(Lectionary Reading is 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 -- 9-15 is left out)
Collect prayer: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
What we don’t say is sometimes even more important than what we do say.
In our reading today from Paul’s second letter to Timothy, Chapter 4, verses 6 to 8 and 16 to 18, we see the Apostle Paul’s dedicated faith as his life draws to a close. The Lectionary skips verses 9 through 15; and, while the makers of the Lectionary had their good reasons for leaving those verses out, they were important enough to Paul for him to include in his letter.
In them, Paul mentions some people who have fallen away, or for other reasons are unable to be with him in his time of need. Before we look at what we haven’t seen, let’s look at what we have seen.
This is the last letter written by Paul before his execution in Rome. He wrote it from prison in A.D. 66 or 67, about 40 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. Paul’s conversion is described in the Book of Acts, and occurs shortly after his participation in the murder of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
For decades Paul preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the worst condition imaginable, and kept his faith in God, even in the toughest times. Paul describes some of the difficulties he endured in Second Corinthians 11:24-28,
“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
So when Paul says in today’s reading, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” he’s not bragging; in fact, he’s really understating things quite a bit, isn’t he?
“Fighting the good fight” seems to draw a different mental image than merely enduring suffering imposed by this world as a result of our faith, but that’s what Paul is referring to. He finished the race, metaphorically, by endurance. All athletes know that speed doesn’t finish a race, endurance does. No matter how fast you run, you can’t win a race you don’t finish, and you can’t finish without endurance. And the key to endurance is faith.
In a foot race, our faith in our ability to make it to the finish line keeps us going. When we lose faith in our ability to finish, we stop running and collapse in a heap. Faith is what keeps us running physically and spiritually.
Paul J. Meyer wrote in Unlocking Your Legacy:
“Cost and self-sacrifice do not make something hard. Nobody feels sorry for the athlete who wins an Olympic medal, even though the person paid an incredible price through grueling effort behind the scenes, denying himself or herself certain things, probably for several years, all for one hopeful brief moment of glory. The medal, once attained, minimizes every cost and self-sacrifice.”
Meyer continues, “Following God is similar in many respects. There are costs and self-sacrifice to be made, but that does not mean it is hard to follow God. Hard is when you compete but never win, invest but lose everything, work but receive nothing for your efforts, and show love but receive hate in return.... When I compare my costs and self-sacrifices with what I have already received and will receive in return, my costs and self-sacrifices are insignificant!”
Our faith is Jesus and his promise of eternal life lets us press onward through whatever this fallen world can throw at us. Whether fire, flood , or famine, faith will see us through. It doesn’t apply just to guys like Paul or Peter or John or James. It applies to every one of us. Faith will see us through adversity.
Dave Roever (REE-ver) arrived in Vietnam in late 1968, serving our nation as a member of the elite Brown Water Black Berets. He was a Christian and really loved the Lord.
During his tour, he patrolled the Mekong Delta area until July 26, 1969 when he was severely wounded. As his boat rounded a corner of the river, a sniper bullet pierced his hand and went right through the phosphorous grenade that he had raised within six inches of his head.
The grenade exploded and blew up the boat. Phosphorous is a metal that gets white-hot and can’t be extinguished by water. Dave was on fire, lying face down in the river, with part of his head blown off and his body severely damaged. Large amounts of his skin were floating around him as he was rescued from the burning water.
As they carried him to the helicopter the burning phosphorous caused him to burn right though the stretcher and he landed right on his head as he fell to the ground. He was having a really bad day.
Later, on the way to the hospital, the doctors on the helicopter thought he had died. So they took his dog tag and got ready to pound it between his teeth, indicating his death. Dave thought to himself, “This is going to hurt.”
Suddenly Dave opened his eyes and it so scared the helicopter crew that they almost crashed.
Nearly 40 years later, Dave is still spreading the word about love and hope through faith in Jesus. When he first popped out of the water for a few moments in terrible agony, before falling face down again, Dave had shouted at the top of his lungs, “I still love you, Jesus!” He still shouts it today, through his actions, as well as his voice, as he shares God’s message of love through the Roever Evangelistic Association.
For most of us, all of our worst days combined wouldn’t add up to the suffering Dave has endured. Yet he finds the strength to continue his mission and purpose, not on his own, but through his faith in Christ. Dave would never have made it on his own, and he’s the first to admit it.
The calamities in our lives are devastating. But if we succumb to the temptation to wallow in despair, it will grow like evil ivy around us until we are totally engulfed in it. Our sorrow becomes a shutter we use to block out the light of the world.
