Word Wrangling

2 Timothy 2:8-19

Ordinary 30

October 27, 2019

William G. Carter

Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some. But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.”

If Paul is offering advice to Timothy about the Christian life, it’s only a matter of time before he talks about words. The Christian faith lives and dies by its words – its words! Words are important.

·         Words express the Gospel: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David.” Paul says these words are his Gospel. They release the truth of God into the air.

·         Words like that can get you into trouble, even if they are righteous words. Paul is in prison again, chained like a criminal. But (he winks) when God speaks, nobody can chain that! God is free, the Holy Spirit is free. So, in a real sense, Paul is free.

·         Words give encouragement: “If we have died with Christ, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will reign with him.” So hang in there. Stay faithful. Keep your chin up. Trust God to endure.

So given the importance of the syllables that we put into the air, how striking it is that words would become the basis of arguments and the kindling of division.

Sometimes the words are important, important enough they become fighting words. In church history class, we learned the first big Christian fight (Christians versus Christians) was over two words: “homoousios” and “homoiousios.” You remember that battle, right? Those words differ by only one letter – but they reflect a world of difference.

In 325 AD, the church wanted to know: “homoousios” (literally “the same substance”) or “homoiousios” (“similar substance”). Is Jesus Christ the same substance with God the Father? Or is he of similar substance? They battled that out in Nicea, a town in northwestern Turkey, and “same substance” won. The city of Nicea is long reduced to rubble, but the Nicene Creed is still around. The words were that important.

They were so important that, seven hundred years after the Church wrote down those words, there was another divisive battle over the same words. This had to do with the word “Filioque” which had been left out of the Nicene Creed. Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father? (the original Nicene Creed) Or should they add the word “Filioque,” as if to say, Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son?

Now, you are free to argue over that one over lunch. You might even say it’s hardly worth a fight, so “pass the ketchup.” But the addition of that word was enough to develop into split of the Eastern Church from the Western Church in 1054 AD. Why is are the Eastern Orthodox churches separate from the Roman churches? The division began with a single word.

What strikes me about the three paragraphs we heard today from Paul’s letter is that sometimes the words are important enough to work at getting them right. He mentions a couple of jokers in Timothy’s church, Hymenaeus and Philetus. They have been goofing up the word “resurrection,” declaring Jesus came back from the dead, and that’s all there is to that.

What they don’t understand is that the resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning. It was the sign that God will restore the whole broken-down world, raising up everything that’s dead, establishing justice, and re-creating the whole cosmos the way it was intended to be. Hymenaeus and Philetus trivialize all of that and make it smaller, as if to say, Easter is a brief flash of enlightenment and everything after that is business as usual.

Paul says no! Don’t reduce God’s free and liberating word into something bite-sized and easily dismissed. The Gospel is enormous. The Gospel has the power to transform all of life. Don’t presume to shrink all of God’s transforming power into a fleeting emotion or warm fuzzy in the heart. It matters that we work on the words, and see them in the immense power of the grace and truth of God.

But this is also Paul, the apostle Paul, the pastor Paul – and he knows, all too well, that the heart of God’s church “is not lifted up, the eyes are not raised too high, and it does not occupy itself with things too great and marvelous” for itself (Psalm 131).

In his memoirs, Garrison Keillor fondly remembers Sunday afternoons. Sunday mornings were long and tedious, especially in the fundamentalist church of his childhood. Sermons were made to be endured, long endurance preferably. Yet Sunday afternoons were quite entertaining.

His family had no television, which was just as well. Keillor’s parents would have wrinkled their brows at watching football games, denouncing football as a waste of God’s good gift of the Sabbath. No, the entertainment came after the family pushed back from the Sunday dinner table and Uncle Louie and Uncle Mel would start discussing theology.

A transcription of the conversation might have looked like a discussion. However the word “argument” was far more accurate. Uncle Louie might lightly toss a thought into the air. Uncle Mel clenched his jaw into a smile to correct Uncle Louie. As Keillor recalls,

I forget the Scripture verses each of them brought forward to defend his position, but I remember the pale faces, the throat-clearing, the anguished looks, as those two voices went back and forth, straining at the bit, giving no ground – the poisoned courtesy (“I think my brother is overlooking Paul’s very clear message to the Corinthians…,” “Perhaps my brother needs to take a closer look, a prayerful look, at this verse in Hebrews…”) as the sun went down, neighbor children were called indoors, the neighbors turned out their lights, eleven o’clock came – they wouldn’t stop!

