Rescued From the Lion’s Mouth

2 Timothy 4:6-22
Ordinary 33
October 26, 2025
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

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.

I don’t know about you, but we often receive mail that was not intended for us. If it’s a credit card statement or a utility bill, we take it back to the post office and ask them to get it right. If it’s an advertising flyer, my tendency is to throw it in the recycling bin unless it’s interesting. Then, I might take a peek. It’s extremely rare to get personal letters at all, much less letters that are misdelivered. 

When we read the New Testament letters of Paul, we are reading letters that were never intended for us. At some point, the church decided we have something to learn by overhearing this personal correspondence. Paul mentions people we do not know. He says, “Tell Prisca and Aquila that I said hello. Greet the household of Onesiphorus.” We don’t know who that is. But we keep looking over his shoulder. Today, unlike most of Paul’s other letters, we listen in to somebody who has traveled a very bumpy road.

In this letter, 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 today we hear a twinge of weariness 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 day.  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 traveled throughout the known world, preaching the good news about Jesus, debating in the synagogues, 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 had left him. Everything he worked so hard to accomplish seems at risk. His entire life’s work might be circling around the drain. In this letter, he gave a lot of encouragement to young Timothy. It sounds like he could use bit in return. 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 was 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 thought to purchase, and here they are in glossy splendor, with the enticing tag line, “Free shipping.” So we put together the wish list, give out quiet hints, live in patient hope. Christmas comes, and there is the perfectly shaped package. Rip open the paper, squeal in delight, and it’s the wrong size, or the wrong color, or nothing like we expected.

How do we 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 by listing your accomplishments. 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 empty when the next words out of his mouth are, “Demas has abandoned me, 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.”

Of course, another time-honored approach to disappointment is 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 by singing the old country 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,” a softening of the outcome. Yesterday, I married off my nephew near Ithaca, New York. At the hotel yesterday morning, there was a swarm of young women, most of them six feet tall or taller. Women’s basketball team? No, the Columbia University volleyball team. They were in town to play Cornell. I looked them up on the internet – Columbia was 2-15.

I checked last night. Columbia is now 2-16. We can imagine the pep talk on the bus ride home. “At least we won two. There are more games to come.”

Sometimes the best way to salvage a disappointment is to look for the blessing in the middle of the experience. It can be a way of parenting. The beloved girlfriend dumps the sophomore, and me, and Mom might say, “Well, wait for the right one.” Thanks, Mom, even though there is little consolation. Or a six-point buck kissed your bumper on a Friday night, Dad says, “The car can be replaced but not you.” The intent is there.

Someone calls this, “Looking 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 Luke Skywalker. In one of the Star Wars movies 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.” True enough.

And if we look at Paul’s final words, we see plenty of grace in the grit, blessing in the brokenness, and mercy in the mess. He laments how everybody ran out on him. “They all ran away,” he says. “Everybody deserted me.” Did he remember that happened to Jesus, too? Thugs came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane while everybody else ran away. Yet Jesus had the graciousness to say, “Father, forgive them. Forgive them all.” There’s Gospel there.

So, Paul takes a breath. He 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.

And then, as Paul unloads about how weak he feels, how abandoned he is, how there’s nobody except Luke by his side – what does he do? He names all the people he still loves. They are out there somewhere, cheering him on, grateful for his life’s work, affirming what he cannot see in himself on that cloudy day.

There’s Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Then he adds, "Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers and sisters." We 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.”

It's a good reminder that the circle of support is always larger than he think it is. There are cheerleaders on your side of the field. Today they are all around you.

All of this brings us to the final insight. It’s best summarized in one of our old hymns:

“Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
 In his arms he'll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.

Friends can be helpful. Or they can be fickle. But Christ himself stands with us. Paul can finally confess it: “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.” He got through it. By the grace of God, he got through it.

Maybe you remember that poem, “Footprints in the Sand”? Some of you may have that printed and posted on the living room wall. Someone has a dream, sees two sets of footprints in the sand. It’s a sign the Lord has been walking alongside. Then the dreamer sees a section of the sand with only one set of footprints, and says, “Lord, did you abandon me when things got tough?” “No, my child,” comes the reply, “I was carrying you.”

There is a variation on that little poem. According to the variation, Christ says, “My child, I never left you. Those places with one set of footprints? It was then that I carried you. And that long groove over there is when I dragged you for a while.” That sounds a good bit more accurate.

