Sermon from April 29, 2007
Carole and I went to the DuPont Playhouse a few days ago to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In the 26 years we have lived in Wilmington we have been to the Playhouse perhaps half a dozen times. We have been to musical and theatrical events in Philadelphia and New York about the same number of times. We use these resources and enjoy them, but they are peripheral to our life.

I wonder how many events in our lives fall into this category, which we may call The Category of Light Diversions. Several come to mind: visiting a museum, going to a sporting event, going to an amusement park, and swimming in the ocean. Does going to church fall into this category for you? Pity, if it does.

How often do you go to your physician? If you are healthy, maybe you go once or twice a year, more if warranted, and to other physicians, if warranted. We use this resource as seldom as possible, but the importance of good health makes those visits much more central to our lives.

I wonder how many events in our lives fall into this category, which we may call The Category of Unpleasant Necessities. Several come to mind: filing income tax returns, renewing a driver's license, getting blood work, and serving on a jury. Does going to church fall into this category for you? If so, then God becomes the great, if not beloved, Necessity.

What gives your life hope or sustains you through dark times or keeps the fire in your belly for what you do everyday? It is tempting to say, "Work, family, money or notoriety," and stop there. We need to go deeper.

Why does your job fuel hope in you? Is it bossing people around, or working together to make a project successful, or the joy of doing something well? Why does money give you hope? Does it give you freedom? Do you like to impress people with what you can buy? Does it give you security?

Work, family, money and notoriety become central to our lives, because they give us hope and meaning and joy. They fall into the category, which we may call The Category of Fulfillment. Does going to church fall into this category for you? Pity, if it doesn't.

I don't mean to belittle Light Diversions and Unpleasant Necessities or events in The Category of Fulfillment that are not faith events. But God made us for something better. Christ offers a better idea of what it means to be human and what it means to be free.

C.S. Lewis said one time, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us," (The Weight of Glory, 2). We're deep-sea fishing with string on a pole instead of rod and reel.

2 Timothy opens a window into the soul of a Christian, who saw the world and differently than we do, because he lived the Christian faith passionately. Look through that window with me into The Category of Fulfillment as Paul lived it. We begin in 2 Timothy 3:11.

A Calling to Hardship
In this verse Paul reminded his protégé, Timothy, of what Timothy had witnessed firsthand. You, however, know all about my ... persecutions, sufferings – what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Timothy grew up in Lystra, when a mob stoned Paul and his fellow missionary, Barnabas and leave them for dead. You can read about in in Acts 14:8-19.

In verse twelve Paul introduces a sobering reality. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world today would agree with that. They may also wonder why we American Christians escape what they can't escape.

You know that I don't think we escape it. Christians elsewhere, whose family disowns them and who face economic hardship, prison and death, may find it hard to believe; but we American Christians must keep our faith in the face of the seemingly invincible seductions of liberty. It has been granted to us on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to face unparalleled personal liberty for an unprincipled pursuit of pleasure and power.

The dragon, the ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, tries to beat the faith out of them; it tries to seduce the faith out of us. Either way, it wants to undermine the gospel's influence over us.

With this in mind, look at 2 Timothy 1:11-12. Paul said to Timothy: And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Now, look down at verse eight: But join with me in suffering for the gospel.

Have you ever heard the famous opening line from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship? "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." The gospel summons the Church to self-sacrifice. The gospel summons the Church to overcome, either the threat of pain or the folly of indulgence.

Whichever temptation Christians face, Paul's word in verse eight applies: Join with me in suffering for the gospel. Paul returned to this theme in 2 Timothy 2:3, where he encouraged Timothy like this: Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Saying no to the dragon's offer of pleasure and power in exchange for dishonoring God entails its own unique hardships as surely as does bearing the blows of the dragon's iron fist.

Paul's Last Days
Paul did not write this letter to Timothy at some Mediterranean villa beside the sea. Look down the page at 2 Timothy 2:8-9. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal.

Look at 2 Timothy 4:6. It gives us more insight into Paul's circumstances and frame of mind. I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure, meaning his death. Somewhere in Rome Paul waited in chains for his trial and execution. Now, we have to descend into a deeper darkness.

Look at verses 9-11a. Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Verse 16 deepens the sense of abandonment. At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them.

The end of verse 17 suggests just how touch and go those days were for Paul. I was delivered from the lion's mouth. But the next time in court might not end so well.