“Perhaps,” Grandpa offered, “it would be meet for us to pray for the Spirit to lead us,” hoping to adjourn, but both Louie and Mel felt that the Spirit had led us, that the Spirit had written the truth in big black letters – if only some people could see it.”[1]

Ah, the poisoned courtesy of those who bicker with one another! This seems to be the recurring habit of lawyers, politicians, and Christians who are convinced they are correct. It’s nothing so great as a conversation about the immensity of God’s grace. Paul sees it as something far smaller yet deeply destructive. He calls it “wrangling over words.”

That’s a suggestive turn of phrase – “wrangling,” as in a cowboy roping a runaway calf or a rider throwing a saddle on a horse to chase after some poachers. We wrangle with words, toss them around, if not hurl them at one another. The words are not in service to pursuing the truth, you understand. They are weapons for bullying, exertions of power, bald attempts of pushing through, obliterating opposition, and getting your way.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is “Avoid this, for (wrangling words) does no good but only ruins those who are listening.”

I chew on that for Reformation Day. For all of his biblical insight and Gospel wisdom, old Martin Luther was not above insulting his opponents. In fact, there are websites with titles like “29 of Martin Luther’s Most Hilariously Over the Top Insults.” Here are a few of the more modest ones that I can dare to repeat:

• “You people are more stupid than a block of wood.”
• “I would not smell the foul odor of your name.”
• “You seem to me to be a real masterpiece of the devil’s art.”
• “I am tired of the pestilent voice of your sirens.”

 … and so on and so forth. He was a great reformer of the church, although he had a tendency toward being obnoxious, especially with his words. It makes me wonder if we must not merely be correct with our words – but also be kind. So I also recall an elegant eulogy from a former president at Friday’s funeral of the Honorable Elijah Cummings. In part, he said,

“Listening to Elijah’s daughters speak… I would want my daughters to know how much I love them, but I would also want them to know that being a strong man includes being kind. That there is nothing weak about kindness and compassion. There is nothing weak about looking out for others. There is nothing weak about being honorable. You are not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”[2]

Are our words inhabited with respect? That seems to have been a problem in Timothy’s church. Paul warned that the deacons of the church must not be “slanderers,” to beware of the “the hypocrisy of liars, to “have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies.” In the first letter, Paul said, “Watch out for the young widows, especially the gossips and the busybodies, saying what they should not say.” He could have also warned of the young widowers, too; in my experience, gossip can be a team sport, without gender limitations.

Words, words, words… Christian growth comes from paying attention to our words. Not just checking the half-truths, innuendos, or the bald-faced lies, but speaking kindness and speaking the honest truth about Jesus.

A good friend is a published poet. He offers a few stanzas of rhyme on this text in a poem called “Stop the Music.”[3]

We flap our gums and state our case

with heavy hearts and frown of face

convinced our words will save the race

while the devil does a dandy little dance.

We pick at nits and quote from books

with stained glass voice and pious looks

assured our view exposes crooks

while the devil does a dandy little dance.

One speaks for pro, another, con,

each one vibrant, each one “on.”

Food for thought to chew upon…

while the devil does a dandy little dance.

While we debate we cannot do—

we can’t proclaim the hope that’s new,

or show a neighbor “God loves you,”

so the devil does a dandy little dance.

The devil dances to our tune;

hopes our “music” won’t end soon.

We bark and bite from June to June

and the devil does a dandy little dance.

It’s time to end the endless song

which brings such comfort to great Wrong!

United and with Jesus, strong

Stop the music so the devil cannot dance.

That’s good advice for word wranglers, nitpickers, liars, and bullies. It’s really good advice for preachers three steps out of reach and listeners with their feet on the floor. God’s invitation for us is not only to speak about Jesus, but to speak like Jesus.

