NOW AND LATER

September 26, 2010
Pentecost 18
1st Timothy 6:6-19
Jeremiah 32:6-15

(prayer)
Churches can be places of deep history. It is part of the nature of church - we are keepers of an ancient sacred story.
But there is a danger when we live in the past. Because in every way that truly matters, we don't. "The time is now." It always is. Faith must have relevance for today: building on the past, regardless of the past, in spite of the past.
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We all have our ‘personal history’ that has brought us to this moment in time. It is valuable and it is important – it helps define who we have become – who we are in this moment.
Something drew each one of us to this gathering this morning. Think about it for a moment. What brought you here?

That is the path that invited you to this place and space. And that is the really amazing thing, isn’t it. Our paths are converging for a while. That’s a miracle in and of itself: that in this busy, diverse world, we have found something in common – even if it is just a place and a time.

The obvious next question is, now that you are here, what are you seeking, what are you yearning for? I wonder how much variety we have out here, just this morning. And the mix changes with each new soul that joins us.

Legendary folk musician, the late Gamble Rogers once said commenting on playing a concert at some small forgettable tavern that his booking agent set him up with because it was on the way between two more significant gigs. He looks out at the crowd and he thinks: What do they need? I don’t have that. I have a guitar, I wonder if it’ll be enough. I have words, I wonder if they stand a chance to be heard?

Preaching is like that sometimes. We may be here together, but we bring our own histories and our own yearnings – is this service enough, can it be heard. I doubt it.
After 20+ years in this and other pulpits I am coming to a comfort with that. I simple offer a reflection on a common scriptural heritage.
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Timothy was a young leader in the early Christian church. The Apostle Paul was his mentor. According to the book of Acts, he joined Paul in some of his missionary travels. Timothy in many ways symbolized the emerging Christian church. His mother was Jewish, his father non-Jewish: Gentile (sometimes in the New Testament, labelled Greek). Paul spent much of his energy teaching the church on a unity that transcends our divergent past. It was Paul who wrote to the Galatian Christians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

After Paul was imprisoned, the work of sharing and spreading the gospel fell to the next generation, including Timothy. The context of the letter we read part of today is Paul’s advice to his young protégé. Now, Biblical scholars are almost certain that the version we have in our New Testament was written after Paul’s death. The two letters to Timothy and Titus are collectively referred to as the ‘pastoral epistles’ – the pastoral letters. Part of these letters are devoted to how the church should function. It describes the roles of local leaders, etc. Paul died in prison sometime in the late 50s of the first century. The church had not yet grown into the structure that the letters describe. So, even though they claim to be written by Paul, it is far more likely that they were written by Paul’s companions still in leadership within the Christian movement, a few decades later. We might call this fraud or plagiarism, but at the time, it would not have been scandalous for followers to carry on the authoritative name of a great leader of the past.

Having said that, I suspect that the kind of advice that the letter describes in our reading today, is the kind of words that might have been shared between Paul and his non-imprisoned companions. Perhaps, the origins of this letter are some fragments of actual correspondence between Paul and Timothy that dates back to Paul’s life. They may have simply been expanded later as the needs of the church dictated.

So ignoring the maybe 20 year lag in exactly when the letter was written, we can still see the words in the context of advice from the veteran to the rookie. Please forgive me the technically of language, but, as I talk about it, I’m going to talk as if Paul is the author and Timothy is the reader.
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In the passage from first Timothy today, we hear advice on how to gage what is important in life. The description from Paul is that of comparing ‘enough’ with ‘excess’. Paul contrasts ‘need’ with ‘greed’.

“If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. [Desiring riches can trap a person] by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”

The advice for this new generation of church people is to put their energy and focus in their share ministry and an eternity within the loving embrace of God, not in the acquiring of ‘stuff’ that is tied to this short life. ”For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.”

Paul is not telling everyone to live at the basic subsistence level. He encourages people to use their resources generously and for the common good. He is just telling people set aside their greed. To live in the now, holding to the hope and promise for the future. And the encouragement is to live with a compassion for each other.

Inter-related compassion is always the first causality of greed. Greed inherently involves tightening the circle of who will benefit from the spoils of greed. For “now”, we are invited to live more simply than complex. More focused on the real value of community health and well-being – for our bodies, our minds, our souls.
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The Jeremiah passage shares a similar basic context to Paul’s time (although they were separated by almost six centuries).
Jeremiah, like Paul, is under arrest. He is writing while under guard at the behest of the Judean King, Zedekiah. Paul lived at the time of the Roman Empire; Jeremiah lived during the expansive years of the Babylonian Empire. Being under the thumb of a world power was never easy, in any era. For a local community, it meant that there was much beyond your control. Zedekiah was, in fact, losing the battle to save Judah from being swallowed up by the empire. What the king could control was imprisoning people who suggested that there was some navel gazing that should happen within Judah – some refocusing of people’s priorities, especially in matters of faith and service.

Jeremiah (and Kind Zedekiah) knew that the country side (the agricultural life-blood of the nation was sure to be under Babylonian control for many years. Now, Jeremiah still believed that Jerusalem might avoid being overrun militarily, but it was sure to be under siege and would very likely eventually need to surrender for pure survival reasons. In the end, the walls were breached and the city was laid in ruins, most notably the magnificent temple built during the reign of King Solomon.

Even without knowing this future, Jeremiah knew that the Judeans would not control their lives for quite a while. It could have been a time to simply give up. Many of the leaders and elite members of the society and temple hierarchy had all ready been taken into exile; the peasant population were being driven out of their lands and forced to resettle across the eastern wilderness. What hope was there? Almost none. Certainly not in the life times of those still huddled within the walls of Jerusalem.

So what does the prophet do? He buys up some family land. He does it making sure that all the details are followed to the letter: making sure all of the ’hath-s are crossed and the sh’ma-s are dotted. The documents are sealed away so they will endure the time to come, preserved for the future, in case anyone wished to challenge who owns the land once belonging to Hanamel.
I’m sure that this transaction was done for a few reasons: one very practical one was that it helped out Hanamel - getting cash for land that was about to be (or had already been) annexed must have been quite a blessing. The other reason for Jeremiah’s actions were purely symbolic. He had no chance of ever enjoying this land, either as a place to live or as an investment. He was in jail and the Babylonians were taking over everything. Jeremiah’s actions were meant to be a vote of confidence in the future. As the text says: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
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So, our scriptures to invite us to ponder the call to live in the NOW and to hope in the LATER.
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Living in the “now” invites us to really decide on what is important. It is important that all have food and shelter, at the very least. As far as whatever excess we have beyond subsistence, we are to be mindful of our part in a wider community – to not be isolated with greed or the love of acquired processions.
Living in the “Later” is to trust that God is our companion and guide into an uncertain future. to express this future hope. Jeremiah was thinking in terms of the life experiences of a generation that will follow. The First Timothy letter looks beyond this life and uses words like: ”Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life.” With that in mind, we might want to amend this message title to “Now and Forever”.
We express this hope when we say the Lord’s Prayer. We follow the common protestant tradition of adding on a doxology at the end: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen" or in the modern ecumenical version For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen
For some people of faith, it is an ‘either-or’: now or later; us or them; this world or the next.
The biblical encouragement seems to a ‘both-and’ situation: now and later; us and them (we); this world and the next. As is strongly implied in the letter of 1st Timothy, we are to strive for balance – our needs and our abilities all considered in how we live our lives.
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Something to think about.
Let us pray:
Help us embrace our call:
to celebrate your presence, O God,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope. #264VU “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wis