KEEPING FAITH
8 8 10
2 TIMOTHY 4: 1-2,6-8,16-18
ANTHONY ACHESON, M.DIV
This past Tuesday I was having lunch with our local clergy group and we welcomed for the first time a new colleague in this area, The Rev Laura Cadmus who is the new UCC pastor in Cabot. During that conversation there was some talk about where Laura had come from and how she had gotten here, conversation which included talk about her interview process with the folks from Cabot. That conversation reminded me of the story of the clergyperson who was reported to have written a letter to a prospective search committee. The letter read: “Dear Friends, I understand your church is looking for a pastor and I want to apply. I am generally considered to be a good preacher. I have pretty good leadership skills. I have also found time to do some writing on the side. I am now in my mid-fifties. And even though my health has had one or two ups and downs, I still do have quite a bit of energy, and have managed to get enough work done to please my congregations, or at least, most of the time anyway. As for references– Well, it’s true that recently I haven’t served in any one place more than three years, and the churches where I have preached have generally been small. There HAVE been a couple of places where there’s been some controversy, I will acknowledge. But despite all this, I feel confident I can bring vitality to your church. And I respectfully ask that you consider my application.”
When the search committee received this letter they had mixed feelings about whether or not they should interview someone with this kind of background. He obviously had some ability but was now, as he himself admitted, well into his fifties and had a history of stirring things up and taking some clearly controversial positions. “So, what was that man’s name, again?” one member of the committee was heard to ask? “I’m not completely sure,” said the chairman of the committee, looking at the application. “He only used one name when he signed it. At the bottom of the letter it simply says, ‘Paul’.”
A few moments ago we heard some words traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul. When you think about the ministry, it is interesting to wonder how well some of the early church’s leaders would make it through the ministerial interview process people go through today. Theirs was a rough and dangerous world, which tended to produce people who themselves were rough and somewhat hard-edged. It was a dangerous terrain that the Apostle Paul faced as he traveled for 20 years and thousands of miles all over the Roman world.
In this New Testament reading from Timothy for today, we hear about this same traveling Paul, and we hear specifically about how his end appeared to be drawing near. He was under house arrest in Rome. He was under no illusion about his fate. So it was that he took pen in hand and wrote a parting letter to his friend and close associate, Timothy of Ephesus. He writes in words that have become timeless and immortal: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He is telling us that, in his own eyes at least, he looks back on a life that has been basically well lived. And this morning I want to invite us to reflect on what these words may have to tell us about at least some aspects of a well lived life.
The first thing Paul says about his own well-lived life is that he has fought the good fight. That phrase has become a common part of our language. As we hear Paul say that he has fought the good fight we might also think about the things that he did not say. He didn’t say, for example, I’ve achieved the American dream–or in those days it might have been the Roman dream. He didn’t say, I’ve always lived the good life, and let the good times roll. He didn’t say, I’ve achieved great wealth, respect and reputation in my community. He didn’t say, I did it my way. By contrast, Paul points to the fact that his life has been constant hard work. Who of us in this room doesn’t understand that life involves a whole lot of hard work? A child has to work to learn. The teenager has to work to deal with peer pressure. College aged students have to be very proactive in finding their identity. Young adults have to work harder than ever these days to even find a job, let alone to create and manage a career, keep their marriages together, and raise children. No one has to struggle more than older adults who fight with frequent health problems; and in these times unexpected financial issues. Even newborns have to work to come into this world and take birth. From the beginning of life to the end, we are all involved in necessary labors. Paul was right on target when he saw life through the prism of fighting a good fight. And of all the battles that we must inescapably face and deal with, the most difficult one is always the inner battle. It is the work that needs to be done within us. It is the inner work for self-mastery and against self-seeking.
The first secret, then, of the life well lived is to fight that good fight and to do the inner work that life requires of us. And then secondly, Paul says that even if people around us let us down, we can’t let that bring us down. When Paul was brought before the Roman Emperor to defend the charges brought against him, as we hear in book of Second Timothy, the clear implication is that when it came to Paul’s closest associates most of them deserted him. Barnabas, Paul’s constant traveling companion for more than 10 years is nowhere mentioned in this letter. Mark, another of Paul’s close friends and by tradition the writer of the second Gospel, had fled in fear. Luke, the great physician, writer of the third Gospel, and traveling companion had apparently deserted his friend. Titus and Silas were all gone. We are left to assume they all hid in the shadows during Paul’s darkest hour. As Paul writes here in verse 16 of Chapter 4, “At my trial, no one came to my support, everyone deserted me.” What Paul went through before the Emperor was not so different, was it, from the desertions Jesus went through in Gethsemane. The author Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” Those are words that Paul could have well understood.
So, if the first secret of a life well lived is fighting the good fight, and the second secret is that being deserted does not mean being defeated; then finally there is a third secret of a life well-lived, which lies in the fact that we need to focus over and over again on relying on and maintaining and rebuilding our faith. Paul says, “I have kept the faith.” That is really a remarkable declaration when you look back on all the occasions Paul could easily have let his faith slip away and given it all up. Consider all the things Paul tells us he endured during his ministry: Hunger, thirst, nakedness, cold, sleeplessness, homelessness and persecution; being cast down, afflicted, beaten, imprisoned and slandered; poverty, floggings, five times given 39 lashes, being beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, drifted in the open sea for 24 hours, in danger from rivers, bandits, and his own country-men. Paul says he has been in danger in the city, in the country, at sea, and around all people both Jew and Gentile. But despite all this, he still viewed his life as a success. Why? Surely one of the keys, one of the secrets, is that he had kept faith alive within him.
In the Broadway play “The Miracle Worker,” we see the story of Ann Sullivan, the woman who taught Helen Keller how to communicate. It was during the 1890’s, in the hills of northern Alabama, that she struggled with Helen and her seemingly insurmountable handicaps-being deaf, blind, and mute. Helen Keller may have been the miracle that history seems to present to us, but Ann Sullivan was clearly every bit as much a worker of miracles in that story as was Helen Keller. What were the qualities that marked the lives of those two women? Was it that they fought a good fight? Clearly they did that. It is hard for us to even imagine not only the primitive care and the prejudices of that day, but also the fact that Helen’s own parents saw her as a hopeless case. Was it the fact that they finished the race? Clearly they both did that as well. Ann Sullivan and Helen Keller went on when most everyone else would have given in and given up. Both the teacher and the student in their remarkable drama saw Helen Keller go on to receive a PhD from Temple University in Philadelphia and become a world renowned author and speaker and an inspiration to millions. The thing that most distinguished the lives of both those women, however, is that they kept the faith. Throughout it all both of these women kept believing, and refused to stop believing, that Helen could surmount her monstrously large handicaps, that she could surmount her blindness and her deafness and profound isolation, not to mention desperation; and go on to become a woman who could not only communicate with other human beings, but far beyond that become a major force in her community, and indeed even become a major force in history. The story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan is a story of two women who not only fought a good fight and ran a good race; it as also a story of two human beings who refused to lose their faith.
And so it can be for each of us. In 2 Timothy 4 Paul writes, “The time of my departure is at hand.” “But that is alright,” he seems to be saying, ” because I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” May we also echo these words in the midst of all the seasons of our lives, when things are high and good, when things are low and bad, whether we are coming to the end of our life’s journey or when we feel as if we are at wit’s end; may we also do the essentially spiritual work of keeping our faith strong through our own spiritual work and commitment, as well as through the gift of the unearned grace and power of the living God.
And this we ask in the name of the living Christ. Amen.
