1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 NRSV

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. 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! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. 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. 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. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

Sleepwalkers

One of the more interesting phenomenon of my previous life as a youth worker was the overnight retreat.

One mother came to us and told us that her son, who was brand new to the youth group, was a sleepwalker.

I remember our first retreat with him.

All the kids were asleep, and some of the leaders and I were up talking about what was coming up the next day.

All of a sudden, the boy shot straight up in bed, eyes opened, and exclaimed “Ain’t no shame in my game! AMEN!”

Then promptly went back to bed.

Every now and again we’d be on a retreat with him, and he’d actually get up and sleep walk around the room.

He would look like he was awake!

He might even talk a little bit as he was going.

But he wasn’t even close to aware of what was going on.

The question for us this morning is this: Are we sleepwalkers?

Exegesis

The problem

This is Paul’s very first letter.

And as is often the case, Paul is dealing with a problem in the Thessalonian church.

These are folks who had assumed when Jesus said things like “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28) , they assumed that the second coming of Jesus was just right around the corner.

They assumed it would happen in their lifetimes.

But they’ve been watching their friends, their families, and their loved ones pass away, and Jesus seemed no closer to coming back.

It is worth noting that the issue with this problem is not that Jesus was wrong, but that folks weren’t paying close enough attention to what Jesus actually said.

Matthew 24:36- But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angles of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Paul echoes that in the beginning of this passage. “You yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

The Wrong Solution

So as the Christians at Thessolonica started to stare down a difficult reality, the pain of losing their loved ones, and a healthy curiosity about what had gone wrong in their theology, they started numbing themselves.

There was a pretty heavy drinking problem in the community, as a whole bunch of folks were using alcohol to avoid facing the difficult questions of life.

In earlier chapters we read a lot about “fornication,” as the believers there had started using sex to numb themselves to what was going on around them.

Most importantly, Paul writes earlier in chapter 4 that the believers had sort of stagnated in their love for one another.

They were just kind of in a holding pattern, not really turning toward hate or anything, but rather indifference.

Paul says about six different ways that this is the wrong way to go about life.

We are not children of darkness!

Whatever darkness there is in the world, whatever problems we might be facing on a daily basis, this is not what defines us.

We as Christians should not be those who numb ourselves to the world around us by means of getting drunk, or drugs, or sex, or Facebook, or Twitter, or a Netflix binge, or Hallmark Christmas Movies, or whatever.

We should not be sleepwalkers in this world.

Key verse:

Let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

The Ways We Are Sleepwalkers

Asleep to ourselves

Have you ever caught yourself off guard?

Sometimes, I am at the grocery store, and someone will be taking up the entire isle as they stare down the three choices of milk for purchase.

I swear, some of my least Christian thoughts come to me from the milk isle!

It’s like a little dynamite fuse gets lit, and that person has exactly three seconds to make a selection and move on before I go nuts.

In reality, it’s because in my own life I tend to sleep walk through my anger.

I think the times in our lives that we most fall asleep to ourselves is when we downplay what’s really going on within us.

I meet once a month with a Spiritual Director who works through life with me and offers me some prayer advice and things like that.

She starts just about every meeting by asking “How are you doing?”

Last time we met I said “Oh, fine. You know, except for Sarah’s surgery and the election and the global pandemic and...”

And she had to kind of wave at me and say…hang on. Let’s deal with each of those!

I think somewhere along the way we were taught that if we slow down long enough to see what kind of impact the difficult parts of our lives are having on us, we’re somehow weak.

It’s not true!

We are in the middle of a global pandemic, and truth be told it has impacted nearly every aspect in our lives, up to and including what’s going on in this space today.

We are still working out the impact of the election from a few weeks ago. How are you doing with all of that? Do you feel heard? Do you not?

How is life at home? What does your family situation look like right now?

It’s actually not a weakness to think about these kinds of things. It’s waking up to ourselves.

Asleep to our neighbors

One of the best things I’ve ever done in my career is serve as a student pastor at a church plant in Homewood.

Homewood is one of the most impoverished African American communities in Pittsburgh.

I was helping with the youth group and doing a little bit of preaching.

One night while I was with the youth group, a young man of about 20 ran in to the house where we were holding our meeting, and dove past us in to the basement screaming “They’re going to shoot me they’re going to shoot me.”

Our youth pastor called the police and I took the kids upstairs, and I think I was noticeably nervous and upset.

I had never had someone threaten to shoot up the youth group meeting at my comfy church in Upper Saint Clair.

But one of the boys in the youth group looked at me and totally called me out.

You’re tripping. This is a daily occurrence for us.

One of the biggest problems I see facing our nation right now is that we are willfully and purposefully sleep walking past our neighbors.

We in white America have very little experience or understanding with our African American brothers and sisters.

This is not a partisan issue, in fact it is something the church is being called to wake up to right now.

There are news and media outlets that are tailor fit to be the echo chambers of our time, so 50% of our country is perpetually asleep to the other 50%.

Even our literal neighbors!

I’m learning that pancake is better at this than some other neighborhoods, but I just learned a few of my neighbor’s names last weekend!

But there are still a whole host of neighbors in the city of Washington that perhaps we’re asleep to.

Those who are in the City Mission.

Those who are at the college at W & J

Those who are just on the other side of our natural borders and boundaries.

