Let Them Eat Cake Dr. D. William McIvor October 23, 2016 Newport Presbyterian Church 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13 (NRSV) Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. ONE: Is the text about how we treat the poor? I think the Christians in Thessalonica were not happy to read what Paul wrote: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Really, Paul? Did you really want to say that? Or, more to the point today, do I really want to preach that? What a downer. But maybe we can find something good for us here and I ll try to get at it by asking two questions. First, is this text about how we treat the poor? The answer in a word No! But the verses in this text are often cited as a prescription for how we should treat the poor. It s their fault that they re poor and if they can t make it on their own, too bad. Hence, my title Let Them Eat Cake. That s the very first thought I had when I started working on this sermon. That expression is attributed to the French queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) whose husband was Louis XVI. Historians are positive she didn t actually say it, but the story is told that during a famine when the queen learned that the peasants had no bread, she said, Let them eat cake. The French word translated as cake is brioche. Brioche was made from dough enriched with butter and eggs, ingredients even more scarce and costly during a famine than what was required for regular bread dough. So the phrase came to symbolize the contempt that wealthy people think the one-tenth of one-percenters have for poor people. Centuries before French queens, could the apostle Paul have expressed that kind of sentiment? Was he moralistically judging the poor for being poor? No, and there are two reasons why we know that. First, Paul was not talking about people in general or the poor in general. He was writing about people in the church. Paul had founded the Christian community in Thessalonica (Acts 17.1-5) and he was upset by what certain members in that church were now doing. Yet as angry Page 1 of 5
Page 2 of 5 as he was, he didn t want even those people to be treated with disrespect. Later in the letter he wrote, Do not regard them as enemies, but warn them as believers (3.15), that is, as sisters and brothers in Christ. In other words, challenge them to live up to what they say they believe. Paul was concerned about how we treat each other in the church, not about how we treat the poor. Well, he was also concerned about that too, but that s not what this text is about. There is a second reason we know that Paul was not talking about the poor. It has to do with what the people were actually doing. In verse 6 Paul said those people were not living according to the tradition Paul had taught them. In verse 11 he says, We hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. In the original Greek language, Paul makes a play on words. He says that some people were not ergazomenous, that is, not working, but they were periergazomenous, that is, working around. They weren t doing their fair share. They weren t fully contributing to the community of faith. Paul was not concerned about people s laziness in general. He was concerned about their faithfulness to the tradition they had been taught. What does Paul mean by tradition? He means the practices of a Christian community, the disciplines by which we live out what we believe. Our practices express the kind of people we are and, in a church, our practices embody our way of life. 1 In Thessalonica some Christians were not living up to what it meant to belong to a community of Christian faith. They were holding the church back from what God wanted it to be. So to answer my first question, is the text about how we treat the poor? No, not at all, but it is very much about how we treat each other and how we work together as the church of Jesus Christ. TWO: How does this text apply to us? So my second question this morning is simply, how does this text apply to us today, here at Newport Presbyterian Church? We begin to find an answer in the last verse: Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. I think another English translation actually puts it better: Do not grow weary of doing good. 2 That s the challenge this text puts in front of us: Do not grow weary of doing good. This church does a lot of good, my friends. I ve known that for many years and now have experienced it directly in the little ways I ve tried to help these past months. Yes, you do a lot of good, but it s easy to grow weary. So how can we not hold back now from becoming even more of the church Jesus wants for us? Thinking about those Thessalonians can help us answer this question. 1 [Practices are] those cooperative human activities through which we, as individuals and communities, grow and develop in moral character and substance. They have built up over time and, through experience and testing, have developed patterns of reciprocal expectations among participants. They are ways of doing things together in which and through which human life is given direction, meaning, and significance, and through which our very capacities to do good things well are increased. And because they are shared, patterned, and ongoing, they can be taught. We teach one another how to participate in them. We can pass them on from one generation to the next. Craig Dykstra, Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1999) 69-70. 2 2 Thess. 3.13: But as for you, brothers, do not grow weary of doing good. (English Standard Version)
