it figuratively, meaning to keep watchful and aware of the coming of morning, watching for what God is up to. To be sensible and not fanatical. It’s remaining prayerful and studious of the Scriptures and doing that not only on our own but together, with one another.
Next Paul makes reference to putting on protective gear, a breastplate and a helmet. Some of the Thessalonian believers had probably faced death in the coliseum by battling wild animals and gladiators as punishment for appearing to be treasonous for claiming that Jesus is Lord rather than Caesar. They would have faced that battle without protective gear. So here Paul tells them that their breastplate is their faith and love and their helmet is the hope of salvation. In the Hebrew way of thinking, faith and/or rather faithfulness and love are matters of the heart, the part of us where the will and desire and drive are located. Faith/faithfulness and love are fitting to be our breastplate to protect our hearts as we stand defenceless in this life not seeking our own gain or power for ourselves but rather seeking Christ Jesus’s benefit and his kingdom reign for all.
As the hope of salvation is our helmet which sits on our heads, we can also say that hope is a matter of the mind or mindedness or our orientation in life. To put on the helmet of the hope of salvation is to wrap one’s mind around God’s ultimate acting in his creation to triumph over all that distorts and destroys it and how our lives now fit into God’s ultimate triumph. It is to be minded towards, oriented towards, pointed towards God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven. Instead of being minded on the things of the world, it is to be minded on the things of God in this world and how he is and will ultimately put it to right and strive to be a part of that.
That said, we as Christians step into this battle of life, God’s battle for the renewal of his creation, defenceless. Where the world fights with some pretty mean weapons, as we ourselves have done, we must now stand as Jesus did, in the power of the Holy Spirit in the apparent weakness of only faith and love with our minds set on being signposts in this world that point to the reality of the Day when God will triumph. As individuals we must prayerfully strive for justice, peace, fairness, and equality in our immediate lives – in our homes, in our work places, among our neighbours. As communities of faith we must do so at the larger scale of neighbourhoods, cities, and regions and so on. And let us not forget the Creation itself, the environment, this planet which groans in labour pains awaiting that Day. We, you and I, us together are signposts of the coming of God’s salvation in this world. Let’s wrap our minds around this and live our lives accordingly.
Paul ends with saying, “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, as indeed you are doing.” That’s how I will end this morning as well. All of you in all four of my churches do a beautiful job of encouraging and supporting one another. In my humble opinion, it is obvious that you belong to the day. Amen.
