Year C. Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost October 7th, 2001
Heavenly Father, thank you, for the elaborate ceremonies marking life passages that make great reminders not only of the “way it was” but also the “way it should be.” Amen.
Title: “The danger of routine”
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Writing in Paul’s name or, more correctly, Paul’s mindset and with Paul’s authority, either commissioned and “ordained” directly by Paul or officially recognized as Paul’s mouthpiece, the author admonishes Timothy, himself “ordained” by Paul, to return in spirit to his original rite of ordination and rekindle the flame of faith, the gift of God’s Spirit in verses six and seven. He should be neither timid about nor ashamed of “the testimony of the Lord,” the gospel and all it entails, nor of Paul’s imprisonment, a worldly sign of failure. Rather, he should willingly join in the suffering the gospel brings with it, a suffering Paul himself knew all too well.
In verse six, I remind you to rekindle, this metaphor from the rekindling of a dying flame does not necessarily mean that the flame of enthusiasm had gone out or was in danger of doing so. This would hardly be true in Timothy’s case. It means that everyone must take some steps, at times but preferably daily, to “keep the flame of faith alive in your heart,” to keep the memory “green,” to recall the original event or experience for the purpose of re-experiencing it and it beneficial effects, to make full use of its potential.
“The gift of God,” the word for “gift” in the Greek is charisma, “charism.” Paul has given this word a special sense. Certainly, faith itself is a gift of God, but Paul uses this term more specifically for an intense manifestation of this first and fundamental grace. God’s grace is manifested in different ways in different people, each according to God’s purpose and for the good of the Church. The gift here is one of ministry to the Church, a special assignment by God, not shared by everyone. Charisms, therefore, are not to be considered as natural endowments, but special bestowals of power or powers, necessary to accomplish a divinely assigned task.
Through the laying on of my hands, Paul “ordained” Timothy. “Laying on of hands” became a technical way of referring to the act or rite whereby a person was recognized to have been commissioned by the Lord for special service, a service to others by virtue of a power others do not have. Of course, it is a specification of one’s baptismal commission, activated at the time of “ordination.” So, what the author here says about Timothy’s specialized ministry would apply, mutatis mutandis, to all Christians in their ministry. The author is reminding Timothy to return to that moment in his mind and heart in order to re-capture and rekindle the human, psychological, emotional enthusiasm. The author is not saying to recapture the Holy Spirit or to re-receive the Spirit. The Spirit was and is there always. Unlike the Old Testament conception whereby the Spirit would come and go, the New Testament understands the Spirit as abiding. It is our cooperation with the Spirit that electrifies us as well as the situations we are part of. All the “charisms” of which Paul spoke in his authentic letters need not be thought to have “rites of conferral” attached to them. After all, the Spirit “breathes where he will.” But ordination to specialized ministry does represent a certain “institutionalization” of the Spirit so far as Church office is concerned. Along with that would come a certain numbing and “succumbing to routine” of the enthusiasm and vitality the presence of the Spirit causes. Hence, the need to “rekindle” that freshness, flame and force.
In verse seven, “a spirit of cowardice,” the Pastoral Letters give lists of qualifications for, now, institutional leaders- bishops, presbyters, and deacons (1Tim 3: 1-13; 5: 17-23; Tit 1: 7-9). From what is said it is clear that the situation has changed. A person with qualities necessary to be an institutional leader is particularly vulnerable to having a “spirit of timidity. “Cowardice” may be too strong a translation. The Greek, deilia, “cowardice, timidity,” appears only here in the New Testament. It refers to the temperament of one who can administer and manage, especially details, but hardly one who could lead, in the sense that Paul was a leader. The old saying applies; “Managers do things right; leaders do right things.” The Church is struggling with the effects of becoming an institution, of keeping the Spirit paramount in a structure most ill suited to him. Apparently, in order to “keep the peace” and to conduct “business as usual,” “routine things done routinely,” Timothy has compromised on “power and love and sound judgment.” Associating the Spirit with power and love is very Pauline. The third term, “sound judgment,” a better translation of the Greek, sophronismos, than “self-control,” has a ring of prudential ethic to it that would be foreign to Paul’s authentic letters. No doubt the author is trying to infuse Paul’s “spirit” into a more Greek approach to conduct.
In verse eight, “do not be ashamed,” in a Greek environment the gospel of Christ, would be ridiculed as absurd and having a prisoner for a mentor, Paul, would be a cause for shame as well. But, Paul is really “his,” that is, the Lord’s, prisoner and so Timothy has no real cause for shame. The author tells Timothy to disregard such considerations. We must remember that the Church was making every effort to accommodate herself to the civil society at this time. The author says that there is a limit to such accommodation.