Walking beside, carrying, or dragging us – it’s all a good reminder that life is not really about us. It’s about Christ, the Christ who rescues and saves. Paul looks back upon his life, names his disappointments, names his friends, names his needs – and reaffirms he couldn’t have gotten through all of it without the invisible, incomprehensible grace that holds us when we feel weak and all seems lost.

The good news of the Gospel is that God finishes what we cannot. The saving is not up to us. Paul has the clarity to finally say, “the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever.”

And in case we need it said again, he says it again. “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.” That is always the final word.

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

Do Your Ears Itch?

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
October 19, 2025
William G. Carter

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,  and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

 

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.

 

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

Today’s memory verse is inscribed on our bulletin cover. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. It’s quite the verse. There’s nothing quite like it in the Bible.

Today’s Psalm is close. Psalm 119 is a long meditation on the value of God’s teaching. It has 176 verses, all of them grouped by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. God instructs us by wisdom through the texts of the teaching. We heard only eight verses from that psalm, which constitutes the longest chapter of the Bible. If there is a singular theme, it is: God’s words are good for us. The Torah – that is, the Instruction – saves our lives.

Today’s prophetic text takes this understanding forward. The prophet Jeremiah has taken note that, just because there’s a Bible, that doesn’t mean anybody reads it. Or that they follow it. Or that they understand it. Lamenting that this lack of engagement has led his nation into ruin, the prophet foresees a day when all of God’s people will know the Torah and understand the Torah. Not because it is written in a book, but because God has inscribed it upon their hearts.

Then we have this text, this memory text, from the second letter from an old pastor to a young preacher. We will call the old pastor “Paul.” The young preacher’s name is “Timothy.” It is clear they share a high regard for scripture. Paul speaks of the “sacred writings,” plural. He alludes that these writings come from different times, through different authors, addressing different topics in diverse ways.

Yet the scriptures share some common purposes. They are useful for teaching, that is, teaching the ways of God. They are texts intended for training – “training in righteousness,” he says. That is, they teach us how to live. Not just what to think but what to do. And then, Paul says something dramatic: “All scripture is breathed by God.”

For some, that’s why this is the memory verse. They believe God blew words onto the page; the text doesn’t specify this, but some folks have a high enough view of the Bible that this is what they believe. They overlook that that the original texts were written down in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, or that there are scores of competing translations, or that there are several wrinkles in the manuscripts. Some of those handwritten manuscripts disagree with others. A few are missing a verse or two. The Gospel of Mark has at least three different endings. And so on.

None of this undermines what Paul is saying. He is saying God “breathes.” The inspiration is the respiration. When we ordain elders, deacons, and pastors, we ask in effect, “Do you accept the Scriptures to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ – and God’s Word to you?” It’s that phrase “by the Holy Spirit” that matters. God’s Spirit breathes upon the text, within the text, and then upon us – and that’s how the words get written upon our hearts. God’s respiration is our inspiration.

The bottom line is that what we need to know is in the Book. By the Spirit of God, it can be a living Book. A life-giving Book. A saving, salvaging Book. That’s why we honor it.

And I have to say, the more we read the book, the more hidden treasures we find. I’m not talking about secret codes or ancient treasures, but treasures. Some of them are so human they are a hoot. Like Proverbs 22: “Make no friends with hotheads, lest you learn their ways and entangle yourself in a snare.” (22:24-25) Good advice! Given that, I can think of a few television channels to turn off.

Or there’s my favorite story of the prophet Elisha. Some Cub Scouts made fun of his bald head, so Elisha utters a curse. A mama bear comes out of the woods to teach them a lesson. Point is, don’t make fun of God’s prophet. Or else! The tale probably began as a campfire story to warn the kids.

There are little treasures, highly human. Last Thursday the Men’s Breakfast group finished an exhaustive reading of the Acts of the Apostles. We decided to read next one of the letters by Paul. So, we’ll start with the letter to the Philippians. I can’t wait to tell them there’s a swear word in chapter three (don’t look for it now). His point is not the swear word – he was writing about Jesus and how everything else smells like the stuff you scape off your shoe.

The point is God’s holiness is imparted to everyday humanness. There is holiness. And there is humanness. Just like Jesus, they are bound together as one. Let’s not tint the pages of this book in gold and put spotlights on it without reading it. The Bible is only as good as our engagement with it. Are we sinking into the pages so that God’s wisdom can sink into us? That’s what counts.

