Grace: reinterpreting our lives
Commentary
Object:
One college professor presented his class syllabus on the first day of the new semester. He pointed out that there were three papers to be written during the term, and he showed on which days those assignments had to be handed in. He said that these dates were firmly fixed, and that no student should presume that the deadline did not apply to her or him. He asked if the students were clear about this, and all heads nodded.
When the first deadline arrived, all but one student turned in their papers. The one student went to the professor’s office and pleaded for more time -- just a single day! The student spoke of illness and hardships which had prevented him from completing the assignment, but all the research was finished and a few more hours would allow the paper to be ready. The professor relented, and granted a one-day extension without penalty. The student was extremely grateful, and sent a note thanking the professor profusely.
When the second deadline arrived, three papers were missing from the pile of student productions. The student who had previously asked for an extension was back, and so were two others with him. As before, all the reasons expressed for failure to complete the assignment were touching and moving and tear-jerking, and the professor again allowed some latitude. The deadline was set aside, and the papers were required by the end of the week. A veritable chorus of praise filled the professor’s small office, and blessings were heaped upon him.
When the third due date arrived, the professor was inundated with requests for extensions. Nearly a quarter of the class begged for more time -- so many other assignments and tests were due, so many books still needed to be read, so much work was required this late in the semester. But this time the professor held firm. No extensions were to be given. Grades would be marked lower for tardiness. Stunned silence filled the classroom.
The large delegation that met the professor in the hallway near his office was very vocal in their anger. “You can’t do this to us! It isn’t fair!”
“What isn’t fair?” asked the professor. “At the beginning of the term you knew the due date of each paper, and you agreed to turn in your work at those times.”
“But you let so-and-so have extensions. You can’t tell us now that we can’t have a few extra days.”
“Maybe you are right,” said the professor. He opened his grade book and made a rather public subtraction from the grades given to the four former late papers. Each of those students, now also in this group, protested loudly. “You can’t do that, Professor! That’s not fair!”
“What’s not fair?” asked the professor. “Justice or mercy?” The question blanketed them heavily as each student silently slipped away. And the professor? When he reported the incident to others, he simply concluded (paraphrasing Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady): “They’d grown accustomed to my grace!”
We grow easily accustomed to God’s grace. We need to become “wow!”ed again by the amazing thing that happens when God chooses to start over in love toward us, even after the Great Syllabus demands a divine reckoning.
Lamentations 1:1-6
The five dirges of Lamentations are typically ascribed to Jeremiah. Consequently they have found a canonical home following the prophecies of that discouraged, but faithful, figure of the seventh century BC. Yet these Laments often get lost in their usual location, tacked on as a mournful appendix to the prophet’s cries. Our energies generally have been sapped by Jeremiah’s tribulations from his last years in Jerusalem, and the Lamentations weigh us down as an exercise in emotional excess.
In truth, these Lamentations would better be considered along with the other poetry of the Wisdom Literature. In literary form, the Lamentations are quite similar to one another. Each of the first four Laments is an acrostic poem. This means that the beginning word of each short stanza (in groupings of mostly synonymous parallelism couplets) starts with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Since there were 22 letters in this language, the opening words in each new couplet progress sequentially from Aleph to Taw when claiming beginning letters. For Laments one and two, there are three couplets in each stanza grouping (only the first word of which begins with the next Hebrew letter in acrostic pattern), producing grieving songs that each consist of 22 short verses (22 Hebrew letters, times 3 synonymous parallelism couplets). The third Lament is very similar, but adds the additional creative touch of having each couplet within a threesome begin with the same Hebrew letter (deepening the acrostic expression threefold). The fourth Lament seems somewhat abbreviated, since each short stanza, while still acrostically developed by way of its initial letter, is formed from only two synonymous parallelism couplets rather than three. Finally, in the fifth lament, there are 22 couplets of synonymous parallelism, but their initial letters do not form an acrostic.
This careful attention to the shape of the poetry gives evidence that the Laments were crafted by someone who felt deeply about the fall of Jerusalem and wanted to preserve memorial dirges that would testify to the complete collapse of confidence it produced. These funeral songs are designed to tell that dark story from Aleph to Taw (“A to Z”).
