First Reading:
4Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Second Reading:
8Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a
descendant of David—that is my gospel, 9for which
I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a
criminal. But the word of God is not
chained. 10Therefore I endure everything for the sake of
the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in
Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny
him, he will also deny us; 13if we are faithless, he
remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.
14Remind them of this, and warn them before God that
they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only
ruins those who are listening. 15Do your best to present
yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to
be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.
There are days when I look around at the things that are going on in
the world and I think to myself It's going to take a miracle for
any good to come of this.
I can't imagine the motivation for lots
of stuff that people do: things that I read about in the news or that
I hear about when I talk to people. And when I read something or see
something that's particularly discouraging, I thank God for passages
of scripture like the one from Second Timothy today because ultimately
it's a word of encouragement. It begins with a reminder that the
impossible happens, when it comes to what God is doing in the world,
there's always hope. Even when it seems like there's nothing but a
dead end, when it seems like there's no solution that will work and no
viable alternative options… there's still a way. Remember
Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. That's the beginning of our
passage… That's my gospel, the author says. There may be other
things that are good news, but that's the good news that matters the
most because it says that anything's possible.
From the letter, we get the picture that the author was imprisoned. He was chained. He was suffering… but he was still hopeful. He was hopeful that Timothy hadn't forgotten him. He was hopeful that Timothy would remain strong in the faith, in spite of seeing what his mentor had to go through. You see nobody wanted to be in prison, but according to the author of Second Timothy it was better than the alternative because the alternative was letting the faith that meant so much to him wither away to nothing. He was chained because he refused to stop telling the story of Jesus Christ. He was imprisoned as an attempt to silence him.
You see, when the Second Letter to Timothy was written, there were no great cathedrals, there were hardly even churches to speak of. There weren't libraries there weren't book stores. There were no inspirational Christian books. Even the four gospels didn't exist yet, at least not as we know them now. At that time, to grow in faith meant finding someone you admired or looked up to and then doing what they did… if people didn't share the story of Jesus, it would have died with them, if people weren't moved to follow the example they saw in others, they would have looked elsewhere, perhaps going along with the dominant culture never bothering to follow Christ at all. So when this letter was written, the stakes were high. The author wanted Timothy to know first that he would do it all again because being chained was better than the alternative, and second that the battle wasn't lost just because he was locked up.
He said I endure this captivity and in fact everything else that I have to go through so that my life can be a testament to the work of Jesus Christ, the messiah: the one who made it possible to have a relationship with God. He said I'll go through anything so that others who have been called can know Jesus Christ as well. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead because that's the gospel and even though I'm chained, it's not.
Wherever people remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, the gospel is not chained. Wherever people tell stories to pass on their faith to another generation of children and newcomers, the gospel is not chained. And wherever people are doing good things in the name of Christ, the gospel is not chained.
I read a story this week told from the perspective of someone who went
to get a first hand understanding of the plight of the street children
living in Sao Paulo Brazil. (It's reported that there are 8 million
of them) Claudio was the guide… He used to be one of the street
kids in Sao Paulo but now, he's trying to do something impossible in
reaching out to those who just about everyone else has given up
on. … Here's an excerpt of the story As we walked toward a
freeway underpass where many of the street children lived (if you can
call it living), we found ourselves stranded on a cement divider
between four lanes of heavy traffic. Suddenly I became aware of an
emaciated young boy sleeping on the cement divider, using his hands as
a pillow. I asked Claudio how someone could sleep so soundly despite
the noise and confusion of thousands of cars? He told me the boy was
sleeping off a crack high. You don't want to wake them, he said,
because the drugs can make them dangerous. So I walked by the boy but
when I turned back I saw Claudio bending down gently touching the boy
and speaking softly to him with amazing compassion saying
‘Andrew, Andrew.’ The boy didn't wake up and we kept
walking. Later Claudio told me that the boy was 14 years old and used
to be their rehab project but the lure of the street and the desire
for the drugs was too much.
Reaching the 8 million street kids in
Sao Paulo is an impossible task, the vast majority of them are like
grains of sand on the beach, nobody knows them and nobody cares about
them, but on that day, because of Claudio's ministry there were only
7,999,999 left because one – Andrew – wasn't forgotten.
Because of Claudio's ministry, the gospel is unchained and lives are
transformed.
I read another story this week about the terrible violence that erupted after a disputed election a couple of years ago in Kenya. Different tribes of people were fighting against each other with guns and machetes and arrows and rocks and anything they could get their hands on. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. There were many churches doing what they could and one in particular was committed to welcoming in refugees so that they could rest and have their wounds treated. I imagine things like this happened more than once, but I read a story of a woman who came in absolutely distraught because of what she had seen in the actions of her neighbors who were part of the opposing tribe… She said we are one people but they don't love us, they can't love us, they'll never love us… she didn't yet know that the people who were preparing her meal and making her bed for the night were people from the other tribe… When she found out, there were more than physical wounds healed that night because God's love is able to prevail over anger and over hatred. Because of the ministry of that church and those people, the gospel is unchained and lives were transformed.
Now, Claudio and the people who worked at that church making dinner and making beds that night in Kenya, they aren't going to show up on any lists of the world's most influential people, but you can bet that God knows who they are because they're the ones who make sure that the gospel lives on unchained. And they're not the only ones. Any time we give of ourselves for the benefit of others, any time we share stories of what God is doing in our lives so that other people might know who God is and be connected with God's people the gospel is unchained. We can't do everything… but we can do something, and even little things count.
In a few minutes, we get to celebrate the baptism of Emma… it's a joyous thing, a time when we get to remember Jesus Christ, what he's done in the world and what he's done in our lives. We all started somewhere on our journey of faith, and for many of us it's been a long road to get to where we are. We celebrate baptism as someone else's beginning, but we don't celebrate as spectators. Every time we celebrate baptism, we make a promise: to support a child as she grows and to support her parents as we all grow together in faith… It's a promise that most of us have made many times before, some of us even made that promise with Emma's dad. And when we live into that promise, the gospel is unchained.
You may be the only one who knows what it is that you're able to do in this faith community and in all the various groups you're a part of outside the doors of the church, and you may even think it'll take a miracle for anything you do to make a difference. But remember, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And every little thing anyone of us does in Jesus name is an opportunity for God to work miracles. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on September 26, 2010.
© 2010 Daniel Holland
