As For You

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Ordinary 29C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

4 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: ²proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. ³For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. ⁵As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

This last month has been a time of reflection on both those who have gone before us as well as those who will follow us in the faith, as we have listened in on Paul’s words to Timothy about his heritage – from his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice.  Paul’s fatherly relationship to Timothy shines through, especially in these last few verses in his second letter. 

In this morning’s passage he speaks, as we read, of the usefulness of all scripture – in teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. 

To be honest, that verse –16 – always bothered me just a little bit, because it seems to validate the way I saw the Bible used sometimes as a child and young teenager – even into my young adult years – the … ‘bonk on the head’, or in more severe cases, the ‘two by four’ approach to scripture.

It’s the one where you are going along on your merry way, and suddenly some well-meaning self-styled Bible Scholar quotes a verse at you, that seems to be telling you that what you are doing is wrong and you are on your way to a very hot place for doing it, and basically, verbally slams you on the head with the entire Old and New Testaments. 

The problem with that is that, cherry-picking texts to fit a given situation distorts the witness of scripture and takes it out of it’s place within a community of faith. 

Now, I know I just read and then summarized verse sixteen of chapter 3 to you – and it says pretty clearly: “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.”  That seems to be crystal clear.   But I want us to step back a little from the second part of that sentence and look at the first part, just the first two words, to begin with. 

All scripture. 

There’s that pesky word again:  ALL.  Keeping in mind that the scripture that Paul was referring to at the time consisted primarily of what we refer to now as the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures – and in some quarters, not even ALL of what we think of as the Old Testament – remember, the Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch – the first 5 books of the Bible – as scripture – he was telling Timothy that it was ALL good for that list – teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. 

That means that we take the parts that are beautiful to our ears – “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” along with those parts that are harsh to our ears and sensibilities, where the Israelites are instructed to go into a town or a city and destroy it and kill everyone there – all the men, of course, but also all the women and the children … even all the animals.  Those are the passages we gloss over.  We dwell on those that are easy on the ear much more readily. 

What about all the laws?  What about the tedious instructions on what is and is not allowed on the Sabbath?  What about the dietary laws?  How do we apply those, or do we? 

Then on the other end of the spectrum we have the New Testament – which, while it definitely contains passages that are reminiscent of the Old Testament approach and understanding, also contains passages that speak of a freedom and a universality in God’s love and grace that it seems to be completely contradictory to what we know of parts of the Hebrew Scriptures.  How do we reconcile the two, or do we?  How do we incorporate both witnesses of scripture into our worship and our living? 

First, we remember the next phrase after “all scripture”, and that is this: “is inspired by God.”  And we start from there. 

Studying the Bible is not easy.  You’ve heard me talk about the obstacles we face often enough:  the distance not only in years but in culture that separate us from those who first put down these words and who heard these passages, these letters.  The distance in experience – what their lives were like and what our lives are like.  Their concepts of the world and the universe and God’s action in them and our concepts of those things … the more we think about it and study it, the further apart they seem to grow…

And yet here we are, reading the same words that were passed down from generation to generation hundreds and even thousands of years ago, and the words still speak to us.  How does that happen? 

As Baptists, we believe it happens through the work and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we also understand it to happen within a context of community.  We bounce thoughts and ideas off each other; a comment made here today may spark a thought a month from now during a conversation hundreds of miles away from here.  But how does that “bouncing” happen? 

In many ways, it still happens like it did with Timothy – Paul understood that Timothy was first exposed to faith through the faith of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.  It is the same way in most if not all of our cases:  we were first exposed to faith – and faithful living – through our parents, or grandparents … a friend, or a co-worker … there may be, here and there an experience where someone’s first exposure was a cold-call Sunday morning spur-of-the-moment decision to walk into a church – and that has made all the difference, as Robert Frost once wrote. 

Paul’s point to Timothy was one that we would do well to take to heart.  Yes, do not neglect the study of scripture, but do not consider yourself infallible in the pursuit of that knowledge.  Remember where you came from.  Remember who taught you, and ask yourself if their lives reflected a grasp of … not simply scripture, but a grasp of the one who inspired ALL scripture? 

Apart from a relationship with God, the Bible is a dead book. It is so much ink on so many sheets of paper.  If we do not know the one who breathed life into us as well as into these words, then these words will always confound us. 

That’s not to say that it’ll be a breeze for us if we DO have that relationship, but that relationship is the starting point.  Whether we come to an understanding of how to reconcile these two images of God that seem to be in such incredible tension in this life or not, when we wrestle with the living word of God we cannot help but come away changed.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

“As for you”, Paul bookends this particular passage, and writes at the beginning, “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Those who were here for the opening assembly last week and this morning heard a phrase that you will begin to hear and see more and more as the weeks go on:  “Opening Doors”.  It is the theme that we are working on for our Sunday morning Bible studies – our Sunday School – I would invite you in the coming weeks to explore for yourself what doors that theme is talking about. 

Doors have a function – you are either on one side or the other of them.  There are doors that we are behind, and there are doors that we are in front of. 

There are figurative doors – to our hearts, in our minds, in our … inner selves, and there are actual physical doors – doors that belong to our neighbors, friends, relative, fellow members who have long since stopped coming to worship or Sunday School or any given church activity, doors that can all be opened, but for which we need to figure out which side we are on.   Some doors are in plain sight; others are hidden behind wall after wall after wall.  

Paul told Timothy, “always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”

Carrying out our ministry fully as a body of Christ-followers is going to require that we step out in faith on a regular basis.  And that is something that we are hard-pressed to do, sometimes.  We know what to expect when we keep the doors where they are, AS they are – whether open or closed – we can deal with predictability so much better than we can with change. 

Here is a central truth about the life of faith:  it is anything but static (still) – it does not remain in one form or in one place for very long.  It is a growing thing, a LIVING thing, a dynamic thing.  The Spirit of God, while giving rest, is restless.  There is much to do.  There are many doors to open, to knock on, in some cases, perhaps, to tear down. 

Doors to

Friendship

Learning

Forgiveness

Neighbors

Old friends

To growth,

To thanksgiving,

To a life unbound by the chains of what society would consider proper.

Let us be gloriously improper, shall we?

Would you pray with me?