The Second Sunday Before Advent Year C

The Second Sunday Before Advent

Malachi 4.1–2a
2 Thessalonians 3.6–13
Luke 21.5–19

Warnings against idleness seem irrelevant in our culture. Those who have work seem to have more and more of it; those who don’t seem stuck in a trap. No doubt there are shades of grey, and some manage to play the system; but few today are idle by choice.

Paul’s warnings, though, shed an interesting light on his teaching. The idleness against which he warns wasn’t caused by his eschatological preaching (the world’s going to end, so why work?). It was the result of his teaching that Christians should live as brothers and sisters in a world where siblings formed a single socio-economic unit. Part of the meaning of agape was the very practical (and politically subversive) one of mutual support. Now he addresses the flip side of the coin: each must contribute to the best of their ability, not simply sponge off the others. It is ironic that today these warnings might apply to welfare scroungers rather than to anything that goes on within the Church...