“Days of Idleness?”
Malachi 4:1-6
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-28
26th Sunday after Pentecost
Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to [be]. Some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly. As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.
Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Bridge
If, by chance, the Lord doesn’t return before next weekend, Holy Scripture (our 2nd Thessalonians text particularly) explains how we ought to fill the hours of our week … Sunday afternoon, for example, Monday through Friday (that’s during the day and into the evening … and don’t forget the mornings), then next Saturday, all day and night. The hours of our weeks, while we await Jesus, our Heavenly Father has plans for. He tells us how they ought not to be used ... and how they should be … because He expects something of each one of them. So hear, again, what He wants of them: of them what He condemns and what He uplifts. “We command you brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to [be]. Some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly. As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.”
Text
Jesus is returning soon. I don’t see any other way to look at it than that. Thessalonica seems to be a place where Paul was cooling their enthusiasm, but that’s, only, because the enthusiasm this church had was causing them to do nothing else but look to the skies. Almost like the disciples who were there to watch Jesus ascend; it took an angel to get them back down the hill, telling them He might not be coming back down that very moment, so get busy in the meanwhile. The church to which Paul wrote was so single-minded that they were sure nothing else ought to be accomplished during the layover.
Paul told them they were wrong and, as a matter of fact, if they can’t find a gainful way to advance God’s kingdom during their hours, they ought not to be allowed to eat during the wait. “Idleness” is condemned for our hours upon this earth. A Christian has no business calling himself a Christian if he’s wasting God’s time-for-him doing nothing kingdom worthwhile.
Now, it’s great that this congregation was so minded. Don’t get Paul wrong in this … as a matter of fact, his whole thought on marriage hinged on his own anticipation of the Lord any moment. Today’s Malachi and Luke readings tell us that the “Day”, indeed, “is coming”. We discussed, last week, how all the signs are in place … even the dominion already (I think) of the Antichrist. If the only thing that’s missing is Jesus flash of lightning over the eastern horizon (and I think that’s the case), our next moments might be all we get here.
But, while we’re waiting, don’t sit on your hands. And don’t consider it, just, a party thing. If, in fact, the end is upon us, then there are no hours to waste. If you’re not like those of the church at Thessalonica, then Paul, of course, would have you understand that you should be … especially now. But if you are there, then the Lord has designs on how every one of your last hours can (and ought) to be useful.
Today, hear that charge. Since we may have but a few hours left (and if you don’t believe that, then be reminded that your final hour and the worlds might not be the same one … yours, individually, could be as any-time-now as the other is), so utilize your time well.
And, what does that mean? Well, according to our text, it doesn’t mean “idleness” or “busybodiness”. I’m drawn to those two words. “Idlessness” is obvious uselessness where “busybodiness” is the version of uselessness that, just, tries to be less-obvious about that. Looking busy (but not, actually, accomplishing kingdom things) is just as useless as is sitting on your hands. The only difference between idleness and busybodiness is that one might be more tired at the end of a busybody day than they would at the end of an idle one.
Laziness takes-on many forms. A basic complacency can demonstrate an, even, intellectual laziness which God condemns. Sometimes the biggest efforts we can muster is a willingness to fight for recreation or leisure … that’s an ironic fight for laziness. Previously in advertising, I’m still amazed at how powerful the art is where a recliner company would build their brand with what you would think would be a derogatory commentary on its own customers. Making people desire to be a “lazy boy” by buying and putting into one’s family room “La-Z-Boy” furniture would have seemed (going in) to be the uphill approach. But revenues showing what they’ve become, folks, apparently, don’t mind spending money to sit on the insult that the company doesn’t mind calling them when they do.
While laziness isn’t shocking, it is surprising, though, to hear that “busybodiness” was big in Paul’s time. The only place this word gets used in Scripture, here we find an additional link to the fast pace of “busyness” so epidemic in ours. Paul identified it of the people of this town. Maybe folks, then, had day-timers and alarm-clocks and needed secretaries to remember their next stop. Maybe folks over-busied themselves with scrambling about … maybe they, too, bustled from one appointment to another: picking up dry-cleaning, taking kids to soccer practices, meeting deadlines, keeping up an image of “busy-and-successful” among friends, or, just, filling-up every waking moment with as much as one can to make an excuse for why one more thing couldn’t be added into the mix.
