Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

At the end of our Office Epistle today, Saint Paul writes something incredibly and profoundly wonderful. Speaking to the people of the church in Thessalonika, with whom Paul had a very good relationship and who clearly had received the Gospel message with a passionate intensity that had not abated, Paul writes, “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? Yes, you are our glory and joy!”

Before we meditate briefly on those last verses, it’s probably a good idea to address the elephant in the room: Paul says some things previously in our reading that have been used to fund anti-semitism. That Paul himself identified as a religiously observant Pharisee, standing firmly within the faith and traditions of Judaism, whose message to Gentile believers was that in Christ they could be grafted onto the vine of Israel, and who very clearly did NOT believe that God had at any time set aside God’s covenant with Israel…none of that excuses what is clearly, here, a sinful scapegoating ploy to curry favor with the Thessalonians to show that he’s on their side over against their own persecutors from within their own culture. That Paul himself would likely be scandalized by the uses to which his rhetoric has been (and continues to be) put also doesn’t let him off the hook, nor does it let us off the hook if we’re merely scandalized on Paul’s behalf. Given the sad history of human sinfulness that is Christendom (which we can understand as the history of the collusion of the Church with unholy social, cultural and political powers to the detriment of the Gospel), it’s incumbent upon us not only to be vigilant when it comes to scapegoating, but especially vigilant when it comes to anti-semitism. We are never called to make peace with oppression.

And one of the reasons why (ironically given what Paul’s written here) we’re never called to make peace with oppression is because the other, the stranger, the neighbor, even folks we’d consider our enemies for whatever reason: who and what we are is intimately in them, and not so much in us. It’s a strange and wonderful feature of our lives as human beings in community (so strange and wonderful that its author could only be Grace) that our wellbeing, our glory, our joy, our hope doesn’t subsist in us but in others and in our relationships with them. This is part of what Jesus means when he tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves—we’re not being asked to love our neighbor in the same way that we love ourselves (God knows our self-love, whether in its excesses or absences, is rarely a source of virtue). Rather, we’re to see ourselves as arising in relation to and with our neighbors: who we are is utterly dependent on our neighbors’ good, on the community’s good. We’re asked to love our neighbors as ourselves because there’s no me without you, because who we are is discovered in each other. Which is to say: discovered in love.

Beloved friend, you are my glory and my joy! And not mine only, I’m sure of it! Whatever you may be facing today, whatever hardships, whatever elations, wonders or gladnesses; whether you’re facing trouble, lament, ecstasy, happiness, fear or bliss; whether you think well or poorly of yourself, I hope you will remember today that you are someone’s glory, and that what you mean is joy. And you are called, by virtue of the mystery of the Church of which we’re a part, you are called to share in and to be the glory of God, the splendor of Love, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, in whom is our glory and joy and hope and crown. What a Mystery of Grace we’ve been given to ponder this day!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+