Welcome to Monday’s Podcast.  My name is Tom Finnemore and I’m part of the team at STC and I’ll pick up the baton from Mick as we continue working through Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica.

Our reading today is 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-12 but we’ll focus on verses 1-2:

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.

REFLECTION:

My son has a wonderful phrase which he uses often ‘I’m just getting a bit interested…’  he will often use to explain why he hasn’t done something.  We’ve now adopted in our family parlance because what he really means is that he’s got distracted.  Somehow saying you’re interested in something sounds a bit more positive than to admit you’re distracted.

So now if we’re distracted – we say – we’re too interested.

There are many things that can get us Christians a bit too interested – or, being blunt – distracted.

One such thing is when will the world end.  It’s a great question, and to be fair, it would be nice to have a heads up, wouldn’t it?  And in some ways, that question seems pretty apt in this current cultural moment.

Now, if you believe some people on social media, we are in the grip of what people refer to the ‘End times’ with all the world events going on right now.   Let’s be honest: it is a weird season – a global pandemic, a return to racial hostilities in the USA which is spilling out across the world, a strange political landscape with a controversial, to say the least, leader of the free world.  They are actually pretty scary times.  It’s the socially distant conversations I’ve had with our neighbours or random people I’ve met walking the dog, and they often say in jest “It makes you think, is this the end?”

And it strikes me that when things are personally challenging – and for many people this season is; for example I spoke ot a good friend a couple of weeks ago who’s single and she hadn’t really had any meaningful face-to-face contacts with people for months.  That’s tough.  Or the grandparents who can’t meet their little newborn grandchildren – that’s tough.  Or people who have lost their jobs, and the list goes on.  You see, when we’re personally challenged, under internal pressure, and the external world is uncertain, then we are really susceptible to fear.

Someone told me that FEAR spells out this: False Evidence Appearing Real.  Massive internal pressure combined with external uncertainty equals fear.  And this is precisely what’s happened to the Thessalonian Christians.Their personal persecution, the horrendous stuff they’re going through, has worn them down.  And for some reason, we don’t know why, they have begun to believe that they are living through the end times, that Jesus’s return is imminent.  And it has totally blindsided them, they’ve lost their peace, they’ve lost their way.

And perhaps you feel a bit like that today.  The terrible death toll in the UK from the Covid-19 virus, or the horrendous events in the USA – it all just feels a bit too much.  What Paul tells the Thessalonians applies as much to us today as it does to them.

Firstly, there are lots of theories around – just Google it or type into YouTube ‘the end times’ – and if we’re in it.  And honestly, to use my son’s words, we can get “a bit too interested” in things that the Bible simply doesn’t make that clear, despite what people may claim on YouTube!  That’s not to say it isn’t right to be curious, but end time conspiracy theories can leave people fearful, afraid and confused,