September 22, 2013
Pentecost 18
Jeremiah 8:18 -9:1
1st Timothy 2:1-7
(prayer)
Yesterday morning, I had breakfast at the Coloniale Golf and Country Club. It was a gathering of pastors, church people, politicians, community leaders, etc. for the Beaumont Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast.
These type of events happen in many communities.
For the past dozen years, I have helped organized the City of Leduc’s Mayor’s prayer breakfast. And at various times in the past, I have also attended the Alberta premier’s prayer breakfast and the Leduc County prayer breakfast. I once heard a politician promote his city’s breakfast by saying "I attend a lot of these and we do it the best of anyone". I can forgive the passive aggressive condemnation of other communities as this politician lauded his town, because I know, it is part of political-speak to judge all other communities by calling your own “the best”.
For me, I am okay if other’s do things well too!
[That's why you'll never hear me say that Canada is the greatest country in the world. Don't get me wrong, I love living here. It's a great country. But I don't need to compare it to anywhere else to be happy about my home.]
I have been to many good prayer breakfasts hosted by many communities. After all... they always include a breakfast - how good is that?!
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Most of these kind of early morning events are done in cooperation with the local Christian Community and so it is not uncommon for 1st Timothy, chapter 2 to be quoted somewhere (directly or indirectly): 1First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, 2for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.
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The book I currently assimilating is Marcus Borg’s “Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written”.
The premise of the book is that we get a better understanding of the development of early Christian thought and practice if we are able to see the way the movement once called Jesus’ “Way” evolved over its first 100 years or so as we read the documents that the church shared, read and re-read - those words that were so treasured that they were preserved long enough (to mid 4th century) for the church to become an institution and hold large canonical councils to decide (officially) what would constitute Christian Scripture and what would be discarded as heresy.
So, the context of a particular New Testament writing is essential in their understanding; by context I mean... who wrote it? to whom? where? when? and why?
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Of the 27 documents (books) in the New Testament, Marcus Borg places First Timothy as number 24: the fourth last to be written (coming from the late first century or early second century).
Although the body of the letter says that the author is Paul, this letter was actually penned many decades after Paul died as a Roman prisoner. In our time, that would be considered unethical (at best) or (at worst) identity theft. But in New Testament times, it was not uncommon for certain leader’s successors to continue to write in that leader’s name after their death. It was a way of claiming an authority from an earlier time. Kind of like, “if Paul were still here, he would say ‘this’ about ‘that’.
The three best pieces of evidence of 'non-Paul' authorship are that:
1. the Greek writing style is (apparently) very different from the earlier letters;
2. the place of female leadership is markedly diminished from the time of Paul;
3. and leadership within the church has become more structured and formalized. First Timothy describes the personal characteristics of people who can qualify as overseers (bishops) and servants (deacons).
Of course, the successor ofPaul who wrote the (so called) Pastoral Epistles (1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus) had lived through times of theological expansion and so the new thoughts and opinions espoused in Paul’s name were not from Paul’s time but from the authors.
Context matters if we want to understand.
In fact, there is a large scholarly consensus that the Apostle Paul actually only wrote seven of the thirteen letters that claim him as the author (1st Thessalonians; Galations; 1st Corinthians; Philemon; Philippians; 2nd Corinthians; and Romans).
The six other later non-Paul letters of Paul relay for us an evolution of early Christian thought that did not yet exist in Paul’s life time. They must be appreciated for the context 'in' and 'for which' they were written.
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So, what might be behind this encouragement to pray for kings and all who are in high positions? At first glance it seems a long way removed from that zealous attitude that was ripe in Galilee and Judea in the time of Jesus that those who held political power (directly Roman or through complicity to the empire) were a barrier to faithful living. Remember Jesus was executed because he was accused of promoting a kingdom and authority other than Caesar and Rome!
So, how did we go from Jesus being crucified because he was the King of the Jews to Paul’s legacy being brought out to encourage people to pray for the Roman Caesar (who was the king for virtually all of the Christian communities of at the turn of the first century)?
