November 13, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I was in seminary and doing youth ministry at a local Baptist church in Massachusetts, we invited this Christian college band to give us a concert. While I knew this guy from college, I was disturbed by his interpretation of this Scripture. He testified to this one phrase “thief in the night” and basically scared our little junior high kids that the world will come to an end at a certain hour while pointing to the clock. I gave him our check reluctantly and spent the rest of the month trying to clean up the mess. He didn’t have a bigger picture of what this passage means. By taking this small phrase out of context, we can become a jerk.
Jerks are everywhere. There are people who are painfully annoying and woefully unaware jerks in the office when they are distracting you from getting some work done, on the highway when they cut in front of you endangering your safety, at the Starbucks when someone places an order for 12 special drinks in front of you, and in your extended family when uncle so and so sat himself in front of the buffet table and ate all the shrimp.
They come in different shapes and sizes. Some are annoying and others are rude. The world is full of them. In fact, the epidemic is so widespread it’s safe to say that one time or another we’ve all been labeled as a jerk one time.
Now the definition of a jerk is someone who is utterly unable to see himself as he appears to others. He has no grace, he is tactless without meaning to be, he is a bore even to his friends, he is an egotist without charm. He sees the world from one perspective only—his own. Other words that may be more politically correct for a jerk is: socially challenged, thoughtless, boorish, offensive, vulgar, bad-mannered, and uncouth.
But the interesting fact about being a jerk is that it’s can be a detriment to one’s health. If you want to live longer, one should stop being a jerk. In the journal of Psychological Science of the Public Interest, an article summarized the point that those whose personalities could be summarized as boorish or jerk-like tend to acquire more diseases, and die at earlier ages than those with other, more socially palatable personality traits.
According to one study, heart patients with Type D personalities—people who lack confidence and are prone to irritability—are at a substantially greater risk of heart-related death. By contrast, people who are open to new experiences, exhibit more flexibility in their temperament and can more easily “go with the flow,” are at a lower risk.
So what does all this psychological talk has to do with 1 Thessalonians 5? Paul gives us three truths about our life in Christ that should be more than enough to keep us kind and jerk-free. Paul can help us be less of a jerk.
Big Picture
First, Paul reminds us that followers of Jesus Christ have been given the gift of a bigger picture. It can be argued that much of what makes for a jerk-like approach to everyday living is a myopic view of one’s own existence. Annoying habits grow out of a lack of social awareness—that is, one’s view of the world fails to include the sensitivities of others.
In verse 5, Paul reminds us that we are “…children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or the darkness.” In other words, while the rest of the world lives in panic and worry about inconsequential things—and will be truly caught off guard when the only important thing arrives, namely the Son of God in glory—we have light of truth shining upon us. We have the light of our victory tomorrow shining upon us, adding context, perspective and clarity to today. My college friend didn’t have this grand perspective of this truth.
Think about this. By faith we understand that the death of Christ has covered over our sin and shame, the resurrection of Christ has crushed our enemy, called “death,” and the return of Christ will usher in unending peace. This is clarity and from such clarity, we can live with the “lights on,” seeing things as they truly are: annoying but inconsequential, painful but not permanent, difficult but not determining our destiny.
This is the reason why we regularly engage in God’s Word by coming to worship, reading the Scriptures in Sunday school, and praying to God. Doing such things allows for the light of reality to shine on your situation and keeps things in perspective. Apart from it, the victory of Christ gets smaller, your problems seem bigger and the likelihood of acting like a fool or a jerk gets higher.
Ready for Anything
The second point that we can get from Paul in 1 Thessalonians is that not only do followers of Christ have the gift of living in the light, having a bigger picture of what’s going on, but when the realities of this broken world come crashing in on us, we have the confidence of knowing we are armed and equipped for battle. Paul writes, “…since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8).
Did you know that much of what drives people to having jerk-like behavior is fear? We become a jerk when we might be making fun of someone else because if we dig deeper inside of ourselves, we’ll often discover that its origin is fear—fear that we’ll be neglected, abused, or considered unworthy. In response to such fears, our sinfulness takes up what it believes to be the protective shield and we become nasty toward others.
Yet the Scriptures tell us that through our belief and baptism we have a more effective armor or protection. We’ve been covered in faith, hope, and love, which can more readily defend us against the attacks of this life.
So what if next time, this girl cuts in front of you at the Starbucks, you recite the Lord’s Prayer quietly under your breath instead of getting mad. Your attitude will change. She may still be a jerk but at least you would have activated your spiritual firewall and regain your perspective of a bigger picture of what’s really important.
