1 Thessalonians is the earliest letter of Paul the Apostle –of which we are aware! – and so the earliest written document of the Church. Last Sunday’s second reading began with the short salutation from Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the Church in Thessalonica, ending with the simple grace (1:1). The reading then continued with the opening of Paul’s Thanksgiving, in which he spoke of his Thanks and Prayers for the Thessalonians, offered especially when he considered “their work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3). These three “theological virtues” will appear elsewhere in this letter (5:8) and in Paul’s letters in general (1 Corinthians 13:13; cf. Romans 5:1-5; Galatians 5:5-6), to say nothing of the developing Christian tradition, but at the beginning of Thessalonians they emerge, I would argue, from Paul’s experiences in their midst and what he has heard from his co-workers. That is, the theological virtues are not theoretical, but concrete and grounded in the life of the Thessalonian Christians. This Sunday’s reading resumes and completes the Thanksgiving of 1 Thessalonians and makes sense of the “grounded” Thessalonians. Paul praises the Thessalonians for becoming “imitators of us and of the Lord” (1:6). The concept of mimêsis, of imitation, has a long history in classical Greek thought, though the extent of the influence of the classical conception on Paul is a disputed question. Whatever the case, in Paul’s letters mimêsis is something in which Paul offers himself as a model, encouraging and exhorting his Churches to become imitators of him. In 1 Thessalonians, however, Paul acknowledges that the Thessalonians have through their perseverance in suffering already become imitators of “us,” probably Paul and his co-workers Timothy and Silvanus, and the Lord. It is their steadfastness in suffering, combined with “joy from the Holy Spirit” (1:6), that has made them models for other Christians. Their perseverance and steadfastness in the face of suffering is particularly impressive, because Paul had to leave Thessalonica quickly, due to his own persecution in the city. Not only were the Thessalonians left to face persecution without their mentor and model, they were Gentile converts, with little knowledge, I would suggest, of the Scriptures or the life of Christ beyond what Paul had offered to them before he was chased out of town. What they did have was the experience of the Holy Spirit (1:5) and the hope of Jesus’ return (1:10). It was clearly enough. John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.