The short answer: "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
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As I mentioned earlier, Institutionalism is a key theme is f First Timothy. So too is... Accommodation. As Paul was traveling, preaching, teaching and writing as an Apostle of Christ Jesus, a revolutionary zeal was alive and well in the Hebrew homeland. Prior to the advent of the Roman Empire, Judea and Galilee were basically self governed. The advance of Greek influence was more cultural than political. Even after Rome became THE world power, for a few decades in the century before Jesus lifetime, Judea (under the Maccabee family) had the empire on it's heals. But, it didn't last.
Even though this was not really a major topic of Paul's authentic letters, it was part of the background context as he actively sought contributions for the Christians in Jerusalem. By the time First Timothy is written Judea had clearly lost the battle with Rome. Fifteen years after Paul died, a brief Hebrew uprising was violently quashed which lead to the permanent destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.
For the Christians at the turn of the first century, an existence was carved out within the context of the Empire: accommodation.
A related example to can be seen in the fact that 'gone' is Paul's proclamation in Galations that "in Christ, there is no male or female, no slave or free". In First Timothy, women are told the best way to serve the church is to let the men lead and focus on child bearing. And slaves were told to just submit to their masters.
A message from First Timothy is that we are to focus influences (first and foremost) at the level of the heart.
All they wanted from the Empire was the opportunity to live 'a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity'. The church sought to survive within the Empire, in spite of the empire.
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When Jeremiah's tome was written, some of the people of Judea had already been sent into exile by the Empire of that day: Babylon. Jeremiah is pained by the pain of others. He knows that these first exiles knew sufferings that those still huddled in a fortified Jerusalem could only imagine. He writes with such anguish - I wish my head were a spring or fountain, so I would have adequate water for the tears I need.
The prophet's message: don't let past/present suffering stop us. Yahweh is still their King, even though many the leaders in Judah were among the exiles.
Jeremiah was speaking about grabbing onto the peace that was still possible in life - no matter what the context.
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Our context is different still. Where we live, we have the freedom to make waves w/o fear of violence and persecution. We are better to be worried about bring ignored. But that experience in not universal. I'm not sure that it still the best and most faithful way to live is to simply acquiesce to 'the empire'.
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In our day, I think a quiet and peaceable life is hard to achieve. Not only is our world still drenched in the blood of violence and war, we have come to depend on huge economies that rely on a continuation of conflict to bring prosperity to people who (ironically) seldom have to face the violence (which they enable) themselves.
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At a more local level, we are bombarded with opportunities and attitudes that discourage real quiet and peace in our lives: "rest" is interpreted as (at best) an opportunity lost or (at worst) as laziness.
But peace is what we need.
A gospel author wrote about Jesus wishing peace in the lives of his disciples: "my peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." (John 14:27) After the resurrection, the same gospel had the Risen Christ greet the disciples by saying "peace be with you!" (John 20:19, 21) Each Sunday (here in church - as we did today), we greet each other in that same manner.
Can we accept the challenge to make that action more than words?
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A message from First Timothy is that peace is enabled by being people of spirit, people of prayer. As we connect with our God, we pray for the means to live peaceably with each other - friend and stranger alike. First Timothy urges "that supplications, prayers, intercessions should be made for everyone!"
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I wonder how many of us realized that yesterday (September 21st) was the International Day of Peace - the date coincides with the time of year that the United Nations General Assembly begins its annual sessions. I know, I missed it until I saw the extremely small crowed gathered at Edmonton's city hall.
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If you plug “peaceful images” into a search engine, you’ll find lots that look like this one [on the screen]. Often there is no hint of a human presence. If there is, it is an old barn, or an empty dirt road. I can almost guarantee that you will not find a busy, city streetscape among the search results.
That seems to imply that we can’t have peace unless we get beyond our interaction with each other.
I don’t think that is what a peaceable life means. It is not just ‘unplugging’ for a while. It is finding the peace that does exist within our busyness. Finding peace between people, not apart from people.
If all it took to know peace was to take a quiet walk alone, we’d all do it. As valuable as that is (and I encourage it) the experience is temporary. To truly know peace, we need to inject it into the chaos.
Because of that a focus on a peaceable life is easy to avoid.
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And yet it is the life to which we are called.
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(prayer)
Let us pray:
Just and loving God, open our imaginations to catch your vision of all people living together in wholeness and harmony. And may we each be open to an inner peace to deepen our connection to you. Amen.
#77MV "Be Still and Know"
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