A Long Campaign

My own graduation from high school and departure to college is so long ago and far away that I can hardly remember it. On the other hand, I graduated from seminary almost 30 years later, and so it’s much closer. There’s a lot the two have in common: leaving behind the old familiar, and going off into a new and maybe dangerous but definitely exciting world. But there is at least one major difference.

It used to be that almost everybody in seminary was there straight out of college. But by the time I started, the average age had already started to climb, and now it’s somewhere in the mid-30’s. I started seminary myself when I was 41. . . I wasn’t the oldest there, but close. And I felt so - not worried, exactly, but concerned, about the young ones, the 22- and 23- year olds who hadn’t had much in the way of life experience and would be going out in a few years to provide spiritual direction and pastoral care to people 2 and 3 times their age.

And so, when I started working on this passage from this letter Paul wrote to Timothy so long ago, I felt a sort of deja vu, caught a little bit of an echo of my own feelings as I watched my young colleagues be ordained and saw them off to their first calls. And of my two favorite young men, one abandoned the ministry before he even started, because his the fiancee he had met during his senior year could not bring herself to embrace the role of pastor’s wife. The other crashed and burned during his first call. He doesn’t answer my e-mails; I rather think he’s ashamed of his failure. Especially because I’m still here, and he doesn’t believe in ordaining women. Except me, of course.

So many people have a rough time with their first call, and it takes a lot of courage and confidence in God’s call to stick it out - either carrying on with your first church or moving on to another one. And in my experience, the younger you are the harder it is. There are a lot of reasons for that; you can probably think of a half dozen yourself, sitting right there in the pews listening to me. But I am convinced that one of the reasons is that the younger you are the more impatient you are to see results right away, and the more discouraged you become with the imperfectability of human nature. Pastoring is like housecleaning - it’s never finished.

Some of you may go on into professional Christian ministry of some kind. Most of you will not. But I want to remind you that whatever your vocation - from housepainting to astronomy - you will still be working for God. It will still be ministry. You will probably never know who you have touched as you go through life - but you need to know that what you do has eternal significance. Even if you fail - and all of us do from time to time - even how you deal with failure will be a witness for or against your faith. So this pastoral letter to Timothy is written to you also.

Now, Timothy had the best pastoral training that anyone could possibly get. He had done his field ed working alongside the greatest church planter the world has ever known. But his first solo pastorate was in a church that Billy Graham would have had trouble with. He got Ephesus.

Now, Ephesus was a large city on the SW coast of Asia Minor, east across the Aegean Sea from Athens. It was a rich city, an important seaport that lay on the crossroads of two very important trade routes. But what was really unique and special about Ephesus was that it was the site of the temple of Artemis. Now, those of you who know your Greek mythology will remember that the Greek Artemis was the same as the Roman goddess Diana: a virgin huntress. But that wasn’t what this particular version of Artemis was all about. Somehow the Asian fertility goddess Cybele got adopted by Greek conquerors at about the time David was establishing the capital of Israel in Jerusalem, and the Ephesian Artemis became a fertility goddess whose statues were covered with multiple breasts and whose priests often castrated themselves in fits of religious ecstasy. The temple had been built in the 6th century BC and was the most sacred temple in the eastern Mediterranean world. Pilgrims came from all over the Roman Empire, and beyond, to worship there and seek the goddess’ favor.

The Apostle Paul lived and preached there for two years. His ministry is recounted in the book of Acts. He was so successful that worship of Artemis dropped off, and the thriving trade the local silversmiths and magicians had with the pilgrims began to suffer. There was a major riot toward the end of his stay, and although the authorities calmed it down by and no one appears to have been either hurt or arrested, there was a great deal of resentment and hostility toward the young church. Christianity was still very much in the minority in this wildly diverse and rather hostile environment. And when Paul met with them a couple of years later, stopping on his way back to Jerusalem, he warned that after he was gone, “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.” [Acts 20:29-30]