Living with Disappointment

2 Timothy 4:6-22

Ordinary 33

November 10, 2019

William G. Carter

As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

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.

At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained in Corinth; Trophimus I left ill in Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers and sisters. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.

A lady I know was in a bit of a tizzy this week. I called to chat and asked what’s new. She said, “I just did something and I don’t know what to do.” Before I could help her figure out what to do, I had to ask, “What did you do?”

Well, she had just retrieved the mail and walked up the driveway. It was the usual assortment of catalogs, advertisements, the weekly local newspaper, and the credit card bill. She sighed. Since she had a little time, she sat down, reached for her checkbook, and opened the envelope. As she starts to write out the check, she says, “Wait, there’s a charge here that I did not make, and another one, from a store that I never go in.”

The matter distressed her. She thought for a moment about calling the bank to register her complaint but reconsidered. It’s her only card. With the holidays coming up, she didn’t want to go through the hassle of having the account canceled. As she stewed about this, she looked again, only to realize the mail had been misdelivered. This was the credit card statement of her next door neighbor.

That’s about the time that I called, and she said, “I don’t know what to do.” I replied, “Well, you have the checkbook out. Why don’t you just pay her bill?”

“Oh no,” she said, “I couldn’t do that. She spent a lot more money than I would ever spend.”

“So you looked at the statement?” She said, “I’m looking at it now.” I bet that’s pretty interesting. In the end, she planned to smooth out the wrinkles, seal it back up, go next door, and explain what happened. It’s really none of my business, so I’ll trust she did something of the sort.

It reminds me that when we read the letters of Paul, we are reading somebody else’s mail. He mentions a lot of people that we will never meet, all of their names now immortalized in scripture. He sends personal greetings, says “tell Prisca and Aquilla that I said hello,” and shares a bit of news. We are looking over his shoulder. In this case, unlike most of Paul’s other correspondence, we listen in to somebody who is disappointed.

Paul is an old man, far from home. He's tired. He’s cold. He is worn out. In an uncharacteristic moment, he admits about how other people have let him down. He usually doesn't grumble like this. Paul frequently stays upbeat and positive, and usually takes the high road. Yet in a reflective minute, we hear a twinge of sadness in his voice.

"Dear Timothy," he writes, "do your best to come and see me. Demas ran off to Thessalonica, chasing after the pleasures of this world. Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus disappeared in Dalmatia. I sent Tychicus back home to Ephesus. Now I'm stuck here all alone, with only Luke to keep me company."

Paul says, "Bring that cloak I left behind in the fellowship hall at Troas. Pack up my books and my parchments. Bring them too." Here is a man who is summing up his life at the close of a long afternoon. He says, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race . . . the time of my departure has come."

This is a remarkable moment of self-reflection. Maybe that's why the apostle sizes up his successes and failures. Like Alexander the coppersmith. We don't know much about him, except that Paul was ready to write him off. "He did me great harm," said Paul, "and the Lord will pay him back for his deeds."  Then he gets on his high horse: "You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message."  Then he starts wagging his finger, "At my first defense, no one came to my support. Everybody deserted me."

These are the words of somebody who comes up short. According to the accounts, nobody worked as hard as the apostle Paul. He traveled all over the known world, preaching the good news about Jesus, starting churches, training the next generation of leadership, working tirelessly. There was opposition along the way – of course there was resistance and opposition – but he accomplished so much.

At the end, most of his closest companions have left him. Everything he worked so hard to accomplish seems at risk. His entire life’s work looks like it could circle around the drain. It seems the encouragement he has offered so freely to young Timothy is something he wish somebody could offer to him. He’s disappointed. Anybody knows how he feels?

Some of us raise our kids, teach them to stand up and be productive. We encourage them to be independent. And they are so good at being independent that they never call, forget to keep in touch, make other plans at Thanksgiving. It’s disappointing.

Or there is the dream job. From the moment it’s posted, you imagine how good it would be: more money, better hours, more vacation time, greater responsibility, in an excellent location. And then you get the job, and it’s all those things – and it’s also a whole lot less. As a wise old sage said, “If it looks like the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, just remember it’s still grass. It’s only grass.” That can be disappointing.

Others of us can’t wait for the holiday catalogs to arrive. All these wonderful things we never knew about and never thought to purchase, and here they are in glossy splendor, with the enticing tag lines, “Free shipping no payments until February.” So we put them on the wish list, give out well-placed hints, live in patient hope, anticipate the day. Christmas comes, and there is the perfectly shaped package. Rip open the paper, exclaim in delight: and it’s the wrong size, or the wrong color, or it’s nothing like we expected. Feel the disappointment.