And today it’s a helpful reminder that, even if Martin Luther could be sassy and rude, on a few things he was dead-on right. Like the second stanza of the hymn that will later conclude our worship service:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure.

One little word shall fell him.

Hear that good news? Words matter. Evil is defeated by a single Word, the Word of God, the Word called “Jesus.”

So take heart, good friends. And watch what you say.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking Press, 1985) p. 107

[2] Barack Obama, “Eulogy for Elijah Cummings,” The Atlantic Monthly, 25 October 2019. Available online at t.ly/d5Lww

[3] James E. Thyren, “Stop the Music,” The Presbyterian Outlook, March 23-30, 1998.

Rekindling the Faith

Rekindling the Faith

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Ordinary 29

October 20, 2019

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline....Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

A good friend tells about something that happened to him. He was driving one day to the school where he was teaching, mulling over a series of moments from that morning.

He is a contemplative sort of guy and begins each day with stretching exercises and a long period of silent prayer. This day, however, he was running late on his usual schedule. Anxiety crept in. His wife commented about it and he snapped at her. She said, “So what good does it do you to sit in there and meditate?” He grabbed his car keys and headed out the door.

On his way to his school he realized he was living through a spiritual crisis. There was a widening gap between what he professed about his beliefs and the nagging sense of emptiness in his soul. He was a minister, of all things, going to teach and converse with adults about matters of faith. But inside it felt like he had little to share with anybody else. The nameplate on his office door declared him an expert, a professor of spirituality – and for the moment his entire professional life seemed like a sham.

Ever have a moment like that? Maybe you’re sitting here in church and you find yourself doubting if you believe any of it. Perhaps you’re sitting next to somebody who sings exuberantly and prays fervently, but you’re not so sure if anybody’s up there actually listening.

Or something good happens, and everybody all around you is cheering, but you aren’t so sure. You might be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the whistle to blow and the referee’s flag to fly. It’s not simply a matter of getting up on the wrong side of the bed. More likely it’s the feeling that something that used to fit together has come disconnected and you don’t know how to cobble it back together.

That’s what I want to talk about today. If your faith is tuned up and humming perfectly, this sermon probably isn’t for you; you are welcome to take an eighteen-minute nap. But for those who wish faith was stronger and the heart was on fire, let’s have a chat.

The first thing to acknowledge is the experience of darkness is common. It happens regularly. After Mother Teresa of Calcutta had died and was on the canonical escalator to sainthood, they discovered a collection of her letters. She was riddled with doubt. She wondered sometimes if God was really there, if her work for the poor actually accomplished anything. She feared the long silences of heaven – and the Roman church called her a saint.[1]

As she wrote to a colleague, “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” This was Mother Teresa, who inspired millions with her charitable work on behalf of Christ, who wanted those letters destroyed after her death.

I cannot judge her because the story is a common one. I’ve had moments, even seasons, when faith wavered, when clarity became confusion, and I’ll bet the offering plate that I’m not the only one. Faith comes and goes; that’s the nature of faith.

In the letter we heard today, Paul commends Timothy for his “sincere faith.” Yet this sincere faith did not come naturally. He wasn’t born with it. It was a gift. The very thing that Paul commends didn’t originate with Timothy. It came from somewhere else.

The apostle says, “There was faith that lived in your grandmother Lois. It lived in your mother Eunice, too.” Lois and Eunice were two Jewish women (Acts 16:1). There’s no mention of Timothy’s father or grandfather. No, it was the women who came before him. Faith came to them; now faith came to Timothy. We can presume they told him Bible stories, taught him to pray, took him to worship.

And if he had been in my family, he wouldn’t have had a choice about it. He would have spent three hours in church on Sunday – Sunday School at 9:30, worship at 10:45, and coffee hour with parents who were always the last ones to leave. Then home for roast beef, potatoes, and conversation about the sermon. That’s how I was raised. My family shaped me in preparation for my belief.

Some of you know my story: every Sunday, we sat in the same pew, all four kids strategically separated by Mom and Dad. The quietest kid got to put the envelope in the offering plate; it was a contest.