But how do they tell that tale of woe? In theme and variations, the main thrust of the five Laments is something like this:
• Lament One -- Jerusalem is like a lonely widow suffering from many oppressions, brought on by her great sins.
• Lament Two -- Yahweh’s covenant anger has erupted, resulting in the judgments now experienced.
• Lament Three -- The pain of destruction and exile is personalized, asserting Yahweh’s propriety in raining down judgment, but nuancing this difficult message with expectations of restoration and words of hope.
• Lament Four -- The torment of Jerusalem’s ruin becomes personalized in horrifying description.
• Lament Five -- A prayer of repentance, seeking Yahweh’s deliverance predicated upon the inviolable strength of divine covenant commitments and promises.
What emerges within this collection is a profound reflection on the nature of covenant election. There is absolute affirmation that the judgments of Yahweh against Jerusalem and the people of Judah were appropriate. Such is the logical outcome of the curses of the Sinai covenant, which clearly expressed the intended divine response to covenant unfaithfulness. The Israelites failed to remain true to the lifestyle of a community shaped by Yahweh-in-residence, and there had to be consequences. But attached to these notes of near-deterministic theology is also a strong and lingering question. How can Yahweh carry out the divine mission if Yahweh’s human partner is annihilated? What sense does it make for Israel to be utterly destroyed? What kind of testimony is left if Jerusalem and the earthly dwelling of Yahweh become nothing more than a stinking, rotting wasteland? How will the nations reflect on the values Yahweh sought to display on the billboard of the world, if Yahweh’s own marriage to Israel ends in divorce?
These are serious questions of faith. If the Creator is forgotten by the creatures who are made in the divine image, things are seriously askew on planet Earth, and the entire cosmos is tilting toward ruin. Judgment and destruction are legitimate and logical outcomes, whether or not the Creator wishes to start over with plan B. But once the Creator stepped into human history and wed a bride named Israel, everything changed. Can Yahweh be trusted if Israel is punished beyond recovery? Is the mission of God possible if the human partner in the enterprise consistently wimps out? Where do we go from here?
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Because we have no journal or historical record of Paul’s travels after Acts 28, we have to extrapolate a limited amount of evidence to reconstruct the final decade of his life, and how his letters to Timothy and Titus fit in. There are the strong bookends for dating the last decade of Paul’s life, of course: his release from prison in Rome in 59 AD and his death around 67 AD. In between we have to arrange the pieces with the few clues ferreted out of Paul’s writings, buttressed by a number of hints from other early church testimonies.
Because of Paul’s promise to visit Philemon, made sometime during 59 AD, along with our knowledge of the typical flow of traffic around the Mediterranean and the bits of travel reports that Paul makes to Timothy and Titus, it seems reasonable to assume that Paul traveled with Titus and Timothy from Rome to the island of Crete soon after Paul’s release in 59 AD. There he installed Titus as pastor, and then continued his journey to the mainland of Asia Minor. By late 59 AD Paul was likely enjoying the warm hospitality of his friends Philemon and Onesimus just outside of Colossae.
Around the turn of the next year, Paul probably headed down the Lycus and Maeander river valleys to Ephesus, which had been his base of missionary operations six or seven years before. The congregation in Ephesus was large and growing, and Paul assisted in installing as pastor there his most promising protégé, Timothy. Perhaps sometime during the year 60 AD, Paul traveled on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3), probably wanting to spend time with his friends and ministry supporters in Philippi (Philippians 1:25-28, 2:24).
From that city, many have speculated, Paul traveled on to Spain. This was certainly his plan a few years earlier, when he wrote to the church in Rome (Romans 15:24). Also, in 96 AD Clement of Rome (1 Clement 5:5-7) reflected on Paul’s travels to the “farthest bounds of the West,” a term used in the Roman empire to designate Spain. There are other supportive references in the Muratorian Fragment, Chrysostom’s Tenth Homily on 2 Timothy, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lecture 17:26 of his Jerusalem Catecheses.
That kind of journey would have required at least a year or two. It was probably sometime during these travels, early in the decade of the 60s, that Paul wrote 1 Timothy. It is a warm and encouraging letter, filled with the advice of a mentor and the seasoned reflections of a man who has observed the strengths and weaknesses of congregational life.
