By Nanette Sawyer
Epistle Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
For Sunday, Nov 10, 2013: Year C—Lectionary 32
One of the reasons a text like this one is so off-putting is because of how truth has been defined by certain Christians who claim total self-righteousness for themselves. If some are perishing because of the wicked deception of Satan and because they refuse to love truth (2:9-10)…then what is truth? 
What if truth is not a list of propositions about the nature of Jesus, but truth is something Jesus taught us, something like generosity and justice? What if the truth is what we are called to live? What if we could live lives that were true to Jesus and what he taught?
Then the claim in this letter would go something like this: The people who don’t believe in generosity and justice, the ones who extend inequality and enact injustice, they will themselves, in time, experience cruelty and injustice rebounding on them. In fact, they are perishing already.
This type of reading more believably suggests a Just God, rather than an unpredictably wrathful God.
What delusion?
What if the “falseness” that people were deluded into believing was something like this: people who suffer bring their suffering on themselves; people who are poor, are poor because they are lazy; people who are afflicted are being taught a lesson. What other false beliefs do people use to justify afflicting other human beings?
In essence, each of these is a delusion that injustice is just, that oppression is innocent. Those afflicting believe what is false. They refuse to love the truth and they refuse to be saved. They take pleasure in unrighteousness, in creating injustice, in accruing wealth and comfort while their actions increase the suffering of others.
What if these are the ones who are perishing, the ones who refuse to love the true way of generosity and justice and so they are condemned?
Apocalypse is About Righting Wrongs
The people of the church being addressed by this letter are being afflicted and persecuted (1:4) and they are being assured that one day the tables will turn: “For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you” (1:6). In fact, it’s the people who are afflicting others who are the ones who don’t know God and they aren’t obeying the gospel of Jesus (1:7). They are disregarding the truth that we are all connected and that their injustice will ultimately, eventually, afflict them too. The God of justice will see to it.
One day, they will be consumed or destroyed by the breath of Jesus, when Jesus comes back (2:8). But clearly Jesus is not here now (2:2), because we see this kind of refusal to love the truth going on all around us.
The final prayer in this letter is a prayer that “we may be rescued from wicked and evil people” (3:2) and an assurance that God “will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” (3:3).
Love Your Enemies?
How should we treat these wicked and evil people? The author of this letter seems to want to comfort people by assuring them that Jesus will come “in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance” on the ones guilty of afflicting them. This is a very different Jesus from the one who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:44-45).
The Hardest Question
It makes me wonder who authorized this letter and it brings me to the hardest question I find: Can there be justice without vengeance?
Nanette Sawyer is the founding pastor of Grace Commons (formerly known as Wicker Park Grace), an emerging faith community that began in an art gallery on the west side of Chicago. She currently serves both Grace Commons and St. James Presbyterian Church as solo pastor. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she has blogged at The Christian Century’s lectionary blog, the Emergent Village Blog at Patheos, and at nanettesawyer.com. She has a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and an MDiv from McCormick Theological Studies, where she has also taught as adjunct faculty. She is the author of Hospitality: The Sacred Art.
