Looking with hope

Fake news is a term that our society is saturated in, we turn on the tv, radio or our social media; we get involved in a big story only to discover that it was fake. Of course, fake news is a term of used by president Trump whenever an unfavourable story comes out about him.

Until I started working on this morning’s service, the notion of fake news being an issue for the church never crossed my mind, but there it is. In fact, we don’t Even need to look hard to find it.

Fake news is exactly what we find the writer of 2 Thessalonians (some say Paul Some say not Paul) dealing with: Theologically fake news.

Much like some parts of the church today, for the early Christian church; the Return of Jesus was a topic of much discussion and speculation.

The focal point inside 2 Thessalonians is, the Lord’s coming has already happened and this of course leaves many worrying that they’ve missed the Bus.

As modern followers and seekers, we need to take a second to appreciate that to the early church “The second coming” had an urgency or immediacy to it.

Most believed it would happen in their lifetime, so when there were rumours doing the rounds that it had happened; we can understand the panic can’t we?

So, what does Paul do?

He reminds them and us to stand firm in the love of Christ and the reality and Glory that he bought forth.

Perhaps we can put it another way? He seems to be speaking to them about responding rather than reacting to what they hear.

That’s an interesting idea isn’t it?

Reacting to me, seems to carry a raw unfiltered quality, were as responding carries the image of reflecting on what we hear and cultivating a response based on what we believe in.

We want to be a discerning people, don’t we?

People that take in new information and chew it over, rather than a people Who say, “that makes me uneasy get it away from me!”

Paul, is inviting his audience to take courage and be encouraged so they can become creators of reality rather than reactors to it.

Good message for us, don’t you think? Knowing God’s heart and getting on with the stuff. Looking with hope.

As with Thessalonians, today’s Gospel puts us right in the middle of a subject that invokes a great deal of passion and debate – The resurrection! In fact, it could be argued that next to the crucifixion, the resurrection is the most explored topic within Christendom.

That’s what we see happening today, the Sadducees approach Jesus with a long winded question about the resurrection and marriage, as we just heard: Jesus wades through their argument and states that God is for the living not the dead. The Sadducees had a different worldview to their wider community.

They believed that:

• There is no fate.
• Man has free will; "man has the free choice of good or evil".
• The soul is not immortal; there is no afterlife.
• There are no rewards or penalties after death.

The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection of the dead, but believed in the traditional Jewish concept of Sheol for those who had died.

So basically, they believed that this world is where everything happened and where justice would be found.

I found it interesting, when I did some research; and found that check list:

Within their question, they seem to want to protect the status quo, as in a society dominated by men and women were property.

Jesus is challenging how they view each other, their idea of reality, their idea of hope.

I wonder how often we do that? Walk around with our theological and social check Lists; thereby limiting how we interact with God and the world at large?

You know, “I’ll just check what they believe in before I let them get close to me”

In fact, this happened just recently, I decided to connect with a friend on Facebook recently and we got talking about why I don’t go to a particular event Anymore (bear in mind, we had the same talk many times) I explained and instead taking in my point of view, he spent the whole time defending his own and inferring there was something faulty with my faith.

You have heard me say this many times, your faith doesn’t need defending: it Needs exploration and explaining. What I mean by that is; you need to explore it for yourself, so that that the statements of faith you make have life behind them and take you somewhere. It’s all very well to say I believe in the resurrection! But what does it actually mean?

What does it actually mean it terms of how we relate to our families?

Our colleagues?

Our neighbours?

Our communities?

What does it mean in terms of how we experience forgiveness?

Are we aware there is more to come: here and now?

Today, we are being offered the chance to do two things, the first is we being offered the chance to become grounded in faith and we also being offered the chance to understand that, that grounding is designed to take us somewhere new and scary! We are being called to be accountable in our theology to make sure it doesn’t place limitations on others.

We are being offered the chance to live out the hope we so frequently claim!

Have you fallen in love with the world the way Jesus did?

If not, maybe todays the day!

Amen!