It is possible and indeed probable that Paul wrote his letter to Titus around the same time as he did his first epistle to Timothy. Although Titus is much shorter, it deals with most of the same themes. Some of the wording, especially related to the qualities of character required for those in leadership, is almost identical between the letters to Titus and Timothy.
Paul ends his letter to Titus with a few personal notes, announcing that he will soon be in Nicopolis, on the east side of Greece, anticipating “winter” (Titus 3:12-15). Since there is no reference in these letters to grave persecutions that might be developing, nor any indication of the apostle Peter’s death (which probably happened early in the attack on Christians that followed Rome’s burning in July of 64), Paul probably penned 1 Timothy and Titus around the middle of 63 AD.
Paul’s next years were likely quite hectic. When the fires began burning Rome in the middle of 64 AD, Emperor Nero was quick to point the accusing finger toward Christians. As a leading figure in the Christian movement, Paul soon became a hunted man. It is probable that the winter of 63-64 AD, spent in Nicopolis, was the last peaceful time in his life. Nero would die in 68 AD, but not until he had killed thousands of Christians, including both Peter and Paul.
In his attempts to stay ahead of warrants for his arrest, Paul probably flitted from location to location from late 64 through early 66 AD. His travel notes to Timothy, in the second letter sent to the young pastor, certainly have the air of haste and mobility about them. During that year or so, Paul spent time in Corinth (2 Timothy 4:20), Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20), and Troas (2 Timothy 4:13), at minimum, and probably a number of other places as well. But Troas was to be his last voluntary stop. There, in the city where he had first come to know doctor Luke 16 years before, Paul was arrested and hauled off to Rome, without even being able to take along his few personal belongings (2 Timothy 4:13).
Evidently there were several different arraignments and trials during the legal process that would lead to Paul’s death (2 Timothy 4:16). After all, Paul’s Roman citizenship provided him with protections that Peter and others did not enjoy. In between some of these court matters, Paul sent a final letter to his younger friend Timothy. It is warm and passionate, urgent and reflective, pessimistic and optimistic, all at the same time. Paul encourages Timothy to live faithfully as a pastor, carrying on the tradition of his godly forebears, grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and learning from the example of Paul’s own life as his spiritual mentor (2 Timothy 1:1--2:13). Paul also reminds Timothy of some of the key teachings that are critical for church leaders to espouse regularly (2 Timothy 2:14--3:9). Finally, Paul lapses into tender reminders of the times they spent together and offers his strong personal testimony of faith and trust in Jesus, even as he senses his execution looming (2 Timothy 3:10--4:8). Some final greetings and urgent instructions end the letter (2 Timothy 4:9-22).
The last words of Paul are quite moving. First he sums up his life in athletic metaphors: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day -- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6?8).
Then he ends his many years of communication and correspondence with a caring and concise blessing: “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you” (2 Timothy 4:22). Paul was executed by beheading, probably sometime in 67 AD.
Luke 17:5-10
Helmut Thielicke was serving as a hospital chaplain for a time, and noticed the extraordinary care of one particular nurse. She was usually working the night shift, but never used the slower time as a means to slack or loaf. Instead she was constantly busy, checking every patient on a very regular schedule, and often holding hands with those who were fearful of surgery, praying with the dying, and reading to those who could not sleep for pain or worry.
Thielicke stopped to thank her for her marvelous nursing care. It seemed to make such a difference for those whom he came to visit as a pastor. He asked her if she ever tired of her exhausting hours and often thankless job.
“Not at all,” she told him. “In fact, every night I am adding jewels to my crown.”
That took him aback, so he asked her what she meant. “Our Lord has promised to reward our good deeds,” she replied. “If my tally is correct, I now have 1,374 jewels in my crown in heaven.”
Suddenly, wrote Thielicke, he saw her through new eyes. The person he had admired for her inner beauty, tender care, and sacrificial service became in an instant a greedy religious ogre, choosing to locate herself in spots where more heavenly goods could be looted from her unsuspecting prey. It made him sick.
So it should. We only have to think of this story of Jesus. That nurse’s self-centeredness and mercenary spirit were clearly at odds with the character of God and the values of the kingdom. When we try to mark service with some value, invariably the price tags never fit.
It is only when we know who we are, by the grace of God, that we begin truly to understand whose we are. And there is where faith is strengthened.
