The Anchor of Christian Community

Homily for Sunday, December 1, 2024
Advent 1
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

It was ten years ago this past Friday that I received a phone call from my mother telling me that she had just been diagnosed with cancer – stage four, and a particularly aggressive cancer – and that she would likely not live more than a few months, perhaps only a few weeks.  As you can imagine, the phone call was extremely difficult, both for her and for me.

And then that Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, in their small Episcopal Church in the small town in which they lived, the congregation sang the hymn we just sang:  

Signs of endings all around us –

darkness, death, and winter days –

shroud our lives in fear and sadness,

numbing mouths that long to praise.

Which in their case turned out to be true – hearing these words, my Mom and Dad couldn’t make it through the hymn.  Rather, they let those around them carry them:  “Give us hope, and faith, and gladness,” those around them sang…

Show us what there yet can be.

Can it be that from our endings,

new beginnings you create?

Life from death, and from our rendings,

realms of wholeness generate?

My parents’ church, in those few weeks before my mother died, rose to the occasion:  they visited, they prayed, they ran errands, they brought meals...  And when my mother died, the parish gave a beautiful service and reception.  In the months following her death, the congregation was an anchor and source of support for my Dad.  As the congregation carried my parents through the hymn that morning, so they carried my mother through to her death, and my dad through his grief.

In this morning’s lesson from the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes to the Thessalonians:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?

Paul loved the Thessalonians. Elsewhere in his letter he speaks of caring for them “tenderly,” “like a nurse… caring for her own children” (2:7); he tells of dealing with them “like a father with his children” (2:11).  He writes also, “You have become very dear to us,” (2:8), and “we long to see you”(3:6).  Paul loved the Thessalonians.

Part of the reason Paul loved the Thessalonians is because of how they cared both for him and for one another. In every place, Paul writes, “they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you” (1:9).  Paul and his companions were warmly received by the Thessalonians.  And when Paul sent Timothy back to visit them, Timothy brought back “the good news of [the Thessalonians’] faith and love” (3:6), even in the face of persecution.  And in today’s passage, Paul prays that “the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all” (3:12).  Because they had cared for Paul, and because they showed love and care for one another even in a time of persecution, the Thessalonians were, Paul writes, his “joy” and his “crown” (2:19).  

The Thessalonians’ love and care for Paul and for each other goes beyond a mere secular love, which – as Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:46-47) – even the Gentiles can love those who love them.  The Thessalonians’ love and care is deeper because it is rooted in their reception of God’s word.  Earlier in his letter to them, Paul writes:

We also constantly give thanks to God for this,that… you received the word of God that you heard from us [and] accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word (2:13).  

The Thessalonians had received God’s word not merely as a human word, but as what it really is, God’s word. And God’s word took root and grew and manifested itself among the Thessalonians, Paul writes, “in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1:5) so much so that the Thessalonians became “an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” (1:7), and “in every place [their] faith in God has become known,” says Paul (1:8).  

If my parents were facing my mother’s death, and if the Thessalonians were facing persecution, we, too, live in uncertain times.  We live with increasingly common and intensifying climate disasters.  We might live with fears of what will be for our nation and for the economy.  We might have fears for what and when the next pandemic will be.  But we Christians have an anchor and source of support. Yes, on one level that anchor and support might be our parish community, as my parents found support in their parish community.  Yes, that anchor and support might be the love that we find in that community, as Paul found love in the community of the Thessalonians.  But the source of this support and the source of this love in Christian community is receiving God’s word as what it really is.  To receive God’s word “in word only,” as Paul put it in chapter 1 (1:5), would be to experience one kind of love and one kind of community. But to receive God’s word “with joy from the Holy Spirit” (1:6), as Paul wrote, “in power… and with full conviction” (1:5) is to receive another, deeper kind of love and community, a love and community that is anchored in the persons of the Trinity, and that – more than any secular kind of love or secular kind of community – can truly open us to the “life abundant” that Jesus and the Trinity wish for us to have.  

To receive God’s word “in power and in the Holy Spirit and in full conviction” it helps to take time regularly with God’s word, not only here on Sunday mornings, but also at home during the week.  Maybe take some time during the week to pray with the scriptures for next Sunday, which are always listed in the back of the order of service.  Maybe take some time regularly during the week to pray with the scripture passages from the Daily Office (Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer), whose readings are in the back of the Prayer Book or easily found online. Set aside some time (maybe even putting it in your calendar), find a quiet place, turn off your phone, and ask Jesus to be present with you as you read.  It could be that sometimes you sense nothing – we cannot will God’s grace to be felt.  But as we attend to the scriptures regularly,as praying with them becomes a practice for us, our relationship with God will deepen, and we might come to see God’s grace more readily.  

And a “grace” need not be momentous.  A “grace” could be, even in the face of uncertainty, of anxiety, or even of death, that we are able to pray (as with the hymn writer):

Come, O Christ, and dwell among us!

Hear our cries, come set us free.

A “grace” could be that we, like the hymn writer, are able to ask:

Can it be that from our endings,

new beginnings you create. 

Which would be amazing graces! May we, as we are in a time of uncertainty, allow ourselves to receive the word of God “with power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, ”so that God’s love – not just any love but God’s love – might take root and grow in us, and that we might find it to be an anchor and source of support in time of need.

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