Across rugged country, Paul made his way south. His next stop? Thessalonica, in the Macedonian region of ancient Greece. Modern Thessaloniki, with impressive ruins dating to Greek, Roman, early Christian and Ottoman times, is the second largest city in Greece. It would have been much smaller in Paul’s day, of course, but still an important city, located on the water and along key trade routes. Paul would maintain a lasting friendship with the tiny Christian church there, writing two of his letters that we now count as books of the New Testament to them.
Read Acts 17:1-14. Paul arrived in Thessalonica and, as was his custom, made his first personal connections in the synagogue. Whatever he said touched off a riot. An aggressive mob attacked Jason, in whose house Paul was staying. Hospitality, incumbent upon all Christians always, can be risky business. Calm was restored when Paul and Silas sneaked out of the city under the cover of night.
What sparked the violence? Acts 17:5 speaks of envy: evidently a few Jews were converted, but perhaps more importantly, most converts were Gentiles, including “not a few of the leading women” – that is, many of the wealthy women! Macedonian women had a well-earned reputation for their independence – and they had financial resources, which had been flowing into the coffers of Roman empire building projects, or else into the synagogue treasury, but now, because of the overwhelming appeal of Paul’s message, were being diverted to the fledgling church.
The angry Thessalonicans unwittingly told the truth: “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!… They are acting against the decrees of Caesar, and saying there is another king, Jesus” (verses 6-7). When we hear these words, we may realize how vapid our Christianity has become, how we fit so snugly into the landscape, how entangled we are in the world so that no one today would say “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!” Doesn’t our world, with its bogus deities, tawdry values, and hollow spirit, need this turning upside down?
I’m fond of G.K. Chesterton’s wise observation about St. Francis of Assisi who used to stand on his head and look at his beloved city of Assisi – upside down. Same solid masonry walls and firm ground – but inverted the city looked “helpless, dangling, as if hanging by the thread of God’s mercy, grateful it had not been dropped.” Christianity invites us into such a vision of things. Even the pagans have the sneaking suspicion we’ve gotten it all wrong: an exasperated Callicles blurted out the truth to Socrates: “If what you say is true, then we’ve got things upside down and are everywhere doing the opposite of what we should be doing.”
Who commands our allegiance? The market? Madison Avenue? The Thessalonicans believed all good hinged on the Roman emperor, whose coins insisted citizens fawn over him as divus: “In god – our emperor! – we trust.” The arrogant, blasphemous Nero boasted, “I am the arbiter of life and death; by my lips Fortune proclaims what gift she will bestow on each person; from my utterance people gather for rejoicing; without my favor no place can prosper.” What makes us rejoice? Where is prosperity? Do we count on capitalism, or patriotism, or self-help? Hasn’t political ideology become the dominant idolatry of our age?
When the Christians claimed “There is another king, Jesus,” they weren’t muttering some pious praise song. They were courageously defying Caesar, and the settled world they’d always known. They were not saying “Jesus matters too!” We need not try to make Christianity relevant. Jesus simply is Lord; he is the “arbiter of life and death, the bestower of gifts, cause for rejoicing.” Caesar’s the rival, the ridiculous looking pretender.
The Church has no prayer until we scuttle any notions of being pleasing to the world and not making waves. We lose all authority until we discover what is peculiar and even edgy about our faith, until we are prepared to defy the logic of market, country, and politics and dare to turn the world upside down.