Ouch! Paul is not pulling any punches. Get to work you busybodies otherwise you are going on the idleness diet and you’ll lose more than pounds, I promise you. It should be some comfort to the church of our time that the church of Paul
I thought of many possible comments when I read this text. Perhaps we all have been guilty of being mere busybodies at various times. That's what happens when religion and the church becomes mostly about us. But, perhaps off the direct point of "you don't work, you don't eat" is something I heard on a Via de Cristo weekend that I carry in my heart everyday. It's about work as being central to life's purpose. Pastor and former ELCA Bishop Bud Buchheim likes to share this prose: "I slept and dreamed that life was all joy. I awoke and found that life was duty. I acted, and behold, duty was joy."
ReplyDeleteThanks Greg. Here's a qoute from Luther's On Christian Freedom. "The works of a Christian ought to be regarded in the same light as would have been those of Adam and Eve in paradise... "The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (He) could not have needed to be justified and made righteous by keeping the garden and working in it; but, that he might not be unemployed."
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