Gentle Among You

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Ordinary 30A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, ²but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. ³For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, ⁴but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. ⁵As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; ⁶nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, ⁷though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. ⁸So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

I want to start today with a confession.

I sometimes have to fight with that part of me that would rather turn inward and keep to myself, sometimes we refer to it as ‘introversion’, sometimes it ends up being perceived as aloofness, but either way, it is not always compatible with the duties and responsibilities that have become associated with being a pastor. 

There is a particular person, a member of our community, that for a number of reasons it has been a challenge for me to visit as a part of my weekly routine.  The question of whether I have a routine is open for discussion, though with Leslie’s help and insistence, that seems to be becoming more and more a reality in my life.  To my shame, at times weeks if not months would go by without my going to see him.  A few weeks ago, I finally found myself driving down the road on my way to his house.  Part of the dynamic that happens as you try to convince yourself that you need to go see this person is that you begin to imagine how that initial conversation is going to play out.  And you create these images in your mind of these conversations being awkward, being pointed and angry, being frustrated, and as someone who like most of us doesn’t particularly enjoy confrontation, the imagination does more than enough to dissuade one from going into that situation where you THINK there might be a confrontation.  As I got closer, I was wondering how the visit would go, and I got a little anxious.  I knew what I needed to do.  I was already praying for grace during the visit, so I asked God to help me see the man through his eyes, not mine, nor my own perceptions of him.  Show me how YOU feel about him.

What came over me as I made one of the last turns before reaching the house, was this deep yearning, a longing to spend time with him that I don’t remember ever experiencing before. 

It was such a strong emotion that I began to cry.  By the time I reached the door to the house, I couldn’t wait to get inside and speak to him and see how he was doing and what he’d been up to. 

It wasn’t particularly outstanding in content – as it turned out, nothing extraordinary was happening in his life.  Well, there were a couple of things, but nothing out of the ordinary for a normal Christian’s life.  Some health issues, which are to be expected in a person of his age, but otherwise, a routine visit. But for me, the visit turned out to be one of the most meaningful and sweet experiences of my life.

What made it different was how I ended up approaching it.  I didn’t go into it with a sense of ‘this has to happen because it hasn’t happened for so long’ – though it WAS the case – but I believe that God answered my prayer really quickly that afternoon.  He made it so that I could tap into HIS heart, and in tapping into his heart, I found where my heart needed to be.

***

We know from other references in the New Testament that Paul was able to spend at most a month – most likely just three weeks – with the people who became the church in Thessalonica, so the depth of the emotion that he conveys in his letter to them can seem in some ways disproportionate.  Usually, you become close to people when you spend a lot of time with them, not a short amount of time. 

But that can vary considerably. 

A crucible is, for lack of a better term, a pressure cooker.

I experienced that, as I’ve shared with you before, during my time in training before going overseas as a Journeyman to Spain.  The sixty-five people that I went through those five and a half weeks with, even though we don’t keep in touch that often, we have that shared connection, that shared bond, that was formed over those brief weeks, twenty-six years ago, and we still pick up where we left off.  I’ve heard countless similar stories from people who’ve gone through various, intense experiences as a part of a small group.  The shared experience – and hardship – does something to the group dynamic that bonds them in ways that would normally not happen in a stress-free setting. 

But Paul seems to have bonded with the people of the church in Thessalonica in such a way that he needed to touch base with them again. 

We have only these two letters as a testimony to that ‘touching base’ in scripture.  Many scholars believe that what we call the first letter is the only letter we have that was actually written by Paul himself.  It is a tantalizing question as to whether he wrote other letters to them, letters that have been lost to history.  But we DO have these.  And this is what we go from. 

A few weeks ago I reconnected with a childhood friend.  He was the person I considered my best friend growing up.  Our parents were fellow missionaries, and we went to school together, though he was a year and then two behind me. 

In the years since we graduated from high school, we maintained some connection as younger adults, but hadn’t spoken in nearly ten years.  His father passed away a few weeks after Hannah was born, and we traveled to go to his funeral, but since then, we’d pretty much dropped out of each others’ lives. 

Our mothers talk periodically on the phone, so I was able to keep up with him at a distance.  I knew he’d been in and out of rehab, struggling with drug and alcohol addictions.  But on this particular day I was on the road, and I had his number loaded in my phone.  I knew I was going to be driving for a while, so I called and spoke briefly with his wife, and then he came on, and it was a conversation like we’ve never had.  It was from the heart. 

We had heart to heart conversations as teenagers, but you know how that can go.    

He sounded … so  … grown up, so mature, so centered.  Before, he was always goofing around, even when the topic of conversation was serious.  This conversation consisted of us sharing from our hearts.  We apologized to each other for not keeping in touch.  He shared with me about his work as a lab technician in a local hospital, and how much he loved it, but that his supervisor was excessively controlling… nothing new there.  About how he’d like to be a part of an MK reunion that we’re hoping to put together in the not too distant future, about how his family is, his sons and his wife. 

The emotion that came along with that conversation is one that I don’t really know how to put into words.  The bond, the connection, the LOVE that was I guess rekindled is probably the word for it, because it was there before.  It’s not that it WASN’T … it didn’t just LEAVE… it didn’t disappear.  There has always been an affection and a love in our relationship, but it was just kind of put on a back burner and left there for a long time. 

As older teenagers we had our disagreements, we had our fights.  There was a time when we didn’t talk.  Intentionally didn’t talk out of anger with each other, but that was all gone on that Saturday. 

The reason I’m sharing this kind of sappy stuff is because when Paul writes “we were gentle among you like a nurse caring to her own children” that struck a chord.  It underscored for me how important it is to handle each other with kid gloves, but it also pointed out the fact that we are people who will fly off the handle.  That’s part of our nature.  With some of us words spoken in anger are words that bring profound regret.  I know there are words spoken to my children that I would give anything to take back.

And yet it still comes back around to the grace of being able to say ‘I love you’ and receive that love back in return. 

I would encourage us all to tread lightly, to tread gently but TO tread; to BE in each other’s lives. Because that what it means to be family, that what it means to be community, that’s what it means to BE the body of Christ. 

That what we say and what we do expresses care and concern always, and always, love. 

Let’s pray.