Despite our loss, despite our sorrow, we have to keep those shutters open so that the light of Christ’s healing love can touch our hearts. We can’t allow our adversity to lead us away from God. And only faith can pull us out of that pit of despair we find ourselves stuck in.
Faith in Jesus brings us salvation; it doesn’t free us from ever suffering. Jesus himself suffered and he embodied faith. When Paul says in verse 18 “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom,” he obviously is not referring to a prevention of physical action against him. The beatings, whippings, and imprisonment attest to that.
The evil attacks are against our souls. Our physical suffering is just a joyful perk for Satan; his real hope is that we will lose faith and relinquish our salvation in Christ. Paul reminds us that by our faith in Christ he will rescue us from those satanic attacks, saving us for himself in his heavenly kingdom.
The things of this world are temporary — all of them. Not just the riches and pleasures that distract us, but also the pain and suffering that can cause us to lose faith, and therefore hope.
We have hope only because we have faith. We only hope for what we believe is attainable. And we believe, or have faith, in God because of his love for us.
The theme of today’s Collect concerns the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. Charity is an old English word that means “demonstrated love” instead of some philosophical or emotional state of being. Charity is love at work. Our faith in Jesus brings us hope and causes us to act in love toward others.
James mentions this relationship between faith and active love in the second chapter of his letter (2:14-18):
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”
The senior chaplain at the Marine Corps Base where I work during the week lost his house and everything in it during the fires this week. When I spoke with him on Wednesday, he had just received the call telling him his house was on the list of addresses destroyed by the blaze. He didn’t mention it, and instead asked how Mary was coming along after her surgery and whether our house was.
When I told him we were doing OK and that the fires hadn’t reached our house, he was very happy for us and praised God. Only when I asked him about his own house and family did he mention the house was destroyed. Just the one sentence, and then he moved on to discussing my ministry on the base.
The following day I found out he was still standing duty, and consoling the more than 400 other evacuees who had been given refuge on our base. In the midst of his own suffering and loss, he still felt the need to reach out in love to others. His unwavering faith in Jesus Christ strengthened his hope and enabled him to act in love toward others in need, consoling them in their loss, ensuring their families had food and shelter, guiding them and bolstering their hope through his love.
That is faith in action. Love makes us act in faith. The works of our faith are charity, or love. We’ve morphed the word charity into some kind of condescending insult over the years. We’ve probably all heard people say, “I don’t need your charity; I’ve got my pride.”
But pride is a sin. What the person is really saying is that their sin has such a strong hold on them, they can’t tolerate the thought of your love. It’s sad when we get to that point. Often it takes a major calamity to humble us to the point that we’ll accept God’s love for us through the actions of others.
Accepting God’s love is the only way we can ever love God. John tells us this in his first letter Chapter 4, verse 19 (1John 4:19):
“We love because he first loved us.”
Paul followed Jesus throughout his ministry, enduring hardships every step of the way. He showed God’s love to everyone he met. He explained to them that God loves us so much that he came to earth in human form to take on our sins as his own and die in our stead. And that by Christ’s love for us, we are saved. For Paul’s efforts he was scorned, beaten, whipped, stoned and left for dead, shipwrecked, and plenty of other humiliations leading up to his torture and death in Rome.
The faith, hope, and love Paul showed to others was denied him by many of the same people who had received it. In verse 9-15 he tells Timothy,
Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message.
Timothy, Luke, Titus and Mark seem to be the only people who have stood by him in his time of need.
These verses, left out of the Lectionary, reveal the normal, human side of Paul that we can identify with more readily than the super-Christian side.
I bet Jesus know exactly how that feels. He handpicked 12 devoted followers — disciples. One betrayed him, the other 11 ran away, and one of them, the one who swore, “I’ll never deny you Jesus, others might, but I never will,” denied him three times in that same night.
God’s exclusive inner circle of friends beat feet at the first inkling of danger, and Paul is surprised that he didn’t do better than Jesus did at selecting?
With winter on its way, Paul is asking Timothy to bring the cloak he left, so that he might be able to have some warmth in his cell during his final days before his execution.
Paul’s lament serves as a warning to us. Demas is mentioned just three times in the Bible, and the three references show a sad story of failure. In his letter to Philemon, Paul includes Demas as one of his fellow workers who sends his greetings, along with Luke and Mark (Philemon 24). In his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to Luke as the “beloved physician,” but Demas is merely mentioned by name (Col 4:14). Finally, here in his letter to Timothy, Paul says the Demas has deserted him, probably to follow the riches of this world.
