Sermon: Anyone Unwilling to Work Should Not Eat

The Government has announced that a large number of training places is to be offered to young people to give them skills and trades so that they can begin to earn a useful living. This is an attempt to deal with an increasingly unsatisfactory situation in which many young people have to live on benefits because they are incapable of undertaking employment. 

The situation Paul faced in Thessalonica was not exactly the same as this. There was no lack of skills. Boys automatically learned trades from their fathers and girls learned the skills of household management from their mothers. But alarmingly, when they became Christians they tended to lay these skills aside and no longer practised them. There were two reasons for this. 

One was, that they had been taught that Jesus would return to gather them up into heaven, and they expected this to happen at any time, certainly very soon. They would not live out their natural span of life. They would be taken away. And if this was to happen so soon, why work ? Why worry about your bank balance or your future prospects ? You might as well just sit back and wait for Christ to return. 

The other reason was, that the first people to become Christians had tended to be hard working people, craftsmen, tradesmen, the backbone of their communities. The next wave, in places like Thessalonica, consisted of the poorer classes who gathered in large numbers in the down town areas of cities - escaped slaves, criminals, those who had been rejected by society. Many of these were understandably attracted to an organization like the Christian Church where the more well off members gave generously to support the poorer members. The urban poor were shamelessly sponging off their richer Christian brothers and sisters. 

This may explain the severe tone of Paul's reaction to them. Keep away from believers who are living in idleness ... Some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work ... Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.

(II Thessalonians 3.6,11). He is directing these comments particularly to the richer Christians in Thessalonica. They need to be more careful in their generosity. Relieving genuine need, supporting people who are working as hard as they can and doing their best, is one thing. Being taken for a ride and subsidizing idleness is another. 

So what is the right attitude to take as we wait for the Lord to return, as he surely will ? Paul gives us one clue, Jesus in the Gospel reading gives another. Such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their

work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. (II Thessalonians 3.12,13). Just sitting down to wait for the coming of Christ is a dangerous attitude. The devil finds work for idle hands  to do. And this is what appears to have happened to the busybodies in Thessalonica. Much better to employ the time, be it short or long, in doing what is good, helping others and making the world a better place, more fitted to receive the Lord when he comes. 

That was Paul's view. What did Jesus say ? He also counselled that sitting down to wait for the Lord's return was not a good idea. For one thing, it might not be easy to decide when that was happening. There would be false alarms.

Beware that you are not led astray ; for many will come in my name ...Do not go after them.(Luke 21.8). Also, not everyone will welcome the coming of the Lord. They will arrest you and persecute you ; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons. (Luke 21.12).  

There will not be much opportunity for sitting down and waiting here. Christ's people will be standing up in the dock, giving their testimony to the one who is to come. So they need to have their minds actively attuned to the mind of Jesus so that they will receive words and a wisdom that none of their opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. (cf.Luke 21.15). 

So there we have the two lines that we are advised to take if we wish to be properly prepared for the coming of the Lord, whether that happens to come sooner or later. Keep working, says Paul. Don't take advantage of others but work conscientiously to help yourselves and them. Keep praying, says Jesus, so that you may be able to play a constructive part in the transformation of the world and guide others through the uncertain and turbulent times to come. 

These two go together. Work without prayer becomes drudgery. Socrates said, Beware the barrenness of a busy life. We are called not to be busy in a barren way but to be active in an imaginative way, always listening for the word of Jesus and looking forward to his coming again.