What You Pay Attention to Matters

Otherwise Occupied

Paying attention is hard. Trust me, I know. As difficult a time as you have each Sunday paying attention all the way through the 25 or so minutes I’m up here, you need to know that I have equally as hard a time paying attention to myself. Its probably unsurprising to you to know that I’ve had a difficult time paying attention my entire life. There are just so many other things that are vying for my attention. And sometimes, paying attention to something else instead of what’s supposed to have your attention isn’t a big deal. For me in school, I could safely drift off in pretty much every history class I ever sat in. I rarely ran across something I hadn’t studied and learned already. So, here we go, another class on the cause of WW1, know that, I’m floating off out the window to daydream land. But sometimes, failing to pay attention can be downright painful, in more ways that one.

It was my sixth grade year, PE class- miserably scheduled directly after lunch. Yep- fill the kids up on greasy curly fries and chicken strips and cut them loose to run, jump, throw, and play- thats a recipe for success. And the worst was timed-mile day. Once a six weeks we would run two laps of the school property, roughly 1 mile total, and our improvement over our previous time was what decided our grade. This particular time I was running, my attention was elsewhere. While I would love to tell you that I my attention was on doing my best, running my fastest, pushing through the pain- or at the very least on where my feet were landing so I didn’t trip and fall on my face- absolutely none of that would be true because, you see, awkward, nerdy, sixth grade me was running with a girl- A GIRL! It was both my dream and my nightmare. She had asked if I would run with her, I’m sure because misery loves company, and starry-eyed me probably responded with words that resembled yes, and so I found myself running around the school with a girl who was intentionally running with me- This is probably the only time I’ve ever been “happy” while running. And so while I should have been focused on doing my best and running my fastest, beating my previous time I was in fact instead paying attention to her, focusing on not making a fool of myself, and nervous that I would fail- clearly a lost cause from the beginning. And yes, of course, everything goes horribly wrong, but I’ll come back to that point at the end.

Noticing the Example

We pick up with where we were in 1 Thessalonians last time, and a few review things on the front end to help us best understand what we’re reading. This Thessalonian Church is a church founded by Paul and it faces significant opposition from the traditionally-minded Jews - those who don’t accept Jesus as Messiah - in its community. They oppose Paul and the local church early and often, eventually dragging some of the local members in front of the local Roman official and accusing the church itself of disloyalty to the emperor- one charge certain to catch the attention of the Roman officials. And so as Paul is chased out of town, he leaves behind a small group of believers - both Jews and non-Jewish Greeks- who are being directly opposed by both Traditional Jews and Roman officials. And so dedicated were the Traditional Jews to snuffing out the Jesus movement in their region that they chase Paul and his associates on to Berea and continue their opposition in that community, rousing a mob and pushing Paul out of the region and on to Athens- and the fact that Paul runs that far - to me - is somewhat informative of how stiff and powerful the local resistance is.

That’s a further distance in a matter of days, than what he covered from Philippi to Berea in months. Paul changes his travel direction and gets out of the region due to the opposition he faced. This opposition doesn’t stop just because Paul is gone, and in the early part of this letter, Paul repeatedly commends the perseverance of the Thessalonian believers through the suffering brought onto them by locals opposed to the way of Jesus. And the idea that Paul keeps using to describe their faithfulness is “Imitation” - that they are imitators of Paul who is an imitator of Jesus. And we’ve talked about why imitation matters, and what it has looked like for them to be imitators, but today I want to highlight the human action that makes imitation possible- giving their attention to that which is worth imitating. The fact of the matter is, there is a lot fighting for the attention of these early Thessalonian believers. They have the people who have been a part of their lives all along who may not be receptive to this new way of believing that they’ve adopted. They have the opposition that is being heaped on them by both Jewish and Roman community leaders who do not wish to see this movement succeed. Then there are all the worries of daily life that don’t have to be written down because we all know them; they are always pulling at our attention- illnesses, death of those close to us, strained relationships with friends or family members, financial struggles, material concerns- all of which is amplified by the rejection they are experiencing. We have to ask, “How do these believers manage to hold on?” They’re all young believers. Their teacher has left. They’re clearly not wanted around by the majority. The fact that there is a church for Paul to write to a few years later is itself a testament to the power of the good news of Jesus.

We will back up and reuse last week’s text for context, but our study will focus on .