Application
In her wonderful collection of poetry called The Awful Rowing Toward God, Anne Sexton examines her life like someone in a canoe rowing against the stream of life, encountering hazards along the way, and finally docking at the island of God’s home. The concluding poem in the book is called “The Rowing Endeth.” In it she sees herself called by God’s great laughter to join him for a game of poker. When the cards are dealt she is surprised and thrilled. She has a royal straight flush. She will trounce God and win for herself whatever prizes God has brought to the table. In great excitement she slaps down her cards, claiming her winnings. Nothing can beat this hand!
But God only laughs -- a great, rolling, joyful exuberance that energizes everything around. In rich good humor, with no malice at all, God throws down his cards. Five aces! That’s impossible! But there it is. And when Anne loses to God, she knows that really she wins. For God is not stingy with his wealth or his earnings. There are never any losers when they sit at table with God. God’s laughter is always without malice or one-upsmanship.
This is the gospel according to Jesus’ parable. In spite of our good fortunes or savvy playing skills or sheer hard work, we never really win at the game of life when we play it by our own rules. But if God is bending them in the direction of grace, something wonderful always happens.
Alternative Application
Lamentations 1:1-6. The conundrums of divine election, and the relationship between God and a community that is sealed by such a deal, continue to intrigue and plague religious people generally, and theologians specifically. Why would God make these kinds of covenant commitments? How certain can we be about the strength of those commitments? What are the possible outcomes to promises made of both blessing for faithfulness and curses for infidelity? Can God ever fulfill the divine missiological designs pledged by the covenant? Is it possible for a marriage of such unequal partners to endure?
The New Testament apostle Paul will probe these issues again in his great letter to the Roman congregation. There, in chapters 9-11, he will pick up the themes of Lamentations. If God made such strong promises to Israel and those promises seem to have been voided by the nation’s unfaithfulness, resulting in Yahweh’s legitimate covenant curses upon it, how can anyone claim confidence in the God of Jesus? What does election mean? How true is the divine pledge to us if we are unable, because of inbred sinfulness, to maintain our part in the spiritual marriage?
While the five Lamentations give voice to our concerns, they also hint at the amazing promises of grace, which always overcome the bad news of current affairs:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning:
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him” (Lamentations 3:22-24).
When the first deadline arrived, all but one student turned in their papers. The one student went to the professor’s office and pleaded for more time -- just a single day! The student spoke of illness and hardships which had prevented him from completing the assignment, but all the research was finished and a few more hours would allow the paper to be ready. The professor relented, and granted a one-day extension without penalty. The student was extremely grateful, and sent a note thanking the professor profusely.
When the second deadline arrived, three papers were missing from the pile of student productions. The student who had previously asked for an extension was back, and so were two others with him. As before, all the reasons expressed for failure to complete the assignment were touching and moving and tear-jerking, and the professor again allowed some latitude. The deadline was set aside, and the papers were required by the end of the week. A veritable chorus of praise filled the professor’s small office, and blessings were heaped upon him.
When the third due date arrived, the professor was inundated with requests for extensions. Nearly a quarter of the class begged for more time -- so many other assignments and tests were due, so many books still needed to be read, so much work was required this late in the semester. But this time the professor held firm. No extensions were to be given. Grades would be marked lower for tardiness. Stunned silence filled the classroom.
The large delegation that met the professor in the hallway near his office was very vocal in their anger. “You can’t do this to us! It isn’t fair!”
“What isn’t fair?” asked the professor. “At the beginning of the term you knew the due date of each paper, and you agreed to turn in your work at those times.”
“But you let so-and-so have extensions. You can’t tell us now that we can’t have a few extra days.”
“Maybe you are right,” said the professor. He opened his grade book and made a rather public subtraction from the grades given to the four former late papers. Each of those students, now also in this group, protested loudly. “You can’t do that, Professor! That’s not fair!”
“What’s not fair?” asked the professor. “Justice or mercy?” The question blanketed them heavily as each student silently slipped away. And the professor? When he reported the incident to others, he simply concluded (paraphrasing Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady): “They’d grown accustomed to my grace!”
We grow easily accustomed to God’s grace. We need to become “wow!”ed again by the amazing thing that happens when God chooses to start over in love toward us, even after the Great Syllabus demands a divine reckoning.