Or with that distracting coworkers of yours, what if you went out of your way to show him love and be kind to him? In other words, do for him what Christ has done for you. Show him a little undeserved kindness and care. Sounds difficult, but wait and see how your irritation starts to fade as you see the bigger picture that to be Christ-like, we can serve anyone despite their faults.
Paul’s point is that through faith in Christ, the hope of the resurrection and the confidence of our right relationship with God, we have nothing to fear, no harm can truly befall us. Sober up and lighten up. We’re protected by these truths.
Future Promise
Lastly, Paul tells us that we not only have the light of truth to grant us this bigger picture and an effective armor protecting us from lasting harm, but followers of Jesus have the unshakeable truth that we’re destined for salvation, shaping our perception of every moment. Paul said this should be a source of incredible encouragement.
When the rest of the world is going crazy, Paul said, “Remember your destiny.” When everything from minor details are missed to major tragedies occur, remember your destiny. When there are these bad-mannered, uncouth, and jerky people who are irritating you, remember your destiny because in the end—which is all that ultimately matters—you will “live with Him.” We will live with Jesus Christ. In other words, we who possesses blessing in the final hour need not to get too worked up about the present moment because we have a future promise that all will be well. It’s our destiny.
The end result of living in the light, embracing your armor and resting in the salvation of that future promise is a people who are less prone to tearing one another down over petty issues and more concerned with building one another up. In fact, Paul closes out his letter to the Thessalonians by giving a list of directions to be less a jerk—respect others, be at peace, admonish, encourage, help, be patient, rejoice, pray, give thanks, and hold fast to what is good (5:12-21).
If being a jerk can shorten your life, God’s people are called to be the exact opposite. We are to be so overwhelmed with the work of Christ that we respond with actions and attitudes that add blessing to this life. So, how is that going for you?
Earth as it is in Heaven
The 1 Thessalonians passage is what we call the Parousia, the Day of the Lord or the coming of Christ. And quite honestly, people have used such passages to awaken people to make decisions to believe in Christ. My old college friend did that.
But maintaining too strong an emphasis on the coming Day of the Lord can lead to a neglect of Christ’s mission in the here and now. Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren makes this point in his book, Everything Must Change. McLaren said, “More and more of us have been realizing something our best theologians have been saying for quite a while: Jesus’ message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven’s blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead about God’s will being done on this troubled earth as it is heaven” (p.4).
In Everything Must Change, McLaren tells a story of an encounter he had in Africa that changed his way of looking at, well, everything. Attending a meeting of church workers near Capetown, South Africa, he heard a young healthcare worker embark on an impassioned critique of pastors he had observed doing ministry among his people. The man was working with HIV/AIDS sufferers in a desperately impoverished squatter community.
“You pastors are…causing such destruction in our community. It reaches to the skies. I know you mean well, but you don’t realize that you cause devastation in the lives of the young people with whom you work…I have listened to your preaching, and you are preoccupied with three things, and three things only. First, you constantly talk about healing. You tell people they can be healed of HIV, and some of them believe you, so they stop taking their medications. When they stop, they develop new resistant strains of the disease that don’t respond well to the medications, and they spread these tougher infections to other people, leaving them much sicker than they were before.
“Then you’re always telling the people they need to be born again, but after they’re born again on Sunday, they’re still unemployed on Monday. They may be born again, but what good is that if they’re unemployed, they’re going to be caught in the poverty web of substance abuse, crime and gangs, domestic violence, and HIV…
Then what do you do? After telling these desperately poor people to get born again and healed, you tell them to tithe. You tell them to “sow financial seed” into your ministries and they will receive a hundredfold return. But you’re the only ones getting a return on their investment. You could be helping them so much. You could motivate people to learn employable skills, you could be teaching them and help them in so many ways, but it’s always the same thing: healing, getting born again, tithing.”
We pastors and missionaries can be such jerks!
In case you haven’t noticed, jerks are everywhere. Whether or not being one actually shortens your life is up for debate. But does it really matter? God’s word teaches us that the number of one’s days is ultimately in God’s hands.
It’s the quality of days that is in our hands that we have a say about. It’s the way we live every day that really matters. We can let our lives be torn down by jerk-like behavior, both by us and against us, or be the kind of people who build one another up because of all that Christ has already accomplished for us. By having a bigger picture of God’s mighty plan in the world, knowing that we are protected from all danger and threats, and having the confidence that our destiny is with God in the end, we don’t have to be so much of a jerk anymore.
Let us pray.
Dear God, grant us a bigger picture of understanding of your larger plans for the world and help us to be confident and willing to trust you in whatever happens since we have the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.