Sunday Worship 5 October | Lectionary Proper 22: Guard the good deposit

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, in keeping with the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve, as my ancestors did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.

This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

For the last two weeks we've heard from the First Letter to Timothy, and this week we're into the Second Letter to Timothy. We jumped straight into the first letter, but now seems a good moment to take a step back and look at a bit of the background to these letters. They are often grouped together with the letter to Titus and known collectively as the Pastoral Epistles, as their focus is on the  practical matters of Christian living and church governance, rather than the finer points of doctrine and theology, although of course there is no hard line between the two. Our lives must be informed by the convictions of our theology, and our theology must take account of the reality of our lives.

The letters all purport to be written by Paul, but many scholars now believe that they were written after his death, presumably using his name in order to trade on his reputation. The argument normally goes that these letters use language Paul doesn't use in the undisputed letters, and 1 Timothy contains the claim that Paul does not permit women to teach, which doesn't square with his clear affirmation of women in church leadership elsewhere. It is however possible that Paul at least commissioned the letters, but someone was writing on his behalf and adding their own flair, or that the letters were edited before they made it into the canon of scripture. Perhaps we might call them Paul-ish if not Paul-ine.

The idea that someone else may have at least been involved in writing 2 Timothy is strengthened by the fact that it appears to have been written during Paul's second imprisonment in Rome, shortly before his execution, which he was clearly anticipating. It makes sense then that the main concern of the letter is that Christians must keep the true teaching of Christ and faithfully pass it on to the next generation. Paul appears to be encouraging Timothy to succeed him in his ministry and to guard the gospel.

But who is this Timothy? Well there are plenty of references to him in the New Testament, so we actually know quite a bit about him. We first meet him in Acts, when he is living in Derbe or Lystra in modern day Turkey, the son of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father, and a disciple in the Christian community there. We have already heard in our reading that his mother and grandmother possessed a sincere faith, and we learn elsewhere that he had known the scriptures since childhood, but he had not been circumcised as would be expected if he was being raised as a Jew, so presumably his mother and grandmother were among the first Jewish believers in Christ, and he was in the first generation to grow up with the gospel. At some point he becomes a companion and coworker of Paul, travelling with him and being sent out by him, and also being named as a coauthor on a number of Paul's letters. 

We can pick up a few other details too. In 1 Timothy, he is exhorted to not let anyone look down upon him because of his youth. I thought I had long aged out of this verse being an encouragement, but then someone was astounded by my youth when I visited another church as a guest preacher only a few weeks ago, so maybe he was as old as his late thirties, although I have always imagined him being more squarely in the young adult category, possibly in his twenties. Paul advises him to take a little wine for his stomach, so he perhaps experienced some illness. And Paul asks the church in Corinth to make sure he might be among them without fear, which has led some to suggest that he was of a nervous disposition. He may not be sounding like the most dynamic of characters, but that should give hope to all of us introverts with chronic health issues. God has work for us too.

That's quite a lot of background so let's come back to look at the passage now. I want to begin by thinking about Lois and Eunice, Timothy's grandmother and mother, whose sincere faith now lives in him. I think that's such a wonderful expression. They haven't just handed down a set of beliefs and practices as if they were a recipe for fruit cake, they have grown and nurtured something in him until it has become its own life force. It is a beautiful picture of generational faith, and I hope it is one we can recognise. Not all of us will have had faith shared with us by the family who raised us, but we will all have learned from the generations of believers that came before us, and we will all have the opportunity to share with the generations that follow us. It seems particularly fitting that we remember that in the week we mark the founding of this church one hundred and twenty four years ago. I have said before that one of the most precious things about church for me is the intergenerational relationships it fosters, and we should celebrate and strengthen them, so this week I invite you to choose someone older and younger than you in faith and pray for them.

Paul talks much in this passage of suffering for the gospel. It's not surprising given his circumstances as one who was being persecuted for his faith, and also his history as one who had previously persecuted others for their faith. Suffering must have been much on his mind, and I can understand him needing to make sense of it or find meaning in it. I have not been in Paul's place, although that is only really an accident of geography, as there are many places around the world where Christians are persecuted for their faith, so I don't want to criticise him. I do however want to suggest from my own experience of struggle that suffering is not redemptive, but it can be redeemed. Perhaps that doesn't sound so very different, but what I mean by that is that we don't have to suffer in order to be redeemed, but there can be redemption on the other side of our suffering. God does not want or choose for us to know pain, because of our faith or otherwise, but God will be with us in any pain that comes.

I want to finish by looking at the final verses from our reading: "What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." We know from other New Testament letters that there were many theological disagreements in the early church, and Paul was greatly concerned that the communities he wrote to maintain the true faith. Some things have changed little in the past two thousand years, and the church continues to be divided by arguments about doctrine. We had to reckon with some of the dividing lines in our own tradition last year, and the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury has reignited other debates just this week. I believe very much in the importance of sound teaching, of guarding the good deposit that is the gospel, but I do not believe that means we should read or teach scripture uncritically. Paul calls us to guard the gospel with the help of the Holy Spirit, and this is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus promised would lead us into all truth, which has always said to me that there is yet more truth for us to discover. So let our faith be sincere but let it also be curious, and may we hand it on not as a fixed thing but as a living reality. Amen.