The sermons were dull, so I took a pencil and filled in all the zeros and O’s in the worship bulletin. And we sat still, until one day, I began to understand what the preacher was talking about. It began with the Jesus stories, but then more and more, comprehension increased. Faith crept in. I didn’t have it. It had me. It came from somewhere else. Paul reveals the clue to Timothy, “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”

Faith sneaks in. It’s not from us, it’s a gift from God. If you hear enough Bible, and pray enough prayers, and learn the language of belief, faith can find a home. It can linger a while.

But faith can also slip away. That was my friend’s experience. It’s happened to me on occasion. Maybe it’s happened to you sometimes. There is a hint in today’s text suggesting it may have happened to Timothy too.

The hint comes when Paul reminds him “to rekindle the gift of God that is within you.” “Rekindle” is a word from the fireplace. It’s what you do when the hot flame has died out and the remnants of some coals remain. You build a small nest of thin sticks over the coals called “kindling.” You blow on the coals – or as I saw somebody do, you use a hairdryer. If the fire comes alive, you must be ready to feed it with thicker sticks and rebuild the fire.

“Rekindle the gift of God within you.” It’s a suggestive phrase. How might we rekindle a faith where the fire has gone out?

I can tell you what my friend did. He did a few different things. First and foremost, he gave up on being an expert, especially about matters of belief. It was very humbling. There he was, teaching graduate courses on Christian spirituality -- and his own spirit was dry and disconnected. It was hard to confess, but he decided not to fake it.

That opened him to a series of surprises. One surprise was how much happened that did not depend on him. The sunrise was brilliant, the sunset was stunning, and neither happened because of him. The world seemed to get along just fine without him having to run it. He was free to breathe and take it in.

He also began to notice how much good there is in the world. That was significant, because he had just been through a patch of personal mishaps, a newspaper full of bad news, national tragedies, and international suffering. Yet, for all of that (and it had been weighing heavily on him), there were heroic efforts for goodness. All the darkness could not snuff out the light. Maybe Christ is risen, God is alive, and the Spirit is busy. He had stopped paying attention.

And then, a seemingly random invitation to visit another worshiping community refreshed him. He had gotten stuck and overcommitted in his own congregation. He went regularly, sat in the same place every week, but it made him grumpy. But when a friend took him to a sanctuary of believers from another culture, it was disturbing in the best kind of way. Those people were joyful. The energy was pulsing from the center.

He said, “I had fallen into thinking there was only OTC – one true church. Suddenly I was thrust into seeing that if, in fact, Christ is risen, God is alive, and the Spirit is busy, perhaps Christ, God, and Spirit are busy somewhere else.” It was a jolt, so he lingered a while. In time, he returned to his familiar church - and he sat in a different pew! A fresh perspective.

Along the way, he had a realization – another gift from the heavenly headquarters. There was something more than religion, something far superior to religion – and that was faith. He remembered two quotable quotes. The first was a stanza from a song by the Grateful Dead:

Once in a while / you can get shown the light

In the strangest of places / if you look at it right.  (“Scarlet Begonias”)

The other was a line from the 17^th century monk, Brother Lawrence. He had assigned the text to his students many times, but until now it had never occurred that the words might speak to him. Brother Lawrence said, “I can sometimes say, ‘I no longer believe, but I see.” He could see what matters most, what is living and true – even if it was awkward, even if he had to give up the old certainties that had become so confining.

His story reminded me of a tale told by a college student. She had gone off to her fall semester, moved into the dormitory, and started her classes. A few weeks later her parents moved to another city a couple of hours away. When she went to visit them at Thanksgiving, “home” wasn’t home anymore. Same parents, different town. It was profoundly disorienting. All that had been familiar was gone. The old places were gone.

When she came out of the fog of dislocation, here is how she made sense of it all. She said, “Home had moved, and I didn’t know where it was anymore. So I had to figure out where home was now going to be.” At the heart of it all, she discovered she was on a journey.   

All of us are on a journey. It’s the same journey. We come from God and we return to God. The longer we live, it can seem like God is elusive and ever on the move. Yet if God is our home, our one true home, faith is chasing after God until we find God – and God finds us.