His great esteem among the young churches of the Empire mattered not one whit. His theological brilliance, his piety, his strategic missions into the heartland of the Empire, and his decisive role in defining the nature of the Church carried no weight whatsoever. The beast had the apostle by the neck, and he could devour him with no more emption than jackals over the carcass of an impala.

If you were in the apostle's place, what messages would you tell yourself about those circumstances? What thoughts would fill your head and give you strength and hope? Have a closer look at Paul's legacy, which 2 Timothy transmits to generation after generation of believers.

A Renewed Mind at Work
Let's start with the verse we just read at the end of verse 17: I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The beginning of that verse says: But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.

He faced the possibility of stepping into the Coliseum as a meal for hungry lions, and where was his mind? He saw an opportunity to proclaim the message of Christ to the Gentile wrold. He didn't look at the prospect of death in the Coliseum and ask, "God, why do you leave me in this situation?" He saw the opportunity he had to preach the Gospel and said, "The Lord stood at my side and gave me strength" to do it.

In the previous verse Paul had said: At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. Does he curse them for being absent in what was likely his last moments on earth? No. He said: May it not be held against them. He gave them the benefit of a doubt, or as necessary, he forgave them, as the Lord had forgiven those responsible for His crucifixion.

Go back to 2 Timothy 2:8-9. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But what does he say next? But God's word is not chained. How often do we see our limitations as God's limitations? Paul did not make that mistake. God's word is not chained.

Because Paul believed that, he took a remarkable view of his circumstances. Verse 10: Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect. "Yes, preaching the gospel got me into this fix, but remember why I preached the gospel in the first place! It was for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. I would do it again in a heartbeat."

Look at one more example of this man's inner resources. Go back to 2 Timothy 1:8-9 where he summoned Timothy to suffer with him for the faith. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. It is counterintuitive, but suffering, physical distress or resisting indulgence, has a home in God's eternal purpose.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Anyone can use pious talk in an American church; but to talk like Paul talked in a Roman prison with his life at stake is to experience God right down in the jungle of life.

To be in chains but to say: God's word is not chained is to experience God. To be on trial alone for his life and feel abandoned by everyone but to say: May it not be held against them is to experience God. To escape the lions of the Coliseum but to say: the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it is to experience God.

None of us faces jail time, but other obstacles frustrate us from doing what we want to do. Do you experience God in that frustration? When someone you counted on lets you down, do you experience God in that disappointment? What thoughts go through your mind in those situations? What messages do you tell yourself about life and God in moments like those?

Two weeks ago, Jeff Stark, a local Christian counselor, spoke to the Evangelical Ministers' Fellowship about depression. He did a masterful job in tracing the causes of depression in many people. Jeff identified what people believe as a central factor in their depression.

For example, he told the story about a man, who lost his job. Over a period of time this man's emotional state and his physical circumstances deteriorated. He wasn't looking for a job. He wasn't shaving or keeping his house clean. He withdrew from church and social contacts.

Jeff gave us a summary of the case study of this man and asked us to identify, among other things, what the man was telling himself over and over about God and life. Two deeply held beliefs stood out.

First, he believed that he should have been immune to losing his job. A bad thing like that couldn't happen to a good guy like him. So, when he lost it, it rocked the foundations of his soul. Second, he said that losing his job showed that God didn't love him.

These beliefs, which he continued to hold, fed his self-pity. His self-pity sapped his energy to act. His failure to act deepened his sense of helplessness and his depression.

Some people say that what a person believes doesn't much matter. I wonder if anything else really matters. What messages do you tell yourself over and over that shape the way you experience life? What do you really believe about life? How does what you believe square with what the Bible says is true about human nature and about God?

I cannot recommend too highly that you have a personal crisis. We may not want to have a personal crisis, but it will reveal what we really believe, and it can dispose us to make changes we might not otherwise be willing to make, including changes in what we believe about God and life and ourselves.

When a personal crisis comes, and it will come, we need to have in our heads something besides what we watch on television. The Bible "offers a different way of perceiving the world which leads people to resist and to challenge the effects of the dominant ideology," (The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 159) of our age: especially the ideology that comes to us relentlessly via television, movies and the Internet.

Last week, I recommended that we get in shape spiritually. I called for us in this congregation to begin with the exercise of reading the part of the Bible I am preaching on at any given time, 2 Timothy again this week. Paul's response to his tenuous situation reminds us that we read Scripture in order to learn how to think a new way about ourselves and God and the world. Thinking that way renovates our habits of heart and mind so that we can fight the fight and run the race that is set before us.