Grace, mercy, and peace from God, our Father, and Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
We read the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. It's helpful to know a little background.
Paul spent actually very little time in Thessalonica. He spent three weeks there proclaiming the gospel.
And sometime shortly after that, those who opposed his message gathered a crowd, a mob,
and created a riot and drove him and his companions out of town.
Later in the letter, he'll say it got to the point it drove him crazy wondering what happened to this tiny little church
that had begun but was immediately cast into persecution and suffering.
And so he sent Timothy to find out if anything remained of this church
and was surprised to find out that his highest hopes had been fulfilled.
The church didn't only survive but was thriving.
You can hear Paul's joy in his opening words.
We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,
remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and your labor of love
and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's that last phrase, steadfastness of hope, that catches my attention.
Perhaps because I look around in our world and I see a great loss of hope.
And much of the hope that I do see is a misplaced hope.
You know, we all have hopes. Some of our hopes I would call casual hopes.
Those are those passing wishes about small, short-term items.
Things like, I hope traffic isn't too bad on the way to work today.
I hope this cooler weather sticks around for a little while.
If these hopes are disappointed, you might be annoyed or a little frustrated,
but typically pretty quickly you move on with your day.
In addition to casual hopes, we have what I might call critical hopes.
Those are more significant. Those are hopes for those things that matter deeply to us.
And while those might vary from person to person,
the fact that you were all created in the image of God means there are some critical hopes
we all share in common as human creatures.
We hope for justice.
We have a deep sense that we want the wrongs of this world to be made right.
Surely you've watched the news and you hear again of a powerful person getting away with doing wrong,
and something within you rises up and says, that's not right.
I hope they get what they deserve.
We have a hope for justice. We have a hope for transcendence.
Just a sense that life is more meaningful and has more purpose than maybe what we experience day to day.
We hope that our lives contribute to something greater than ourselves,
that it's not just getting through the day, not just paying the bills,
but perhaps there's a greater story, a greater purpose that our life is a part of.
We all hope for relationship.
We hope that we can be fully known by another and yet deeply loved at the same time.
And certainly we hope for beauty, though those glimpses may be fleeting.
Certainly you have seen a beautiful sunset or looked upon a mountain vista,
or even just seeing a sleeping baby and there's something stirred within you that's hard to put to words.
We want to grab onto it, but it often passes just as quickly as a sunset.
So we have casual hopes and we have critical hopes,
but I would also venture to say we have something called an ultimate hope.
When your casual hopes are disappointed, you might be frustrated for a moment.
When your critical hopes are disappointed, well, that's more difficult.
We might enter into a season of grieving, of struggling, but typically our critical hopes,
we may never be the same, but we can move beyond even when those are disappointed.
But ultimate hope is different.
Ultimate hope is what you've bet your life on.
If your ultimate hope is disappointed, everything is lost.
Here's the problem.
We take hopes and we promote them, meaning we give them a promotion in the rankings of hopes.
For example, casual hopes can be promoted to become critical hopes.
I hope there's no traffic. A casual hope becomes, how dare these people block my way.
That's become a critical hope.
That's become a casual hope has become a critical hope that people will respect me and treat me the way I want
and make me the center of the world and do what I want, when I want, the way I want.
But the real problem arises when critical hopes are made ultimate hopes.
It's one thing to say, I hope that my marriage grows.
That's a critical hope. That's a good hope.
But when we make it ultimate, when we say it's on my spouse to make me feel how I want to feel,
to give me the security I so long for,
well now that marriage is being asked to carry a weight it cannot sustain.
Or another example, I hope my children turn out well.
Certainly every parent hopes that deeply, that their children turn out well,
that they experience happiness and success in this life.
But it becomes an ultimate hope when their success becomes a verdict on your own life.
When their struggles feel like your failure.
When their rebellion feels like your ruin.
When we make critical hopes ultimate, we're demanding a return to Eden now.
We're demanding a return to the world in which was a paradise and there was no sin
that led to disappointed hopes in which every need was fully met in a right relationship with God.
But through our ancestors, Adam and Eve, we sinned and that world has been shattered.
To make critical hopes ultimate is to demand God fix what we broke and to fix it now.
We are the Thessalonians in the sense that the Thessalonians started with a hope in idols.
Not just little carved images on a shelf, but a whole way of life.
The Greek and Roman gods were everywhere.
If you were going to plant a tree, if you were going to get married, if you were going on a business trip,
you visited the appropriate shrine, you made an offering to the right God
in hopes that that God would show you favor.
These gods were unpredictable. They were often at war with each other.
You could never be sure that you had done enough to keep in the good favor of the gods.
By the time of Paul, even the living emperor was considered a god who needed to be worshipped.
It's easy to look back from our sophisticated day and to think how silly they must have been
to think each of these gods could do something for them.
But then I pause when I come across this explanation of the small catechism which asks,
what does it mean to have a God?
It answers, to trust in and then rely on something or someone wholeheartedly
to help us in times of need and to give us all good things.
Each of us must ask that question and answer.
