Much of my discretionary time nowadays is spent doing the stuff I enjoy, but in busier years had to ration or even put off till work commitments reduced. So I am now often and happily to be found reading big books, or at least using and studying chunks thereof. Not always theology or biblical studies, but I do have a known weakness for biblical criticism, exegetical commentaries and much else that opens up the biblical world so that we can begin to make connections between ancient text and life as we have to live it today.
So this afternoon I spent time reading in a commentary – and in the garden with the sun so hot it felt like I was maybe even in Macedonia, where Paul around AD 50 founded a few small communities of Christian believers. F F Bruce's Commentary on Thessalonians is packed with lucid commonsense and careful historical judgement, and while 30 years old, still holds its own alongside more recent commentaries. I have and am using half a dozen commentaries on Thessalonians, each of them different, and sure, with some overlap. But there is a tone of voice, a demeanor and intellectual disposition in F F Bruce that those of us who have read him for decades recognise and appreciate for what its is, using the old phrase "believing criticism".
One example – all the commentators dig around the historical context, social background, varying accounts of life in a Greco-Roman city, and try to make sense of the text of Paul's letters, building on all this information, historical reconstruction, and at times historical surmise. But in a very fine paragraph F F Bruce allows that careful historical attention to detail to illuminate the mind and inner reaction of Paul to the ups and downs of those few days in Thessalonica. Having won converts, he was set up and chased out of town as an enemy of Caesar, a subversive presence. The Thessalonian letters were written months later because Paul was prvented from coming back – here is Bruce's paragraph about that:
He had been virtually expelled as a troublemaker from one Macedonian city after another…In each Macedonian city they visited they had established a community of believers. But the missionaries had been forced to leave these young converts abruptly, quite inadequately equipped with the instruction and encouragement they would need to enable them to stand firm in the face of determined opposition. Would their immature faith prove equal to the challenge? It did, outstandingly so, but this could not have been foreseen. The first gospel campaign in Macedonia in the light of the sequel, can be recognised as an illustrious success, but at the time when Paul was compelled to leave the province it must have been felt as a heartbreaking failure.
And there it is. Bruce the exegete of the text, with the same restrained thoughtfulness, exegetes the emotion and motivation of Paul the missionary. That is the kind of paragraph out of which sermons are legitimately born. Thus. At the times of apparent failure and rejection in living and sharing the gospel of Jesus, other things are happening that won't be evident till later, further down the road. And no, it doesn't always turn out that way – sometimes it goes on feeling we wasted our time, or nothing happened. But often it does, and what is needed by us is not results based obedience, as if numbers and visible success was our right; no what is needed is trust based obedience, and a hopefulness in God and in the work God does when we are not around!
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