Thessalonica AD 49: Coming to Faith
By The Rev. David McMaster
July 1, 2007
Text: I Thessalonians 1:1-10
A well-known British author and clergyman wrote the following:
At the age of eighteen, in many ways my life could not have been better. I was halfway through my first year of college. I was having fun, and every opportunity of life seemed open to me. Christianity had no appeal for me; indeed the reverse. I felt that if I became a Christian, life would become very boring. I imagined God wanted to stop all the fun and make me do all sorts of tedious religious things.
On the other hand, as I looked at the evidence for Christianity, I became convinced it was true. I thought the answer was to delay the decision, enjoy life now, and become a Christian on my deathbed. Yet I knew I could not do that with integrity. Very reluctantly, I gave my life to Christ - but - I was surprised by the joy that Christian faith brought me.
Accounts of coming to faith derive from all stages of Christian history. One of the first recorded is found in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians. I want you to travel with me to a time long ago. Travel back in history with your mind. Travel back past the great wars, past the years of the founding of the new world, past the reformation, the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages, into the heyday of the Roman Empire.
Come across the Atlantic, past the Rock of Gibraltar, into the Mediterranean. Let us travel past Spain and Italy and, passing the southern tip of Greece, let us sail north into the Aegean Sea, up the east coast of Greece, past Athens, right up into the north west corner of the Aegean and there find Thessalonica, a city that Cassander founded and named after his wife, the half-sister of Alexander the Great in 315 BC.
Today, in AD 2007, Thessalonica is the second largest city in Greece after Athens. Back in AD 49, Thessalonica was already an important free city within the Roman Empire, the capital of the province of Macedonia. It was on the great Roman road, the Via Ignatia, and with its sheltered, natural harbour was a substantial port and trade city.
Geographically, Thessalonica was close to the centre of Hellenistic influence, but because of its function as a trade centre, it enjoyed the influences of many cultures. Among them was the Jewish culture, and the strong Jewish presence in the city had erected a synagogue.
Into this hustling, bustling town came Paul, Silas, and Timothy on Paul's so-called Second Missionary Journey. It was AD 49, give or take a year or so. As was his practice, Paul brought the gospel first to the synagogue. He preached there for three successive Sabbaths and his success among some of the Jews and many God-fearing Gentiles raised the ire of the wider Jewish society. They were angry with this incomer and the damage he was doing to their community. So they got together and encouraged others to go up against Paul and his friends.
Sometimes you have to love the phraseology of the Scripture. The RSV translates the Greek of Acts 17:5 in this way: they gathered “some wicked fellows of the rabble,” to attack Paul in the house of Jason. The KJV translates it, “Some lewd fellows of a baser sort.” (What exactly is a baser sort of lewd person?) I suppose in Australia they would be known as a bunch of yobbos; in Britain, bovver boys. I don't know what it would be in Canada - the largely American NRSV says “ruffians from the marketplace.” Anyway, the Jews who disagreed with Paul gathered some “ruffians,” attacked Jason's house where Paul had been staying and caused an uproar. Fortunately for Paul, he had already taken his leave, but Jason and others were dragged before the city magistrates and accused of harbouring a man who was proclaiming a king other than Caesar. The magistrates were alarmed, but upon payment of a security and a warning, they let Jason go.
Paul, of course, sensed that with all this trouble, it was best to leave the city. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that he went on from there to Athens, and then to a fairly lengthy stay in Corinth. It was probably from Corinth around AD 51 - some months after he had left Thessalonica - that Paul wrote the letter we know as First Thessalonians. Paul had been worried about the new converts for some time. He had sent Timothy up the coast to see how they were doing, and upon Timothy's return and his good report of their continued faith, Paul penned this letter, making it one of the earliest - perhaps the earliest - of the New Testament writings.
Paul began, as he often did in his letters, with some words of thanks. He was thankful that, in the midst of hardship and difficulties, those who had turned in faith to God and Jesus Christ had kept going, maintained their faith and stood fast. There was something significant, something special, about what had happened in Thessalonica. The response, the depth of the new-found faith, was significant. In spite of trouble, they had received the word with joy and, Paul wrote, they became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. Probably with a little hyperbole, Paul said,
In every place your faith in God has become known . . . how you turned from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
(I Thessalonians 1:8-10)
It is hard to know the effect of the gospel message when preached. There are times when it seems to fall on empty ears while at other times it bears much fruit. As Paul entered Thessalonica, it would not be a stretch to say he may have been downcast. The wounds from the beating he received in Philippi would still have been fresh. The imprisonment and persecution he had endured for the sake of the gospel would have been etched in his memory. It had not been the first time he was mistreated, and one really wonders if, in his humanness, he was down as he entered Thessalonica in AD 49. One could not really blame him if he wondered if this gospel thing would ever really be heard. But something overtook Paul in Thessalonica; something propelled him and his message into the new arena with great vigour, for we read that the word of the gospel was preached with power, with the Holy Spirit and with much conviction. Something gave Paul renewed strength, and he taught and preached with great power.
The extent of this power becomes a little greater when we understand that the Greek word for power, dunamis, is the same word from which we get our English word, dynamite. Something of the power of dynamite was in Paul's words in Thessalonica.
