1 Thessalonians 2.2b-8
As you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. 3 For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; 6 nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, 7 though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. 8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
Paul in the reading we’ve just heard was writing to the young church in Thessalonica. They were going through a hard time, and it seems they were not too sure about the status of Paul’s ministry to them – but before looking at all that, and before the passage Lesley read, Paul takes time simply to give thanks to God for them.
And above all, before we think about anything else, and perhaps more importantly than anything else, today is a wonderful opportunity for all of us in the diocese to give thanks to God for all of you! Alleluia! We’ve one day left to shout them out so let’s make the most of it. Alleluia!
Today we remember you, your faith and your work, just as Paul remembered those of the Thessalonians, who were as dear to him as children, and we pray for you and commit ourselves to keep on praying for you. We say thankyou!
The Thessalonians must have really needed this assurance, since Paul clearly says they are facing great opposition, in fact persecution. I trust that things aren’t quite as bad as that for you. But the fact remains that the gospel and its ministers are more on their mettle as they live and work outside the comfortable confines of the gathered church, or within them but outsie the cadres of the stipended clergy.
Your calling and ministry are a wake-up call to those of us who are more locked into the insider structures of the church not only to open eyes wider to your ministries, but also to remember that we too need to continually be re-sharpening ourselves, to seek first again the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The gap between a proper sense of security and an off-putting self-satisfaction, or at least self-preoccupation, can be wafer-thin; and the world can pass us by if we are not alert to its challenges and its needs.
This means that there is a mutuality between what I might call the inner and outer ministries of the church. We all share in both in varying proportions, and as a church need both, and need both to be in constant dialogue, holding home and away together so that we can be a church that both gathers as Christ’s body and is active as that same body in the mission of Christ.
Giving value to both halves of that balance is one reason why it is entirely fitting that you should be now be licensed not as Assistants but Associates. We are yoked together equally in the work of the Lord.
Such work is often hard and costly. So why did Paul do it (after all, he could well be deemed the Patron Saint of self-supporting ministers), and why do you do it? Paul says in reply that it is for love not money, which is I suppose the one thing that unites you as a body of SSMs in all your diversity; he is simply pleasing God and following God’s commission. He does sound a bit defensive as he says this, and perhaps some people doubted his motives as they may doubt ours, but that simply drives him back even more strongly to the language of love, and beyond the often fickle love of mortals to the love of God, which leaves us no choice but to love and live for Him. He first loves us, and in our love for him we then have the power to love others too.
No surprises by affirming his love for them, finds himself laying open the roots of his loving in his own belovedness by God, the belovedness that any apostle and any preacher must first find in themselves before they can offer it to others with authenticity.
So the gentleness Pauls speaks of matters, and the deep caring, and that the loving is not just in words but deeds. You like him become the Gospel on legs, let loose in the world, and are called into a costly sharing of yourself as your share its good news.
In the words of Paul a chapter later, “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other, and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.”
An important insight in more recent missional thinking is precisely that this work has an authenticity in itself, that it is not just a means to the end of gathered church membership, but a sharing in the mission of God, through his Pentecost Spirit, who simply keeps on pouring himself out for us, whatever the cost, whatever our response.
Of course we hope and pray for a fruitful response, because as we share God’s love for His world so we share his hope that every corner of it will return to his just and gentle rule, will enter his Kingdom. But precisely because it is God’s love that we are sharing and his gentle rule we are seeking, we will often call people into that kingdom but never co-erce them, rejoicing in the justice of their free choice as we do in our own.
So this Pentecost Eve the dismissal at the end of the service maybe its last part but is by no means its least. Let the Spirit of truth lead you. Go in the power of the Spirit to take God’s love to a world in need. Go like Augustine beyond the boundaries, to our whole nation, to people where they are.
But let me leave you with one last thought about love from St Bernard of Clairvaux. He imagined love as a ladder and we begin, he said, on the bottom rung by loving ourselves for ourselves’ sake. We all still do, at least some of the time. Then perhaps in a time of need we turn in love to God though still for ourselves’ sake, the second rung.
Then perhaps as we grow in the love of God we come to love God for his own sake not ours, the third rung, just as in a good marriage or friendship we may begin with our own interests but become caught up in the being of the other, loving them for who they are not what they do for us.
But we have still not finished. There is one final rung to the ladder. We moved from love of ourselves for ourselves’ sake, to love of God for ourselves’ sake, to love of God for God’s sake. The last step is the hardest: it is to come to love ourselves for God’s sake not ours. To glimpse just how eternally beloved we are, just because we are the children of God.
And that is my last prayer for you and last word to you. Go – but as you go, remember, you are the beloved children of God, no matter what happens, no matter what is said, no matter how others rate you, no matter how you are tempted to rate yourself – high or low: you are beloved, and in the strength of that love you can go indeed in peace to love and serve the Lord. In the name of Christ. Amen.
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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have issued a joint explanatory statement about the amendments made to the Women Bishops legislation at a meeting of the House of Bishops earlier this week.