Our worship committee recently surveyed the Bibles in our pews. Some of them are worn out. That’s a great problem to have! A sanctuary with Bibles that are falling apart. I imagine you’ll help us replace them when the appeal is made. Because the Bible is good for us. When God breathes the ancient words of alive, we come alive. Faith, hope, and love come alive.

So, you might ask, why all this emphasis on the Bible? I’m glad you asked. Good question. Paul brings up the Bible because he knows all the other messages out there in the world. Without God’s instruction, a world left to its own impulses becomes ugly and twisted out of shape. Right before our text, right before Paul speaks so glowingly of the Bible, he describes what he calls his own “distressing times.” Here’s the list, from the beginning of chapter three:

For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unfeeling, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:2-5)

This is how he describes those who live without God. They are totally turned in upon themselves. They abuse others. They build themselves up while they tear others down. Some of them are so intoxicated by their selfishness that they wrap themselves in religious talk as they cut down their neighbors. Pretty horrifying, isn’t it? And it needs to be said that all of us are prone to turn in upon ourselves. Without God, without God’s instruction, that’s who we could become. That’s the human condition.

That’s the canine condition, too. Let me explain. We have two Springer spaniels in our home. Both are getting up in years, but they are lovely companions. They both like to have their ears rubbed. I mention that because that’s the phrase Paul uses to describe the beastly tendencies of the human animal – they have itchy ears.

Well, Pippa and Oakley like to have their ears scratched. It’s intoxicating. It gives them great pleasure. It’s the dog version of catnip. Scratch their ears. If you stop, they tap you with a paw. “Keep going! Don’t stop. Ooh, that feels so good. Yes, that’s it. Right there.”

And Paul says this is how some people are. They want their ears scratched. They listen only to what they want to hear. They change the channel if an adverse word is spoken. Either that, or they say, “You can’t trust the news” or “I have my own set of facts.” Or worse they say, “Just keep scratching my ears.” Keep me intoxicated by my own insulated experiences. Don’t try to teach me anything that would make me a better person. No, scratch my ears. Keep me entertained.

I was in the check out line at the market, buying some yogurt, and I noticed all the ear-scratching headlines of the tabloids. Elvis consorted with Martians, and the offspring walk among us. The here-today-and-gone-tomorrow celebrities are divorcing and remarrying. There are secret ingredients in your pantry to eliminate diabetes. There are flying saucers mentioned in the Bible. And so forth. Who pays any attention to these things? Those with itchy ears. 

Paul’s counsel, woven all through this letter to Timothy, is to stay grounded in what he calls “sound doctrine.” This is that body of material that have its gravitational center in the love and justice of the God we know through Jesus Christ. It’s an anchor when the waves are pounding against the boat. It’s the call to love your neighbor when others are trying to divide you. It’s the invitation to trust in God and his ways when there are so many liars, scammers, and doomsayers.

Sound doctrine is when we join together to speak the truth we have inherited, “We trust in God who creates everybody in the divine image. We trust in Jesus Christ, who gave his life to cancel the power of evil and has been raised from the dead to rule over all. We trust in the Holy Spirit who can refresh us and renew us if only we would get over ourselves and stop acting as if we know what we are doing. 

The great reformer John Calvin said it best. The moment of his transformation began, he said, when God showed him he was teachable.[1] He took on an attitude of grateful receptivity. God has something to say. God has something to teach. We are not left to ourselves. Just like us, Calvin didn’t have to rely on his own wits to get through the day or sleep through the night. There is a greater Wisdom at work in the world. We access it by reading the Bible together.

So, we read the folktale of Elisha cursing the Cub Scouts. Rather than focus on the chaos, we discover there’s a great power in the Word of God than we first realized.

Or we read the multiple versions of Mark’s resurrection story and affirm he was doing his best to affirm something so great that it cannot be captured in words.

Or we read the apostle Paul writing to a church he loved. When we come across a saucy word, we know he is amplifying his language to tell us how much he’s willing to give up to claim the transforming power of God.

The Bible is just that useful. So, let’s read it. Let’s read it together. Let’s find ways to increase our understanding and then let’s live out of the treasure chest that generations before us have preserved for our benefit. For if there’s anything scripture can teach us, it’s this. When your heart and mind are full, your ears don’t itch.

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

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[1] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms

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.