Paul's Poetics

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
November 6, 2005

Paul’s Poetics
Matthew 25:1-13
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

The great 19th century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning
used words the way a painter uses color:
to create images in the minds of the listener,
to give life to her poetry,
as she conveyed the depths of her emotions.
As she wrote, she stitched together otherwise ordinary words
in such a way that they traveled from ear to mind
on their way to their final destination: the heart.

Listen to these well-known lines from her
“Sonnets from the Portuguese”:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach,
when feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s most quiet need,
by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs,
and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints,
I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life!…”

Who cannot hear those words and feel the depth of her love
for her beloved Robert?

There is a great deal of poetry in the Bible,
splashes of color across a canvas,
extraordinary images that form in our minds,
built on nothing more than a string of words.
The Song of Solomon, which is rarely heard in church,
is a marvelous love poem, as passionate and emotional
as anything from the pen of
either of the two Brownings, Elizabeth or Robert.

When we think of poetic writing in the Bible,
Paul’s is not a name that jumps to mind.
He was more adept at the dry logic that is typical
of one trained in the law.
Most of his writings were designed to persuade,
to inform, to teach, to encourage, and
occasionally to chastise and discipline.
But every now and then we find a glimmer of poetry in Paul’s writings,
a few lines here and there where Paul shines.
Who has not heard his timeless, artful words of love
from his first letter to the Corinthians:
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels,
but do not have love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge, and If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing….”
(1 Cor. 13:1)

Paul might not rival the great poets of history,
but still he knew that imagery could help his listeners to understand,
help them – and us -- to comprehend.
This is what Paul was trying to do in our text from Thessalonians.
Paul was waxing poetic, trying to convey an image
to give the people of Thessalonica hope,
hope in the promise of life eternal with Jesus Christ.

The passage we heard ranks right up there
with passages from Revelation
as among the most distorted and misinterpreted in the Bible.
For the past 150 years verse 17 has been referred to by some
as the “Rapture”: “we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up in the clouds together…
to meet the Lord in the air”.
The notion of the “rapture” came from an itinerant preacher named
John Nelson Darby back in the 1860s.
The word “rapture” came from the Latin word for “caught up”.
Most theologians and clerics dismissed Darby’s interpretation,
but in the early part of the 20th century,
a small but strident group who referred to themselves as
Fundamentalists latched onto the idea
that they would taken up as the chosen among the chosen
and that the faithless would be left behind
to suffer agony too terrible even to imagine.

Over the past decade an entire industry has been built on this notion
of a select group being “raptured”, while most will be “left behind”.
The theology behind this is no stronger than Dan Brown’s
premise that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were secretly married;
but still there are many whose imaginations
have been captured by the idea.

So if Paul is not telling us about the rapture,
what is Paul doing?
He wrote to the people of Thessalonica to give them hope;
hope in a time of confusion, persecution and misunderstanding.
Paul, along with Peter and the other apostles
all believed that Jesus would come again,
as Jesus had promised.

But they believed that Jesus would return in their lifetimes.
In his first letter, for example,
Peter sounded positively apocalyptic:
“the end of all things is near” (1 Peter 4:7)
Paul sounded the same note in his letter to the Romans,
“the night is far gone, the day is near…”
(Romans 13:12)

The faithful in Thessalonica believed as Peter and Paul did.
But as time passed and as brothers and sisters in faith died
in the natural order of things,
the faithful grew increasingly concerned
about the fate of their dead brothers and sisters,
If they died before Christ’s return
did that mean that they were lost forever?

Paul used poetic imagery to allay their concerns,
to assure them that all believers would enjoy eternal life
with Jesus Christ regardless of when they might have died.
The foundation of Paul’s argument is what we talked about
a few weeks back: the resurrection of the dead
to life eternal with Jesus Christ.
He put that hope another way in those familiar words
from his letter to the Romans:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Paul wanted the Thessalonians to persevere,
to have hope, even in the face of danger, discouragement,
disappointment, disillusion, and death.
Something so deeply emotional needed emotional imagery
and so Paul the lawyer became for a moment,
Paul the poet.

We don’t have the fears and concerns
the believers in Thessalonica had,
because we take on faith the words we said
at the beginning of our service this morning:
“I believe in the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.”
Neither you nor I have anything to fear;
we will not be left behind.
We will be in God’s presence,
safely in the shadow of his wings,
as the Psalmist has written, for all eternity.
This is the promise given all of us
through the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

But that doesn’t mean we can sit back and take it easy.
No Jesus tells us to be prepared, be ready,
for that moment could come at any time.
When it will come, and of course, how it will come
is known only to God.

Paul knew that readiness was important,
so only a few lines after he gave the Thessalonians comfort
he urged them on, to work at their faith:
“you have been taught by God to love one another
and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters
throughout Macedonia.
But we urge you, beloved, to do more and more,
to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs,…”
(1 Thessalonians 4:9-11)

Simple, strong, effective words for the believers in Thessalonica,
and simple, strong, effective words for you and me.

As you come to this table this morning,
I invite you to offer a prayer of Thanksgiving,
a prayer of Thanksgiving not for the “rapture",
but for the rapturous love
you have been given in Jesus Christ.
Come to this table to be renewed and refreshed by this holy meal,
and then go out into the world to share
the rapturous love you have been given.
Go out vigilant, filled with hope, always ready,
and confident in the promise that nothing will ever,
nothing can ever separate any of us from the love
of God in Christ Jesus.
AMEN