Prequel to 1 Thessalonians 2 and the (very) lost art of 'mimesis'

Don't miss the sequel to this blog HERE

Find the AUDIO version of it HERE

I've been reading Amos recently and Amos predicts a great deal of hardship for a host of very badly behaving Semitic peoples spiralling in geographically (on the map), as he moves from one ancient kingdom to the next, as his first few chapters unfold to proclaim judgement on the people of God for being JUST the same as the nations around them and NOT being distinctive in their lifestyles ... God will visit the compromised people of God in judgement.

Perhaps the most shudderingly awful of the judgements Amos proclaims lies in Amos 8:11 with perhaps the crescendo of the book's judgements against idolatrous Israel:

"‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord,

    ‘when I will send a famine through the land –

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord."

So now you're possibly thinking 'Thanks for the encouragement ... tell us nice things, don't you know there's a pandemic going on and here we are being good enough to listen to this podcast when you won't open church?!'

Hold it right there that is coming!

You see, we've all all grown very used to the Evangelical Orthodoxy that 'hearing the Words of the Lord' means a 40 minute monologue in a church building at least once, possibly twice, with congregationally sung psalms, hymns and songs every Lord's day.

The believers that Paul, Silas and Timothy left behind without Biblical ministry at Thessalonica in Acts17 to protect Jason and the others from the authorities probably hadn't had time to get entrenched views about what hearing the words of the Lord looked like, apart from the small number of Jewish believers there they probably hadn't had the chance to get settled in any particular cultural expectation of what hearing God's word looked like ... but they were certainly left bereft of regular Gospel, Bible ministry by their Apostolic team, and were left bereft of hearing the words of God from their mouths until Timothy slipped back quietly and briefly months later.

And this was all done FOR THEIR SAFETY ... as Jason and the others were bound over by the city authorities to put a stop to the missionary activity of Paul and his crew.

What we have come to view as Biblical ministry was removed from them.

But look at what Paul and his team emphasised in this context ...

1 Thessalonians 1:6 "You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7 And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia – your faith in God has become known everywhere."

That’s much MORE than the Apostolic team had been managing to achieve while they were at Thessalonica … however crushed, defeated and deserted the Thessalonians might have been feeling.

Now in spite of the way God usually works, that wasn’t how God was working at that time, so Paul is NOT emphasising congregational preaching in this context, he is emphasising the power in proclamation of what he'd been such a big part of in rabbinical Judaism.

He emphasises the 'modelling' ministry of the Word of the Lord.

The commentators frankly struggle to explain what 1 Thessalonians 2 is all about, so notice what happens:

Paul just keeps referring to things that build the relationship he and the team had with them.

It is CONSCIOUSLY relationship-building stuff.

The chapter just binds the hearts of the church to its planting team.

Why?

Where this chapter is taking the Thessalonians is where rabbinical Judaism went to once its' visible, congregational, proclamational patterns of ministry were lost to the persecution that followed the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 BC and the Exile in Babylonia and then Persia, until the regular institutions were re-ordered by Ezra and Nehemiah centuries later.

Paul was HIMSELF the product of rabbinical Judaism, and Paul knew EXACTLY what the Lord had done to teach His first disciples OUT of their established world-view and meta-narrative into a RADICALLY different Christian one as He’d walked them around Galilee WITH Him, learning from His Word and example, those three years before the Lord’s crucifixion.

You can see why, providentially, the Lord might take a group of people down this route. When you’ve a whole mindset to change, a view of the world to overturn and replace with a different one, perhaps the Word learned in depth and in daily practice by mimicking the 'rabbi' is sometimes likely to be God’s preferred method to achieve life transformation. 

When what's verbalised looks too far 'outside the box', showing me as much as telling me could be what is needed.

Now, of course, losing the longed-for public ministry was traumatic ...

Psalm 137 famously records this sort of anguish:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,

yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth,

saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?"

Those sentiments are so close to the days we are living in through lockdown, and 1 Thessalonians 2 has hugely important things to teach us for our context.

It's all about learning and teaching Christ through the proclamation that takes place through imitative relationship.

And it’s all about that being an authentic Apostolic pattern for teaching and ministering the Gospel and the Word in disrupted times … the Word sometimes has to be communicated in this way as lived example is explained to disciples rather than congregations.

Paul expresses the behavioural model they had embodied, and emphasises the points of that living 'sermon' alongside Bible teaching in personal relationships, while we wait for the world to change to allow big meetings again.

Why is he doing that?

Just as not everybody is listening in 'the sermon', so people ignore the lived sermon by becoming critical of a preacher's conduct and personality. They may need correction about their perception, and exhortation to prize the main points of the exemplified message.

But mainly he is doing it here to draw in those who will listen to themselves be reinforced in their bonding to and relationship with the Apostles and whoever else is living for the Lord along His way.

That’s a LONG introduction to another post ... but if you navigate your way HERE we can skip along the face of this passage in 1 Thessalonians 2 to see how Paul and co. set about this perceived purpose.