Sermon Notes — October 12, 2025
“Steadfastness and Faith”
2 Thessalonians 1:2-4, 11-12
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 12, 2025
One of my goals upon arriving at Bethlehem was to sit down with every Sunday School class for an informal visit. I am pleased to say that, with the exception of The Path 2.0, I have completed that Sunday School tour, and it was a wonderful experience of hospitality and fellowship. I didn’t show up to these visits with an agenda, but I did ask each class to tell me its history. And I heard some great stories. Lots of you remembered who started your class and those classes with a history of mobility remembered all the different places in the church where you met – even in the hallway! Then I asked each individual to share two things. First, how you ended up at Bethlehem; and second, why you stay at Bethlehem. A lot of you were born into this congregation, but those who weren’t born into the church most often reported ending up at Bethlehem because someone invited you to come.
If that’s you – if you’re here because someone invited you to come to church here – would you raise your hand?
Thank you. I think that’s important for us to recognize just how many people are here today because someone thought to invite them.
Paul begins his second letter to the church at Thessaloniki with these words that Jim read for us a moment ago. He says,
We must always give thanks for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing.
Paul’s words remind those of us sitting here today that we owe a debt of gratitude not only to the people who invited us to be part of this church, but to everyone whose faithfulness and love made our own faith possible.
Whose faithfulness and love made your own faith possible? I think of my maternal grandmother and grandfather. My earliest memories of my grandmother were of sitting in her lap while she rocked me and sang, “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.” My grandfather was a teaser and I was a sensitive kid, so I didn’t appreciate his company until I was a bit older, but when I visited my grandparents each summer my grandpa would let me ride along in his old retirement truck while he rescued and redistributed food for a ministry called Kentucky Harvest.
I want you to take thirty seconds to turn to someone next to you and tell them the name of someone you are thankful for whose faithfulness and love made your own faith possible.
(Pause)
Will you pray with me and for me?
I want you to grab a Bible, a real, physical, Bible. If you brought one, grab it. If you didn’t, take one out of the pew rack in front of you. Now turn to the Book of Romans in the New Testament. Everything from the Book of Romans to the end of the Bible (with the exception of the Book of Revelation) every book from Romans to the end is a letter. The fancy church name for those letters is epistles. The Apostle Paul wrote some of them, Peter wrote some of them, John wrote some of them, but no matter who wrote the letter, they all pose the same challenge.
Before we get to that, here’s a question: Have you ever listened to someone else’s phone conversation? Have you ever tried to figure out who they’re talking to and what they’re talking about? You know, you’re in one room and they’re in another room and you can only hear one half of the conversation and so you do your best sleuthing to figure out who’s on the other end of the line and what they’re talking about?
Well, that’s the challenge: The letters that we have in our book are only one half of a two-way conversation. Sometimes it’s pretty easy to pick up on the gist of the conversation, even when we have half of it. Take 1 Corinthians, for example. Paul has heard either by letter or by someone telling him face to face that some members of the church at Corinth are behaving badly. So Paul writes his first letter to them to address the issues. Then something else happens and Paul writes to them again. But we only know Paul’s side of the story.
Other issues that come up in other letters are harder to figure out. For example, Paul opens this second letter to the Thessalonians by saying:
We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.
And we think, Tell us more, Paul! Spill the tea.
But he doesn’t, and much of the letter is too vague for scholars to pinpoint what exactly the persecutions and affiliations are, and why the church is enduring them. In cases like this, we just have to be okay with not knowing the juicy details.
What we do know, though, is that they’re going through it. Despite having a tight-knit community, their life together as disciples of Jesus Christ is wearing them down. But even in the middle of these afflictions, Paul points out that their faith is growing and their love for each other is increasing.
Their faith is growing and their love is increasing.
Let’s imagine faith and love as both spatial and directional. Their faithfulness – their trust in God – is flourishing – that’s how the New Living Translation puts it – their faithfulness is flourishing and that’s inward. God is building a resolve within them so that they will have faith, not in their own ability to endure their trials, but in God’s ability to sustain them even when they are suffering.
Their love – everyone for everyone – is increasing – and that’s outward. In the midst of crisis we often see communities do one of two things. They either come closer together – their love for each other grows stronger – or they turn on each other. Paul commends them for loving each other with greater commitment and compassion and loyalty even when they are in crisis.
Paul is all too aware that the church could allow these trials – whatever they are – to destroy them. Instead they are putting more and more trust in God. They’re not depending on God to fix their problems, but to live within them.
After Paul tells the church that he gives thanks for them and that he brags about them to other churches, Paul tells them that he prays for them.