In one of her books, the Presbyterian writer Anne Lamott writes,

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something (someone) had told me – that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense … to go for a walk.[2]

So we walk on, best in the company of one another. There’s no better way to “rekindle the faith” within us than by reaching beyond us, welcoming one another as strangers, building trust, and becoming companions on the way. As Paul reaches toward Timothy, so we can extend ourselves for one another. None of us ever need to travel alone.

We are on the journey of faith and trust together. When we can affirm that, no matter how far off and distant it seems, it feels like going home. That’s when we know the journey is God’s journey, too, “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Daniel Trotta, “Letter reveal Mother Teresa’s doubts about faith,” t.ly/xvLwm

[2] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 256-7.

Our Primary Pursuits

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Ordinary 28

October 13, 2019

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, but Benny Hinn recently made big news in Christian circles. He is one of those televangelists, a longtime proponent of the prosperity gospel. His message that if you give his church a lot of money, Jesus will make you rich. For years, Benny laid the same sermon on his people: “Give God a thousand dollars, and it will come back to you tenfold.” Then he flew off in his private jet and preached the same sermon somewhere else.

Well, here’s the news: Benny Hinn has decided to stop asking people for money. “I don’t see the Bible in the same eyes I saw 20 years ago. I think it’s an offense to the Lord to say, ‘Give $1000,’ so I’m not going to do it anymore, because I think the Holy Ghost is fed up with it.”[1]

Now, this is big news in the TV Church world: a preacher in a white suit who has been preaching wealth and success for thirty years has started reading the rest of the Bible. He discovered the Bible is more interested in how you live than what you have.

There’s nothing new about this, except for Benny and his bunch. As we read the first letter to Timothy, we have heard Paul say the bishops of the church should not be “lovers of money,” and the deacons should not “be greedy.” And immediately before our text, Paul warns against the wacky Bible teachers of his own day, particularly those, he says, “who imagine that godliness is a means of gain.” (1 Tim 6:5). To put that in plain speech: they will tell you whatever you want to hear, in order to gain a profit.

The underlying assumption is that more money will make us more happy. It’s an enticing thought. Someone said to me the other day, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be a billionaire?” Well, it’s appealing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, indeed, if every person we know could be a billionaire. It could repair poor roads, improve tough schools, and pay off college tuition bills. All of this swirls around. Here’s the assumption: if I could get money, even if it’s at the expense of other people, than I won’t have the same difficulties that they do.

In the late part of the first century, some people were coming along and saying, “You know, this has been a strand in Jewish thinking.” For instance, there’s a verse in the Psalms that says, “I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread” (37:25). If you take God seriously, things will go well for you.

Perhaps we would like to believe it: the Christian faith promotes a generosity of spirit and says we should expect that generosity from God. If I show up for worship, my life will improve, right? If I keep praying, all my worries – particularly my financial worries – will drop away.

I may regret saying this, but I will say it anyway: nothing is ever as easy as the preachers would want us to believe. Write that one down in the margin of your worship bulletin. Nothing is ever as easy as the preachers would want us to believe.

For one thing, riches are unpredictable. Anybody doubt that? Paul knew it at the end of the first century, and the Jews knew it and wrote that down in their Bibles, too. The apostle quotes from the book of Ecclesiastes, written a few hundred years before him: “As they came from their mother’s womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came; they shall take nothing for their toil, which they may carry away with their hands. This is also a grievous ill: just as they came, so shall they go; what gain do they have from toiling for the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 5:15-16)

500 years ago, John Calvin could declare, on behalf of all the Calvinists who would follow him, that hard work produces its own reward. According to Calvin and his bunch, a full day of work is what we need to put in, so that idleness would never taint our spirits. If we don’t have enough to do, or if we are between jobs, there’s always something to do – a neighbor to assist, a home to improve, a skill to develop. Hard work produces its rewards.

But sometimes it gets foggy, especially if you try to onnect such rewards to faith in Jesus Christ. Like I said, things are never as easy as the preachers would want us to believe.

