A Holy Charge in Thessalonia (1)

 

1 Thessalonians 5:12 – 28

 

I’ve been pondering the conclusion of 1 Thessalonians, in which Paul gives 16 admonitions (depending on how you count them) to his readers. As with the conclusions of many NT letters, our tendency can be to mentally skip over them; we see the finish line and we want to cross it. If we do this with the Gospels we miss the Cross and Resurrection. If we do this with the epistles…well, who knows what we miss?

 

This passage is not a checklist on how to live, it outlines a way we should live, an outline that is based on what precedes it (1:1 – 5:11).  Perhaps we could call the passage an image of what we ought to look like in Christ. Perhaps we could call the passage a Holy Charge from Paul to the disciples in Thessalonica.

 

If this passage were a tree, how would you describe the tree? What does it look like? What is its form? I’m not asking you to focus on the individual branches right now, just the form of the tree. What do you see? Most of us need time to see the tree, to allow it to come to us, to form in our hearts and minds, for our souls to take it in and connect with it. It is a form which is always developing, clarifying itself, drawing us.

 

Our tendency is to look at individual verses, but if we don’t see the passage as a whole we will usually not see and live in the individual verses. Let’s remember that chapter and verse numbers were not in the Bible as it was written, Paul didn’t put verse numbers in his letters anymore than we put verse numbers in our letters or emails or blog posts. Chapter numbers, chapter headings (put there by Bible publishers and some translators), and verse numbers can impair our seeing Christ in the Bible and seeing the Message of the Bible.

 

Beyond that, seeing the Bible as a whole will result in a lifelong unfolding of its individual parts and sections – from verses to paragraphs to sections of books to entire books of the Bible to patterns and themes – all of them revealing Jesus Christ. We can share our experience with the Living Word with others, and we can receive what others share with us out of their experience in the Living Word.

 

But, of course, we can only experience the Bible as we read the Bible and seek and receive Jesus Christ in the Bible.

 

As we read and reread 1 Thessalonians 5:12 – 28, what do we see? What is the main image? What does the tree look like?

 

Paul begins our passage, “We request of you, brethren, that you respect those who labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work.”

 

In light of what follows, why might Paul’s request be important?

 

We’ll come back to this question in our next reflection on the passage, the Lord willing.