Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 (June 24, 2025)

June 24, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter – 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

May Christ's Peace and Power, filled with compassion, be in, with, and around you today.

Please continue the prayer requests from yesterday, and a reminder that this Sunday we will have coffee, donuts, and juice fellowship hour before worship at 9AM in the parish hall. I hope that you will be able to join us. At this time, our sign-up list for those who will provide donuts and pastries is complete. Please continue to keep Tricia Don in your regular prayers as she receives therapy for her cancer. She is having some difficult days. This Friday our Foodies of Faith will be going out to the IHOP on 22nd Street at 11:30. It is east of Alvernon, about 4 blocks on the south side of the street. Call the office by Thursday morning if you want to be added to the list. (520-623-3661) This will give us the opportunity to have the right number of seats set up for lunch. Our July Journeys newsletter will be out this coming Sunday, so be sure to check your computer, or pick one up in the narthex at church. If you have not signed up yet for our July 6th carry-in lunch, please take the time to sign up at church, or call the office to get on the list. This July's meal theme is "The Great American Picnic". I hope to see you all there.

Today in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, we do not have a prayer commitment from Paul for this new church, or a request by Paul to have regular prayers offered on behalf of his ministry in its future work. Instead in our reading for today, Paul is telling the reader of this part of his letter that there are apparently a few problems in this new church community. The key word here is community. His concern is for the harmony that should exist in Christ, and yet that harmony breaks down sometimes. Or as Paul puts it, "Some People are stepping out of line". Perhaps our modern way of speaking would be to call them slackers.

Let's move now to speak about ballet! You might be asking what that has to do with what's happening in Thessalonica? I will get there. When our son Joshua, who is now 40 was in middle school and high school, he became deeply committed to dancing in a ballet troupe, practicing 5, sometimes 6 days every week, nearly every free moment that he had. I must admit I was indifferent about it initially. But watching practices and going to performances I became much more intrigued. Joshua was amazing! His posture, positions in different dances, and his leaps were incredible. However, I also noticed something else. There were some members of the troupe who did not have the same commitment to the troupe as Joshua did. Their dancing was lackluster, their timing was often not quite right, and you could see in them that it was being done because someone else had been forcing their practice and work. There certainly were times when Joshua's ballet team members really pulled every move, and its timing, and its beauty together. Those dances were amazing, but when someone who was not committed was on stage, it really drew the audience’s attention away from the integrity of the ballet performance. This is where we reconnect to Paul's concern in the church of the Thessalonians. There were so many who were completely committed to their new relationship with Christ, and to the gathered community, each providing from their resources of food and labor and money, the care for the entire community. But what did it look like from the outside, when some members were just kind of coasting along in their faith journey and were taking advantage of the gentle hospitality of the rest of the community. From this reading we discover that the community gathered around agape meals where everyone contributed in some way, yet there were those who came to take advantage. Paul tells them that if they do not work, they do not eat! In those few people, viewed by others, the picture of Christian harmony and love was incomplete in some ways. You might ask, well does that mean that the aged, the infirm, the challenged, there was not to be care? Absolutely not! Those members, the weaker ones, were always to be cared for, and they are still to be cared for today. But, the "slackers" who shared nothing of their time, talents, and resources to support the Body of Christ the Church, they were to be encouraged, and if there was no change, to be disciplined by the church's members and leaders.

Paul finished this section with an imperative, a command. "Do what is right"  Though it may be our brothers and sisters who see some members getting caught up in that "slacker" mind set, it is God who sees and knows, and judges with forgiveness the ones who have had that metanoia of the heart and mind which brings the tender change of Christ's love to all the aspects of the believers life.  Let's be honest with each other, in our world, just like it was in the world of the Thessalonians, "doing what is right", is difficult, and requires our openness to the Spirit's daily presence so that we too can find the strength, courage, and faith to have changed hearts and minds for Christ's way in our lives. 

May God bless you today, and always, 

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim