II Thessalonians 1:1-2:2; Biblical Eschatology and Humor I

"Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. 4 Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring. 5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, and is intended to make you worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. 6 For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at on that day among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. 11 To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

2:1 As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, 2not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here."

Introduction

II Thess. is one of the most curious epistles in the NT. It only deals with one subject, and that subject has already seemingly been dealt with so clearly in I Thess that you wonder how misunderstanding could have arisen between the two letters. But not only has misunderstanding arisen, but the solution given to the problem created in II Thess is so far different from the solution offered in I Thess that you wonder if you are in the same mental universe assumed by I Thess. Added to this problem is the way the passage we are examining this morning shows how the author (whether or not the Apostle Paul) tends to get "off track" in the greeting, landing us in the depths of tribulation and punishment and exclusion from God when we started with gratitude. The fact that the greeting ends up in such a place is probably the reason why the Lectionary Makers decided to cut out the "middle verses" (1:6-10) from the reading for the morning. But by keeping the passage "intact" above we recognize some of the unintended humor of the passage--as well as the serious problem the author intended to address.

Pastors and teachers responsible for bringing the "Word of God" to a congregation may tend to want to get to the "three points" that give a "contemporary" (i.e., 2007) reading of this letter, but in order for us truly to understand its meaning, we need to uncover the first century context. That is the purpose of these two essays.

The "Problem" of II Thessalonians

We know that we have a problem when we read II Th. 2:1-2. The issue is that a rumor has been circulating among the congregation that the Day of the Lord has already occurred. This would cause confusion because they thought that when the Day of the Lord came that they wouldn't be there anymore. Since they were, indubitably, there, something was amiss. Part of the problem may have been terminological--Paul doesn't often use the phrase "Day of the Lord" in his Epistles, even though it has a long theological pedigree going back to Amos 5 and, before that, to the "Day of Yahweh," when Yahweh would exercise judgment on the enemies of Israel. So, someone may have come into Thessalonica using terminology not familiar to the congregants, leading them to wonder what was true about the "end times," what was going on now and how the concept of "Day of the Lord" might be related to Pauline concepts of the end times.

Paul, in visiting the Thessalonians a few years earlier, had already encountered their interest in eschatological things. Whereas the Corinthians were hung up on issues relating to worship--the role of men and women/the function of spiritual gifts, and the Galatians were bothered by the question of whether you had to become a Jew first before becoming a Christian (i.e., whether circumcision as a covenantal sign was necessary for all Christians), the Thessalonians seemed to have caught the eschatological fervor which burns brightly not only in Paul but also in Jesus. But they weren't interested in eschatology for what we call "academic" reasons. They had people die in their midst, and they wanted to know what happened to those who died between time of acceptance of Christian faith and the "End" of it all.

Thus, when Paul penned I Thess, which all scholars accept as a "genuine Pauline epsitle," he had to spend inordinate attention on what one might call the "chronology of the last days." Here, in a nutshell, is Paul's solution to the problem of how things are going to "work out" in the future.

Paul's "Solution" in I Thessalonians

What will be the end-time chronology? Well, it consists of a story that looks pretty simple--in I Thessalonians 4.

1. Jesus, who died and rose again, will return. There will be a "cry of command," along with the "archangel's call" and the sound of "God's trumpet" and then the dead in Christ will rise.

2. We who are alive at the time of Jesus' coming will be caught up in the clouds and meet the dead who are rising at this time.

3. We will all "meet the Lord in the air."

This chronology actually raises a lot of questions, but they aren't really relevant to our consideration of II Thess. So, this was the simple three-part eschatological scheme taught by Paul to the Thessalonians. In the meantime, someone has come into Thessalonica proclaiming that the "Day of the Lord" had already passed. The natural question is how the concept of "Day of the Lord" relates to the simple Pauline eschatological scheme.

The next essay probes the "solution" in II Thess. 2 as well as the "greeting" in II Thess. 1.

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