We always pray for you, he says, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every resolve and work of faith, so that the name of Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.
Paul reminds the Thessalonians that their lives are no longer their own. Their lives – and their life together – belongs to God in Christ. And it is not their own power that sustains them, but the power of God working in them. At the same time, he encourages them to keep on keeping on. He tells them not to give up. God has started good work in them, and God will bring that good work to completion. And, Paul says, the result of continuing that good work is that you will become more and more clear about God’s call on your life and how to live it out.
Mariam Kammell of Regent College reminds us that
Faith has an outcome – faith has an outcome – our faithful trust in Christ has a result. And that result is based in our identity in God. She says we believe we are in God and Christ, we begin to act like God and Christ, to the glory of God and Christ.
The faith of the church of Thessaloniki is being put to the test by afflictions and persecutions. Even so, the church maintains its faithful trust in God. And God is glorified through their faithfulness and steadfastness and love.
So maybe you’re asking yourself right now, so what? What does the introduction to a letter that Paul may or may not have written to a church in Greece 2000 years ago have to do with us?
Well, I’m glad you asked.
It’s hard for me to believe, but I have already been at Bethlehem United Methodist Church for one quarter of one year. When I got the call that I was projected to be your pastor, I had some idea of what to expect but not much. I knew who some of your pastors had been, and I knew that your reputation within the conference was a good one. And while I rightly expected that this would begin a new chapter in my family’s life, there were some plot points that I didn’t anticipate. And to be very honest I wasn’t sure what this chapter was going to feel like without my dad as a main character.
What I have found in this church is God’s grace lived out in real time. I doubt that any of us have ever faced real persecution or affliction for our faith, at least not like the early church experienced it. But like the church at Thessaloniki, you allow your identity in Christ to guide you, and you have a deep awareness that God has not called you into existence for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the sake of others. That includes offering mercy and compassion to our neighbors right now, but it also includes looking to those who will come after you, and that’s what gives a church life. Preparing it for those who will sit in these pews 20, 50, 100 years from now.
Our website has a Frequently Asked Questions section, and the first question listed is
What Makes Bethlehem Unique?
Part of the answer to that question reads:
We are direct beneficiaries of the selfless giving and vision of our predecessors at BUMC. We are blessed with a committed and gifted congregation, devoted staff members, abundant ministries, excellent preschool program, modern family life facility and the same commitment of those original trustees of 1848 . . . a commitment to the future.
Be honest, how many of you knew that was written on your website?
I haven’t been in ministry for an incredibly long time, but I’ve been around the block enough time to know that this is a unique perspective. Your stated commitment to the future of this congregation isn’t common. It is a sign of your faithful trust in God, and your hope that God will fulfill by his power every resolve and work of faith. It is a sign of your faith that God is still working in and through you, and that you trust that you are becoming more and more like God and Christ, not for your own sake but the sake of the world.
When I look at this congregation I see the same steadfast faith and love that Paul celebrated in the church at Thessaloniki. I see it in the way you have welcomed my family and me into your life. I see it in the way you surround others with care. I hear it in conversations about how to keep this congregation’s commitment to the future.
And this is the encouragement that I want to share with you:
Your faithful trust in God and your steadfastness in faith and your love for each other are going to be part of someone else’s story. At the beginning of the sermon I asked you to share with each other the name of someone whose faithfulness and love made your own faith possible. Someday, someone is going to be sitting where you are, and some pastor is going to ask that question, and the name that they will share will be your name.
And that is true not just for each individual person in here, but for the collective you as well. Ya’ll’s faithful trust in God and ya’ll’s steadfastness in faith and ya’ll’s love for each other are going to be part of someone else’s story. Whether that someone is born into this congregation or you invite them or they just show up here one morning looking for a place of welcome, shelter, and unconditional love. I started to put together some statistics that would motivate us to get out and invite people to join us here in this congregation, but I don’t need to do that. You already know people who need a community like this one. And you know just how much their lives can be changed…because your lives have been changed by your encounters with the love of God in this place and through these people. And I have confidence because my encounters with the love of God through you have been acts of God’s grace in my life.
This church is going to be the reason that someone else encounters the love of God in Christ. This church is going to be the reason that someone else believes that they are a child of God. This church is going to be the reason that someone has hope in the Lord. This church is going to continue embodying the grace of God that has been part of this congregation’s story since 1848.
And God will be glorified.
As we finish our service today and move into the day and the week, I encourage you to pray that God will bring to your mind and to your heart the name of someone who needs to be invited to this community of grace and mercy and compassion. And that God will guide you to offer them the love of this congregation.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.