NOTES for Th1 2:13-20

The main theme of today's reading is the essence of apostolic tradition. First the Word of God is proclaimed and must be heard. Once heard, it enters the heart and is accepted by the believer. The process of accepting and “digesting” the Word allows each person to realize that it was not someone capable of speaking beautifully and convincingly, but God Himself, who acted through His messenger, through the one He chose to preach. Once again, the apostle draws attention to the fact that the Savior was given to everyone without exception. The Gospel must be preached to every person, whether Jew or Gentile. And if believers try to hinder the preaching, they become accomplices of Satan rather than of the crucified and risen Jesus.

Speaking of the conflict that arose, on the one hand, between the Church and the Synagogue, and on the other between the Church and the pagans, Paul considers that, despite outward differences, the essence of the matter in both cases is the same, so that he even likens them to each other. At first glance such a comparison of two outwardly very different situations looks somewhat artificial, for the Palestinian situation was indeed unique in many respects, even compared with the situation that took shape in the communities of the Jewish diaspora. But the apostle himself points to the common element uniting these two very different cases: both the Jews of Palestine who opposed the apostolic preaching and the pagans who persecuted newly converted Christians from their own environment opposed the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world.

As we can see, opposition united both pagans and such deeply religious people as the Jews of Palestine. This is all the more remarkable if one remembers that practically nothing connected the two groups, so that in ordinary life they had almost no points of contact, while reasons and occasions for conflict were, on the contrary, more than enough. But opposition to the Kingdom, as can be seen, united two groups of people completely unlike each other. This could become possible only because the opposition was not political, not ideological, and not even religious, but spiritual. The manifestation of the Kingdom in the world equally threatened both the traditional pagan and the traditional religious order of life. The pagan order was simply destroyed by the Kingdom entering the world: it proved incompatible with its norms and laws and aimed to change them completely so that the world might be transfigured and become part of the Kingdom, submitting to its laws.

But religion as such could enter the Kingdom only by ceasing to be what it is: it had to be freed from external ceremonial and ritual forms, and most importantly, religious people had to renounce the absolutizing of their own religiosity. In practice this meant the destruction of religious consciousness in the form characteristic of the overwhelming majority of religious people, regardless of what religion they profess. As we can see, in both cases the issue is a choice between the Kingdom and the familiar order of things that neither a pagan nor a religious person wants to renounce. It is a choice that determines each person's path and his fate in eternity.

The rules of conduct for Christians whom the Lord obligated to preach the Gospel are repeated by the apostle Paul more than once or twice. And here in today's reading we have a concise statement of the foundation of life for everyone. First, witness is not instead of ordinary life, but together with ordinary life, with daily duties, with care for daily bread. We cannot justify our inaction by saying that our life is too complicated. Second, holy, righteous, blameless conduct. Easier to say than to do. But before us stands a person with an obviously difficult character, with his own problems and illnesses that plainly burden and torment him. And he tells us that our conduct before God must be blameless.

But most strongly of all, Paul defines the center of his preaching: "we asked and persuaded and implored you to walk worthily of God, who called you into His Kingdom and glory." It is unbearably painful for a modern person to accept this phrase. Because it is most convenient to imagine God as something abstract, mechanical, many-faced, and cruel. Such a god is easier; he is controllable. But with one phrase we find ourselves before the face of God, in whom there is no darkness; before the face of the Son of Man, the apostle Paul implores us to be worthy of the One who has called us into His wondrous Light. Readiness to bear witness to the Light, to the Glory, and to the Kingdom is based precisely on the fact that all of this is not an abstraction. We are speaking about the properties and qualities of a real Person.