While our great nation is built around personal freedoms, we need to be careful that our personal freedoms don’t put us to sleep toward those around us.

May our personal freedoms never mean that we live in our own bubble without waking up to the needs of others around us.

Asleep in our faith

A long time ago at another church, my friends and I started a contemporary worship service.

(Hint hint!)

We didn’t really have time on Sundays for the service, so we decided that it would make a good mid-week boost to have the service on Wednesday nights.

(Cough again)

When I announced it in church, someone came up to me and said “Oh, if we come to that service, does that count even if it’s on a Wednesday?”

Does that count?!

There’s a book out there called What is the least I can do and still be a Christian.

Usually I say there are no bad questions…but...

What can happen, particularly, in fact, to those who are most faithful, is that we can get set on autopilot in our faith.

We can show up in church, not because it has any kind of impact on our souls but because that’s just what we do on Sunday mornings.

We can read the Bible, mostly because that’s what’s on our phones first thing in the morning.

We can check the box called “Christian” on the survey, but really that’s just because we’re Americans and aren’t we all Christian anyway?

This is exactly the kind of sleepwalking Paul is warning the Thessalonians against here in our passage.

They are so worried about when Jesus will come back that they are sleeping right through what Jesus is already doing in their lives!

They are so grieving the loved ones in their life being gone that they are sleeping right through the celebrations of lives well lived.

They are so caught up in getting their theological house in order that they are forgetting to encourage one another and build each other up in the faith.

One of the most important, and sadly easiest to miss, truths about the Christian faith is that we worship a resurrected Jesus.

Jesus is alive and well!

Jesus is at work in our lives every day.

Jesus is, through the power of the Spirit, interacting and communicating with us every day.

Don’t fall asleep to what Jesus is up to in our world!

Waking Up

Another favorite thing to do on youth group trips is wake up sleepy kids in the morning.

They didn’t let me fall asleep at night, so it’s a tremendous joy to return the favor in the pre dawn hours.

I loved taking a bluetooth speaker and blaring the 1812 overture throughout the cabin.

(Sometimes Raffi’s “banana phone” if I’m feeling weird)

And while in real life it’s not a good idea to try to wake a sleepwalker, I think there are some pretty simple things we can do to make sure that we are not asleep, but rather as Paul encourages us to let ourselves be awake and sober minded.

Waking up to ourselves

There’s been a meme going around on Facebook.

Be like Route 79 and never stop working on yourself.

Doesn’t it feel like once they get to one end of the highway, they need to turn around and go back to the start?

I think the question that will best wake us up to ourselves is “Where do I need to grow?”

To be super clear, to ask that question is not to presume that you aren’t great just as you are.

It’s to try to find where there is room for growth and continuing to get better along the way.

These can be little tiny things that we work on within ourselves too.

Sidney Crosby (rumor has it) once spent an entire summer practicing where he put his fingers on the stick during face-offs.

What small pieces of growth do you need to work on?

Perhaps you want to read the Bible more?

Maybe you want to establish a more regular prayer life?

Maybe you have a bit of an angry streak and need to work on your patience?

Perhaps for you it’s money management and generosity.

How can you grow? How will that help you wake up to yourself?

Waking up to our neighbors

The way to wake up to our neighbors is to ask the question: Where here do people hurt?

Who in our neighborhood is struggling?

This might be a hard question to answer because we as humans tend to hide our pain and our suffering.

But if we’re aware, if we’re awake to our neighbors, we can see it without too much extra effort.

Once we’ve identified where our neighbors are hurting, we then show up with support.

It is a biblical mandate to be a force for good, and healing, and reconciliation to our neighbors.

We can have a very real, and very serious impact in our community.

Waking up to Jesus

Have you ever forgotten somebody’s name that you absolutely should know?

There are a few tips and tricks to wiggle your way out of this, and I am master of them all.

“What’s going on…man?”

You can stand around and wait until someone else says their name.

Or, I love the idea that we are all children of God, because the words “Brother” and “Sister” are on the table.

The thing is that I am so good at knowing all these tricks, that I absolutely know when someone is doing it to me.

Every now and again I’ll be sitting in a conversation with someone and realize “Hey, they don’t know my name!”

And that kind of hurts! j

The way some people use the word God, I feel like they are forgetting someone’s name.

To be sure, praying to God or giving credit to God are important aspects of our faith.

And we remember that Father, Son, and Spirit are all together God in the Holy Trinity from our confirmation classes.

But sometimes I feel like God is just a lazy stand in for “universe,” or “love,” or “power.”

A lot of sleepwalkers use a lazy name for God.

The way I think we can wake up to our faith is to allow the name of Jesus to be on our lips more.

Jesus came to earth as God in flesh to show us what God was like.

Jesus came to show us what living a godly life was all about.

Jesus died so that we can live.

Just next week we’re going to dig much more into this for Christ the King Sunday.

But for this week, what does it look like to look toward Jesus more, rather than to some idea of God?

Live in the Light

These are just a few examples of where we may be sleepwalkers.

There may be many many more.

But Paul tells us that we are to live in the light.

We do not belong to the darkness of this age.

We do not belong to division and hatred and animus.

We are not to sleepily walk our way through life.

But instead, we are to encourage one another and build each other up.

Who can we wake up to for their benefit?

Who can we encourage today?

Who can we build up?

May Christ give us the strength and grace to wake up to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to our Lord Jesus! Amen!