Lamentations 1:1-6
The five dirges of Lamentations are typically ascribed to Jeremiah. Consequently they have found a canonical home following the prophecies of that discouraged, but faithful, figure of the seventh century BC. Yet these Laments often get lost in their usual location, tacked on as a mournful appendix to the prophet’s cries. Our energies generally have been sapped by Jeremiah’s tribulations from his last years in Jerusalem, and the Lamentations weigh us down as an exercise in emotional excess.
In truth, these Lamentations would better be considered along with the other poetry of the Wisdom Literature. In literary form, the Lamentations are quite similar to one another. Each of the first four Laments is an acrostic poem. This means that the beginning word of each short stanza (in groupings of mostly synonymous parallelism couplets) starts with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Since there were 22 letters in this language, the opening words in each new couplet progress sequentially from Aleph to Taw when claiming beginning letters. For Laments one and two, there are three couplets in each stanza grouping (only the first word of which begins with the next Hebrew letter in acrostic pattern), producing grieving songs that each consist of 22 short verses (22 Hebrew letters, times 3 synonymous parallelism couplets). The third Lament is very similar, but adds the additional creative touch of having each couplet within a threesome begin with the same Hebrew letter (deepening the acrostic expression threefold). The fourth Lament seems somewhat abbreviated, since each short stanza, while still acrostically developed by way of its initial letter, is formed from only two synonymous parallelism couplets rather than three. Finally, in the fifth lament, there are 22 couplets of synonymous parallelism, but their initial letters do not form an acrostic.
This careful attention to the shape of the poetry gives evidence that the Laments were crafted by someone who felt deeply about the fall of Jerusalem and wanted to preserve memorial dirges that would testify to the complete collapse of confidence it produced. These funeral songs are designed to tell that dark story from Aleph to Taw (“A to Z”).
But how do they tell that tale of woe? In theme and variations, the main thrust of the five Laments is something like this:
• Lament One -- Jerusalem is like a lonely widow suffering from many oppressions, brought on by her great sins.
• Lament Two -- Yahweh’s covenant anger has erupted, resulting in the judgments now experienced.
• Lament Three -- The pain of destruction and exile is personalized, asserting Yahweh’s propriety in raining down judgment, but nuancing this difficult message with expectations of restoration and words of hope.
• Lament Four -- The torment of Jerusalem’s ruin becomes personalized in horrifying description.
• Lament Five -- A prayer of repentance, seeking Yahweh’s deliverance predicated upon the inviolable strength of divine covenant commitments and promises.
What emerges within this collection is a profound reflection on the nature of covenant election. There is absolute affirmation that the judgments of Yahweh against Jerusalem and the people of Judah were appropriate. Such is the logical outcome of the curses of the Sinai covenant, which clearly expressed the intended divine response to covenant unfaithfulness. The Israelites failed to remain true to the lifestyle of a community shaped by Yahweh-in-residence, and there had to be consequences. But attached to these notes of near-deterministic theology is also a strong and lingering question. How can Yahweh carry out the divine mission if Yahweh’s human partner is annihilated? What sense does it make for Israel to be utterly destroyed? What kind of testimony is left if Jerusalem and the earthly dwelling of Yahweh become nothing more than a stinking, rotting wasteland? How will the nations reflect on the values Yahweh sought to display on the billboard of the world, if Yahweh’s own marriage to Israel ends in divorce?
These are serious questions of faith. If the Creator is forgotten by the creatures who are made in the divine image, things are seriously askew on planet Earth, and the entire cosmos is tilting toward ruin. Judgment and destruction are legitimate and logical outcomes, whether or not the Creator wishes to start over with plan B. But once the Creator stepped into human history and wed a bride named Israel, everything changed. Can Yahweh be trusted if Israel is punished beyond recovery? Is the mission of God possible if the human partner in the enterprise consistently wimps out? Where do we go from here?
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Because we have no journal or historical record of Paul’s travels after Acts 28, we have to extrapolate a limited amount of evidence to reconstruct the final decade of his life, and how his letters to Timothy and Titus fit in. There are the strong bookends for dating the last decade of Paul’s life, of course: his release from prison in Rome in 59 AD and his death around 67 AD. In between we have to arrange the pieces with the few clues ferreted out of Paul’s writings, buttressed by a number of hints from other early church testimonies.
