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| My Aunt Lolly's Puzzle Box |
November 16, 2014
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
1Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters,
you do not need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves
know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3When
they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon
them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4But
you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5for
you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night
or of darkness. 6So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but
let us keep awake and be sober; 7for those who sleep sleep at night,
and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to
the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for
a helmet the hope of salvation. 9For God has destined us not for
wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who
died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 11Therefore
encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
Sermon: “Children of the Light”
Today’s
sermon is going to be a bit of a show-and-tell.
I want to show you this box (and, well, tell you about it).
This
belonged to my great-aunt Lolly and, at first glance, it looks like a
decorative block of wood. There is no
perceivable opening or closing, but if you look closer, beneath all of the
intricate woodwork, you begin to notice faint seam lines. But you can’t just push along those lines and
force the box open. It opens the way it wants to, in a very particular order.
First,
one side is pushed upwards, just a little, revealing that the box is hollow
inside (and making you very curious as to what you might find). You meticulously work your way around this
intricate box, and finally, if you’ve followed the path in the right way,
pushing here and pulling there gently, it opens.
I wish I
could tell you that, when I finally deciphered this puzzle box of my aunt
Lolly’s, I found hidden within a treasure map or a priceless heirloom. I didn’t.
All I did find within this old forgotten box was the instructions that
came with it, telling you that this “Personal Secret Box” should not be
dropped, forced open or (inexplicably) eaten.
But, I
found I wasn’t all that let down. You
see, I opened the box! And that in and
of itself was a success.
Our
passage this morning from 1 Thessalonians reminds me an awful lot of my Aunt
Lolly’s secret box. You see, I pushed
against “the day of the Lord coming like a thief in the night.” I wrestled with this heavy imagery of a
pregnant woman. I pulled back and forth
on these themes of light and darkness, soberness and drunkenness. I manipulated the words about the holy outfit
described here: breastplace of faith and love and helmet of the hope of
salvation. And try as I might, nothing
happened. I couldn’t open this box of
scripture and reveal anything to myself, never mind to you.
But then
I noticed something, like one might notice the faint lines indicating that what
looks solid and impenetrable is not, in fact, that way. This passage is like a secret box, holding
something precious inside. Let me
explain.
Every
now and then, the writers of scripture had a habit of emphasizing something
really significant. They did this
through a certain writing structure, which was called a chiasm. A chiasm basically puts things in a
repetitive order of bookends, leading the hearer or reader to a central truth,
like a treasure hidden within a box. And
just as, after many failed attempts, I finally discovered the order in which I
had to open this box, this text opened up to me through a chaism.
So grab
a Bible and watch this screen. (*See outline below.) I’m going
to show you what this looks like. 1
Thessalonians 5:1-11: We start from the outsides of this passage and work our
way inwards to the central verse. Look
at verses 1 and 2, and 9 and 10. The
beginning and end of this passage. Do
you see any patterns, any lines of similarity?
They’re both talking about the Day of the Lord, a time destined by God
for salvation, of which we know neither the day or hour. So these bookends tell us that the Day of the
Lord is an unknown day, but that we do know that it will be a day of
salvation.
Moving
towards the center of the text, let’s look at the next verses: verse 3, and
verses 6 through 8. These are a bit more
tricky to see a parallel in, but it’s there.
You see, both pieces are talking about contrasting realities. Verse 3 talks about the contrast between
peace or security and destruction. There
are contrasting realities in verses 6 through 8 as well: wakefulness and sleep,
soberness and drunkenness. Do you see the
way this text is unraveling a bit, guiding us to its center?
Next up
in our chiasm, further in towards the middle of this text, gets more obvious,
using nearly identical language. Verse 4
and the second half of verse 5 both say we are not in, or of, darkness. And finally, after following all of the
repetitive clues in the right order, we get to the heart of this text, like a
treasure in a complicated box. It’s the
first part of verse 5. Can someone read
it for me?
For you are all children of light and children of
the day.
___________________________________________________________
a: verses 1-2 Day of the Lord: Unknown Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you
do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves
know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
b: verse 3 Contrasting Realities: Peace/Destruction
When they say, “There is
peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor
pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape!
c: verse 4 Not in Darkness: But you, beloved,
are not in darkness, for that
day to surprise you like a thief;
d: verse 5a Children of the Light/Day:
for you are all children of light and children of the day;
c’:
verse 5b Not of Darkness: we are not of the night or of darkness.
b’: verses 6-8 Contrasting Realities:
Wakefulness/Sleep & Sober/Drunk:
So then let us not fall
asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those
who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But
since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of
faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.
a’: verses 9-10
Day of the Lord: Salvation: For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us,
so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him (together).