“Busybodiness” is busy-ness for its own sake, but it also includes being into everyone else’s business without being in their business in ministry (just being in their business to be in their business). Gossip gets its root here in this “busybodiness”, but so does things like, just, talking about stuff that ought to be done forever without, actually, doing any of it. “Idleness” that’s busy can be like running the motor of your life’s engine really high in RPMs, but keeping the transmission in “Park”. God, here, is telling us that He’s noticing when we do these wastefully idle things … and reminds us that the few hours we have left are His and He has desires for them. Condemned is our throwing of those hours away by any form of uselessness that wastes kingdom time.
The condemnation goes further: don’t associate with people who drag you into their uselessness. No one, God says here, should gain relationship benefit from their unwillingness to accomplish God’s good. Don’t yoke yourself to what drags you to Hell, quite literally. There’s, obviously, a healthy attempt needed to pull every one of your neighbors into God’s kingdom, but brush his dust from your feet if he’s more effective in pulling you his damning ways. The worlds already got too hearty of a grip trying to secure you into laziness towards God … attaching yourselves willingly to folks wanting you that way is, just, plain dumb.
And, maybe, it’s just naïve. Maybe just hearing God try to keep you from these ways which you might have considered harmless is a wake-up call. If so, then please do wake up.
And He’s set the stage for the Good that He expects. His Son died to make that happen and He’s washed you into that death and His own name. Ridding you of the ultimate bad and making you able to keep yourself in a context by which His Good can be developed, God’s made His Word-about-that-Good a great place to start because He’s got it all to say right there. He says “you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing Good”. So He’s made you able to shed the idleness and wasteful busybodiness (at least conscious of it so that you can confess it and unload it every chance you get, then keep yourself clear of its influences), becoming ready to be actually useful to the Lord where, then He’ll make Good of you. If you place yourself in His hands, then the out-growth in hours He’ll take charge of.
Application
In two weeks we’ll be talking a whole bunch about this Good that God has for your hours. I included an insert in your bulletins and you’ve got more about this in your mailboxes in the hallway. The simple version of it is the adoption of a Good habit as God would define that. Most of this world hasn’t a clue about what God considers Good … they don’t bother to find out. See, the world’s good and God’s definition of it are two vastly different things, even though society will tell you that they have a pretty decent idea. What God says about Good (what He classifies as it) is neither cared about most places nor would the fact-of-it be listened to immediately if it smacked one from off a written page or from within its hearing. There’s nothing about God’s Good (which, remember, He demands of us in our waiting hours) that any could quickly discern. His image, through a believer, He’s made possible for us to reclaim and express, but it’s nothing like what the masses think it is … even we forget far more than we could ever remember.
Yet it’s expected of us. Nothing short of it is what, through Paul, we’re told to “not grow weary in doing”. And if that sounds tiring, well, it needn’t is God’s point. Weariness is ours to impose upon ourselves; His is strength that He has to impart. ….
There is a sociological term, and, maybe, it would be helpful to walk away with this one word to describe a new vision (a new way to look at these few hours God entrusts us with yet, before He sends back His Son). I suggested the word earlier by using a form of it but the real word makes its exercise, really, a way of life. The word from which we get “habit” is “habitus” which embodies propensity from its root carried out into purposed (sometimes, even, natural) exercises of it. Why we’d practice a Good habit is because we’ve, to our soul, adopted (in every way conscious and sub-conscious), the value of what we’ve made so habitual.
From the premise that the hours that we have left are not ours … they belong to God … and they are granted solely as a trust to be managed, by us, according to His definition of the usefulness of us with them … may we adopt such a “habitus” as to give God every opportunity to make us useful in that time. I have a suggestion for that which that bulletin insert called “The Story” … and your mail package about it … will ask you to fully embrace. What I guarantee from it (because it’s what God guarantees from it) is that such a faithful “habitus” will yield an untiring usefulness.
The full benefit of our “redemption is”, Jesus says, “drawing near.” May God’s call of us to be useful until that moment be welcomed in us. May we adopt, meanwhile, a “habitus” that will make of us faithful responders to God’s adoption of us.
May it be so in +Jesus’ name. Amen.