17 Pentecost, Proper 22
2 Oct 2022
Based on 2 Timothy 1:1-14
Parents are, in the best of worlds, our first teachers and greatest teachers. My earliest memories are of my parents doing little things and me trying to imitate. Mom would be in the kitchen and I would be right there with a couple of old pots and pans and utensils trying so hard to help fix dinner. Dad would be planting something in the garden and I would have a little trowel and be digging away, mostly in search of earthworms but occasionally planting seeds. The best thing ever was to sit on the sofa with one of those Golden books open and either mom or dad reading to me. They read them so much the covers wore off and I had all the words memorized. Heidi was my favorite, or perhaps it was Jasper the giraffe. When we sat at the table, scrunched in the same small space as the kitchen, we would always say grace and then have our family dinner together. It was a ritual we continued until I left home for college.
On Sundays everyone would put on our “Sunday best” and head to church. Although they both softened their views later, at that point in our lives one would never think of going to church in anything but the best clothes we owned. It was God’s house and we needed to dress for the occasion. Yet it was not the clothes; it was the lessons on how one should live one’s life. They modeled Christian living and did so in a way that was authentic. As my world expanded, I found that Christian life could be modeled by people in other denominations. A devout life could be modeled in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on.
The centerpiece of faith is that it is communal. Paul can’t say to Timothy enough just how communal it is. It is faith, the faith of the community, which summons us. We are not superheroes of the faith but rather members of the community of faith. The community loves us and cares for us, but it is the bigger story that is important. This is about God, really, and not about us. Yet God so wants to share the goodness of creation that he sent his son to us and for us. Paul understands this in a way that is often lost on many of us living in a world that is more concerned with individual achievement and personal happiness than with the welfare of the community.
At their best, our public institutions serve the community, be they legal or educational or even recreational. We don’t build a swimming pool so that a few people can do laps or a library that only certain people can use.
Christianity, the Church with a capital “C”, is there to serve the needs of all. We are to both serve and be served as the need arises. Each one of us has a place (we are not all ears or toes or eyes) where we do our best work. No place is greater or lesser than any other. The person who cleans the toilet is of equal stature to the priest who consecrates the bread and the wine. The newest confirmand is of equal importance to someone who has been part of the community for fifty years, just as the worker who came at 4 pm received the same wages as the ones who started at 9 am.
Paul reminds us, by reminding Timothy, to keep the faith alive and to renew it by fanning the flames. I don’t know about you but coming to corporate worship warms my heart and fans the flames. After the enforced separation and the distancing that Covid demanded of us, being able to participate in a service of healing and laying on of hands and anointing became a profoundly meaningful way to renew my faith and reconnect with the community. We would do well to restore the practice!
It may be that, as he writes this passage, Paul is near the end of his life and hopes fervently that his work will continue. Not that it is “his work” but that of Christ. He preaches to us of the universal hope that we all have, the hope exemplified by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul could have penned the hymn All My Hope on God Is Founded. In truth, that hymn that most of us have sung many times, was based by Joachim Neander on these very lines from 2 Timothy!
All my hope on God is founded, all my trust he shall renew; he, my guide through changing order, only good and only true: God unknown, he alone calls my heart to be his own.
We put our faith, our trust, only in God, not in human institutions, not even in one another. We live our faith in community with each other, but it is only through our faith, which is not the same as belief, in God and in Jesus.
Pride of man and earthly glory, sword and crown betray his trust; all that human toil can fashion, tower and temple, fall to dust. But God’s power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower.
Paul has been betrayed and has suffered (and probably is suffering as he writes to Timothy) for the faith, but he has never lost it. It is through family and community relationships and the renewal of faith in the laying on of hands that continues to sustain him as it reveals God’s power to him.
Day by day our mighty giver grants to us his gifts of love; in his will our souls find pleasure, leading to our home above: love shall stand at his hand, joy shall wait for his command.
Still from Earth to God eternal sacrifice of praise be done; high above all praises praising for the gift of Christ his Son: hear Christ’s call, one and all – we who follow shall not fall.
This is the God who will not fail us who gives us gifts, even as we sleep. But we must not take any of this for granted nor rest on what we have done; we must continue to proclaim the Gospel, the very good news, and to engage in those acts of faith which bind us and renew us as a Christian community.
I leave you with questions: what helps you to renew your own faith, not as an individual, but as a member of the Christian community? How do you hear Christ’s call? And most importantly, how will you answer?
May the gift of God’s love be with you all.
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