Because of Paul’s promise to visit Philemon, made sometime during 59 AD, along with our knowledge of the typical flow of traffic around the Mediterranean and the bits of travel reports that Paul makes to Timothy and Titus, it seems reasonable to assume that Paul traveled with Titus and Timothy from Rome to the island of Crete soon after Paul’s release in 59 AD. There he installed Titus as pastor, and then continued his journey to the mainland of Asia Minor. By late 59 AD Paul was likely enjoying the warm hospitality of his friends Philemon and Onesimus just outside of Colossae.
Around the turn of the next year, Paul probably headed down the Lycus and Maeander river valleys to Ephesus, which had been his base of missionary operations six or seven years before. The congregation in Ephesus was large and growing, and Paul assisted in installing as pastor there his most promising protégé, Timothy. Perhaps sometime during the year 60 AD, Paul traveled on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3), probably wanting to spend time with his friends and ministry supporters in Philippi (Philippians 1:25-28, 2:24).
From that city, many have speculated, Paul traveled on to Spain. This was certainly his plan a few years earlier, when he wrote to the church in Rome (Romans 15:24). Also, in 96 AD Clement of Rome (1 Clement 5:5-7) reflected on Paul’s travels to the “farthest bounds of the West,” a term used in the Roman empire to designate Spain. There are other supportive references in the Muratorian Fragment, Chrysostom’s Tenth Homily on 2 Timothy, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lecture 17:26 of his Jerusalem Catecheses.
That kind of journey would have required at least a year or two. It was probably sometime during these travels, early in the decade of the 60s, that Paul wrote 1 Timothy. It is a warm and encouraging letter, filled with the advice of a mentor and the seasoned reflections of a man who has observed the strengths and weaknesses of congregational life.
It is possible and indeed probable that Paul wrote his letter to Titus around the same time as he did his first epistle to Timothy. Although Titus is much shorter, it deals with most of the same themes. Some of the wording, especially related to the qualities of character required for those in leadership, is almost identical between the letters to Titus and Timothy.
Paul ends his letter to Titus with a few personal notes, announcing that he will soon be in Nicopolis, on the east side of Greece, anticipating “winter” (Titus 3:12-15). Since there is no reference in these letters to grave persecutions that might be developing, nor any indication of the apostle Peter’s death (which probably happened early in the attack on Christians that followed Rome’s burning in July of 64), Paul probably penned 1 Timothy and Titus around the middle of 63 AD.
Paul’s next years were likely quite hectic. When the fires began burning Rome in the middle of 64 AD, Emperor Nero was quick to point the accusing finger toward Christians. As a leading figure in the Christian movement, Paul soon became a hunted man. It is probable that the winter of 63-64 AD, spent in Nicopolis, was the last peaceful time in his life. Nero would die in 68 AD, but not until he had killed thousands of Christians, including both Peter and Paul.
In his attempts to stay ahead of warrants for his arrest, Paul probably flitted from location to location from late 64 through early 66 AD. His travel notes to Timothy, in the second letter sent to the young pastor, certainly have the air of haste and mobility about them. During that year or so, Paul spent time in Corinth (2 Timothy 4:20), Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20), and Troas (2 Timothy 4:13), at minimum, and probably a number of other places as well. But Troas was to be his last voluntary stop. There, in the city where he had first come to know doctor Luke 16 years before, Paul was arrested and hauled off to Rome, without even being able to take along his few personal belongings (2 Timothy 4:13).
Evidently there were several different arraignments and trials during the legal process that would lead to Paul’s death (2 Timothy 4:16). After all, Paul’s Roman citizenship provided him with protections that Peter and others did not enjoy. In between some of these court matters, Paul sent a final letter to his younger friend Timothy. It is warm and passionate, urgent and reflective, pessimistic and optimistic, all at the same time. Paul encourages Timothy to live faithfully as a pastor, carrying on the tradition of his godly forebears, grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and learning from the example of Paul’s own life as his spiritual mentor (2 Timothy 1:1--2:13). Paul also reminds Timothy of some of the key teachings that are critical for church leaders to espouse regularly (2 Timothy 2:14--3:9). Finally, Paul lapses into tender reminders of the times they spent together and offers his strong personal testimony of faith and trust in Jesus, even as he senses his execution looming (2 Timothy 3:10--4:8). Some final greetings and urgent instructions end the letter (2 Timothy 4:9-22).
