1 Thessalonians 5.16-24 (NRSV)
16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give thanks in
all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19Do not quench
the Spirit. 20Do not despise the words of prophets, 21but test
everything; hold fast to what is good; 22abstain from every form of
evil.
23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your
spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
I am indebted to the work of J M Reece for this short reflection.
Paul’s letters always end with
ethical injunctions. As I used to be an ethics teacher, this therefore is a
deep interest of mine.
Here Paul urges people to
rejoice because joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and so it is refreshing to
all concerned when people share their joy with each other. He also urges them
to live lives that are in an attitude of prayer. Added to this is the need for
thanksgiving: God is the source of all our blessings. In verse 18 he states
that giving thanks is the will of God and brings it all together to include constant joy and
prayer as being part of God’s will for us in Jesus.
When God reveals his will to us,
he also provides us with the means to achieve what God wants for us. As J
M Reece suggests ‘... grace does not eliminate human efforts but empowers it.’
Paul goes on to deal with some problems that had
arisen in the fellowship because of the charismatic element. Reece aptly
comments that ‘... charisms ... often proved a two-edged sword in a church.’
Yes, they fortify converts, build them up and give them a tremendous sense of
the presence of God within the midst of the Church. This enables converts to
accept the high moral standards required of them and to resist temptation. But
in Thessalonica, the ‘charismatics’ took over the fellowship and appeared to be
forming factions. How some things never change. I am sure you can remember our
charismatic experience in the 1970s. It would seem that it mirrored the
Thessalonian experience, with those who spoke in tongues giving the impression
that God had earmarked them especially for blessing, while protesting (at least
in theory) that they were any better than anyone else.
The advice here is timeless – ‘... test everything.’
Discernment is one of the spiritual gifts, together with tongues and prophecy
and all the rest, and a vital ingredient.
Having said all this, by moving away from the
Charismatic Renewal of the 1970s I think today we have the opposite problem and
the Church seems to have ‘... quenched the Spirit ...’ So much of worship falls
into a dry formalism and even some beautiful services – like Evensong – can so
often degenerate into a refined concert. I was interested to hear the prior at
Mirfield challenge the Church to bring the Spirit back into the liturgy where
he warned that much of Cathedral worship is in danger of becoming mere relics
of a past way.
A little while back, when I was doing some preparatory
reading for my weekly reflection, I was touched by a simple realisation and
that is the word translated as ‘good’ in verse 21 is kalos and it is almost better translated as ‘beautiful’. The
tradition that the Apostles handed down to future generations, and our duty to
maintain and pass on is something that is ‘beautiful’. Reese puts it this way:
‘Apostolic preaching enables future believers to experience the beauty of the
Holy Spirit.’
For some time now, I have been convinced that the best
way to decide if something is good or not, is something is right or not, it to
end with the question: “Is it beautiful?” This is not always easy to answer,
because the role of beauty (in my mind at least) is transformative; to take the
ugly and redeem it, to make it beautiful. This is demonstrated in an experiment
in Malawi that is working well, where the latrines are made to produce methane
which powers the cookers in the kitchens – taking excrement and making it
enable something beautiful to happen.
Paul ends with ‘... the universal negative prohibition that
grounds all moral activity, “abstain from every form of evil”.’ (Reese) Note
the play on words – abstain here is
linked to the hold fast in the
previous verse.
Recall again the experience of the Charismatic Renewal of the
1970s; some of the radicals of this time behaved as if there were no restraints
and celebrated the ‘freedom’ of the Spirit. But our freedom arises from
constraint as Cicero explained: ‘We are slaves to law so that we might be
free!” The Psalmist in all 176 verses explains the liberty that comes from
following the Law of the Lord.
The work of the Spirit is there to sanctify us entirely –
our focus ought not to be solely on having wonderful experiences, but the
transformation of our entire lives, body, mind and spirit as verse 23 suggests
so that we may be found blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do
not achieve this alone, but we need to surrender to the love of God, because
the one who calls us is faithful and
will do this.
Shorter this week as I have needed to prepare carol services
for over 1,500 students.
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