{"id":9335,"date":"2023-10-17T05:09:19","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T12:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?page_id=9335"},"modified":"2023-10-17T05:09:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T12:09:19","slug":"he-who-calls-you-is-faithful-and-he-will-do-it","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?page_id=9335","title":{"rendered":"
\u201cHe who calls you is faithful and he will do it.\u201d<\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Click here for a pdf version.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; 5:24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 Thessalonians, the earliest of Paul\u2019s letters, has some significant things to say that are said with a certain drama, both in words and in thought. It seems that Paul just wrote it spontaneously. How did he do it? How could he have just written these kinds of things that we find in the letters of Paul?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a scholarly book on Paul which has printed out all of his letters in parallel to each other. It also takes each of the letters in order, that is, Romans, and then prints out all the parallels to that. And then 1 Corinthians and so forth. As a consequence, one comes to see that Paul follows the pattern of the letter of the day. We have thousands of papyri that are letters of the day. Paul also follows a certain pattern that he uses for himself, either in exact formulas or a paraphrase of what he has written elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises the question: How is Paul working? It shouldn\u2019t surprise us that Paul follows a standard form for letters. It surprises us because today people don\u2019t write letters as much as they used to. Now it\u2019s emails and texting. But it used to be that people wrote letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were writing a business letter, you followed the business letter form: \u201cDear Sir\/Madam. . . . \u201d It doesn\u2019t mean that there was anything \u201cdear\u201d about that company and whoever those anonymous people were. And the letter ended \u201cSincerely,\u201d but it had nothing to do with \u201csincerity.\u201d It is simply a way of using the pattern of a business letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the friendly letter, which had its own pattern. A sister writes to her older sister: \u201cDear Mary: I\u2019m sorry I haven\u2019t written to you in a while. Things here are about the same. The weather is a little colder. Jonny had a cold and stayed home from school for two days. We\u2019re going to go to Bob\u2019s for Thanksgiving. Look forward to seeing you at Christmas. Hope all is well. I\u2019ll be better about writing in the future. Love, Jane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you took twenty or thirty such letters and line them up in parallel, you would find an astonishing sameness. The details would be different, but actually it\u2019s kind of fun. People have certain patterns and they repeat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul is falling into the patterns of his day. His letters start out: \u201cI, Paul, and \u2026 so-and-so to so-and-so, Grace and peace.\u201d \u201cGrace\u201d is the way a Greek letter would begin, and \u201cPeace\u201d (Shalom) is the way a Hebrew letter would begin. Paul puts them together and it keeps repeating. There is nothing particularly significant about the greeting. It is like saying: \u201cDear So-and-so.\u201d He might say a little bit more and then there would be the thanksgiving: \u201cI thank God for you.\u201d And then something about his travel, and then the main body of the letter, then his greetings to other people, a doxology, and Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we look at all of Paul\u2019s letters in parallel, we see how he repeats himself directly or paraphrases himself. The big exception to this is in Galatians, where he leaves out the thanksgiving.  We know he\u2019s saying to the Galatians: \u201cYou have left the truth of the Gospel.\u201d He\u2019s saying: \u201cWe can\u2019t be thankful.\u201d It\u2019s significant that the thanksgiving is left out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1 Thessalonians there are five chapters. The first chapter, after the introduction in verses 1-2, is totally a thanksgiving: Thanks be to God. Thank you. Thanks, thanks, thanks. (In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 the note of thanksgiving echoes again.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s going on here?  In the comic opera, The Barber of Seville<\/em> (1816), there is a closing between two fellows, a bass and a baritone, singing: \u201cGood night.\u201d It\u2019s very musical. One sings \u201cGood night,\u201d and the other one sings \u201cGood night.\u201d It goes on for more than five minutes. Finally one of them stamps his foot and says: \u201cGood night\u201d and leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the \u201cThank you\u201d for in this extraordinarily different way of writing in Paul and in the letter as it is known from the time? We don\u2019t know for sure. He talks about how they have become Christians, and how they are examples, and how they look for the coming of the Lord. They are from Thessalonica, which in that day was in a province called Macedonia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other letters of Paul\u2019s, such as 2 Corinthians 8:1, he thanks the people who gave a collection for the poor. We know from Josephus and other sources that there was a famine in Jerusalem in 48 A.D. The poor, and most of the Christians were of the lower class, were suffering, though there were those from elsewhere who gave a collection. He mentions this several places, not here in 1 Thessalonians, but it can be that he is inferring it, not saying it directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is significant when we look at the parallels, we see that one of the almost direct parallels is in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9. It\u2019s odd because Corinth was the most crime-ridden and corrupt seaports of the ancient world. It was known as the worst. If you think of that letter that we call 1 Corinthians, that congregation was a mess. In chapter 5 he talks against incest; chapter 6 is against prostitution and homosexuality; chapter 7 against marrying outside the faith and slavery; chapters 8-10 eating food offered to idols; chapter 11 women having their heads covered and those who abuse the Lord\u2019s Supper; chapters 12-14 about the gifts of the Spirit; and chapter 15 about those who deny the resurrection. The congregation is a mess. To be sure, there were even more problems, but that\u2019s what he was asked directly about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, in Thessalonica there doesn\u2019t seem to be any problem. What is significant is the parallel what he says in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 and what he says in these three chapters plus at the end of the first letter to the Thessalonians because he basically says the same thing. It\u2019s not \u201cthese (Thessalonians) are spectacular Christians,\u201d and \u201cyou (Corinthians) don\u2019t have it together.\u201d In both cases he says the same thing. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 he writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMay the God of peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful and he will do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says the same thing to the mixed-up and problematic people in Corinth, as we read in 1 Corinthians 1:7-9:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Paul writes to the troublesome Corinthians is the same as what he writes to the Thessalonians. What we see here in terms of all the troubles is: Yes, there are troubles, but the Lord is taking care of them, just as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:24: \u201cHe who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very much the same as he writes in Romans 8:30: \u201cAnd those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.\u201d Notice that it is all in the past tense and there is a peculiar Greek tense here that is not past continuous but a state of being. It is done (aorist).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here for a pdf version. A Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; 5:24 1 Thessalonians, the earliest of Paul\u2019s letters, has some significant things to say that are said with a certain drama, both in words and in thought. It seems that Paul just wrote it spontaneously. How did he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9335","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9335"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9338,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9335\/revisions\/9338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}