Reputation Points

I Thessalonians 1:1-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

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Do you enjoy playing games? In particular, do you enjoy playing role-playing games? Perhaps you grew up when DnD campaigns were happening in everyone's basement or waited till you could play captivating visual adventures on the computer or other gaming console. A mechanic I've always found interesting in these types of games is reputation. In one of my favorite games, Skyrim V, your reputation affects various aspects of the game, sometimes permanently impacting the rest of your gameplay. Today in this reading from Paul's letter to the church in Thessalonica, we are asked to consider our reputation as people who profess to follow the life and love we have received from Jesus Christ. Will our reputation that precedes us be sinister in nature? Or will we be known as imitators of God?

What is your reputation? Perhaps you haven't thought much about what others think of you, or maybe you don't care. While I don't believe we should let the opinion of others completely control our lives, we do need to care about our reputation because when we choose to follow, Christ our lives are no longer centered on us. Though if we were honest, we always knew that our lives were more than an expression of our sphere of influence. It's hard to care about other people; it's never been second nature, except to the handful of living saints who dedicate their whole selves to the wellbeing of others. Yet we are called to be people who care, people who live our lives that bear witness to the life-saving, life-giving gift that Christ gave to all people. 

If we were to look back through the annals of history, we would discover that we, as North American Christians, have not always had a reputation of being imitators of Christ. One only has to look back to find Christian missionaries who forcefully took Native American children away from their parents and put them in boarding schools. And for every Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Robert Graetz, who stood in support of the Civil Rights Movement, there was a Rev. Henry Lyon Jr., who preached from their pulpits that a White church was no place for Black Americans. Who could say what caused this chasm to emerge in American Christianity? Perhaps it was inevitable, due to our pursuit of self-happiness or self-fulfillment at any cost, or maybe it's something else. It could be due to our inherent aversion to doing the work of chipping away the hardened parts of our hearts. 

Reputations are fragile, and like relationships, they can break if we aren't careful. The believers in Thessalonica laid the groundwork for Jesus' word by sacrificing their time, materials, and even their lives. And countless others throughout time and space have paid the ultimate price to make sure that people would know Christ as the savior of the world, the Prince of Peace. It's a legacy, an ongoing story of trust, that has been passed down to us today. We find that within our care, this living narrative continues, and we add or subtract to the work of those who dedicated themselves to fulfilling the life of the gospel. The church in Thessalonica knew this, and we must acknowledge this responsibility and claim it as our own if we are to reconstruct and undo the copious amounts of pains others have inflicted in the name of Christ. 

I find myself thinking of the countless saints who walk this world, who exude more Christ-like love and are greater imitators of Christ than those of us who claim to follow Jesus. I think about the family of Matthew Shepard, for example. Matthew Shepard was only a student when brutal thugs beat him to death in 1998 for being gay. Under the law of the State of Wyoming, Matthew Shepard's killers could have received the death penalty but instead were issued life sentences. Why were Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson spared the death penalty? Because Matthew's parents asked that they receive life terms, "To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy..." Living in the Spirit of truth, justice, and compassion is one of the hardest things we will ever do in life.  Yet embodying the Holy Spirit in such a manner will speak more to others than anything we could say. 

Far too often, we find ourselves making excuses or even seeking them out so that we can avoid the calling God has placed on our lives. Maybe we don't want to do the work, or perhaps following Jesus demands more than we thought. Either way, we find that at this moment, we cannot separate our lives from the complexities of our earthly and heavenly relations. In the gaps that have formed, in the broken places, Jesus steps in to reveal what must happen to bring about reconciliation and healing. Being imitators of God does not mean that we are God. And relationships will be fractured or pushed to the limit, but instead of making excuses or trying to justify ourselves, what if we tried to live into the Spirit of God and own our mistakes in that spirit? A spirit that opens up new pathways and stretches our understanding of what it looks like to live in a community as a neighbor, a friend, and as a disciple of Jesus Christ. 

Unfortunately, we cannot reset our reputation by rolling a natural twenty or reloading a saved game file. Our words and actions will leave a lasting impact that will shape years of how those around us think of us. So the question that I posed at the beginning needs to be answered, "Will our reputation that precedes us be sinister in nature? Or will we be known as imitators of God?" God calls us to be imitators of the heart and mind of Christ. God calls us to be bearers of this image, because as Christians, Christ-followers, there is something expected of us! When we chose to embrace Christ, we said we would commit ourselves to the ministry of reconciliation, justice, and love of Christ. That means our reputation reflections not only ourselves but God as well. So let us go and be the living embodiment of what it means to bear the reputation of Christ to the world. Amen.