Good Treasure, Entrusted

October 5, 2025
World Communion
40th Anniversary of Ordination
William G. Carter

      Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 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.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

 

Thirty-five years is a long time. Forty, even longer. In some ways, the time has zipped by. In other ways, the days are long, and the years are short. Trust me when I say I’m grateful to be here, still here, and we have many more miles to travel together before I’ll be done.

Given the nature of this day, I hope you won’t think it overly self-indulgent if I say a few words about how I got into this line of work. My intention is not to make it about me, but to make it about God, and the call of God for each of us.

Simply put, I did not choose to be a preacher. I was recruited. Anybody who chooses the pastoral ministry on their own must be insane. If you do it right, the hours are long. The emotional demands are heavy. You rely on volunteers. You live among consumers. At least the pay is extraordinary, right? It’s a little less than the going rate for public school teachers, although you don't get summers off and you must work weekends and hoIidays.

For pastors, the blessing is that we are invited to mark life moments. There are three big ones, which could be described as hatched, matched, and dispatched. We baptize children, then wait decades for them to return. We marry off lovers who have no clue what they are getting into. We bury people who should have taken better care of themselves. And those are the big moments. Meanwhile, there are thousands of little moments, too, every single one of them important.

Why would anybody do this? Because they were recruited. Because God said, in a Voice from beyond time, “I have work for you to do.”

That's my story. I didn't go looking for this. I was found. The Voice said clearly, “I have work for you to do.” I heard it at a Halloween party, of all things, when I was nineteen years old. Nobody else heard that Voice. I looked around, saw no one, but I knew. That initial summons released a temporary euphoria, something I’ve never been able to explain. I laughed out loud. I was filled with joy.

And then, a few days later the terror sneaked in. Why me? What would this mean? What would be required? Whom do I tell? The college girlfriend who had just dumped me thought I would be a terrible minister and said as much. The college chaplain believed I was too arrogant. The jazz cats looked at me funny, as if to say, “How will that work out?” All that, in addition to my own doubts and fears, faults and issues.

Yet here I am. Because if you've been recruited, you need to see it through. I could say a lot more about all of that, but I'm here to talk about Jesus and not about me.

Why would Christ recruit any of us? Because there is work to be done. The world is a broken place, so broken that we broke Jesus. Yet he keeps coming back, wounds still visible, and he says, “Blessed are those who are broken.” Say that, he says. Let them know they are precious even if their hearts are fractured. Tell them there is redemptive joy even if they are weeping. Be the Beatitudes, as strange as they are. Keep this good news alive, in you, in them, even when the broken world denies it.

In our text, Paul says to young Timothy, “Guard the gospel.” He's not telling him to defend it, because Jesus never defended himself. The Lord came among us vulnerable, defenseless, trusting in God alone. Yet Jesus kept the faith. He hung onto the faith. He kept it burning within. That’s how he guarded it as treasure.

And that is the second part of the call of God. First, there is the summons. Then there’s the keeping of the flame, the stoking of the fire, the guarding of the hope that God implants within us. We keep, stoke, and guard in diverse ways. I know what has been most beneficial to me.

For me, there has been a constant return to the Bible. It’s a big, delightful stew of stories and songs, collected by people who came to love God after discovering how much God loved them. About four weeks after my ordination, I ran out of sermons. I said everything I knew. Then I started reading the Bible, really digging in, and there has been no shortage of things to teach and preach. We live within the pages of this book.

There have been the God moments too, occasions that happen off the page. I can cite youth camps, wilderness trips, hospital visits, service trips, and occasional trips to the monastery to get the spiritual fleas out of my hair. My mother taught me to appreciate the visual arts and good music. My father taught me to sit in the woods, be still, and watch the world come alive at dawn through no effort of our own. These holy moments can train us to back off from our aggressions and let God rule the world.

A third gift has been laughter, what Anne Lamott calls, “carbonated holiness.” Counter to all the grim saints we’ve had to endure, God loves a good joke. That’s why he keeps us around. Laughter names the inconsistencies and absurdities. Joy levels the hypocrisies and pretensions, reminding us we will never make it without a lot of help. Grace comes as a guffaw. As the Psalmist says, “The Lord delights in his people.” (Psalm 149:4). That means you and me.

And then there is friendship, which lies close to the core of the Christian life. We can’t do Gospel work alone. We need one another. One of the sustaining gifts of my ministry was spending a week with a dozen or more preachers. Some of them are here today. For thirty years, we met for a week in January to work on scripture, to walk through joy and heartbreak, and to build connections that still give grit and grace.

One more sustaining gift has been the work of integration. When the invitation came, I couldn't figure out how the church could ever use a jazz musician. But God did. The Holy Spirit punctured my lack of imagination, and said, “Try this.” Keep at it. That miracle is still in the making.

And if I’m honest, my work has been made infinitely easier by living with a congregation like this one. Over the years, as outsiders would learn about my work, some would ask, "How long are you going to stay in that little town?" I have always smirked, then replied, "I have a secret." The secret is all of you. We have forged something special. It is a treasure – the Gospel enfleshed in our relationships. And I love you all so very much.

The question today: how do we keep the flame alive? How do we keep the fire burning? There is no single answer, although most of us have some pretty good hunches. We anchor ourselves in the things that matter. Then we give ourselves to the work of God in our world: living, loving, learning, serving, speaking out, forgiving, creating, collaborating, contributing, always making a positive difference. 

It begins there. It continues there. And the God who began this good work in each of us will see it through to the end. Thanks be to God, who entrusts us with this priceless treasure.

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