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]
And this is the environment in which young Timothy was now responsible for teaching and guarding and guiding the church. None of its members had been a believer for more than about eight years. All of them had old habits and old friends pulling them away from the gospel, and most of them were probably older than Timothy. You will find that going out into the business or professional world - even college itself - is very similar to Timothy’s experience.
In his first letter, Paul gives advice to Timothy on how to manage church affairs, gives instructions for choosing elders, regulations for ordering worship, and warnings about dangers to the church from false teaching. He strongly urges Timothy not to be intimidated by the fact that he is young, but to make sure that he guards his own spiritual life and to stay dependent on the word of God.
But by the time Timothy received Paul’s next letter nothing had improved. He had tried to put everything Paul had said into practice but nothing seemed to work. He was struggling, discouraged, sure he was failing at his call. As he broke the seal I’m sure he must have thought, “Whatever Paul says, I deserve it. He taught me better than this. If he were here we wouldn’t be having these troubles. He should have send Silas or Titus here and sent me to an easier place, maybe Philippi or Berea. I can’t seem to make any headway against heresy; as soon as I think I have a handle on one issue another one pops up. Half of the church thinks that getting married and having children makes you a second-class Christian, they claim that starving yourself and wearing hair shirts earns favor from God. And another crowd says, “We have the Holy Spirit, we can do whatever we like because we’re not under the law any more.” And then there’s another bunch that spends so much time arguing about doctrine that they don’t have time to love and serve one another. Surely Paul would be ashamed of his poor performance, and be sending someone else to take his place. He had failed Paul, failed the gospel, failed God.
So when he saw Paul’s opening words, tears came to his eyes. “Timothy, my beloved child,” said Paul. “I remember you constantly in my prayers.... I remember your sincere faith.” He could almost hear Paul’s voice. As he continued to read Timothy remembered the day when Paul laid hands on him and prayed that he might receive the Holy Spirit. He remembered the inward upsurge of joy and energy that had come upon him then. And he began to believe that Paul’s words were indeed “rekindling that gift” which God had given him - was it only three years before? It seemed like a lifetime. As he read further, and heard Paul say “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” [2 Tim 1:6-7] Timothy felt ashamed again - not of failing - but of forgetting how many times Paul had been attacked and slandered and even beaten. And, of course, even now Paul was in prison in Rome, still preaching the Gospel, and apparently never for a minute believing that because of that he had failed. And if Paul - chained to a Roman soldier night and day - didn’t feel like a failure, and wasn’t ashamed of how he had served the gospel, then what right did he, Timothy, have to feel sorry for himself?
He had been thinking it was all up to him, Timothy thought to himself. He had been thinking that if only he could think of the right words, if only he could apply the right formula, if only he were better, somehow, more eloquent, more personable, more authoritative. But that wasn’t what he was supposed to be relying on. He continued to read. The grief he’d been getting from the self-denial faction for drinking a little wine to settle his stomach was nothing like what Paul had gotten from the Jews in Jerusalem. He would just have to stop being so sensitive, after all, it was God he needed to please, not men. They weren’t basing their teaching on Scripture, after all. And it wasn’t his fault that they rejected his teaching. He’d done exactly what Paul had told him to do - and here, he was saying it again. Rely on the Scriptures. They are enough. It is the Word of God - not the words of Timothy - that carries the power of the Spirit, for “teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” [v.16]
Timothy had known and loved the sacred writings ever since he could remember. His earliest memories were of sitting on his mother’s lap while his grandmother read to them from the Law and the Prophets. It was as if the words went straight through his ears into his heart. That’s what Paul meant by “Those who belong to God,” [v.17] he told himself as he continued to read, because those who belong to God hear the word and let themselves be changed by it. Those who don’t belong to God won’t listen no matter what I say. So as long as I do what I’m called to do - Jesus will hold on to me just as he is holding on to Paul there in Rome.
“How true it is,” he mused as he continued to read. "There are people who won’t put up with sound doctrine. It is as though they’re allergic to it, it seems as though it grates on them like new wool on a sunburn. But they want to do what they want to do, and so they twist God’s words so they mean exactly the opposite of what Jesus meant. It’s not that I haven’t explained properly, it’s that they don’t want to listen because then they might have to change. They might have to forgive their neighbors, or give up their lovers, or share their food with strangers. No wonder so many of the people cluster around the slick preachers that keep showing up around here, trolling for prospective customers. They get permission to celebrate their sins rather than abandon them!
“I can’t change the Gospel to suit them, they have to change to suit the Gospel,” thought Timothy. “And I can’t do it. I can’t make them change if they don’t want to. But who knows? maybe God will open their ears. If Paul can preach to his jailers, I can preach to the thorns in my flesh, too. If every time they come up with some new piece of nonsense I can remember just to answer with Scripture, with the truth of God, then I won’t get upset at my failure to get through to them, and they won’t be able to get to me, to discourage and dishearten me. It doesn’t matter if I can’t see any result. God can see their hearts, and if he intends for them to be saved through then he will open their eyes. My job is to ‘Proclaim the message.’” [v.4:2a]
Paul’s next words caused Timothy a pang of guilt. “Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.” [v.2b] Too often he had delayed confronting or correcting a member of his flock, telling himself that a better, more favorable time would come. And then, when he had geared himself up for the fray he had sometimes been too combative, too aggressive, his words empty of the grace of Christ but filled with his own frustration and distaste for conflict. It was almost as if Paul had been watching him, or maybe even reading his mind. “Convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” [v2c] Patience. That’s what he needed. Stop counting the days, wondering when things would get better, wondering when his charges would quit running off in all directions and start acting like a church instead of a zoo. Just accept that God’s plans are not fulfilled in a day.
“Endure suffering,” he read aloud. And then he said it again: “Endure suffering.’” [v5b] The fact that I’m meeting opposition doesn’t mean I’m a failure. I should just put up with it - accept that comes with the territory - and get on with the job. In God’s time I will see the results of what I have done, even if someone else completes the work, just as I am building on Paul’s foundation.
“Thank you, Paul,” he said to himself as he rolled up the scroll, planning to read it again later that evening “Everything you said I already knew, but somehow I had forgotten. I needed to hear it again, to be reminded of God’s grace and power. I had almost forgotten what a joy and privilege it first seemed to be entrusted with the Gospel. It had started to be a burden, because I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. But it doesn’t even matter if I die before it’s finished, because both the cause and the victory belong to Jesus, not to me.”
He frowned suddenly, and opened the scroll again. And there were the words that he had almost skipped over. “Do the work of an evangelist.” Timothy sat bolt upright. “Do the work of an evangelist.” [v5c] ‘Paul, thank you! I’d almost forgotten! I’ve been concentrating so hard on the troublemakers in my own flock - the ones that don’t seem to hear anything I say - that I’ve been neglecting all the people out there who’ve never even heard the good news! I should stop beating my head against a brick wall fighting people who have already rejected Jesus and look for people who really want to be forgiven, who really want to find God, who really want to receive new life. I’d forgotten that Jesus said not to throw pearls before swine - although maybe I shouldn’t call them swine if I’m supposed to be working on being patient. I’ll do it. I won’t stop rebuking and encouraging the ones who have already heard, but there’s nothing like the joy of introducing someone to the Gospel for the first time. That makes it all worthwhile.”
The possibilities and pitfalls that Timothy faces are ours, as well - no matter what field God chooses to plant us in.
And so “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus . . . I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience . . . [v. 4:1) Fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith. [for] a crown of righteousness is reserved for you.” [2 Tim 4:7-8]