Paul joins the conversation at this point. He is instructing Timothy to scratch below the surface of these causal connections between God’s love and financial blessing. There is no simplistic connection. He reminds Timothy of the same theme he has developed throughout this entire letter: that there is a quality of life that is independent of how well off we are, or how financially settled we are. He calls it “the life that really is life.” Or to be blunt about it -- “real life.” That is what the Gospel of the Living Christ offers us: real life.

It’s worth reflecting on what real life might be. What does it look like? Sometime back, David Brooks wrote a piece in the New York Times. “The 21st century will come to be known as the great age of headroom,” he said. People have built enormous houses and driven oversized cars. As he describes a town like Clarks Summit, the rule seems to be the Smaller the Woman, the Larger the Car.

He writes, “So you would see a 90-pound lady in tennis whites driving a 4-ton truck with enough headroom to allow her to drive with her doubles partner perched atop her shoulders. When future archeologists dig up the remains of that epoch, they will likely conclude that the U.S. was afflicted by a plague of claustrophobia and drove itself bankrupt in search of relief.”

That approach doesn’t seem to be working for many of us. Not anymore, if it ever did. And it raises the question, “What is real life?” As Paul writes to Timothy, he sets up a checklist. Food and clothing, check; they are good. Temptation, trapped by senseless desires, not so good. Love of God and contentment with what God gives, those are good. The love of money, that’s the root of all evil. Righteousness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness, put them on your list of good pursuits. Wandering away from the faith and piercing yourselves with many pains, not a good idea.

What is the life that really is life? I’m at the point in my life where I notice how all my high school classmates are turning out. Two of them went to nursing school. One married a software engineer who sold off his company and they now live in a 5100 square-foot house in the suburbs. Another heard the call to the mission field and started a health mission in the Dominican Republic. Both of them are Christians, but I’m guessing real life is different for each of them. The first one is very settled, has everything in place, and wants no disruptions of her affluence. She looks weary. The other has taken great risks for Jesus. Her eyes are crinkled from smiling so much.

Paul says to Timothy, “Look around! Pay attention to the pursuits of the people around you.” Pretty soon, the truth of their lives will be revealed. If all a person does is chase after money, they may get what they pursue, but they won’t have much of a life. Maybe that’s why some of the unhappiest people I have ever met are those who touched everything and turned it to gold, only to have their life tarnished. I wonder why that is.

And then there’s that monk in the New Mexico monastery. He walked away from a successful and lucrative career as an engineer. He gave up all his stuff and signed it over to the monastic community. Why? He said, “All my success was killing me. It robbed me of everything and everybody I loved.” So he gave up everything but God and devoted himself to a life of prayer. These days he just glows with the Holy Spirit.

Or how about that family we met on one of our church’s mission trips? There were nine family members bunking in a small home that had barely survived a hurricane. The grandfather invited me in and told the story. He said, “We lost everything, but we have one another, and most important, the Lord still has us.” His face lit up when I mentioned I was a preacher, and he asked me to sit down so we could talk about scripture. Is there a connection between his faith and his life? A life that really is life?

There is a connection, and it’s never as easy as any preacher wants us to believe. But the ancient insights of this New Testament letter raises the question of what we really value.

To the person who wants to be rich, the Bible has to ask: “What would you do with all of that money?” Would you get a big house, build a tall fence, install a security system to keep your stuff safe? And would you spend every night worrying that people valued you only for your money? What kind of life is that?

It reminds me of the fortune cookie that my friend Andy opened one day at lunch. He cracked it open and found the ancient wisdom in four words: “Greed leads to poverty.”

By contrast, Timothy is given the Christian charge. Paul writes, “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather to set their hopes on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

So Paul extends it into ethics: “Do good, be rich in good works, be generous and ready to share.” This is the invitation for every baptized person, every week, every day. We do not live only for ourselves. We live for God and God’s entire world. That is the good life. That is the real life. When we look at the bank statement, we may have a lot or we may have a little. But when you get right down to it, here is the truth. We are only as good as the good that we do.

Do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous and ready to share. This is how we store up “the treasure of a good foundation for God’s future.” This is how we “take hold of the life that really is life.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] “Benny Hinn renounces prosperity gospel,” t.ly/MZ9gq