First Reading:
5The apostles said to the Lord, Increase our
faith!
6The Lord replied, If you had
faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey
you.
7Who among you would say to your slave who
has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,
‘Come here at once and take your place at the
table’? 8Would you not rather say to him,
‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I
eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you
thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you
also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say,
‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to
have done!’
Second Reading:
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by
the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ
Jesus, 2To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and
peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3I am
grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my
ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night
and day. 4Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that
I may be filled with joy. 5I am reminded of your sincere
faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your
mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6For this
reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you
through the laying on of my hands; 7for God did not give us
a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of
self-discipline.
8Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord
or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel,
relying on the power of God, 9who saved us and called us
with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his
own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus
before the ages began, 10but it has now been revealed
through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death
and brought life and immortality to light through the
gospel. 11For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an
apostle and a teacher, 12and for this reason I suffer as I
do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my
trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I
have entrusted to him. 13Hold to the standard of sound
teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are
in Christ Jesus. 14Guard the good treasure entrusted to
you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
I know that I've told you before in another sermon at another time about when I walked away from the church… it was seventh grade and I just could not reconcile what I heard being preached at the Wednesday night youth gathering with what I saw of how the students acted on Thursday morning at school… now obviously, somewhere along the line I came back to the church and I know I've told you in another sermon at another time the story of how I read the Bible cover to cover as a high school senior and that that experience confirmed for me that I had dismissed the God who's made known in Jesus Christ too quickly… But I've only told you part of that story, reading the bible wasn't where it started. You see I had never really dismissed God entirely. I think I was always searching. I was very interested in understanding who God was… but the only data that I had to guide my search at that point in time was the behavior of the people who claimed to follow God… Where I grew up there were lots of options to choose from and I'm sure that around here there are even more…
There was a girl who sat in front of me in social studies class who handed out Hindu tracts… I read them; in part because I was interested and in part because I figured if it meant enough to her to try to communicate her faith, the least I could do was to try to understand it. There was a group of guys in my year of high school who called themselves the M5… it stood for the Mormon 5. Everyone knew it. They weren't the only Mormons at school but they were definitely the most outspoken and the fact that they claimed their faith tradition and made it such an integral part of their visible sense of community and identity was something that was attractive to lots of people at school, including me.
You see, so much of what I saw at that time was that there were people
who wielded their faith like a stick, bashing anyone who disagreed
with them. I wasn't ever really interested in that. There were
people who talked a good game but whose actions were pretty far off
from their words… that was what frustrated me so much with the
particular youth ministry gathering I had been attending. But mostly
what I saw was that faith just didn't make a difference in people's
lives… so when I saw something that did, I found myself asking
questions, looking deeper—further into that faith tradition.
And each time it wasn't right… something didn't resonate well,
so I kept searching. Sometimes I looked hard, sometimes I pretty much
took a break from looking. This went on for a couple of years. As I
look back on it I was probably well on the path to being part of the
fastest growing faith group in America— spiritual but not
religious.
But then I met Dr. Dave… Dr. Dave and I rode the chairlift together a couple of times while we were up skiing one day… and he told me a story… It was something that happened in his life and frankly I don't remember much of it; but what I do remember vividly is that he was grateful for what God had done and he was excited about what Jesus was doing in his life. It was a simple thing really, but here was someone, a living, breathing, normal guy… who wasn't some sort of fanatic, who wasn't pushing me to accept some set of beliefs that I didn't really know what they meant anyway… but he was telling me that the God made known in Jesus Christ was at work, that God had made a difference in his life. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the first time in 4 years that I became interested again in the Christian faith. I was still a little skeptical, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to find… which was part of why I read the bible looking for inconsistencies—to be honest, there are plenty— but primarily what I found by reading the bible was that I wanted to know more about what God is still doing. I wanted to know whether Jesus was still alive.
So I looked, and I started listening to people's stories… I met Andy and Justin. I got to know Mark and Jessica and Saranell. I listened to Mike and James B. I heard some of my mom's stories, and other people's too. Sometimes there were stories of uplifting joy and hope. Sometimes the stories were of gut wrenching hurt and disappointment. There were stories of success and failure, there were stories of discovery and loss… A lot of the stories had elements of both sides of the emotional spectrum because after all they were stories of life. But they were special because they were also stories of how God met them in the midst of it. And those stories, by the grace of God, those stories are how faith gets passed on.
You see, Jesus Christ made a difference in the world, and he makes a difference in people's lives… both in how we live them and in how we understand them. And that difference is how our faith gets passed on.
I worked in youth ministry in different capacities for about ten years before I came here…and when I talked to parents about their hopes for their children, the single thing that I heard most was that they wanted their children to have a relationship with Jesus Christ…
And it got to the point where a parent would share this hope with me
and I would ask them Is that what they see in you? Is that what
they hear from you? Because what they see in you is what they'll try
to be like. What they hear from you will shape what's important to
them.
The more I did youth ministry the more convinced I became
that doctrine is important… but faith isn't passed on through
sound doctrine. It's passed on because it's visibly important to us.
It's passed on because we share what God's doing with our words and
with our actions.
We teach with our lives… of course as parents we teach our
children… they are sponges, they watch everything, Natalie
tells me that all the time: Daddy I'm watching you.
but it's
also more than just our children who are watching… with our
lives, as Christians we teach the rest of the world what Christ is
like… we show people what meaning Christ has for our lives and
for the world… by our actions and by our words. And you know
what, if there's no difference—there's no difference.
Timothy was lucky… in verse 5 we're told he had his mother and his grandmother to look up to. Both were women of sincere faith. And with this letter he's told now it's your turn… as a reminder and as an encouragement about how to pass his faith on, he gets a message we would all do well to listen to… Rekindle the gift of God within you. Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed. Join in the work, rely on God's power because God called us and it is God's work that we do. And above all, Trust in Jesus Christ keep doing what he told us to do… don't ever give that up, because it's worth suffering for, it's worth dying for… but even more important than that, it's worth living for. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on September 19, 2010.
© 2010 Daniel Holland
