The Promise That Won't Be Broken
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
Paul was sitting in prison with every reason to be discouraged. He was just days away from his execution at the hands of Emperor Nero. He was isolated and treated like a man to be scorned, unlike his earlier stints in jail. The Emperor Nero had blamed the Christians for the great fire that destroyed the city of Rome. For the first time they were subjected to terrible persecution and citizens from every corner of the empire turned against them. Christians were burned as living torches to light the emperor's social gatherings. They were thrown to lions and killed by gladiators. They were despised throughout the empire as being cannibals. Their talk about eating the body and blood of Christ was given as testimony against them. They were considered atheists because they did not worship the official idols of the Empire. They were said to be revolutionaries because they denied the ultimate authority of Caesar and said that Jesus was Lord. It was a world that had turned ugly and brutal for the Christian community. Paul became the symbol of the upstart religious movement and Nero was looking to make an example of him.
The atmosphere of the letter reflects these circumstances. Paul is lonely. He says, "I long night and day to see you." He is feeling abandoned and he writes, "All those in Asia have turned against me ... Only Luke is with me ... Demas has forsaken me and gone to Thessalonica." The ground he sleeps on is cold and hard so he asks Timothy to bring the cloak, which he left in Troas. He is bored because time passes slowly and he has little to keep him occupied. He asks for the books and the parchments, which he left behind in Troas. He is certain that the end of his life is at hand. So in typical poet fashion, Paul writes, "The time of my departure has come ... I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." There is that word of clear anticipation that he had reached the end of his life.
Yet, despite the dark days, the letter opens with Paul's usual calm and confident expression of faith and grace. Putting his own circumstances out of his mind, he reminds Timothy who it was who called him and named him an apostle of Jesus Christ. Despite the fact that Paul outwardly looked like a beaten, forgotten man, Paul knew that he belonged to Jesus. That was enough to keep him going despite the hard times.
Paul knew that Jesus had made promises that would not be broken. It didn't matter to him what was going on all around him. He looked beyond what was apparent to all and decided to live by faith and not by sight. As he sat there, he thought about Timothy and those who he would leave behind. He wondered about their faith and whether or not they could stand up to the persecution. He tried to find the right words to encourage them to keep their eyes on Christ.
In these first few verses, Paul reminds Timothy of the gospel and he calls it "the promise of life in Christ Jesus." Paul lived by the message that he proclaimed. In Romans he wrote, "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God let loose among men, the power of God unto salvation. The gospel changes people; it delivers them; it frees them; it heals them. The gospel brings people into the fullness of their life; it sets them free to be what God intends them to be."
If you have ever watched a young child at play, you get a sense of what it means to be fully alive. Just go to the playground and you will see boys and girls filled with a desire to see, touch, and taste everything that life puts in their paths. They look at life as something to be experienced. As we get older, we try to become more sophisticated about things, but many of us are still looking to get the most out of life.
As a result we are often vulnerable to the appeals of the world. Just turn on the television or open up a magazine and you will bombarded with advertisements telling us that "we only go around once." We have to grab it while we can. "Live with gusto," we are told. We are encouraged to buy this make of car, or that whitening toothpaste, and capture the good life and all that goes with it. It is amazing how much that idea takes hold of us. We want to have it all.
Unfortunately, the images the world shows of what it takes to have the good life are fallacious. We keep grabbing for material things and end up discovering that they do not make us happy. We reach for them and come away feeling empty. There is something missing.
A few years ago, Maury Povich invited some teenagers onto his afternoon talk show to talk about their experience growing up in the suburbs. The kids were dressed in black. Their faces were painted pale white and they took on the pallor of death. Their hair was unkempt and they looked lost. Maury kept asking them, "Why do you dress in this bizarre way? What is behind this look?" They responded, in all honesty, "What else is there?"
Their answer was a silent protest against the emptiness of life, against the sense of being cheated by life, by the world, and by society. The truth is that the world doesn't have anything meaningful to offer us. Will money bring satisfaction? We read of Martha Stewart and other corporate executives who served or are now serving time in prison because, despite their millions, they could not find contentment. The rich are more prone to divorce and nervous breakdowns. For all their wealth, they cannot buy what it takes to give life meaning and purpose.
Some would say that power and the ability to control one's destiny can bring happiness. Yet, how many stories have we heard about people who have sacrificed to get to that position only to find out that they have lost all their friends and even their family to get there? Whoever it was that declared it to be lonely at the top, was speaking from personal experience. To get to the top in this world, you are expected to destroy all competition. Unfortunately there is often a lot of "friendly fire" on the way up the ladder.