I remember the great theologian, a man so smart that he taught at Duke Divinity School and Duke Law School. He taught a class on the meaning of marriage. One day, I went to hear him speak. He said, “Here is the truth about marriage: we always marry the wrong person. When we discover that truth, we have to decide, ‘Am I staying with this person, or should I look for another?’” There was an audible gasp.

Over coffee someone said, “What exactly did you mean by that?” He replied, “Only to say that no human relationship can bear the full weight of everything we think that relationship should bear. Friends let you down. Neighbors betray you. Spouses can never be perfect; and if you don’t believe that, ask your spouse.”

How do you deal with disappointment? Sometimes the best way is to push through it, stay positive, spin the situation in an affirming way. Squeeze that lemon into lemonade. Turn that frown upside down. Accentuate the positive.

Or in Paul’s situation, begin with the conclusion. How does he spin the situation of weariness, abandonment, and disillusion? He says, “I’ve fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith, and I know there is a crown of righteousness waiting for me. And you can have that crown, too!” Yet it sounds a little empty when the next words out of his mouth are, “Demas has abandoned me and Alexander the silversmith has done me wrong.” Which is it, Paul? The good fight or the lingering resentment? A good place to stand is in the honesty of that ambivalence, and say, “All the above, and I’m a tangled mess.”

Another time-honored approach to disappointment is simply this: to reduce our expectations. The runner-up to the contest says, “The winner was a lot better than me.” Or the graduate with below-modest grades says, “I wasn’t valedictorian material anyway.” Or the bar-room romantic describes his girlfriend in the words of the country music song, “She wasn’t much to look at except through the bottom of a beer glass.” Hear all of that? Reduced expectations.

Sometimes it’s called “putting cushions on the floor.” I don’t know if our team is going to win tonight; that’s a way of saying, if we don’t win, I won’t be quite so disappointed. Put the cushion on the floor, so when you fall, it won’t hurt quite so badly. Some people do this. A lot of people do this.

A third approach to disappointment is to look for the blessing in the middle of the experience. That has been the consistent message of people like my parents. The high school girlfriend would dump me, and Mom would say, “Well, wait for the right one.” No comfort in that. Or have a six-point buck kiss your bumper on a Friday night, Dad would say, “You’re OK, it could have been worse, the car can be replaced but not you; by the way, do you think the venison is still available?” I’m kidding, of course; not really.

I talk regularly with a wise friend who calls himself a spiritual companion. He has a phrase for this. He says, “Look for the grace in the grit.” That’s a great phrase. There may be flecks of gold in the mud, so look again.

It sounds like the advice of Yoda to a disillusioned Luke Skywalker. That little green elf appears in the last Star Wars movie to say, “Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, hmm… but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters” (The Last Jedi).  True enough, although Yoda still sounds like my mother.

Yet another look at Paul’s final words and we see plenty of grace in the grit, blessing in the brokenness, and mercy in the mess. The first place is in the thick of his lament of how everybody has run out on him. “They all ran away,” he says. “Everybody deserted me.”

As he says it, I wonder, just among friends, if he paused to remember Jesus in his time of need. The second Jesus was arrested, everybody ran away from him. They forsook him and fled. Yet Jesus had the graciousness to say, “Father, forgive them…forgive them all.” So Paul takes a breath. He considers how he too has been abandoned, and he prays, “I hope these things aren't counted against them."

It's a remarkable turn, a turn toward mercy. Sometimes the Gospel appears in the small details.

The second moment comes after Paul unloads about how weak he is, how abandoned he feels, how there’s nobody except Luke by his side – did you notice this? He starts to name all the people he still loves, who are still out there somewhere, cheering him on, grateful for his life’s work, affirming him for what he cannot see in himself on that cloudy day.

"Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus." (I don't know any of those people, but Paul does. They have stood by him in troubles before, and they will do so again.

Then he says, "Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers and sisters." I don’t know any of those people, either, but isn’t it striking that Paul, who cries “boo hoo” that nobody is with him --- still has people with him. Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and “all the brothers and sisters.” Maybe the circle of support is larger than he thought it was. It always is. There are people on your side, you know. They are sitting all around you today.

Then comes the final blessing: "The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you." Ah, there it is. Not merely the wish that the Risen Lord will breathe his Spirit into the soul of Timothy, his church, Prisca and Aquila, and the family of Onesiphorus … but the affirmation that the last word on all of us is grace. Grace be with you. The grace of God, that invisible, incomprehensible favor that holds us even when we feel weak and all seems lost. God finishes what we cannot.

The point of the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ is that our saving is not up to us. In the thick of his emotional stew, Paul at least has the clarity to say, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom.” The last word is not up to Paul, any more than it’s up to you or me. The last word is always grace, the grace of God, to whom be the glory forever and ever.

So here is the final word: “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.”

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