Common English Bible Chapter 2

As you yourselves know, brothers and sisters, our visit with you wasn’t a waste of time. 2 On the contrary, we had the courage through God to speak God’s good news in spite of a lot of opposition, although we had already suffered and were publicly insulted in Philippi, as you know. 3 Our appeal isn’t based on false information, the wrong motives, or deception. 4 Rather, we have been examined and approved by God to be trusted with the good news, and that’s exactly how we speak. We aren’t trying to please people, but we are trying to please God, who continues to examine our hearts. 5 As you know, we never used flattery, and God is our witness that we didn’t have greedy motives. 6 We didn’t ask for special treatment from people—not from you or from others—7 although we could have thrown our weight around as Christ’s apostles. Instead, we were gentle with you like a nursing mother caring for her own children. 8 We were glad to share not only God’s good news with you but also our very lives because we cared for you so much. 9 You remember, brothers and sisters, our efforts and hard work. We preached God’s good news to you, while we worked night and day so we wouldn’t be a burden on any of you. 10 You and God are witnesses of how holy, just, and blameless we were toward you believers. 11 Likewise, you know how we treated each of you like a father treats his own children. 12 We appealed to you, encouraged you, and pleaded with you to live lives worthy of the God who is calling you into his own kingdom and glory.

Common English Bible Chapter 2

13 We also thank God constantly for this: when you accepted God’s word that you heard from us, you welcomed it for what it truly is. Instead of accepting it as a human message, you accepted it as God’s message, and it continues to work in you who are believers.

I’m not going to fully unpack this week’s text. Instead, I want to point something out. With everything going on in the lives of these Thessalonian believers, with all the challenges they face, with the opposition forced on them by those who would see them disappear, they have remained faithful in a powerful way. If the question is how this is possible, Paul offers up an answer. Paul is certain that the reason they’ve stuck with it and remained faithful is because they embodied, lived out, the gospel- and they knew how to do that because they were paying attention to how Paul and his fellow missionaries lived. They weren’t distracted by everything going on. They weren’t discouraged to the point of giving up by the opposition. They weren’t so scared they shelved their faith. They didn’t allow their own situation distract them from what was worth focusing on. They gave the gospel and service for that gospel all their attention, and by doing so they imitated the very Messiah they were following. Paul points to his own actions while he was among them, himself an imitator of Christ, and states that they are doing exactly what he did. He describes them as “knowing”, “remembering”, “witnessing”, and “accepting.” In other words- THEY WERE PAYING ATTENTION! For everything that could have distracted them and carried them off, their primary focus on living out the good news of Jesus has allowed them to flourish in spite of the other things trying to take away their focus. And I really just want to focus on the three verses at the end of that section. In vs 11-12, Paul describes his time there as spent “appealing, encouraging, and pleading” with them to lead a life worthy of God. And then commends them for recognizing that the spoken and lived gospel that they had witnessed and heard from Paul and his associates is not simply a human message but a Holy Call- from God and not humans- and that it is that gospel at work in them. All of this- ALL OF THIS- is only possible because they dedicated themselves firstly and only to the spoken and lived gospel of Jesus, overcoming the constant temptation to focus on the other things that cried out for their attention.

God Pays Attention to Us

So 6th-grade me is running around the school, completely distracted by the girl I’m running with. And while I’d like to say that it was a struggle between the thing I should have been paying attention to and the thing that I was paying attention to, that’d be a lie. There was no challenge. She won outright, and I’m just doing my best to impress her - mostly accomplished by trying not to embarrass myself. And now comes the part of the story where I failed. You see, because all my attention was there, I wasn’t paying attention to other things on the path- people, steps, cracks, holes, or, and this is the one that jumped up and got me- sign poles. So focused was I on other stuff that I missed the 8 foot metal pole that held the no parking sign that flanked the sidewalk on the east side of the school. I may have missed seeing it, but it did not miss me, and I was suddenly brought back to the reality I should have been in all along.

That’s not just a funny story about my clumsy junior high self. There’s an important lesson to be learned about what we give our attention to. And yet the solution for us is there in the text too. The whole reason that believers have the chance to give their focus to God through the good news of Jesus is because God first gave attention to us, God’s creation, and sent an example worth imitating in Jesus. And that story of Jesus is full of examples of Jesus sacrificing what the culture would dictate as important in favor of what is important to his mission. We as people are here because God has been doing that for us, God’s own creation, from the beginning. The bible is a constant story of God hearing, God seeing, God noticing, God paying attention to people for God’s own purposes. We are not accidents, we are not secondary thoughts, we are not simply left to our own devices- we are loved, cherished, cared about children of God who God has repeatedly show are worthy of God’s attention simply because we are Gods. The Thessalonians understood that, and it completely reshaped their lives. What about us?