Some look at love and sexual pleasure as being the ultimate of satisfaction. The world is filled with erotic images that paint sex as an end in itself. What we soon learn is that without a deep and abiding love, it becomes passionless and filled with emptiness. It becomes nothing more than something to do.
It is of little wonder that the young people on Maury's program looked the way they did. They were at an age when life should have been exciting and filled with endless opportunities. These were kids who ought to be hungry for life, looking forward to it. But the world had shown them an image of what the good life was all about and it left them disillusioned and despairing. What they had already tasted in life had left them feeling hopeless, empty, and abandoned.
Which brings us back to Paul. At the end of his career, he writes to remind Timothy that the hope of the world can only be found in the gospel. As he is sitting there in prison, with every reason to be discouraged, he tells his young friend that Jesus Christ offers every one of us a promise of meaningful and productive life. The circumstances of life are inconsequential. You can be sailing along with every blessing falling into place or you can be stuck in prison with a limited future, and the promise is still good and ready to be claimed.
I am sure that Timothy was worried about Paul. I am sure he was worried about the future. To this introverted, sensitive, sometimes fearful young man in Ephesus, Paul describes again the ingredients of the promise of life in Jesus Christ. He says to Timothy, "Remember the words of your mother and grandmother and let them be rekindled again." When things are going well, faith is easy. When the fire is burning bright, we forget how hard it was to start. We need to remember that it started somewhere. Paul encouraged Timothy to look back and let the sparks be rekindled. He reminded him that God has given him a treasure to share and it includes the promises of God.
What is this treasure and what are these promises that Paul speaks about to Timothy? The first promise is that we will receive grace. Grace is getting something we don't deserve. You cannot earn it. It is given simply because God loves us. It shows itself in terms of forgiveness. God sees us in our sinful state and decides to offer us a complete pardon. So many people try to earn God's favor and end up feeling frustrated. The good news is that God has abundant grace for all who are open to receive it.
A second promise is that God wants to walk with us. His incarnation is proof enough of his desire to enter into our lives. He doesn't want to watch from afar. He wants to come into our world. He wants to welcome us into his loving arms. That is the point of his grace. His forgiveness is not a simple exercise of his power and ability to do so. He does it for a purpose. He wants us to know him and love him as much as he knows and loves us.
A third promise is that we will receive power from above. In our human condition we are weak and subject to temptation and the wiles of the devil. God promises that when we come to him we will receive the power to stand up to the devil, to obey God's Word and to walk with God.
In Christ, we find we are able to do what we could not do before. Jesus now stands with us and we have the power of the Holy Spirit within us. This is what makes it possible for the alcoholic to leave their drinking, for those struggling with infidelity to remain faithful to their spouses, for the gambler to turn away from the games of chance. We cannot do it on our own, but we have been promised power from above so that we might do extraordinary things.
A fourth promise is that we will gain new understanding and grow in wisdom. God promises that if we follow him, he will open our eyes to truths that we never knew before. He will lift the veil and we will see things that we never saw. He will turn us around so that we can begin to walk by faith not by sight. It will be as if we have been lifted up and can see things from a new vantage point. We will be made aware of the bigger picture. The new understanding will strengthen our faith and equip us to serve even more faithfully.
A fifth promise is that we will receive mercy. The difference between mercy and grace is that grace gives us what we do not deserve, while mercy withholds what we do deserve. It is God's mercy, which tempers the difficulties of our lives and adjusts them to our weakness of faith. We take God's mercy for granted. We think that life ought to be easier. This is especially true of new Christians. We do not think it is fair that we should have to suffer.
In a fallen world the exact opposite is true. Every day ought to be nothing but disaster and sheer chaos. Every day, every moment ought to be filled with malice, hatred, viciousness, and betrayal. The fact that those things only come rather infrequently into our lives is due to the mercies of God. We ought to expect nothing but the direst hardships, but actually we are given hours and days -- sometimes weeks and months -- of joy, blessing, peace, excitement, and adventure. That is due to the mercies of God. That is what allowed Paul to sing God's praises even when he was stuck in prison with little hope of a future. He saw God's mercy and realized how blessed he was in spite of his circumstances. Wow!
A sixth promise is that we will have God's peace, the peace that passes all understanding. Peace is that inner sense of well-being. It is knowing that God is in control and that you are in his hands. It is the peace that a man named Les Main knew when the doctor told him he had terminal cancer. A parishioner of a fellow pastor, Les was only 62 years old when he learned of his diagnosis. He wasn't happy about the cancer. His faith was strong and in the following months he learned just how deep that faith was. As he shared his testimony, he was always quick to point out that he and Jesus were going through this together. He would say, "As long as Jesus holds my hand I knew everything, absolutely everything, will be all right." That is the same sentiment that Paul shares in Philippians 1:21 when he says, "For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain." It is that kind of inner peace that allows you to sing hymns and offer prayers when your world is turning upside down.
