When April and I moved from Illinois to Michigan to begin our seminary training, we were excited to be out of the fast-paced, insulated life in the suburbs of Chicago, where we didn’t really know most of our neighbors and didn’t have many opportunities to meet people outside the circles we already walked in. In Michigan, we would be living in seminary housing, in a townhouse, with neighbors who also went to the seminary and who we were certain would be as excited to meet us as we were to meet them.

Shortly after we moved in, we met the neighbors whose townhouse shared a wall with ours. They were a young married couple with a small child. They were kind and friendly, but they informed us in that first meeting that they had lived in the community for a while.  They told us that they had a lot of friends already and weren’t really looking to make new friends because seminary was only three years. They saw that the time we all might spend together already had an expiration date, so they didn’t want to even try.

The church at Thessalonica saw their futures in much the same way. They’d heard the promise of Jesus that he was going to return, and they were convinced that his return was imminent. Because of that, many of them were neglecting their work. They were not working in the field or caring for their animals or selling goods at the market. It had become one of those situations where spending all of their energy prepping for the end rather than living for today. What does it all matter if Jesus is going to return soon?

In the TV show “Parks and Recreation,” there is a group that gathers in one of the parks to celebrate the end of the world. The group believes that a terrible alien monster named Zorp is going to come and destroy the earth. These predictions come from a book they’ve read. When they gather, they share a meal together, talk about how Zorp is going to come and melt their faces off, and even play some music. The director of the Parks department, Ron Swanson, comes and plays a flute he hand-carved. When he finishes playing it, he offers other hand-carved flutes for purchase to the group. The leader of the group comes and hands Ron a check for one of the flutes and says to him, “Wait till tomorrow to cash that.” He, of course, believes that the world will have ended by the next day, so there will be no check to cash nor anyone to cash it. When we are convinced (whether right or wrong) that the end of something is near (life, relationships, jobs) we can very easily start getting reckless.

For the Thessalonians, they began to listen to false prophets who had come in during Paul’s absence and began to spread lies. These false prophets were taking advantage of the Thessalonians. Rather than working to support themselves, they were mooching off of the people. They were proclaiming that the return of Christ was near and therefore the people did not need to worry about money. The people could freely give their money to support these prophets because they wouldn’t need any money soon, and the church at Thessalonica had been taken in by them. Paul was writing to warn them and to encourage them to distance themselves.

Ten years ago, when we bought our car, it came with a free six-month subscription to Sirius XM radio. Since we had it, we decided to try it out. When the trial period was up, we called to cancel the subscription so we wouldn’t start getting charged for it. The person I talked to asked about why I wanted to cancel. I told them it was expensive, and we didn’t feel that we could afford it at that time. They responded by offering me a subscription at a discounted cost. When I told them that I still wasn’t interested, they offered an even lower price. I cracked and agreed to the deal. Every 6 months to a year, we would go through this same process. I’d call them to cancel, they’d offer me a discount, I’d cave and renew my subscription for longer. Finally, I was tired of the process and determined to cancel the service once and for all. I called, they offered a discount, I said no, they offered a better discount, I still said no. Then they surprised me. They offered me 6 months free. I had to pay nothing to keep my subscription for 6 more months. How could I turn that down? My resolve crumbled and I renewed yet again. Then I was sucked back into the cycle. They were good at dangling that carrot just out of reach, tempting you.

I view the false prophets in a similar way. They wanted the Thessalonians to buy what they were selling. They had their own carrot that they were dangling. That carrot was eternal salvation. They convinced the Thessalonians that Jesus was returning soon, and they could help them ensure their salvation. All it would cost them was donations to the prophets to support their work. And since the end of the world was coming soon, the people didn’t need material possessions much longer, so why not share with these “men of God?” Paul heard about what was happening, and he recognized that these prophets were preaching false ideas. He knew he needed to warn them before things got even worse.

Paul begins by commanding them to distance themselves from believers living in idleness. With what we now know about the situation in Thessalonica, the “believers living in idleness” is likely a reference to those false prophets. But I want to look a minute at the word Paul uses for “idleness.” The Greek word is ataktos. Rather than idle, this word more accurately translates as unruly or disorderly. Paul commands the Thessalonian Christians to keep away from those who are walking around causing disorder to the community. That has a very different feel to me than someone who is being idle, who is simply sitting around doing nothing all day. If someone is walking around causing trouble, that seems a more obvious and pertinent problem.

This passage gets thrown around a lot to disparage the poor by calling them lazy. The quote, “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat” gets weaponized against struggling people to justify our own self-indulgences. I’ve heard this so much that when I saw that this was the passage that came up in the lectionary for me to preach on, I had an almost visceral reaction. I did not want to preach on this Scripture, mostly because I did not want to research it and find out that the way people used it to tear others down was actually how it was meant. That view seems to be in stark contrast to Jesus’ words about the poor. Eventually, I decided to tackle it anyway and was relieved to discover that Paul’s intention was never to criticize the poor with that statement. In fact, the people he was criticizing were actually those who were taking advantage of the poor to pad their own pockets.

So, what does all of this mean for us and how we live our lives? I want to suggest three things. First, be discerning in who you listen to. Especially in our world of social media and instant news, we need to be more discerning than ever in who we listen to and believe. No one is without bias and no one is immune from making mistakes. So, we, as listeners and readers must be careful not to simply believe everything we hear or read. Like in Paul’s time, there are false prophets, even within the church, that will lead us astray and take advantage of us. We must be discerning so that we know who to follow. And the greatest test for that is comparing the actions and words of the person with the actions and words of Jesus. And that leads us to our next point.

We must be discerning in who we listen to and, second, we need to follow the example of Christ and of those who are also following Christ’s example. Paul tells the Thessalonians to imitate him and his companions. They did not take from the people when they came, but they found work for themselves so they would not have to rely on the limited resources of the church. Paul says that they would have been within their right to do so, but that they cared about the Thessalonians and desired to do what was best for them. I think that is the heart of Jesus, to always be seeking the best interest of others.

We must be discerning who we listen to, we need to follow the example of Christ, and third, when we discover that there are people taking advantage of others, we need to warn them. They may not listen, but if we follow Jesus’ pattern of caring for others, then shouldn’t we at least try? I’ll be honest that this step scares me a bit, especially with the deep divide in our country right now. What we are seeing in the political realm and throughout the country with all the anger and hate from both sides, we are not immune to it in the church. That makes it really tough to warn our brothers and sisters of false prophets. If we express an opinion that someone doesn’t want to hear, we are very likely to get yelled at or mocked. But Paul says, “Do not regard them as enemies, but warn them as believers.” I think it is key that we don’t regard people as enemies, but as brothers and sisters in Christ. Social media and our political leaders have trained us to regard those who disagree with us as an enemy. And then we start treating them like less than human. But Paul says to warn them as believers. That means regarding them, not as outsiders, but as part of our family. And then warning them in love and out of deep concern.

There is a lot of false teaching in our world and in the church. We must be careful to seek the truth. We must look to Jesus as our example and our guide in living rightly. And we must care for our brothers and sisters even when they stray from what we know to be the truth of the gospel. May we turn to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to help us to live rightly in all things. And may we continually be renewed and transformed by God’s gracious love. Amen.