Biblical Busybodies
II Thessalonians 3:6-13
Rober J. Elder, Interim Pastor
First
Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, Washington
Twenty-second
Sunday in Ordinary Time
September
2, 2012
We hear that some of you are living in idleness,
mere busybodies, not doing any work.
Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ
to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.
Brothers and sisters,
do not be weary in doing what is right.
When Paul began detailing the ways
in which some of the folks in that early church in the city of Thessalonica
were not pulling their weight, I can imagine that many in that little
fellowship cringed to hear his truth-telling, no matter how true it was.
“For we hear,” Paul wrote in his letter, which was surely read in the
middle of the gathering of that little church, since New Testament letters were
designed to edify the whole church and few could read them on their own anyway,
“For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not
doing any work.”
Ouch!
True as such things may be, we often create elaborate ways to avoid such
truth, especially in church, because to face it means to have to do something
about it. A study of any dysfunctional family will turn up many methods by
which all the family members carry on their elaborate charades to avoid
confrontation with truth; but not the apostle, not Paul. His hard words of
truth remind me of a classic, short, modern parable I once read, and have long
remembered, entitled, “The Day Rev. Henderson Bumped His Head.”[1]
I can’t resist sharing an excerpt with you:
Leaning down toward the bottom
shelf to retrieve his trusty Strong’s Bible
Concordance to pursue “new moon” through both testaments, the Reverend
Henry Henderson, pastor of Sword of Truth Methodist Church, bumped his head,
“Darn,” he exclaimed, grabbing his forehead.
This he followed immediately with
[a stronger expletive] which was muttered with atypical candor. The rather
non-ministerial [utterance] surprised Henderson. He could hardly believe he
said it. [Then] he heard himself say [it] again. “This hurts.”
That, so far as the Reverend
Henderson could tell, was how it all began – an accidental blow to the brain
while reaching for a Bible concordance.
Moments later, the phone rang.
“Pastor,” whined a nasal voice at the other end, “are you
busy?”
“Not at all...” said Pastor Henderson out of habit. Then,
from nowhere he continued, “I’m sitting here in my study just dying for someone
like you to call and make my day! No, I am
busy. I was working on my sermon for next Sunday. What is it?”
His words paralyzed him. They must
also have stunned the whiny voice at the other end of the line, for there was a
long, awkward silence followed by “Er, well, I’ll call you at home tonight
after work, Pastor.”
“No,” said Henderson firmly, alien words forming in his mouth
as if not by his own devising, “call me during office hours on any day other
than Friday. Thank you. Good-bye.”
The receiver dropped from his hand
and into the telephone cradle. He felt odd. Yes, quite odd. His head no longer
throbbed. Yet he felt odd.
Emerging from his study, he
encountered Jane Smith, come to church for her usual Friday duties for the
altar guild. “As usual, just me,” she said to Henderson. “They all say they’ll be on the guild, that they
don’t mind helping out the church. Yet, when it comes time for the work, where
are they?”
“I think you know very well why they are not here,” said Pastor
Henderson. “You gave them only a half-hearted invitation. Everyone knows you
love playing the martyr. Their absence helps bolster your holier-than-thou
attitude.”
Mrs. Smith nearly dropped the
offering plate she was holding, along with the polishing cloth and the Brasso.
“Pastor! How dare you accuse me of being a complainer! You
know how hard I’ve worked to get the altar guild going! If you gave us
volunteers the kind of support we ought to...”
… but Pastor Henderson was no
longer listening. He staggered down the hall as Mrs. Smith continued her
complaint. He was feeling dizzy, unsteady...
...He was a pastor in peril.
Henderson at the hospital that
afternoon, Room 344: [found himself saying] “So the doctor tells you your heart
problems are congenital? That so? Are you sure the doctor didn’t mention
anything about (by my reckoning) eighty
pounds of excess fat?”
And in Room 204: “Really? So this
is the strain of emphysema that is not
caused by smoking? Give me a break! Two packs a day for thirty years, and you
wonder why you’re sucking on an oxygen tank for dear life?”...
...That fateful Sunday service,
after a pastoral prayer in which Henderson admitted to God that “Most of us
didn’t really want to hear anything truthful you have to reveal to us,” an
emergency meeting of the Pastor/Parish Council was called [and the next call
was to the bishop’s office]...
We can probably imagine how the end of the story went from there.
It was Flannery O’Conner, I think, who once reworded a familiar Bible
phrase by adding a new twist, saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you odd.” Paul never needed a blow to the head to inspire him to
declare what was true, but I am certain that more than once his unwillingness
to soften the truth of the gospel must have made him a bit odd to those on the
receiving end of truths they had made a practice of hiding. I can imagine there
were a few sluggards in the Thessalonian congregation who dreaded to see an
envelope arrive at the church with a return address bearing Paul’s name.
Their error wasn’t mere sloth, a simple laziness that afflicted some of the
believers in Thessalonica. The fact is, there were some in that congregation
who had decided that Jesus was going to return very shortly, so soon, in fact,
that they determined that they might as well stop working. Why work when Jesus
would soon be there to set everything right? By believing as they did, they
became a burden on the others in their fellowship. Who was supposed to keep
these blissful non-workers and their families from starving?
We may find this a bit quaint, even odd, but I have to say, we still have
not yet begun to hear the last of end-of-the-world prophets, they appear in
every generation. As books such as the Left
Behind and DaVinci Code novels of
a few years ago continue to come across booksellers’ counters, don’t be
surprised to discover the enduring cultural fascination with people who declare
the end or beginning of all manner of things is at hand. Just remember, this is
nothing new, and don’t quit your day job. Around 200 A.D., in a region in what
is now northern Turkey, a church leader reported to his followers that he had
dreams that the final judgment was coming at the end of the year. Many
Christian believers in the area abandoned their fields and sold their personal
possessions in anticipation of a day which not only did not come by the end of
the year, indeed, it has not yet
come. It has been happening ever since. Self-proclaimed spiritual leaders have
been taking the gullible for a ride for centuries. Just remember Paul’s word: “For
you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were
with you...but with toil and labor we worked night and day...”
This is not to say that such a “Day of the Lord” is never coming. The Bible
seems clearly to suggest that it is. It is to say that we have plenty of word
from that same Bible about what we should be doing in anticipation, and none of
it suggests we should simply stop doing the good work of God and sit by the
side of the road to wait for the end. Paul said, “For even when we were with
you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”[2]
It is a truth, even though it is one that may be hard to hear. “Brothers
and sisters,” Paul said, “Do not be weary in doing what is right.” This goes
for the righteous, industrious ones who do more than their share as well as the
idle ones who do little, if anything. The hard workers must not take the
example of the slothful as their excuse to despair in their task, and the
slothful ones must not be left in this one of the seven deadly sins, as if it
doesn’t matter.
On the weekend of Labor Day, this passage seems like an appropriate
reminder of the nobility of work, of committing ourselves to doing some small,
useful work, even though we know that other great things may be underway in the
world.
In one of his Bible commentaries,[3]
our favorite 16th century reformer, good old John Calvin, said, “In vain do
persons who are delighted with an easy, indolent life, and with exemption from
the cross, undertake a profession of Christianity.” He went on: “The true
self-denial which the Lord demands ... does not consist so much in outward
conduct as in the affections; so that every one must employ the time which is
passing over him without allowing the objects which he directs by his hand to
hold a place in his heart.”
Here is a word to us on this Labor Day weekend. Whether we work for peanuts
or for millions, scripture is clear in its declaration that we are to work for
the betterment of all until that time when the Best of all comes, lays our work
aside, and says, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
Copyright ©
2012 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved
