Paul’s Guidance for Timothy in Difficult Times

The setting is after the times described in Acts. Paul has been in Rome. Perhaps traveled to Spain. Now back in the area of Greece and Asia Mino, as he never expected. Dealing with problems in Crete and Ephesus in perhaps 66-68. Perhaps drafted by a co-worker. (1Pt 5:12).

Paul has a rich relationship with Timothy, beginning in Lystra about 20 yrs earlier, 1st journey. Mother Eunice, grandmother Lois converted. Timothy, with gift, joins Paul on 2nd journey. Timothy, Paul’s emissary to Macedonia and Corinth. Dealing with persecution, challenges.

The Engagement of Faith versus the Withdrawal of Speculation

Things have changed. Nero is emperor. After fire in Rome. Beginning of execution of Christians. Many discouraged, withdrawing (Heb 12:4, 12). Paul had experienced the arbitrary violence of Roman magistrates. Now, no official ban, but clear permission to harass and execute.

It’s important to grasp the effect of the threat of execution. Paul wants them to live exemplary lives serving and loving all so that opponents won’t be able to say anything bad about them.

Others sought a more definite withdrawal into a kind of philosophical commune, later Gnosticism. Allegorizing the Law, a pure spark of the divine, banning marriage, purity laws, etc., a spiritual group that could never appear threatening to the Roman powers and thus no persecution.

Paul wants Timothy to call the community to love and faith without hypocrisy. Engaged in caring for and building both body and spirit. Face persecution like Paul did, but not seek it. Rather know that God is the universal God of all who seeks the salvation of all.

God’s Choice of Generous Grace

Jesus taught farmers and fishermen about treasures in God’s realm, serving God and Mammon, and choosing not to be anxious about life. Paul gave us the example of persecuted, impoverished believers overflowing with simple generosity.

It’s hard to relate. We in the US are well-off in the world at large but most of us don’t feel rich enough to be generous. We like generosity. Henry Ford or Bill Gates makes a pile of money, sets up a foundation, becomes “good,” a benefactor. We learn generosity as a function of wealth. That’s “love of honor” (a payoff) not simple generosity.

The striking thing in the NT is Generosity of the Poor, not for any glory but to learn God’s grace by simply seeing and helping the needs of others. There’s no virtue in poverty nor any necessary evil in wealth, but there’s danger in both. Dispair and rage, corrupt power, blindness to others, etc. All along the spectrum, we learn that Mammon saves.

God’s grace draws us to see simple, non-manipulative generosity as a core of life for everyone no matter what their circumstances. Seek to share in the practice of Grace!

Meditating on God’s Grace – Practicing God’s Grace

God, as we see him in Jesus, unites the limits of wealth/power and poverty/vulnerability. Paul calls us to think how Grace re-makes us as we live within it. Three scriptures. It challenges us to think clearly about reality, about just how much we receive: life, hope, forgiveness, God’s Spirit, etc. All came by God joyfully taking on my vulnerability, poverty, death in Jesus. I’m like that lily, more beautiful than Solomon. Even persecuted and without money, I’m rich. I want to learn that joy and love of God that I see in Jesus. God’s grace re-makes me as I make choices, find ways to practice God’s love and joy in generous grace. No bargain, no payment, only gift: God’s inexpressible Gift.

This sort of re-make can’t be law. We see it in Jesus; we catch it from others; we learn to breathe it. We find it bears our weight. It makes life joyful in any circumstances. Not pleasurable or without pain and suffering, but joyful in the high, wide, deep love of God.

Do it, Do it, Do it!

Paul is offering the Corinthian one starter way to begin this remake. People far away in need. Sacrifice without any real response except the creation of thanksgiving. Not the end but the beginning of learning Grace, but it is a step on the journey into God’s life.

We seek out ways in our own situations to practice simple generosity. No repayment except insight into God’s joy. That’s what church ministries are. Starter opportunities, ways to grow, places to learn what matters, God’s grace, his inexpressible gift!

The Grace of God and Worship through Giving

We began the new year hearing Jesus’ teaching about serving God and Mammon and about being anxious about life. How can I live that in a world organized around Mammon and powered by anxious, competitive desire. Serving Mammon is our default setting.

Each Sunday: “Worship through Giving.” What does it mean? Offerings aren’t mere tokens. They’re a language of gratitude, spoken with money – the stuff we get in exchange for a portion of our life, energy, creativity. We all pay life to get money. It can become Mammon: getting money is fundamental. Jesus takes money very seriously: “More blessed to give...”

Paul recognized the challenge of teaching Gentiles and Jews. Traditional religion is often bargain and payment. If God is good to me, I’ll pay a vow. I’ll give in order to get far more. Is God good, fair? Am I getting return for my faith, worship, gifts I bring? Doesn’t God owe me?

God’s Reality and A Revolution of Heart and Action

As Paul taught in Macedonia and Greece, he was leading people to a “renewal of mind,” a revolution in vision, understanding, and practice. He announced the Good News and called them to grasp the Love and way of life it embodied. Nothing is earned; nothing is paid. Everything is given! God starts! God gives himself, his love, his life in Jesus.

Paul’s collection for poor Jews of Jerusalem challenged Greek believers. Paul calls it Grace, but they faced affliction and poverty themselves because of their faith. Is God fair? Is he good? Yes! Their suffering forced them to face seriously the question, “What really matters?” “What is my life about?” “What really lasts?” They realized that the gift of God’s Grace was what gave them “abundant joy.” A joy and peace that can flourish and sustain in suffering. As God had given himself to them, they gave themselves to God. They experienced the love and grace at the heart of God and desired to give. Affliction and abundant joy and profound poverty led to generosity. Embodied Grace.

Practicing the Transformation of Grace

Paul wants the Corinthians (and us, not in such desperate straits) to experience the same embodied grace. The inner revolution isn’t separate from outer practice. It shines through. Desire / readiness to share resources. Persistence to really give, completing the action. Watching the action flow from giving ourselves to God to sharing love to each other.

Thankful, seemingly irrational generosity helps de-fang the bite of Mammon. We choose to live below our means in order to be generous with our means. Jesus says “Don’t be afraid!” The “abundant joy” that flows from Grace and shared life is true wealth – living out God’s Grace and Love in our own life. They put their treasures in God’s realm in generously serving each other and those far away. It worked. God’s own joy and grace bloomed in them.

Seeing the Reality of Life – A Life of Treasures

We start the new year/decade in Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Seek God’s kingdom. Jesus is talking to villagers, farmers, fishermen, women who spin and weave. Life is survival. Too vulnerable to care about abstractions, meaning. (Pyramid of motivation) Jesus goes straight for deep-high meaning. These hardscrabble people have treasures.

The question: where they/we put treasures. What gives meaning/value? Where my heart is. Earth – things that pass away. God’s realm – things that can’t be destroyed. But both are here and now. It’s a challenge of vision. How do I see the world/life. My ability to see the world and people as God’s realm can become distorted, dark or give light.

Jesus focuses on a difficult “choice.” Who do I serve? God or Mammon? A personification of Money, power, control, and all their embodiments in structures, relationship, stuff. Mammon’s the most powerful god we can create. Mammon is our human replica of God, the kind of god we think God should be. Pragmatic, real. Visible (not hidden). Powerful. Equipped with full theology. Daily rites to shape my choices. Able to save and destroy.

Now I am a creature of God. That relationship is real. God is less visible. Gives me freedom.

From “Nothing But...” to “Something More”

To modern ears, Jesus may seem quaint. We’re trained by long tradition of reduction from Adam Smith to John Locke to Darwin to Marx to Nietzsche to reductionist science to postmodernism. We’re reducible to mindless particles, to irrational drives, evolutionary processes, invisible hand of the market. We strive to rid our world of purpose, meaning.

But Jesus challenges the heart of so much debate. The secularization of society, the disenchantment of the world: Max Weber. Charles Taylor (A Secular Age) develops a Christian view. Now Eugene McCarraher (The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity) says the modern world was never disenchanted. We shifted the enchantment from God (now private opinion) to Mammon, our public god.

The “enchantment” is another word for “serve.” Jesus talks to people who’ve never heard of capitalism, free markets, socialism, mercantilism, modernism. But the enchantment of Mammon is already real on every level, even for a fisherman or spinning woman.

Refuse Anxiety – God’s Generosity

Jesus says the anxieties come from not looking clearly enough at life/reality. We don’t see life as a gift that’s both vulnerable and secure in God’s generous love. We see it as a product made by mighty Mammon. We keep producing our god. We always “need” more.

No amount of Mammon is enough. No satisfaction. But we ultimately realize that we can’t add one cubit where it really matters. We get reduced to nothing but the size of our god. We lose the “something more” that is the glory, beauty, mystery, creativity of life.

Jesus says God’s reality is there in front of you – in all the beauty and delight of the world. God’s not removed to a distant heaven. Jesus sees/knows God everywhere. So pervasive, we can ignore him. Heaven is God’s all-pervading realm touching everything.

You are that something more made for the touch of God, God’s life. God know/loves you. Seek His kingdom, justice. Seek! In a world of Mammon, it’s hidden. There, you find All.

Emmanuel – God with Us Jesus’ story, like other human stories, begins with birth and goes to death. The same but different. Something more is happening so that that event can become part of every human life – our life. Our theme: “God with Us.” Unexpected entry; Refugee; at Long last. God chooses a very distinctive way to create a bridge from God to Us. It’s truly wise and powerful beyond imagining, but overturns every structure of smart power we build. We humans live in a moment. The limitation of life unfolds in Genesis. The Big Bang, 13.75 billion yrs ago. All written human history, 6,000 yrs. But in the scale of God’s infinity, the Big Bang is hardly longer ago than the pyramids or cave paintings. Other things determine value, meaning. 2 Pet. 3:8. God’s bridge draws my human life into the long past and future of the human drama and into the heights and depths of God’s life. Being Part of a Long Past and Long Future We have no idea what it’s like to be God. Timeless? Maybe. That’s beyond my imagination. But God chose to reveal himself in unfolding, varied history. Drama with twists and turns. Disasters, promises, hopes, turning-points, new vistas, direction, purpose, participation. Advent begins the great turning-point of Jesus. God fulfills his promises but surprises human expectations. Long before Jesus, Isaiah encapsulated the present-future life of hope created by God for his people. Real darkness, real promises, a structural makeover, a child, a visionary name, an unfolding future, God will do it. People/Jesus lived that faith. What could Isaiah mean after 7 centuries under successive empires? Could there be a different kind of power, a different hope? How do we share in that near/distant future? The Gift of Grace that becomes a Quest Part of the Event announced in the Good News brings a new paradigm of human hope/future. God brings the indefinite future into the present in Jesus’ resurrection. The Fullness of Time is here. Symbols of temple, kingdom, sacrifice, etc. reshaped. Power, idolatry, glory, wisdom, are all remade. Humans participate in creating the future. “I am with you!” People are recreated. Barriers between humans are broken. Against our barrier building history. Baptism is plunging into God’s gracious identity. Put on Jesus’ identity. Only God can do it. I am part of God’s long purpose to unite everything in Jesus. “On Earth as in Heaven.” But I get up in a new year and go to work. What difference does it make? Do I know who I am? I’m a beloved child of God, living in God’s grace, no matter what my circumstances? We make thousands of choices. On what basis? Reacting to others? As a child of my Abba? Can it be true? Some doubted. Jesus knows and still calls us. God’s Spirit lives in us today!

People Waiting for Joy through Long ... Experience

Luke takes us into the life of faithful Jews near the end of Herod’s violent reign. Zechariah/ Elizabeth; Mary/Joseph; Simeon and Anna. Two young, four elderly. The old ones lived through the old days and know they weren’t better. They carry the long expectation.

Isaiah, before the exile, foresaw Israel’s royal hope cut off. But a branch would grow from the stump. He would bear God’s Spirit; God’s heart for justice; God’s renewal. What joy!

Things started happening: Gabriel, Zechariah, Mary, Elizabeth, John’s birth. Mary and Joseph bring an astonishing child (angels-shepherds) to the Temple for faithful obedience, 6 bc.

The Temple was brand new, 14 yrs old, rebuilt by King Herod an Edomite. It’s high priest was Herod’s father-in-law, Simeon son of Boethus, an aristocratic Sadducee from Alexandria.

Another Simeon meets Jesus, an elderly prophet, full of scripture and hope. He is the other faithful Israel, like Zechariah. He received a promise. What did he expect? A baby whose parents could only afford pigeons? But he sees! Salvation. Light. Glory. Prophetic hope!

Anna – What These Eyes Have Seen!

Luke emphasizes the prophet Anna’s age. Born 90 bc. Married, widowed, about 70 bc. 64 yrs as a widow, becoming a prophet. Simeon and Anna anticipate prophecy in Acts 2 – for all. She’s from one of the lost tribes. Evidently soon after becoming a widow, she focuses her life on the Jerusalem’s old Temple. Now in the midst of Herod’s gold, she fasts and prays.

Think of this woman, what she has seen, what she represents. When Anna was born, it was 500 yrs since Israel lost it’s last Davidic king and Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. About 430 since 2nd temple built, under Persian empire. 370 since Ezra brought Torah. 240 since Alexander conquered Persia. 80 yrs since Antiochus 4 outlawed the Torah, Maccabean revold began. Hasmonean kings (High priests not from Aaron, Kings not from David. Pharisees rise. John Hyrcanus conqured Edom, Herod’s grandfather.

Anna was born in a time of civil war between Alexander Jannaeus and the Pharisees. 50,000 killed, 800 Pharisees crucified. Anna married as Salome Alexandera became queen. 7 yrs later a widow, 20 yrs old, 70 bc. Begins life around the Temple. 7 more yrs, dynastic conflict leads to intervention by Pompey the Roman general in 63 bc. Violent siege, slaughter of priests at altar. Pompey enters Holy of Holies. Hundreds enslaved. Judea becomes a Roman outpost against Parthia. In 50 bc, Anna 40, Rabbi Hillel came from Babylon. Roman civil wars renew dynastic conflict and the rise of Herod. In 40 bc. Parthians plunder Jeru. Herod escapes to Rome, returns with army. Another siege. Anna 53. Herod builds Theater and Amphitheater in Jerusalem. 20 bc, Anna was 70, Herod rebuilt the Temple, while his family descended into ever more violent conflict. She was 83 when her friend Zechariah had a vision of Gabriel in the temple, became a prophet.

Now Anna is 84. Can any hope or joy be left? She has watched it all. Now a baby comes. Here is the hope of the prophets! The End of Jerusalem’s long enslavement. How will it happen?

Refugee, Exile, Alienation – Home

Advent and Christmas present positive images of Peace and Love. It’s striking that the Gospels don’t edit the story of Jesus’ birth for sweetness and uplift. The event of Jesus enters the long story of human separation, alienation from God and each other. God strives to bring us back home, to reality, to real life. We’re refugees who enjoy our exile and have set up life in it with our own power structures, pretending all is fine. Exile is all there is.

We don’t need a Creator. Alienation hits every level: our hearts, relationships, societal/ political structures, a break of earth from heaven. Can anything really New break in?

Matthew tells the story highlighting the irony of our broken, violent home in exile that we humans create, and how God breaks into that false reality by unexpected wanderers.

Magi in the World of King Herod

Herod is at home – a fear-flooded, subordinate, power-hungry king of the Jews. The Magi are mysterious eastern philosophers studying stars. They’re far from home but following cosmic signs to find the King of the Jews. They upset those who should seek and know, those at home in alienation – no place to put a Messiah. Priests paraphrase Micah 5:2 for Herod. Tools to manipulate the Magi. Build a glorious temple but kill God’s Messiah.

But the Magi aren’t at home in Herod’s world. They follow a star with joy to a baby and mother. Herod has the soldiers, priests, money, empire, powers of deceit and coersion. But if their sign is true, something totally different is breaking in. God’s bringing a new world to birth. These wanderers see something. They give kingly gifts not to Herod but to a nobody.

Life and Death and Death and Life

We watch the violent, fear-filled empire of alienation strike. Joseph’s dream warns him, and they flee by night into exile in Egypt – like Israel in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon – humanity alienated from God. The Messiah flees as a refugee – ironically, in exile from Herod’s exile. The family lost everything. The Messiah embodies, shares, Israel’s and humanity’s exile.

Enraged Herod shows the depravity of thwarted power in his false Home. To get this child, he orders death for all Bethlehem’s baby boys. They don’t get Jesus this time, but the baby is weak, fleeing. Herod’s kind of power will crucify this child. The reality of alienation.

Mt lets us look at the horror. He cites Jeremiah 31. Weeping over the destruction of Israel, real grief that can’t be assuaged in exile. But the grief is in a story of God’s grace. This baby has already emptied himself. He comes as an exile from God’s realm into our exile. He comes with vulnerable love to unite heaven and earth, God’s home and ours, God’s Life!

Many Anticipations Become One Event

After disastrous exiles that ended kingdom in Israel and Judah– prophets and people anticipated the return of God in glory. When, how would he come? Restored Temple. New King-Messiah. Pure priest. Son of Man–people receive kingdom. Suffering servant–for people. Could Gentiles be included? Or a purified people? Or do we just keep up tradition?

Jesus, in his teaching and action, is the first to unify and embody all these anticipations. People struggled to grasp uniting glorious Messiah with suffering servant, transformed temple, and included outsiders. In Jesus’ death and resurrection they realized that Jesus was the very Advent of the One God, who used the human forms and anticipated images to show himself in the person of Jesus – the one and only Son, glory, and suffering.

Two Women Alone See God Changing His World

The Gospels help us grasp this challenging reality. Elizabeth and Mary, two women who carry impossible life – elder and virgin – they have been touched by the physical-spiritual, expected, surprising in breaking of God. They become believers and prophetic visionaries. Elderly Elizabeth recognizes the “mother of my Lord” who trusts the Lord’s promises.

Mary knows that if God has chosen her and Elizabeth to fulfill his mercy to Abraham, then he disregards all conventional powers of empire, religion, and society. He has already brought down the powerful and lifted the lowly. We watch how the story plays out. What these two women experience challenges every person: Can you see the reality of this unimaginably complex God who breaks into our limited vision in this powerless infant?

A New Tabernacle where God and Humans Meet

John tells the same story in other terms. He reaches back to creation, the Word, Life, Light coming into the world’s darkness. Powerful concepts. But then, the Word became flesh, a person, someone you could eat dinner with, talk to by a well, whip with a scourge. But more, that person became the new Tent where God’s Glory returned visible for his people.

John Bap. spoke in a riddle, but we’ve all drawn from his Fullness/Grace. God/Word in flesh allows the impossible, really knowing God, becoming children, new life, born from God.

Thanksgiving that Flows from the Good News

We live in an age of irony, distancing from engagement in life. Early Christians (like Jesus) can put us off because of their lack of ironic distance. They live with a sense of joy and engagement with life even in the midst of suffering, persecution, and loss.

In the OT the word for “to thank” (yadah) means to confess/ praise – used only toward God. Recognizing God’s reality as source of life and good. Praising God in worship as in Ps.100.

In the NT, the common words for thanks and thanksgiving are closely related to the idea of “grace” – eucharistein. The experience of God’s grace announced in the Good News of Jesus’ Life-Death-Resurrection filled them with a sense of gratitude and courage for life.

Jesus was continually surrounded with human suffering and trouble – sickness, poverty, and oppression of the people; the doubt and fear of disciples.But he lived with great calm, seeing beauty, faith, hope, healing– God’s presence visible in all things and people.

Jesus’ ministry/grace climaxed in the Cross – God’s absolute love in the heart of suffering – calling disciples to life shaped by God’s self-giving love. The Cross was the end of irony. Such grace calls us a world of gratitude/charis – thanks to God in all circumstances.

Living in a Way that fits the Love of Jesus

Early Christians didn’t see the world as they had before. They shared a sense of birth, new creation, recognizing grace. Every sense was wide awake to the challenge of living in a new way with new hope in world of old traps, worn-out values. The aim is to walk/live fitting that Good News embodied in Jesus. Every day is precious. A choice to see God’s presence, seek God’s kingdom, find transcendence or be blinded into our world’s self-serving ordinariness.

Seek Wisdom, Understanding. No foolishness. Don’t narrow your mind to see only material things. Keep a mind big enough to recognize the Lord who creates the material things, to acknowledge God and his purpose for creation, to seek his will – real knowledge of God.

Integrate his Grace and Love into your understanding of the world and all your relationships – giving grace to each other. Letting Jesus’ peace decide conflicts. Clothed with Love.

Spirit-Filled Life – Poetry and Gratitude

The Good News is deep and rich. Marinate in it. Teach it to each other and outsiders. This Spirit-filled life is expressed in poetry and music – traditional psalms, new experiences – sung with voice and heart. These take into account the full range of human experience and see them in the light of God’s inexpressible gift of grace in the Messiah.

A profound integrity / wholeness results. All of life – happiness and suffering, pleasure and pain – can be experienced as we grow in the light of the love that’s at the center of God’s delighting, suffering, self-giving, unconquerable, ever-living grace.

Born from Above – New Creation – Really?

The New Testament language about the impact of the Good News is strikingly radical. New birth. New Creation. No Jew/Greek; slave/free; male/female. Crucified with Christ. What does it mean? Paul tells the struggling Corinthians about New Creation as a fact. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about being “born again” evolved into an Evangelical cliché that talks more of a method of conversion or testimony or even politics. What is Jesus’ challenge really about?

Nicodemus is a leading teacher, positive toward Jesus. Jesus confronts him with the “kingdom of God” that’s breaking in. The teacher must start over: birth from above. So must all. Nicodemus struggles to understand. Water and Spirit: Spirit-Wind/Breath, blowing but unseen. The Good News of God’s reign is a new, challenging reality. You have to learn from the only one who truly embodies it: Son of Man/Son of God. Lifted up in death. Giving life that extends beyond death. This is God’s reality bursting into new clarity – embodied. God’s love for the cosmos, his kingdom is here. Can I see it? It’s light. Do I really want it?

New Perception, New Self, New Life

The radical reality of that Good New was experienced by Paul. Changed from the inside out, but not given an easy life. We still live in the death of Jesus while also being called into his life. We hurt because we’re fractured from God and each other, but God’s reconciliation has already happened in Jesus: God and Human, yoking sin to sinless wholeness; alienation to reconciliation. God did the whole thing. Now he invites, woos, appeals in love. Take the gift.

What God as Creator has done becomes a new lens through which we see reality. We’ve lived in distortion and deception. God enacts His reality in Jesus. He offers it as a gift uniting us. We know our brokenness. We die with him and gain true life now – resurrection life – Spirit!