Twenty-third Sunday After Pentecost Year A

23 Pentecost A 08
October 19, 2008

1 Thess 1:1-10 (NRSV)
1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.
2 We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. 9 For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

Turning the World Upside Down

The Book of Acts tells us that Paul spent very little time in Thessalonica. He was on the run and could only preach three sermons there. He went to the synagogue, as was his custom, to try to convince the Jews there that Jesus was the Messiah. Of course, some people believed, among them a certain Jason, and the local Jewish leaders went to the authorities and said, "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also." You can find the story in Acts 16.

This first letter of Paul to the church in Thessalonica is thought to be the oldest document in the New Testament, the earliest letter of Paul that we have. It tells us a lot about that first flush of missionary work, probably within a few years of Jesus’ resurrection.

Even after Paul left, it seems local authorities continued to harass the new congregation. It’s difficult to understand today what exactly the offense was. But despite the controversy the Thessalonicans kept the faith and even became stronger, so that Paul was able to write to them giving thanks for their impressive work, work that was so remarkable that news had travelled all over Macedonia and Achaia about the faith of this little congregation.

They were turning the world upside down. What does that mean?

Today, the news is full of conflict. The political race right now is full of accusations being flung back and forth across party lines, effigies are being burned, insults are being hurled, threats are being made. A war is raging halfway around the world. This sect and that sect vowing unending hatred and opposition. The global economy is in a tailspin and people are pointing fingers right and left, blaming this one, blaming that one.

And even in the lives of families in our own community, there are stresses and strains being felt. It seems to me that almost every family with an elderly or ailing older member finds itself torn by conflict, people blaming each other, defending themselves, going out of their way to hurt each other. Families stricken with alcoholism or drug addiction struggle with each other and with themselves; who is to blame, who is responsible, who’s supposed to fix the problem?

Some of us gathered to watch a movie last night called Crash. Some others of you may have seen it. It had to do with how racial and ethnic stereotypes are deeply ingrained in people and cause them to completely misunderstand each other. To me the film is really about people denying other people’s humanity, and in so doing, denying their own.

The world of Thessalonica in the ancient Roman Empire was no different. We are accustomed to thinking of the world’s religions as some kind of pleasant diversity, but in fact they are lines of separation, ways of elevating one group over another, one type of person over another. In the same way, ethnic culture, while sometimes rich and wonderful, is often simply a way of defining us over against them.

What turns the world upside down is a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Roman oppressor and the poorest of the poor under his feet, a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Pharisee and the sinner, the traitorous collaborator and the rebellious zealot, the slave and the slave-owner, the male and the female, the adult and the child, the rich and the poor, the Jew, the Greek, the Parthian, the Ethiopian and the Arab.

What turns the world upside down is the proclamation that all of us, every one, belong to God and to no one else.

And this is what turned the Thessalonican’s world upside down. When people turned away from the idols, they were turning away from every human excuse for denying some other human being’s humanity.

Philippi became an example and a beacon to the whole of District IX in their passionate commitment to helping a family fleeing the war in Iraq. This is turning the world upside down.

This week, we heard a wonderful story from Lyle Predmore about the mission in Bali and on the tiny island of Timor, about how the faith of one tiny person, one even shorter than Hiroko, became a fountain of life for a whole community. He was a man who had escaped from a desperately poor community and had made a life for himself in a better place, but whose deep passion for God’s kingdom led him to become a conduit of grace for people the world has forgotten. This is turning the world upside down.

Today Habitat for Humanity will be dedicating a house for a poor African American family. That alone I know from personal experience enrages racists in our community. I don’t know the family, but I would bet that if one examined them closely, one might find many reasons to deny them such a wonderful thing as an affordable new home. But Becky and Page and Lyle and a number of other people in our churches and our community have labored long and hard and have donated money and materials to make it possible. That is turning the world upside down.

In the coming week, Global Ministries, our joint effort with the United Church of Christ, is asking us to give consideration and attention to the plight of the Republic of the Congo, where an unjust regime is raping the land and its people, so that the poor are literally starving in a land of plenty. To pray for them, to urge our government and the United Nations to intervene, this is what it means to turn the world upside down.

In the gospel of Matthew, the Jewish leaders tried to trick Jesus into trapping himself when they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus answered by asking them to produce a coin. Of course, it had Caesar’s image on it. Jesus said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and render unto God what is God’s.” In other words, if the coin belongs to God because it bears Caesar’s image, we belong to God because we bear God’s.

This is a radical and offensive and world-shaking truth: everyone belongs to God. Because everyone belongs to God, whatever evil there is anywhere is everywhere. Whenever one practices evil, everyone becomes a part of it. And likewise whenever one practices goodness, everyone is a part of that too.

Beloved, and you are my beloved, when we give our lives, we are given our lives.

The idols of the world are all the things that make one person or group of people more important or more valuable some other person or group. When the Thessalonicans turned away from them, they turned the world upside down.

And so are we.

Amen.