Our End Is Our Beginning: Reflections on 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11 & Matthew 25.14-30

Our End Is Our Beginning

Reflections on 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11 & Matthew 25.14-30

 

RCL Proper 33A

19 November 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            Two of the more important women in my life are my maternal grandmother and my maternal great-grandmother.  I had the joy to know my grandmother face to face as a boy growing up, but of my great-grandmother, present for my birth, I have no conscious memory.  Both lived through the upheavals and conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century, events that certainly marked the ‘end of the world’ as they knew it as girls and young women.  It’s their attitudes to these earth-shaking events.

            For example, during the Blitz when bombs where falling on them all about, my great-grandmother refused to run to a bomb shelter and walked with dignity despite the explosions.  When asked why she did not run, she is supposed to have said, ‘No German shall ever see me run.’  Of my grandmother it must said that, if she had been told that the world would end in an hour, she would likely have responded, ‘Oh good, there’s time for a cup of tea.’  I hope that I’ve inherited a portion of their sangfroid, their calm and steady attitude during crises.

            We sometimes forget that the first and second generations of Christian disciples, living in the years before and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 bce, faced their own challenges.  Two of these challenges were directly related.  Because the early Christian disciples expected Jesus to return during the lifetimes of the apostolic generation, the fact that this generation was dying posed a source of anxiety.  We hear Paul addressing this a few verses before today’s reading from his 1^st Letter to the Thessalonians:  “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” (1 Thessalonians 4.13-14 NRSVue)

            Their second challenge was the fear that Jesus had not yet returned.  Some Christians might have worried that they had missed the signs and become anxious about how best to prepare for an event that would bring the current world to an end.  To them Paul also writes words of reassurance:  “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. . . .  So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober . . . .  For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.  Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5.1-2, 6, 9-11 NRSVue)

            So how do we wait for the coming day of the Lord?  Well, first of all, we acknowledge that we are, as Paul might say, people who have been woken up, who have been converted to looking at the world as God looks at it.  Ours is a world filled with beauty and, as we all know too well, ugliness.  Ours is a world filled with promise and with maddening obstacle to the fulfillment of that promise.  Ours is a world filled with diversity and with forces that work night and day to create divisions by claiming that our diversity is a curse not a blessing.

            Claiming to be ‘woke’ these days is fraught with political baggage.  It’s a word that came into use among North Americans of African heritage to describe becoming aware that, despite all the rhetoric of equal opportunity and upward mobility, being of African heritage was rarely an advantage.  It meant and still means becoming aware of the real and persistent obstacles faced by people of colour to full and equal participation in the benefits and privileges of living in North America.  It’s a word that describes the pain and sometimes shame that the descendants of European settlers and immigrants experience when they wake up to these inequalities.  It’s no wonder that some of our neighbours and friends use ‘wokeness’ as a criticism, as an undesirable attitude to adopt.  It’s not a very happy experience to learn, as my family learned, that we enslaved other people despite the family myth of being enlightened New Yorkers.

            So how do we wait for the coming of the Lord?  Well, let me say that I am not suggesting any form of biblical star-gazing that seeks to identify the day, the time, the moment when the day of the Lord shall come.  Even Jesus says in the Gospel according to Matthew, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father . . . . Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming . . . .  Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24.36, 42, 44 NRSVue).   In other words, Jesus tells us that we need to be re-awakened to the presence and work of the Kingdom continually (Feasting on the Word, 735).  We need continuous conversion – continuous repentance, transformation and renewal (Feasting on the Word, 735).  Only such continuous wakefulness will allow us to “ . . . expose the powers and principalities of night and darkness and unmask the lie that all is peaceful and secure” (Feasting on the Word, 736).  One of the ‘Five Marks of Mission’ of the Anglican Communion commits all of us ‘(to) seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.”

            So how do we wait for the coming of the day of the Lord?  Well, in the spirit of my grandmother and my great-grandmother, let’s put the kettle on, make a good cup of tea and then walk calmly, steadily and with dignity into the ministries God has entrusted us to do.  

 

·      We have a ministry of care for the hungry, so we continue to provide meals and to identify how we’re going to continue these thirty years of ministry into the future.  

·      We are called to worship in Word, sacrament and prayer the joy and mystery of God’s love made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

·      We continue to proclaim the good news that every man, woman and child is made in the image of God, has been given gifts that help enrich and nurture the diversity of human communities.

·      We commit ourselves to learning those things that make us more able ministers of Christ – the Scriptures, Christian faith and practice, the insights of other religious traditions.

·      We care for one another and for those who are in any need or trouble.

 

We do this every day, as best as we can, walking on the path the Spirit leads us to follow.  Even as we wait for a new priest to join us, there is work to be done.  Even as we wait for years of work on property development to bear fruit, there is work to be done.  God’s promise of Christ’s return helps us to maintain our faith in the midst of hardship and uncertainty, but an even greater gift is the mutual encouragement of the community of faith as we walk the path we are called to walk (Feasting on the Word, 739).

            Friends, in the coming day of the Lord is our beginning, a beginning to be hoped for and a beginning to wish to come soon.  But, in the meantime, in the mean times, we go about the work we’ve been given to do, because with steady and faithful work five becomes ten and two becomes four.  Not a bad result.