This is what the world is looking for as it strives to find joy and happiness. These treasures are what will make a teenager sit up and smile. These are the gifts that God offers and we are called to share with the world.
These are the promises that cannot be broken or stopped as long as there are witnesses to tell the story. So let's take up the challenge and share these promises with the world. Amen.
The atmosphere of the letter reflects these circumstances. Paul is lonely. He says, "I long night and day to see you." He is feeling abandoned and he writes, "All those in Asia have turned against me ... Only Luke is with me ... Demas has forsaken me and gone to Thessalonica." The ground he sleeps on is cold and hard so he asks Timothy to bring the cloak, which he left in Troas. He is bored because time passes slowly and he has little to keep him occupied. He asks for the books and the parchments, which he left behind in Troas. He is certain that the end of his life is at hand. So in typical poet fashion, Paul writes, "The time of my departure has come ... I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." There is that word of clear anticipation that he had reached the end of his life.
Yet, despite the dark days, the letter opens with Paul's usual calm and confident expression of faith and grace. Putting his own circumstances out of his mind, he reminds Timothy who it was who called him and named him an apostle of Jesus Christ. Despite the fact that Paul outwardly looked like a beaten, forgotten man, Paul knew that he belonged to Jesus. That was enough to keep him going despite the hard times.
Paul knew that Jesus had made promises that would not be broken. It didn't matter to him what was going on all around him. He looked beyond what was apparent to all and decided to live by faith and not by sight. As he sat there, he thought about Timothy and those who he would leave behind. He wondered about their faith and whether or not they could stand up to the persecution. He tried to find the right words to encourage them to keep their eyes on Christ.
In these first few verses, Paul reminds Timothy of the gospel and he calls it "the promise of life in Christ Jesus." Paul lived by the message that he proclaimed. In Romans he wrote, "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God let loose among men, the power of God unto salvation. The gospel changes people; it delivers them; it frees them; it heals them. The gospel brings people into the fullness of their life; it sets them free to be what God intends them to be."
If you have ever watched a young child at play, you get a sense of what it means to be fully alive. Just go to the playground and you will see boys and girls filled with a desire to see, touch, and taste everything that life puts in their paths. They look at life as something to be experienced. As we get older, we try to become more sophisticated about things, but many of us are still looking to get the most out of life.
As a result we are often vulnerable to the appeals of the world. Just turn on the television or open up a magazine and you will bombarded with advertisements telling us that "we only go around once." We have to grab it while we can. "Live with gusto," we are told. We are encouraged to buy this make of car, or that whitening toothpaste, and capture the good life and all that goes with it. It is amazing how much that idea takes hold of us. We want to have it all.
Unfortunately, the images the world shows of what it takes to have the good life are fallacious. We keep grabbing for material things and end up discovering that they do not make us happy. We reach for them and come away feeling empty. There is something missing.
A few years ago, Maury Povich invited some teenagers onto his afternoon talk show to talk about their experience growing up in the suburbs. The kids were dressed in black. Their faces were painted pale white and they took on the pallor of death. Their hair was unkempt and they looked lost. Maury kept asking them, "Why do you dress in this bizarre way? What is behind this look?" They responded, in all honesty, "What else is there?"
Their answer was a silent protest against the emptiness of life, against the sense of being cheated by life, by the world, and by society. The truth is that the world doesn't have anything meaningful to offer us. Will money bring satisfaction? We read of Martha Stewart and other corporate executives who served or are now serving time in prison because, despite their millions, they could not find contentment. The rich are more prone to divorce and nervous breakdowns. For all their wealth, they cannot buy what it takes to give life meaning and purpose.
Some would say that power and the ability to control one's destiny can bring happiness. Yet, how many stories have we heard about people who have sacrificed to get to that position only to find out that they have lost all their friends and even their family to get there? Whoever it was that declared it to be lonely at the top, was speaking from personal experience. To get to the top in this world, you are expected to destroy all competition. Unfortunately there is often a lot of "friendly fire" on the way up the ladder.
Some look at love and sexual pleasure as being the ultimate of satisfaction. The world is filled with erotic images that paint sex as an end in itself. What we soon learn is that without a deep and abiding love, it becomes passionless and filled with emptiness. It becomes nothing more than something to do.
It is of little wonder that the young people on Maury's program looked the way they did. They were at an age when life should have been exciting and filled with endless opportunities. These were kids who ought to be hungry for life, looking forward to it. But the world had shown them an image of what the good life was all about and it left them disillusioned and despairing. What they had already tasted in life had left them feeling hopeless, empty, and abandoned.