“Join with me in suffering for the gospel,” Timothy is to suffer for the sake of the gospel, as are all Christians. He should not let his natural timid temperament overrule his spiritual gift of, what Acts calls, “boldness.” That “Spirit,” though it can temper intemperance, can embolden natural embarrassment.
In verses nine and ten, the gospel, the meaning of “the testimony about our Lord in verse eight, is briefly summarized as God’s saving us through Christ by abolishing real death, spiritual death and giving “immortality,” a decidedly “Greek” way of putting “eternal life.”
In verses eleven and twelve, Paul was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, while he was still living, that gospel. They refer to different responsibilities in different circumstances. More to the point, Paul suffered and was not ashamed of the gospel, nor should Timothy or anyone else, be. He is not asking of Timothy something Paul himself did not experience.
In verse thirteen, “Hold to the standard of sound teaching,” this is another way of saying, “Follow the example of…” The Greek, hypotyposis, means “pattern, sketch, outline.” An architect would sketch out a rough draft before making more detailed plans in designing and then building something. It is a starting point, not the finished product. Certainly, the author is not referring to any wooden model, but a dynamic, living one, and allowing for adaptation to new circumstances. Timothy is to imitate Paul as Paul did Christ, not by calcified repetition but by living and applying the principles that infused his actions. The word that translates “sound,” hygiaino, gives us in English “hygienic,” a word for sound in the sense of healthy and wise, enabling good health and growth.
In the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, above, in verse eight, faith and love were two of the three kinds of “spirit,” Timothy was said to have received at Baptism or ordination or both. The author has just tied in the third aspect, the spirit of sound judgment, that is, sound words . Now he closes the stitch. First he reminds that it is Jesus Christ who has done all this and continues to accomplish it through his faithful followers, those who “take, him, as the norm.” In the next verse he will attribute the same mystery to the Holy Spirit.
In verse fourteen, guard the good treasure, Lit, “Guard the good deposit.” The word for “deposit” in Greek is a legal term for what has been entrusted to a person’s safekeeping by another and to be returned upon demand unused, undamaged and undeveloped, as is. However, the term is used figuratively here for all the gospel is and implies. Clearly, it is to be developed. Matthew 25: 14-30, the Parable of the Talents, makes that clear as well. There, however, the term for “deposit” is not this legal one but the one Paul uses throughout his letters for “tradition,” what was “handed down” to him and he has passed down to others. Essentially, the two terms refer to the same reality, a dual one, both what we as Christians have entrusted to God, namely, our lives, and what God, in turn, has entrusted to us, namely the life of Jesus. All Christians must take care to “guard the deposit,” and not vary its truth content. Timothy, as an ordained minister, has a special responsibility because people are looking to him for authentic and authoritative teaching. Only union with the Spirit of Christ ensures this.
Sermon
Routine makes us comfortable. It also enables us to do things more easily and quickly because we have repeated the process many times and have it down pat. This is both good and bad. If there is no routine in our lives we would be in a constant state of chaos, not knowing what to do when. At the same time routine can dull and numb us to the possibilities of the moment and, worse, the possibilities of life. Routine causes us to look upon change as a threat to comfortability. The constant repetition of the same old thing also saps our enthusiasm for any activity. Because routine is so habitual we do not have to concentrate very much on what we are doing and boredom with routine sets in. Everyone experiences this and when it hits home we experience emptiness in our lives, a lack of meaning in what we are doing at the moment. Boredom can begin as a kind of mental and emotional illness and develop into a form of death.
This happened in the post-apostolic church big time. The author of this epistle is reacting to the routine that sets into Christian life and the life of the church. He knows something needs to be done about it or the church will lose enthusiasm for the gifts of the Spirit, the very antithesis of routine. The life, excitement, enthusiasm, élan so characteristic of the Pauline churches is slipping away under the weight of “business as usual.” He is not advocating a return to the “good old days,” but to the “good old ways,” to the original Spirit one experiences at Baptism or any of the rites of passage such as Confirmation, and the first time one takes Holy Communion or Eucharist. We have the same problem today as the church of the Pastoral Epistles. The church can seem so routine that it feels more like a museum or a business than a movement or a cause. How do we capture, re-capture really, the original enthusiasm? To put it another way, how do we let the Spirit have free reign in our routine lives?
