Our Imagined Ends — 16 November 2025

Our Imagined Ends

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2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Now we command you, siblings, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every sibling living irresponsibly and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Siblings, do not be weary in doing what is right.

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I can do all things through…a Bible verse taken completely out of context. I mean, I do believe that Christ strengthens me to love boldly, to believe courageously and actively in all circumstances as that verse from Philippians describes, but I am very suspicious of stand-alone Bible verses that justify my every decision. “Eat, drink, and be merry” is certainly in the Bible, though it is worth noting that what follows those words is generally tragic. “You fool,” Jesus says in a parable where a wealthy landowner said it, “Don’t you know tonight your life is being demanded of you?” Bible verses out of context. And today, a real humdinger: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” Our Bible Study folks recalled that everyone from John Smith in colonial Jamestown to Vladimir Lenin and the 1936 Constitution of the U.S.S.R. quote this passage. It’s the proverbial Protestant work ethic. Today it is invoked in debates about SNAP benefits and welfare work requirements. It has become one of those Bible verses we use to bludgeon one another into fulfilling our demands. In its context, though, the verse asks us about whether the kind of lives we’re living reflect the kind of eternity we’re hoping for.

The two letters to the Thessalonians are as different as night and day. Both address a common issue, but from radically different points of view. In the first letter, the Thessalonians have written to Paul about their concerns that Jesus is supposed to be returning any day now, but members of their community have died. What does this mean for them? Paul encourages them to grieve…to grieve with hope; to expect Jesus’ return with faith; to trust that those who have died will rise to new life. The coming day of the Lord will be a surprise, he says, and we wait with joy for it. 

But in the second letter, things are different. The community has come under persecution. And the author (this letter is so different from the first one, and the threat of persecution is so palpable, that scholars are not sure that Paul actually wrote it) is looking at all this persecution and they want to prepare the community for further hardships. So the letter, on the whole, is harsh, but in this weirdly loving way: the author wants them to be safe. So, look, the letter says: those who persecute the community will be subject to God’s wrath and judgement. And, in the meantime, the community should live soberly and with vigilance. Not because this is most moralway to live, but in the hopes that this might be the most safe way to live. In effect, the author is saying, “Don’t be so joyful in your expectation that you are reckless—that you’re irresponsible.” 

Each letter has a different expectation for the coming day of the Lord because of what they’re experiencing—is it joyful or judgmental? Hopeful or harsh? And how should we live as a result, as we await that day?

And this remains an important question. In 2025, there are those who believe that the end of time will be a rapture, an apocalypse, the Armageddon. They believe that the good will be whisked away to far away heaven to watch in vindication as the evil and the earth itself are reduced to ash. They point to verse after verse promising God’s wrath, neglecting the context, where it is the oppressed, the marginalized who are vindicated. It is their reassurance that says something like, “Don’t worry, your enemies will get what it is coming to them.” But if this is what we believe the end is like, how do we live? Do we bother to care for the earth? Are we called to overturn systems of oppression? To advocate for the marginalized? To forgive one another?

But what if we believe that the end of time is God’s grace reconciling us to God and one another? What if we believe that the end of time looks like what Mary describes in her song at the beginning of Luke’s gospel: lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, coming to our aid. What if God does what Zachariah sang: saving us from enmity and hatred? What if the end is the tender mercy of God, breaking like the dawn upon us? What if the end is like the angels’ song at the birth of Jesus, proclaiming glory not to the powers and principalities, but to God who offers peace and goodwill among people? What if it is like Jesus’s first sermon, which proclaimed good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed? How then do we live?

And while Second Thessalonians seems to be the doom and gloom kind of end, it is still much more about the loving and reconciling grace of God. The grace of God names death and gives life. The grace of God condemns violence and brings peace. The grace of God is law and gospel. The grace of God hates hatred and loves love. The grace of God says this here, this is not God, and this here, this is not God’s intention, and then the grace of God begins the work of setting things to right. When these texts speak of judgment, it is a reminder that God has the work of judgement and retribution handled. Look at Malachi: God’s got the smiting part in hand: our work is to rise up, to heal, to leap with joy. The end may be at hand, but so is God’s grace. Don’t be reckless, sure, but don’t be overcome by fear and hatred either.

And so this letter is a warning against cheap grace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.” We don’t owe nothing to nobody. That’s cheap grace. He says, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Cheap grace is having great responsibility for ourselves, our neighbors, our community and living irresponsibly instead. 

Costly grace, Bonehoeffer says, “is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ…It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of [the] Son…and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

That’s what’s at stake here, Beloved: that we do not take God’s grace for granted. Second Thessalonians, for all its dire warnings, says, God is setting this world to right: act like it. Act like you’ve been set free. Act like you’ve got good news to share. Act like the hungry are filled—should be filled—fill them! Act like you’ve been reconciled to your enemies—reconcile with them! These are the times in which we live, let us spend them in service to our neighbor, to our community, to one another imitating, always, the love of God. Amen.