The Good Confession

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Ordinary 26C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), 

Warsaw, Virginia

1 Timothy 6:6-19

⁶Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; ⁷for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; ⁸but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. ¹¹But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

¹³In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. ¹⁷As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

It is increasingly interesting to me that in reviewing Church history, one of the goals of those who would reform the church has nearly always been a reconnection to the ‘early church’ – that first band of believers who, led by the apostles, lived in harmony and shared all they had, were a radically loving and giving community, and ‘turned the world upside down’, as we like to believe. 

They DID,

BUT …

  

Where does this image come from?  A few short verses in Acts – itself a self-proclaimed attempt to present this newborn faith practice in the best light possible in order to convince a Roman person of note that at worst it is worth allowing and at best it is worth becoming a part of. 

What does the rest of the New Testament Canon tell us about the early church?  That it was not so different from us. It still had the conflicting interests, the ego wars and the power-and-influence-peddlers that plague us to this day.  In that sense, there truly is nothing new under the sun.  It says something about human nature that we can read scripture that is nearly two thousand years old and place ourselves squarely in the context that is being written of. 

So we hold up that ideal and say to each other:  “this is what we aim for.”  I would invite us to consider another possibility:  that the ideal for which we are to aim is one that has not yet been seen on earth.  Even in those early years of the newborn church, while there might have been glimpses of the kingdom established on this terrestrial plain, it was very much a work in progress, an incomplete project, very much like what we have today in the church around the world:  a work in progress, an incomplete project.

The issue at hand in this particular section of Paul letter to his protégé Timothy is how to relate to material possessions. 

He first brings home a point that bears unpacking:  “There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.”  Paul reminds Timothy of a basic fact:  we enter and exit this world under exactly the same conditions: we bring nothing into it and we take nothing out of it.  In the interim, he says, here and elsewhere in his letters, to be content in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. 

As Christians, we readily agree with that statement and move on to the next lesson.  As American Christians, and maybe in a broader context, as Christians in a global society based largely on consumerism, I suspect we have a slightly harder time with it.  You see, our predominant culture here in the States tells us that to strive – for more, for newer, for the latest – is a noble and worthwhile pursuit, that it is a reflection of God’s grace and blessing to have an abundance of material possessions – to be wealthy. 

That is not something we find in the New Testament, nor in this passage. 

What is contentment?  Contentment is being satisfied.  The root of the word itself is one that is translated into Spanish as ‘pleased’ or ‘happy’, so it is inextricably tied in with our sense of wellbeing. 

What do we base our contentment on? 

Do we base it on not having to worry about where our next meal comes from?  Do we base it on knowing where we will sleep tonight?  Do we base it on what we will be doing tomorrow, or the next day, or the next? 

Paul contrasts for Timothy what leads to true contentment as opposed to false or illusory contentment:  false contentment is alluded to in verses 9 and 10.  If we determine our status based on what we own, what we can acquire, and how much control we have over our lives, then that is what will consume our every waking moment: do we have the latest technology, the newest automobile, the most money in the bank?  Do we have to wonder about how we will pay for something we want to buy or can we just go out and buy it?  If we base our importance in the grand scheme of things on how we are regarded by the society in which we live, that society will determine our value to ourselves.  Paul’s statement in verse 10 is often misquoted:  ‘The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’.  We sometimes hear: Money is the root of all evil.  That is not what Paul says.  Money and wealth in and of itself is not evil.  It is morally neutral.  What Paul is saying is that if our preoccupation with the acquisition of money and wealth and power and influence takes up our time and energy, then that preoccupation – that ‘love’ has become our idol, and has replaced God in our search for meaning and value.

Paul follows this image of people wandering from their faith and even causing themselves harm by pursuing riches with the image of what a person who is seeking God is to do: “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

   Go down that list with me:  righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.  Can any of those things be quantified on a spreadsheet?  Is there a way to measure our righteousness, our love, our gentleness?  Can we show receipts for the amount of godliness or endurance we’ve displayed in the last week?  People may have tried, but it is a losing proposition. 

What matters in the eternal is immeasurable in the finite. 

Paul’s use of the phrase ‘fight the good fight’ at the beginning of verse 12 is athletic imagery – a wrestling term – but one that describes a desperate struggle between two adversaries:  it is not a friendly contest when we are pitting the eternal against the mundane, nor is it a matter of first and second place.  It is a matter of victor and vanquished. 

Taking hold of eternal life, as he continues, is something that begins here, on earth, on this plane of existence.  Remember: Jesus’ portraits of what the Kingdom of God looks like, in almost every instance, were represented by images of life HERE, on earth.  While it described a vision of life that is foreign to what we generally experience here, he was describing a life that was being lived out as God intended it to be lived – not in the midst of the brokenness of the world, but in the midst of the world being mended.  And we, his followers, are commanded to mend. 

That ‘Good confession’ that Paul mentions that Timothy made in front of many witnesses, almost certainly refers to the confession of faith he made at his baptism, and it is one that we proclaim when we observe the ordinance of Baptism here or at the river:  ‘Jesus is Lord’.  It is both the earliest confession of the church and the simplest and most direct statement of the place that we are giving Jesus in our lives, and that position is in relation to every aspect of our lives:  our dreams, our goals, our wishes, our desires, our hopes, our vision. We are making Jesus – and his call on our lives – the arbiter – the one who determines what is to be important in our lives. 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we hold fast to that same confession that has marked Christ followers since the beginning.   That we do not live by the standards of a society that tells us the value of a person is determined by their wealth, but adhere to the standard that the value of a person is determined by how much God loves them, and in that acknowledgment we understand that the love of God is equal for ALL of humanity and THAT is the value we place on our lives here in this community as well as on the lives of all those we come in contact with. 

Let’s pray.