The last words of Paul are quite moving. First he sums up his life in athletic metaphors: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day -- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6?8).
Then he ends his many years of communication and correspondence with a caring and concise blessing: “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you” (2 Timothy 4:22). Paul was executed by beheading, probably sometime in 67 AD.
Luke 17:5-10
Helmut Thielicke was serving as a hospital chaplain for a time, and noticed the extraordinary care of one particular nurse. She was usually working the night shift, but never used the slower time as a means to slack or loaf. Instead she was constantly busy, checking every patient on a very regular schedule, and often holding hands with those who were fearful of surgery, praying with the dying, and reading to those who could not sleep for pain or worry.
Thielicke stopped to thank her for her marvelous nursing care. It seemed to make such a difference for those whom he came to visit as a pastor. He asked her if she ever tired of her exhausting hours and often thankless job.
“Not at all,” she told him. “In fact, every night I am adding jewels to my crown.”
That took him aback, so he asked her what she meant. “Our Lord has promised to reward our good deeds,” she replied. “If my tally is correct, I now have 1,374 jewels in my crown in heaven.”
Suddenly, wrote Thielicke, he saw her through new eyes. The person he had admired for her inner beauty, tender care, and sacrificial service became in an instant a greedy religious ogre, choosing to locate herself in spots where more heavenly goods could be looted from her unsuspecting prey. It made him sick.
So it should. We only have to think of this story of Jesus. That nurse’s self-centeredness and mercenary spirit were clearly at odds with the character of God and the values of the kingdom. When we try to mark service with some value, invariably the price tags never fit.
It is only when we know who we are, by the grace of God, that we begin truly to understand whose we are. And there is where faith is strengthened.
Application
In her wonderful collection of poetry called The Awful Rowing Toward God, Anne Sexton examines her life like someone in a canoe rowing against the stream of life, encountering hazards along the way, and finally docking at the island of God’s home. The concluding poem in the book is called “The Rowing Endeth.” In it she sees herself called by God’s great laughter to join him for a game of poker. When the cards are dealt she is surprised and thrilled. She has a royal straight flush. She will trounce God and win for herself whatever prizes God has brought to the table. In great excitement she slaps down her cards, claiming her winnings. Nothing can beat this hand!
But God only laughs -- a great, rolling, joyful exuberance that energizes everything around. In rich good humor, with no malice at all, God throws down his cards. Five aces! That’s impossible! But there it is. And when Anne loses to God, she knows that really she wins. For God is not stingy with his wealth or his earnings. There are never any losers when they sit at table with God. God’s laughter is always without malice or one-upsmanship.
This is the gospel according to Jesus’ parable. In spite of our good fortunes or savvy playing skills or sheer hard work, we never really win at the game of life when we play it by our own rules. But if God is bending them in the direction of grace, something wonderful always happens.
Alternative Application
Lamentations 1:1-6. The conundrums of divine election, and the relationship between God and a community that is sealed by such a deal, continue to intrigue and plague religious people generally, and theologians specifically. Why would God make these kinds of covenant commitments? How certain can we be about the strength of those commitments? What are the possible outcomes to promises made of both blessing for faithfulness and curses for infidelity? Can God ever fulfill the divine missiological designs pledged by the covenant? Is it possible for a marriage of such unequal partners to endure?
The New Testament apostle Paul will probe these issues again in his great letter to the Roman congregation. There, in chapters 9-11, he will pick up the themes of Lamentations. If God made such strong promises to Israel and those promises seem to have been voided by the nation’s unfaithfulness, resulting in Yahweh’s legitimate covenant curses upon it, how can anyone claim confidence in the God of Jesus? What does election mean? How true is the divine pledge to us if we are unable, because of inbred sinfulness, to maintain our part in the spiritual marriage?
While the five Lamentations give voice to our concerns, they also hint at the amazing promises of grace, which always overcome the bad news of current affairs:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning:
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him” (Lamentations 3:22-24).