Page 3 of 5 Paul wrote that some of them were living in idleness and not living according to the traditions they were taught. Some of them were not living up to the faithful practices of Christian life and they were holding the church back. So are we living up to the faithful Christian practices that we ve been taught? Those practices can be expressed in many ways, but in the churches I ve served I have always described them as five basic things. I like five because I can remember them on one hand. Worship regularly. Does that mean every Sunday? No, it means regularly. Read your Bible. This is not to become a Bible scholar, but God speaks through the Bible. If we re not reading in it with some regularity, we will not hear all that God wants to say to us. Pray. How often should we pray? The Bible says pray without ceasing. 3 Paul actually wrote than in his first letter to the Thessalonians. That s not to be taken literally but seriously. We need to pray because God always wants to hear from us and always listens and when we pray with regularity we will also hear God speak to us. Give money. I ll come back to this in a minute. Serve. Always be doing something for Jesus Christ and there are many ways to do that from teaching Sunday school to serving as a deacon or elder or helping at the fall cleanup day, which was yesterday, or dozens of ways including working for justice for all. So there you are five basic practices: worship regularly, read your Bible, pray, give money, and always be doing something for Jesus. Are we all of us living up to these traditions? If we are not, then just like the Thessalonians, we are holding this church back from all that God wants it to be. In what he wrote to the Thessalonians, Paul got right up in the face of some of those who were holding the church back. I m not going to do that. I have tried throughout my ministry to never preach guilt. Preaching guilt is counterproductive. It just makes us feel bad and doesn t lead to a positive outcome. So there s no guilt here and no judgment here at all. I won t (and I can t) judge you, but I do want to encourage and challenge you because we all need to step up to faithful practice: worship regularly, read the Bible, pray, always be doing something for Jesus. And, yes, the one practice I said I d come back to give money. My favorite author, Anne Lamott, belongs to St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, California. In one of her books she said she went to church one Sunday in a cranky mood because it was stewardship time and she hates the shakedown sermons. She added that she had to go to church because she was teaching Sunday school that Sunday. 4 It s interesting that she didn t like hearing about one faithful practice giving money but she went to church because she was doing another faithful practice doing something for Jesus by teaching Sunday school. Well, I don t know if you ll think of this as the shakedown sermon, but it is the 3 1 Thessalonians 5.17. 4 I went to church crankily because it is stewardship month, and I hate the shakedown sermons, but I had to go because I was teaching Sunday school. Anne Lamott and Sam Lamott, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son s First Son (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012) 64.
Page 4 of 5 stewardship season. Our theme is Abundant Generosity and it s time to talk about money. Here s the question about the faithful practice of giving money. How much should we give? Two weeks ago I said I would tell you how much to give. The Bible tells us with one word tithe. A tithe means giving ten percent. Some folks in this church probably do tithe and the Bible would say that all of us can tithe and should tithe. And some of you hearing me say that will think that my brain has floated off into some cloud cuckoo land. Maybe it has but these words don t come from a cloud cuckoo land. They come from the Bible. What the Bible says about tithing has to be put in the Bible s context. And what is that? That everything we have comes from God. Everything belongs to God, but I know we don t think this way. We think that what we have is earned from our own hard work. Which is true in and of itself but it s not the complete picture. Lots of things have happened to make our hard work possible. Most of us were born into families that provided opportunities and education. We have natural abilities and talents. We live in a prosperous country. All of these things and so many others are from God and here s the deal. God says, I give it all to you life and everything else. I give it all and you keep ninety percent and give me ten percent. That s a deal that all of us would take in a heartbeat. So why don t we all tithe? Well, because it s a hard discipline. It s also something we have to learn. It has to be taught and we have to practice it over time. I think we also don t tithe because we just don t believe it s possible. Which may be true if we are giving two percent or two and a half percent which is about what Presbyterians average across the country. Jumping from two percent or less to ten percent is for most people too big a jump. That s why next Sunday after the Harvest Celebration between services you will get your pledge packets. Inside is a pledge or estimate of giving card and a little brochure. The brochure has a wonderful message from Janet, some information about the church and its financial needs, and on the back page is a little chart. Spend a few minutes with that chart and it will help you figure out how to go from two percent to three percent or five percent to six or from wherever you are now to a little higher level. If we all make those proportional kinds of increases, we will be stepping up in the faithful practice of giving money, and before long tithing or something approximating tithing will not seem as impossible as some of us think it is. I know this is true because it has been true in my own life. So I ll close the shakedown sermon now by telling you about how I feel about giving. The dollars Merrie and I give away to do the work of the Lord are the best dollars we spend and we are blessed to give. I know for a fact in my own life and in the lives of many in the four congregations I have served, that when we give sacrificially, when we step up and give a little more than we think we can give, there is blessing. It s like what Marie Antoinette is said to have said actually being true. There s cake! There s not just ordinary bleached white bread in God s blessing. There s cake. There s brioche and it s made with all the eggs and butter we could ever want! There is blessing when we give because the Lord will not be in anyone s debt. Sometimes the blessing is material and sometimes spiritual and most often it is both. God always blesses when we give and when we are abundantly generous, greater giving brings greater blessings.
Page 5 of 5 It s exactly what our stewardship theme means: Abundant Generosity brings blessing for ourselves, for others, and for our church. My friends, let us step up in giving and in all the ways of faithful Christian practice. Let us not grow weary of doing good. For doing good is the way of joy, the way of wisdom and peace and love, and the way of blessing. Thanks be to God.