Thessalonica has a problem with timing. The first letter had to reassure them that believers who died before the master's coming had not missed it (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). The second letter has the opposite problem: someone has told them the day has already arrived, and they believed it.
What happens
Paul asks them, "concerning the coming of our master Jesus Messiah and our being gathered together to him," not to be "quickly shaken out of your mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or by a word or by a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the master has come." Something must happen first, he says — and today's reading breaks off at exactly the point where he would say what (2 Thessalonians 2:3a), skipping to the conclusion: "He called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our master Jesus Messiah. So then, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, whether by word or by our letter." It ends in blessing: "may he encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word."
What to notice
Saleuthēnai apo tou noos — "shaken from the mind." Saleuō is what an earthquake does to a building and what a storm does to a ship at anchor; the noun salos is the heaving of the sea. Paul is not describing a wrong opinion. He is describing something torn from its moorings. And notice the sources he fears: "a spirit, a word, or a letter seeming to be from us." A forged letter, circulating under his name. That anxiety is why this same letter ends by drawing attention to his handwriting — "the greeting in my own hand, which is the sign in every letter of mine" (2 Thessalonians 3:17), tomorrow's closing verse. A community that could be persuaded the end had come could be persuaded of it by a document, and Paul knows it.
One of the enthronement psalms — the group (Psalms 93, 96–99) built around the cry Yahweh malakh, "Yahweh reigns." A version appears in 1 Chronicles 16 as the song sung when the ark came to Jerusalem. It is a coronation announcement addressed to the whole earth, including its non-human parts.
The selected verses
Psalm 96:10."Say among the nations: Yahweh reigns. The world is firmly established, it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with fairness." Psalm 96:11–12."Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound. Let the plains be joyful and all that is in them; then let all the trees of the forest cry out for joy." Psalm 96:13."They shall exult before Yahweh, for he comes, for he comes to rule the earth. He shall rule the world with justice and the peoples with his faithfulness."
What to notice
The verb in Psalm 96:10 — "the world is established, it shall not be moved,"bal timmot — is the exact counterweight to the first reading. Paul's word for what must not happen to their minds is a shaking verb; the psalm's word for what will not happen to the world is a shaking verb. And Psalm 96:13 repeats ki va, ki va — "for he comes, for he comes" — twice, in a perfect tense that in Hebrew poetry can mark an event so certain it may be spoken of as already done. The psalm is not anxious about the timing. The trees are already applauding.
The middle of the seven woes of Matthew 23, spoken in the temple in the last week. The chapter is a set piece: Jesus is not sparring with an interlocutor here, he is delivering a sustained indictment, and the lectionary is walking through it a few verses per day.
What happens
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: judgment and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides! Straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, that the outside also may become clean."
What to notice
Three things, each more specific than the general charge of hypocrisy usually taken from the passage. First, the clause almost nobody quotes:"these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." Jesus does not abolish the tithe of garden herbs — he ranks it. The problem is a scale error, not a category error. Second, the barytera tou nomou, the weightier matters — krisis, eleos, pistis: judgment, mercy, faithfulness. That is Micah 6:8 in Greek dress (mishpat, hesed, and walking humbly), which means Jesus is quoting the prophets' own ranking of the law back at professional readers of the law. Third, the gnat and the camel work in Aramaic as a pun English cannot carry: qalma (gnat, louse) against gamla (camel). Straining wine through cloth to remove insects was ordinary practice, and both creatures are unclean — the gnat about the smallest unclean thing that could fall into a cup, the camel the largest that could be named. The joke is not that they are fussy. It is that the eye which catches the smallest impurity in the drink does not catch the animal going down the throat.
How They Fit Together
Two errors of proportion, and a psalm that is not worried
Two readings about what to do with a day that has not arrived, and a psalm that is not worried about it.
Getting the small things exactly right while the large ones go unweighed
The Thessalonian error and the Pharisaic error look unrelated until you notice they are both errors of proportion. The Thessalonians have taken one item — the timing of the end — and let it swallow everything, to the point where (as tomorrow's reading shows) some of them have stopped working. The scribes have taken a set of small items — the tithe of herbs from the kitchen garden — and let them stand in for the whole. In each case a real thing has been sized wrong, and in each case the correction is not to discard it but to put it back in scale. Paul does not say the day is unimportant; he says stand firm and get on with good work and word. Jesus does not say the mint does not count; he says count the mint and weigh the judgment.
Then Psalm 96 does something neither reading does: it changes the subject from when to who. "For he comes, for he comes to rule the earth." No date, no signs, no sequence — just the fact, said twice, and an instruction to the sea and the fields and the trees to make noise about it. The psalm is the day's answer to both anxieties. You cannot strain a gnat out of a forest that is applauding.
A Question to Sit With
The gnat and the camel are funny until I notice that the straining is real work. Someone is holding a cloth over a cup, paying attention, taking trouble — and taking it in exactly the place where trouble is cheapest. I know where I do this. There is some small thing I keep meticulously, partly because keeping it is possible, and something larger nearby I have not weighed in a long time because weighing it would change something. What is the mint in my life, and what is the camel going down while I strain?