Which brings us back to Paul. At the end of his career, he writes to remind Timothy that the hope of the world can only be found in the gospel. As he is sitting there in prison, with every reason to be discouraged, he tells his young friend that Jesus Christ offers every one of us a promise of meaningful and productive life. The circumstances of life are inconsequential. You can be sailing along with every blessing falling into place or you can be stuck in prison with a limited future, and the promise is still good and ready to be claimed.
I am sure that Timothy was worried about Paul. I am sure he was worried about the future. To this introverted, sensitive, sometimes fearful young man in Ephesus, Paul describes again the ingredients of the promise of life in Jesus Christ. He says to Timothy, "Remember the words of your mother and grandmother and let them be rekindled again." When things are going well, faith is easy. When the fire is burning bright, we forget how hard it was to start. We need to remember that it started somewhere. Paul encouraged Timothy to look back and let the sparks be rekindled. He reminded him that God has given him a treasure to share and it includes the promises of God.
What is this treasure and what are these promises that Paul speaks about to Timothy? The first promise is that we will receive grace. Grace is getting something we don't deserve. You cannot earn it. It is given simply because God loves us. It shows itself in terms of forgiveness. God sees us in our sinful state and decides to offer us a complete pardon. So many people try to earn God's favor and end up feeling frustrated. The good news is that God has abundant grace for all who are open to receive it.
A second promise is that God wants to walk with us. His incarnation is proof enough of his desire to enter into our lives. He doesn't want to watch from afar. He wants to come into our world. He wants to welcome us into his loving arms. That is the point of his grace. His forgiveness is not a simple exercise of his power and ability to do so. He does it for a purpose. He wants us to know him and love him as much as he knows and loves us.
A third promise is that we will receive power from above. In our human condition we are weak and subject to temptation and the wiles of the devil. God promises that when we come to him we will receive the power to stand up to the devil, to obey God's Word and to walk with God.
In Christ, we find we are able to do what we could not do before. Jesus now stands with us and we have the power of the Holy Spirit within us. This is what makes it possible for the alcoholic to leave their drinking, for those struggling with infidelity to remain faithful to their spouses, for the gambler to turn away from the games of chance. We cannot do it on our own, but we have been promised power from above so that we might do extraordinary things.
A fourth promise is that we will gain new understanding and grow in wisdom. God promises that if we follow him, he will open our eyes to truths that we never knew before. He will lift the veil and we will see things that we never saw. He will turn us around so that we can begin to walk by faith not by sight. It will be as if we have been lifted up and can see things from a new vantage point. We will be made aware of the bigger picture. The new understanding will strengthen our faith and equip us to serve even more faithfully.
A fifth promise is that we will receive mercy. The difference between mercy and grace is that grace gives us what we do not deserve, while mercy withholds what we do deserve. It is God's mercy, which tempers the difficulties of our lives and adjusts them to our weakness of faith. We take God's mercy for granted. We think that life ought to be easier. This is especially true of new Christians. We do not think it is fair that we should have to suffer.
In a fallen world the exact opposite is true. Every day ought to be nothing but disaster and sheer chaos. Every day, every moment ought to be filled with malice, hatred, viciousness, and betrayal. The fact that those things only come rather infrequently into our lives is due to the mercies of God. We ought to expect nothing but the direst hardships, but actually we are given hours and days -- sometimes weeks and months -- of joy, blessing, peace, excitement, and adventure. That is due to the mercies of God. That is what allowed Paul to sing God's praises even when he was stuck in prison with little hope of a future. He saw God's mercy and realized how blessed he was in spite of his circumstances. Wow!
A sixth promise is that we will have God's peace, the peace that passes all understanding. Peace is that inner sense of well-being. It is knowing that God is in control and that you are in his hands. It is the peace that a man named Les Main knew when the doctor told him he had terminal cancer. A parishioner of a fellow pastor, Les was only 62 years old when he learned of his diagnosis. He wasn't happy about the cancer. His faith was strong and in the following months he learned just how deep that faith was. As he shared his testimony, he was always quick to point out that he and Jesus were going through this together. He would say, "As long as Jesus holds my hand I knew everything, absolutely everything, will be all right." That is the same sentiment that Paul shares in Philippians 1:21 when he says, "For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain." It is that kind of inner peace that allows you to sing hymns and offer prayers when your world is turning upside down.
This is what the world is looking for as it strives to find joy and happiness. These treasures are what will make a teenager sit up and smile. These are the gifts that God offers and we are called to share with the world.
These are the promises that cannot be broken or stopped as long as there are witnesses to tell the story. So let's take up the challenge and share these promises with the world. Amen.