In John Bunyan’s book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Demas is portrayed as the keeper of a silver mine at the Hill Lucre.
Paul must have been incredibly saddened to see Demas fall so far from grace. Yet it can happen to any of us if we lose our faith. Backsliding Christians exist. And many slide back to enjoy the riches and pleasures of this world. Maybe that’s one reason that Paul was so critical of riches in his pastoral letters. He had seen first-hand the dangers of that particular temptation.
Paul has no harsh words for Crescens, Tychicu, or Titus who are on mission trips at the time he’s writing this, but we can tell he wishes he still had their company. Luke, who has been chronicling their adventures together, is still with him.
We also see how much Paul has grown spiritually in Christ as he mentions Mark.
“Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry.” This is the same person who is referred to elsewhere as John Mark and who had deserted Paul and Barnabas during Paul’s first journey. Luke writes in the Book of Acts 13:13,
“Then Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. John, however, left them and returned to Jerusalem; …”
When Paul and Barnabas are about to leave Antioch in 15:36-39, we read,
“ Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.”
Since that journey, Paul had the time to see Mark grow in Christ also. And he came to realize that Jesus saw the potential in Mark that Paul had missed. Paul had discarded Mark from participating in his ministry because he noticed some flaws in Mark’s behavior. Instead of helping to develop Mark, Paul chose the easier path.
Here in Paul’s final letter to Timothy we see that Paul now realizes that Christ had done a strong work in Mark.
A sculptor had ruined a huge piece of beautiful Carrara marble. It was left in the courtyard of the cathedral in Florence, Italy, for almost a hundred years. Artisans thought it was beyond repair. But in 1505, a young sculptor by the name of Michelangelo was asked if he thought anything could be done with “The Giant.” He measured the block and carefully noted the imperfections caused by the bungling workman of an earlier day. To his mind came the image of the young shepherd boy David. He carefully made a sketch of that biblical character as he envisioned him. For 3 years he worked steadily, his chisel skillfully shaping the marble. Finally, when one of his students was allowed to view the towering figure, 18 feet high and weighing 9 tons, he exclaimed, “Master, it lacks only one thing, and that is speech!” (Unknown.)
Paul, like that first sculptor, had bungled his earlier attempts with Mark. But in the hands of the Master, Mark was made just as Christ wanted, and unlike the statue of David, Mark was given speech for the whole world to hear. A few years before this letter from Paul, Mark had written the first of our Gospels (A.D. 55-65).
Paul also mentions a coppersmith named, Alexander, who hindered much of Paul’s ministry. Jesus has his followers, but so does Satan. Working against the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, means working for Satan. We don’t like to think of it that way, but we’re either for Jesus or against him.
Merely believing in Jesus is not enough to be welcomed into his kingdom. Jesus says that many times in the Gospels, yet somehow we miss that point. Maybe because it sounds too harsh, or maybe because it sounds like a “works-based salvation” if we have to do anything other than just believe, but the truth is that mere belief is not enough.
As James tells us in 2:19,
“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”
Our belief must include a change of heart that causes us to act in love. When we act in love, we are showing Christ. And showing Christ provides hope.
In prison, Paul saw Christ and had hope. In Rome Paul was released from prison and was able to continue his ministry for a few more years until he was imprisoned again by Nero. The Lord had rescued him from the emperor’s wrath, the lion’s mouth.
Paul’s life on earth was now soon to end, but his ministry was poised to continue into the ages. He shared his advice, his warnings, and his change of heart with his young leader Timothy, and in so doing with the rest of us as well.
Despite all the hardships of his life that Paul endured for the sake of his faith in Jesus, he still praises Christ even in his final moments, knowing he has secured a place in the heavenly kingdom. And his final reminder to us is that it’s all for the eternal glory of God.
What we hear from the Lectionary reading today is wonderful example of a life devoted to following Jesus as Paul had done. What we don’t hear is just as important though, the sadness in Paul’s heart for those who turned from Jesus.
His lament for the lost echoes through those forgotten verses. Paul is reminding Timothy and us that Jesus is not looking for acceptance or recognition or believers. Jesus is looking for followers, disciples. Admitting that Jesus lived, died, and rose again is not sufficient. It’s a good first step, but as James points out, even the demons believe that.
What sets us apart as disciples is our decision to live as Jesus lived and do what Jesus did. We must fight the good fight; we must finish the race; we must keep the faith.
Amen. God bless you all.