The answer or remedy the author gives is no different from what the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous found to work in combating addiction. We could say that routine is really a mild form of addiction or addiction in its early stages. In their meetings they would have recovering addicts stand up and tell how it was before they entered recovery and compare it to how it is now. They called it “keeping the memory green,” never forgetting the “way it was.” In other words, they went back to the past, back to the time before their change of heart and remembered how awful and unmanageable it was. Then they would describe their “conversion” experience, their equivalent to Baptism. In remembering that original experience, that original grace, even if they would not use the term “grace”, they would “re-kindle,” re-capture, re-experience that original power. In doing so they would get an influx of power to not merely remain sober but live a life of, what they call, serenity. Serenity is sobriety plus. It is an enthusiasm for their routine lives. After all, part of beginning drinking to excess was an escape from boredom and routine and an attempt to control these feelings by medicating them with a mood-changing, mind-altering drug. Unfortunately, all that was artificial, a somewhat manufactured attempt to manage their lives according to their own desires. Even more unfortunately, that attempt to escape routine became routine, so routine that it became addictive, uncontrollably repetitious. When they sobered up it left them lower on the ladder of depression and boredom than when they started. Keeping the memory green became their technique for avoiding the pitfalls of boredom and the subsequent need to medicate it with alcohol.
We do not need to be recovering alcoholics or any other form of addicts in order to benefit from the same technique. In fact, that is precisely what the inspired author of Timothy is revealing to us. For most of us it would be impossible to recall our original experience of baptism, but we can recall our Baptismal promises. We can also recall our first Holy Communion, and our Confirmation and recapture that “original” enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is simply another name for Holy Spirit. When we do, when we keep our memory green, that very enthusiasm moves from memory of the past into energy available for application to the present. It puts routine in a new light and we no longer fear change. Indeed, we welcome it. Oh, not the change of external circumstances, but the change that takes place inside us, in our minds and hearts. We become rejuvenated, even enthusiastic to tackle the challenges of the day, but now fortified by God’s Spirit. We recognize that routine is necessary and even is good, provided that it does not deaden us to what is un-routine about the present moment or present challenge.
Faith is like a fire; it has to be stirred at times to make it flame.
The Spirit overcomes natural timidity and cowardice.
God grants to those who accept his gospel strength to bear hardship.
The Spirit guards the gospel entrusted to us, if we let him.
Being reminded: In the dullness of routine living we need reminders of times when life was not so routine and dull. Then, as a result of having enlivened our own spirit with awareness of the Spirit of God’s presence and activity in our lives, the routine of life itself gets lit up and we see it as a grace. The routines themselves become opportunities, challenges even, to incarnate the grace of God. Since we cannot just sit down and open our photo albums and scrapbooks or pop in a family video at will, we need to have mental “post-it” messages, short and to the point, that we can focus upon in the course of our daily chores in order to bring us to the center of life. The author here recommended to Timothy that he recall his ordination, the time when he was commissioned to minister as an official of the church. Since Timothy was most probably baptized as an infant, like most of us, he could hardly recall his Baptism. That ordination ceremony, with its prayers and rituals, had a good chance of rejuvenating Timothy with the original enthusiasm for his work. So, it is with us. The rather elaborate ceremonies marking life passages make great reminders not only of the “way it was” but also the “way it should be.” Remembering and reminding ourselves and others of the great moments in our past is not merely a walk down memory lane. It is a stimulus to rekindling the flame of faith and countering routine with enthusiasm.
Timidity and Cowardice: As good and necessary as routine is, it can turn even an otherwise assertive and adventurous person into a timid and cowardly one. Routine can make us so comfortable that we become reticent to do anything different, to ever think outside the box, let alone walk outside the enclosure in which we have, perhaps unwittingly, imprisoned ourselves by virtue of routine. We can be come so used to the comfortability that regular repetition brings that we actually fear such normal things as moving to a new locale, changing jobs, even getting married, or having a child. Now, a certain amount of fear of the unknown is understandable, but when fear becomes so great that it prevents entrance into the unknown, when it paralyzes us, when there is no concomitant fascination with the unknown to trump the fear, then all the enthusiasm for life has been drained out of us. Only an infusion of the Spirit of God can remedy this and that is done by his very help and listening to God’s word, “taking as your norm the sound words you heard from me.”
Church: The same malaise that comes over individual Christians as a result of living their religious lives routinely comes over the church as a whole and especially the officials of the church. Religious rituals, including the celebration of the sacraments, are routines really. All ritual is routine, a regular, repeated, even rote, way of doing something. Ennui can set in and often does. Preaching itself, though it never should, can become so routine that people actually expect the preacher to be dull, to drone on mouthing and repeating the same words and phrases they have heard a million times. Should a preacher ever step out of the mold and say something “unroutine” or do something “unroutine” many people are so offended by the breach of their mental dormancy that they could not tell you what the preacher actually said that offended them. Church officials conduct church business so routinely that they neglect charity and forget the whole point of why they are doing what they do. They regress into the world’s way of doing business, routine, and are offended by anyone who comes to them and bothers their comfortabliity. Yes, the church can succumb to routine just as her individual members and the same remedy applies. Prayerful reminders that get us back to the center where Christ, his Spirit, and our Father are there waiting to enliven us with their spirit of power and love and self-control, give us the strength to bear hardship and guard us with their indwelling. Amen.
