Image courtesy of Sharefaith.com
Text: 2nd Timothy 1:1-14
Luke reports that Timothy joined Paul and Silas at Lystra while on the journey from Antioch to Corinth, dated somewhere around 49-51. After Timothy joined them, Tom Wright notes that the three of them move on, but without any real sense of direction (pg.174 Paul). Lystra was where Paul had healed a crippled man and thus, been mistaken for a Greek god. Lystra was Timothy’s hometown.
Timothy was probably in his late teens – early twenties and must have seemed like a son to Paul.
Certainly a bond of understanding and mutual trust developed between them of a sort that happened with few others
(Tom Wright in Paul, pg. 175)
Timothy had a Jewish mother, but a Greek father. Paul takes the unprecedented step of circumcising him. This is puzzling because in all other instances Paul vehemently refuses to allow gentiles to be circumcised. Here, the only explanation might be that as Timothy was to accompany Paul as he continually visited synagogue after synagogue, Paul, ever the realist, was giving in to the least line of resistance. Among the Jews, Timothy’s Jewish credentials must also be beyond challenge, as were those of Paul, himself.
For the last two weeks we have been reading from the 1st Letter to Timothy, a text smattered with soundbite phrases like –
We brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it; for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
1st Timothy 6
Today we hear the opening of the 2nd Letter to Timothy. Among more liberal NT scholars, the Timothy and Titus letters are grouped within a larger set of writings known as the Pastoral Epistles. Although tradition ascribes both Timothy and Titus letters to Paul’s own hand, today most scholars agree that these are much later than Paul’s time as evidenced by the kinds of concerns and theology they address. These letters are concerned with good order, and how people should behave – a theology of larger and more established and respectable Christian communities in contrast to the concerns of the small and edgy house churches to which Paul wrote directly.
Tom Wright, who tends to swim against the prevailing tide of liberal NT scholarship, on this matter tends to agree with them. However, he makes a case for separating 2nd Timothy out as not belonging among these later Pastoral Letters. So, we need to hear these opening verses of 2nd Timothy not as a sequel to 1st Timothy, but actually an earlier expression from Paul, himself, writing at Rome during the period when he was appearing before a number of legal hearings. Paul, lonely and bereft, appears to be pining for Timothy. Where Timothy is, we don’t know. Wright sums up the difficulty as like searching to piece together the small fragments of a jigsaw with far too few pieces to form a coherent picture.
The opening to 2nd Timothy is a loving and intimate expression revealing the depth of feeling when Paul opens his heart.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. …I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.
2nd Timothy 1
2nd Timothy stands out for the quality of Paul’s openness of heart. We cannot escape being moved by his words; words that encourage me to open my heart similarly to you this morning.
I trust that you have all read my e-message to the parish this last week in which I described the preparation process needed to lead us to a successful capital campaign in 2020. If you have not read my E-message you can find it probably still in your inbox, or failing that, you will find it on the website under Visit us/Rector’s Musings, Contact us/Newsletter, or under the newly created Capital Campaign tab and on the St Martin’s Facebook page.
Within days we will launch the discernment phase – a series of facilitated gatherings inviting us to share our hopes and expectations for shaping the priorities for our community direction around a central question: what is God empowering us to achieve at this point in our community life? In the New Year, we will launch a feasibility study – involving a parish wide survey and targeted one-to-one conversations. The information we gather in the feasibility study will be analyzed by the Episcopal Church Foundation to provide us with an accurate assessment of our community’s capacity to meet our fundraising and community development goals.
Prayer is the radical starting point of fundraising because in prayer we slowly experience a reorientation of all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and others.
Henri Nouwen (pg 56 A Spirituality of Fundraising)
Earlier I mentioned that I was encouraged by Paul’s example in 2nd Timothy to open my heart to you this morning in sharing two concerns I have.
- That we will ask too little of our faith. As middleclass Episcopal Christians we have not been taught to expect much from the fruits of living a spiritual life. As middleclass Episcopal Christians we have too strong an impression of our own self-sufficiency. The result is that we often feel we have little need of God. That instead of turning courageously to prayer – for the very act of prayer requires real courage to risk hoping in things yet still unseen -we will slink away from the challenge finding refuge in a self-protected shell of I’m all right Jack – as New Zealanders like to say.
- We are a community of highly motivated individuals – who do marvelous things in the wider city and state communities and in doing so lend crucial support to many worthy causes. But if this results in our not having enough time or energy to support our parish community, then we will continue to struggle under the increasing burden of many and conflicting demands.
Our love of God is the source for all our loves in life. Following in the way of love provides the very necessary compass setting, around which the multiple demands that threaten to tear us in a hundred different directions at once, become ordered.
Our love of God is the source for all our loves in life. Following in the way of love that Jesus demonstrated is not another set of demands, it provides the very necessary compass setting, around which everything else – the multiple demands that threaten to tear us in a hundred different directions at once, then become ordered.
Can we come to see our Christian journey not simply as one more set of demands on us? Can we come to see our membership of this community as an expression of our longing for that indefinable something more in our lives? That indefinable something more is not only an expression of our unrequited longing in life but of God’s targeted longing for us. Can we allow God’s longing for us to flow into our cautious and risk averse lives? That is the question.
Paul reminds Timothy that the faith that first lived in his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice, now lives in him. The faith that lived in our spiritual forbears that moved them to sacrifices and service that sustained their common spiritual lives together within these walls and under this roof – that faith now lives in us!
Paul reminds Timothy of the need to rekindle the gift of God that is within him; a spirit not of cowardice but of power, love, and self-control. The challenge and the opportunity we face together is the nudge or push we need to propel us into the next stage of our journey of becoming individually, and communally, more fit for God’s purpose.
Paul instructs Timothy to guard the good treasure entrusted to him, empowered by the Holy Spirit’s presence within the community. We will realize our dreams and achieve our goals not by our own efforts, but through our empowerment by God’s Spirit to become so much more than left to the fearfulness of our own imaginations, we could ever dream of becoming.
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