What is it that we trust in and rely on in times of need?
Where do we look to for all good?
Our culture has no shortage of idols and gods.
No shortage of good things that we have made ultimate things.
Things like a good education, a high paying job, a child who becomes a star athlete,
a fully funded retirement account.
The first commandment tells us again, you shall have no other gods.
But we do have other gods when we take these critical hopes and make them ultimate hopes.
Paul arrives on the scene of these people that turn to many different idols and gods
and he announces there's only one true God and this God has a son whom he has raised from the dead.
And in chapter one here Paul describes the impact of this announcement of good news.
He says the gospel came to them not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit
and with full conviction.
He says the Thessalonians received the word with the joy of the Holy Spirit.
They turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.
And even in the face of affliction and persecution,
even after Paul was driven out of town before he could fully establish that church,
they remained steadfast in hope.
How do you remain steadfast in hope when so much else has been lost?
They suffered physical persecution.
They suffered financial loss.
They were falsely accused of undermining the emperor.
How do you remain steadfast in hope with so much disappointment?
Because they had found the ultimate hope, the one they were waiting for,
his son from heaven whom he had raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
Jesus delivers.
Well, someday deliver, but Jesus delivers now today
because that deliverance was secured on a cross outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
And it was at that cross that Christ was forsaken so that you would never would be.
He bore on his shoulders on that cross your idolatry, your turning to little gods,
your promoting critical hopes into ultimate hopes.
He took it all with him to the cross.
And on the third day, the Father raised him from the dead.
It was the Father's way to affirm that, in fact, his offering for sin had been accepted.
The wrath of God that we deserved was poured out on him on our behalf for us
that we might not have to fear the wrath to come,
but we can look forward to the return of Jesus as our deliverer who brings to us only life and forgiveness and joy.
That's why their hope is steadfast.
It's steadfast because the one it rests on is steadfast himself.
Though our grip on Jesus may waver, his grip on you does not.
The ultimate hope is not something that you maintain.
It's not something that you find in this world.
It's not dependent upon the circumstances of your life.
It's dependent upon the faithfulness of the one who promises that your deliverer is coming.
It's he that holds you.
We are no longer dependent upon unreliable gods.
No longer worried if we've offered enough in just the right way.
The offering has been made, and it is finished.
Notice Paul says that this steadfast hope takes place while they wait for the return of Jesus.
We still wait today, don't we?
What do you do when you're waiting?
You have your ultimate hope that Jesus is going to return and make all things new.
What do we do while we're waiting?
Well, when you have your ultimate hope in the right place, it restores all other hopes to their proper place.
We no longer demand a return to Eden, but we look forward to the return of a deliverer.
And while we wait for his return, those critical hopes that are so deeply embedded in our heart,
well, we continue to hope for those things.
But not having those things is not devastating.
The Thessalonians were treated unjustly.
They had the assurance that even while they suffered loss in this life, that justice would come.
When Jesus comes back, he will bring justice.
The wrongs you have suffered will be made right.
Those who have persisted in their worship of the things of this world will get their just dessert.
But you, you will have every tear wiped away.
Every loss will be restored.
In this world, relationships become strained, even broken.
In this world, we lose people to death.
But when our deliverer returns, those relationships that have been reconciled to him will be reconciled to one another.
And so it doesn't take the sting of death away.
In this world, we still grieve, we still hurt, we still struggle, we still suffer loss.
But we don't do so, as Paul will say later in the letter.
We don't grieve as a people without hope.
We grieve in this world when those critical hopes are unmet.
But we do so with the assurance that our ultimate hope has been secured.
And when our ultimate hope returns, all these other hopes will be made right.
All these other hopes will be made right.
The beauty you catch glimpses of, just moments of in this life, will be restored and even better and endure for eternal life.
So yes, we will still suffer loss in this life.
If you've buried a spouse or a child or watched a marriage end or lost a job, the hurt is real.
Christ's coming doesn't sweep away our grief.
But Christ's coming assures us that we never grieve alone.
We grieve with the one who has suffered for us, who now suffers with us,
and who is coming soon to deliver us from the suffering of this world,
that we might know peace and joy and life with him forever.
There is no God in this world that can save you from the wrath to come.
The wrath to come belongs to the idols of this world and those who worship them.
But Jesus has delivered you.
You've been baptized into his death and his resurrection.
He has borne the wrath of God. He's coming back for you.
So we hold our critical hopes with an open hand,
because we know the one is coming is our ultimate hope who holds us secure
through this life into the next life forever.
It's to him we pray.
Father, we give you thanks that you have sent us a savior, a deliverer.
Though, Father, we grieve and we moan and we groan and we suffer in this life,
we don't do so alone.
We turn to the one who has suffered on the cross for us
with the assurance that he suffers with us now.
But one day, one day our deliverer comes again.
On that day, every tear is wiped away.
On that day, the heartache of this world is transformed into joy.
On that day, the wrongs are made right.
Lord, until that day, strengthen us and sustain us in the faith.
We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.