What should you hope for in a church? – 1 Thessalonians 2:13–3:13, Part 5

This week I once again welcome guest blogger, Kirk Marks. Kirk is a retired pastor of 35 years who now works in international fair trade.

I was a denominational administrator for for 20 years. In that time, I sent a lot of letters to churches on behalf of the denomination. Those letters were communicating hopes that the denomination had for our local churches.

What hopes do you have for your church? Think about that for a minute before reading the rest of this post. Write down those hopes. Then come back to the post.

Here are the hopes we so often communicated in those denominational letters to our local churches: “You haven’t paid your denominational ministry funds. You owe us. You better get to work on growing that church because you’re shrinking and it’s not good. We want to see more people coming to your church. We really want to see you do something about your building. It’s falling apart. You’ve got to do a better job of taking care of it.”

I look back on those letters with embarrassment. Do you think Paul would write those kinds of hopes to the churches he started? In 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica, “I have heard news about you, and I some hopes for you as a church.”

Before we read what Paul hopes for the church, think with me for a minute about all the hopes Paul could have.

He could have said, “When I think about the future, I really hope for you that this persecution eases up. I hope that it gets easier for you, that people aren’t out there trying to kill you anymore.” He doesn’t say that though.

He could have said, “I really hope for the future that more people join the Christian movement there at Thessalonica. I hope you get more people to come to your church.” But he doesn’t say that.

He could have said, “I hope that you have the resources to do programs and events for the kingdom of God that we want to see happen in your city,” but he doesn’t say that.

He could have said, “I hope that you spread the good news of Jesus and get more converts into the church,” but he doesn’t even say that.

Now, I’m sure all of those tasks were part of Paul’s mission, but obviously they’re less important than what Paul says. What does he hope for the church in Thessalonica?

First, Paul writes “I hope that God opens the doors, that I can come to you and be with you again, share some more with you. It can’t happen now because of this persecution that’s taking place, but I hope that that happens.”

Second, he says, “I also hope that may you persist in faith till the judgment day, till the last day, till Jesus returns.”

Third, “May you continue to show love to one another and to everyone around you.”

What Paul writes fits perfectly with what Jesus taught us, doesn’t it? “This is my commandment,” Jesus said, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34–35)

Jesus said, “Make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey the things I’ve commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18–20) What has he commanded? That we love one another. So, Paul’s priority of love, saying to the Thessalonian church, “what I want most of all is to see you still loving one another and showing that love to everyone” fits perfectly with Jesus’ teaching.

That teaching about love is another way we need some unlearning (see previous unlearning examples here, here, and here) in the church of Jesus Christ in America today. Does that priority of love surprise you? If so, perhaps it is because we have had misplaced hopes for our churches.

Remember how I started this post? I talked about when I was an administrator for my denomination, and I sent letters to churches asking them to pay their bills or fix their buildings. I don’t know that I ever, in any of those letters said that what we as a denomination really hope for churches is to show love to one another and make sure you’re showing love to the people around you.

It seems to me that we’ve got the priorities wrong in some places: how many people we have coming, how much money we’re raising, what kind of buildings we have. Those metrics can become more of a priority than showing love to one another and to the communities around us.

Paul, therefore, reminds us to think about how our relationship with each other, our relationship of love and our showing love to the people around us, needs to be the most important thing. Jesus certainly said we should work hard at loving one another as he loved us.

I’m going to take this a step further. Imagine we were to ask the people at the church at Thessalonica, “So Paul says to you that he hopes you’ll continue to show love to one another and to everyone else. What’s making that hard for you? What’s the presenting issue that makes that difficult?”

They’re being persecuted. People are trying to drag them off and throw them in jail and even kill them. And they would say, “It’s hard to love people who are attacking us, people who are opposing us, people who are threatening our lives.” It would not surprise me if that’s what they said.

Jesus gave us some teaching about that too, didn’t he? Jesus said, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, falsely say evil against you because of me.” (Matthew 5:10–11, 43–48)

Jesus prepared people to love even those people who are trying to attack you, those people who are against you. He even loved them. The kind of sacrificial love for one another, for our communities, and even for our enemies is what we should hope for our churches.

In the next post, we’re going to bring this into the 21st century to look at how we Christians in American can do a better job of loving one another.

Photo by Daniel Tseng on Unsplash