Think about dynamite for a moment and its explosive power. My teenage years were spent in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the years of the so-called “troubles.” On several occasions I saw the effects of explosives. Once, just after school ended, a bomb went off in a car near the house of a good friend. We heard it go off as we exited the school. Word spread fast, and many of us ran for about 10 minutes to the site of the blast. When we got there, the security forces had just arrived and we saw a horrible scene in which a car and its four occupants were strewn around the place. We learned later that it wasn't a very large bomb that went off in the car, but that is the nature of explosives. Very small amounts have great power and can cause great damage and death.
But explosive material is not always used in negative ways. It can be used in a controlled manner to break rock in a mine, to clear rock for a road, or to bring down an old building that is no longer fit for habitation. The power of a little explosive material like dynamite can be used to a positive end, and its force is really quite amazing.
It is in this manner that the word is used here in the Scriptures. Paul preached and taught in Thessalonica with dunamis; it was positively explosive. His words there were not mere human words - the effective word of God came through in his voice. The Holy Spirit was involved. The Spirit giving words of power beyond natural ability to the one who speaks for God is a theme found elsewhere in the Bible.
Paul also said that the gospel came there with great conviction. The people could see that what was presented came from those who had just suffered greatly for what they taught. They had suffered, yet they kept on talking about what they knew to be true. They were not among those who came looking for handouts, freebies or gain; they had worked among the people and earned their own keep as they presented the good news. The lives of Paul, Timothy and Silas portrayed truth and conviction that carried much weight as the message went forth.
We are told that the Thessalonian people received the word with joy, even in the midst of persecution themselves. Their faith became a great example to others, and knowledge of it spread to other communities. It was not just a matter of belief for them. The message and faith influenced how they lived as they turned away from idols to the living and true God and waited for his Son, who was raised from the dead and rescues from the wrath that is to come.
It may not be a popular thought these days, but there it is front and centre in the text we call the word of God: faith, and the conversion of the people in Thessalonica, pertain to what God was doing in Christ to deal with the problem of sin and its consequences.
In recent years, it has been fashionable to deny these things and redefine Christianity without sin and consequence. I have often wondered if that is possible. Can we really toss out sin and consequence from the biblical world view? For when we do, the world view ceases to make sense and the whole idea of salvation - the need for Christ, the need for the cross - becomes meaningless. But in spite of thoughts to the contrary, there are still great thinkers who look at the world and individual lives and see a reality in the notion of sin. The heralded Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for instance, affirmed its existence when he wrote:
The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor through classes, nor between political parties . . . but right through every human heart and through all human hearts.
The literary giant who became a Christian, C.S. Lewis, wrote that when he really began to examine his inner self with a seriously practical purpose, he found things that appalled him: “a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, and a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was Legion.”
But it is not sin that I want to focus on - sin is a reality. What is important here in Thessalonians and truly wonderful about Christianity and what God did in Christ - this thing that faith is all about - is not sin at all. It is grace. It is not evil; it is salvation. It is not guilt; it is forgiveness and eternity. And this is so important to understand.
I once heard a Roman Catholic woman's call to a radio talk show host who, as on the popular TV program, Frasier, offered on-air therapy. The woman explained that she'd had an abortion 20 years ago and was racked with guilt. Her marriage was on the rocks, and she sobbed as she pondered whether this was a punishment for her earlier sin. The therapist tried to talk to the woman, sympathizing with the reasons for the decision she made 20 years earlier. She talked about how her current problems had nothing to do with what occurred back then, and tried counselling her on marriage issues. But the woman remained quite distraught and eventually, with a few more sympathetic words from the therapist, she was moved along for the next caller. As a minister, I couldn't help but wonder if what this person really needed beyond anything else was spiritual help. I wondered if she - in her faith - needed something greater, to experience grace and forgiveness at deep levels of her life; to experience the God who can take a life in whatever condition, wipe the slate clean, offer a new start and bring about change.
We all need forgiveness at times in our lives. During a televised debate with a Christian, humanist Marghanita Laski once made an amazing confession when she opined, “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness.” Then she added, a bit pathetically, “I have no one to forgive me.”
It may be the church's fault that we get stuck in such ruts or present the gospel in such ineffective ways that the faith is perceived as boring and irrelevant. But when we really get down to the essence of the Christian faith, we find it far from boring and irrelevant. On the contrary, as C.S. Lewis wrote, it can bring the most amazing and surprising joy into one's life.
Just before Dr. Stirling left this week, he told me about someone who had been through the most horrible time over several years. As a result of an accident, this person's life had totally changed. A vibrant life became difficult, and recovery elusive. She has, however, almost made it through now. While chatting with Dr. Stirling about difficult days, she said, “If it wasn't for my faith and hope in Christ, I couldn't have made it.”
Dr. Stirling stood in my office, opened his arms and grinned as he said to me, “That's what it's all about, David, isn't it?”
We may not be by the harbour in sunny, 30 degree, Thessalonica, and this may no longer be AD 49. But faith - Christian faith - is still relevant, and still changes so many things as we journey toward eternity.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.