11Therefore encourage one another
and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
That, friends, is a chiasm. Pretty neat, isn’t it? Piece by piece, we’ve unlocked this text,
revealing the truth Paul most wanted to convey: y’all are children of light and
children of the day. Why didn’t he just
say that, then? Why the chiastic puzzle
for us to solve to get there?
As you might suspect, I have a theory. I think we human beings have an awfully hard
time seeing ourselves as children of the light.
When given the choice, we will tend toward the darker side of
things. Just watch the news and you’ll
see this. Light is not lucrative or
sellable, but darkness, oh, much can be done with that. A focus on darkness is one many people take –
including many people of faith, and it leads to fear, radical self-preservation
and hatred of anything seen as a threat.
Like children afraid of what might lurk in the
darkness, we human beings often prefer the false comfort of hiding under a
blanket to the certain comfort found in bravely getting out of the bed and
turning on the light.
And so, if we are just told to be children of the light, we can quickly dismiss the idea
as something that sounds nice, but naïve.
There’s too much darkness – people out to get us, disconnected families,
divisive politics. We want our faith to
be a blanket to cover our heads and keep all of that darkness at bay.
But, the thing about sitting with a blanket over
your head is, it doesn’t work for very long.
Eventually, it gets awfully stuffy under there, and you begin to have a
hard time breathing. Your lungs long for
cool, fresh air even more than your frightened heart longs for safety and,
before you even realize what you’re doing, you whip that security blanket off
and breathe deeply of new air. This text
is that breath of fresh air after we’ve let the fear of darkness have its way
with us.
Paul coaxes us deeper into understanding, and
finally, when he thinks we’re ready, he pulls off that heavy blanket we’ve kept
our faith hidden under and proclaims: “You all are children of the light and
children of the day!”
Stop cowering in the darkness, you were made for
so much more. Stop keeping your faith
contained under a stuffy blanket of security and breathe in the cool, fresh air
of the Spirit. Because a day is coming –
none of us know when it is – and we had better be ready. But, unlike what you’ve heard, this day is
not a day of darkness. It’s a day of
Light! Of the Light of the World coming
to set things right once and for all.
It’s the day of salvation!
There’s enough darkness in this world without you
adding to it. Focus on what really
matters – get to the heart of the puzzle box of your own life and claim your
true identity. You are not a defender of
God. You are not a weapon against the
darkness. You are child of the
light. And light doesn’t hate. It doesn’t defend or defeat.
Light shines.
It illumines all of the dark and scary places of this world and our
lives, until what looked like a big scary monster is only a frightened person
caught up in their own darkness. It
fills the cracks and uneven places until we see ourselves clearly and are not
afraid of what we see anymore.
Once Paul has thoughtfully led us to the heart of
this text, and the heart of our identity as children of light, he tells us why
it matters in verse 11. “Therefore
encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.”
Life often feels like a puzzle box we simply
can’t figure out. We want to care for
the world, but with so much darkness, we don’t know how to start. We want to love our families, but when they
are far away or near, but distant, we don’t know how. We want our faith to mean something, but if
it doesn’t mean an impenetrable truth to defend against outsiders, we don’t
know what it does mean. We push this
way, and pull that way, and are even tempted to just smash this box to finally
get to what’s inside, but nothing works.
We can’t solve the puzzle.
But then we see someone who is feeling as lost or
weary as we are. And we tell them we’re
here for them, or we just bring them some food or an unexpected smile. And the seams start appearing.
Then, we have the opportunity to return darkness
to someone who’s made our lives a little more shadowed, and instead, we choose
to recognize their own fearful darkness beneath such actions. And one panel of this box starts to budge
under our uncertain fingers.
Then, we decide that there is an awful lot we
cannot control, but we can make the choice to shine compassion into the lives
of the people God puts in our path. We
can encourage instead of tear down. We
can come out from under the blanket and have the courage to turn on the light
and shine.
And suddenly we realize that the puzzle box of
our life has been open all along, that the dark, closed appearance of it has
been an illusion. And we realize that
the truth buried within is a truth also written on the stars and golden leaves,
in the eyes of a stranger, in fellowship around a table, in the offering of a
hand and the smile of a grandmother: you are a child of the light!
And then, despite ourselves, we can’t help but shine. Oh, do we shine. Amen.
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