God and Jesus 101
“To Timothy, my beloved child: May grace, mercy and peace from God the Creator and Jesus, who is the Christ, and our Savior, be with you. I am grateful to God, I thank the God of my ancestors— whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did....” — 2 Timothy 1:2-3a.
It’s likely most of you know I am a baseball fan. Occasionally, someone will ask what team I root for. My answer is: “You don’t understand. I’m a baseball fan. I’ve been known to pull over to the side of the road and stop and watch a little league game.”
Sometimes someone will press me and suggest that, since I grew up in New York City, I must root for the Yankees or the Mets or, since I spent so much time in Maine, the Red Sox must be the team for which I root. At that point I answer, “You don’t understand. My team, the team I rooted for, no longer exists. My team was the Brooklyn Dodgers. They left Brooklyn when I was nine. It broke my heart.” (Slight pause.)
My childhood devotion to the Brooklyn Dodgers, that particular fandom, comes through inheritance. Yes, my Dad was a Dodgers fan. And yes, he took me to see games in Ebbets Field, the home of ‘dem bums.’
But my Grandmother was the real fan. How big a fan was she? She would sit in front of the television rooting for the Dodgers and, good Catholic woman that she was, say the rosary praying for the team to win.
For her, the Yankees were scum. The New York Baseball Giants, the National League rivals of the Dodgers who played in the Bronx at the Polo Grounds— they were not scum. They were merely unworthy. (Slight pause.)
This much is certain: our lineage and early childhood forms us in many ways. Hence, our likes, our dislikes the things we root for or against, are often just inherited. And those inherited likes and dislikes can be appropriate but they can be inappropriate.
One thing that can make inherited likes and dislikes appropriate is when we own those likes and dislikes for ourselves, when we work on them, when we think about them, when we think them through. I became a baseball fan, as opposed to a team fan. But I lost my team. As a consequence, I stopped simply rooting for a team and started to think about and study the game.
You see, people readily become fans. It’s easy. Being a fan does not demand much of anything except rooting— my team good, other team not good. A person doesn’t really have to know much to be a fan.
Being a fan of a game, as opposed to being a fan of a team, is a more demanding discipline. It insists a person not simply roots but really studies, thinks about and knows a game. (Slight pause.)
And these words are found in Second Timothy: “To Timothy, my beloved child: May grace, mercy and peace from God the Creator and Jesus, who is the Christ, and our Savior, be with you. I am grateful to God, I thank the God of my ancestors— whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did....” (Slight pause.)
As was mentioned earlier, while we are fairly sure Paul did not write these words, the theology we find here is rock solid. Why is that?
Well, perhaps it has to do with both what is inherited and what is owned. The writer indicates Timothy inherited the faith. But Timothy has clearly done things to own it. How so?
We have, in these words, an appeal to the God of the ancestors, the God of Israel. This is the God worshiped by Lois and Eunice, mother and grandmother of Timothy. Certainly this is an indication of both a longer lineage and an immediate heritage for Timothy, a history that goes back not just those several generations but back to the God of Abraham and Sarah— Yahweh, God— God who is One.
But then we get the reference to Jesus, who is the Christ. Hence, the classic question of the New Testament era is posed: ‘who is this One called Jesus?’
The answer is actually in the text waiting for us and comes with good news and bad news. The good news is that the answer is, in fact, right there, in the text, sticking out like a sore thumb. The bad news is, unless we make the answer our own, as did Timothy, we have no chance of understanding what is being said— no chance.
You see, if we simply root for Jesus, we do not really know who Jesus is and it’s unlikely we will ever know what is being said. That’s because simply rooting for Jesus requires minimal involvement.
We need to go beyond rooting, beyond merely saying “Yeah, Jesus!” And that is what Timothy has done— gone beyond rooting. And the writer illustrates this.
Later in the passage we hear (quote): “This grace was given to us in Christ, Jesus, before the ages began, before the beginning of time. It has now been revealed through the appearance of our Savior, Christ, Jesus, who has abolished, destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.”
Here, we not only get two of the three persons of the Trinity, God and Jesus, named, we get them named as co-existing from the beginning and as fulfilling the promise God makes to humanity about life everlasting. Hence, what we have in this passage is not merely a matter of rooting for Jesus, as if Jesus popped up yesterday.
And the passage does not leave us with the impression that Yahweh, God, no longer matters because Jesus is now on the scene. This is a basic explanation and a basic understanding of who Jesus is and who God is and how the writer, and by extension Timothy, has answered any questions about who Jesus is and who God is.
In many ways, the question being answered is not the classic ‘who is Jesus?’ question. The question being answered is a little different and is this: ‘if the God of the ancestors, Yahweh, is One God, how does Jesus fit in— if Yahweh, God, is One?’
Both the question and the answer are much more textured and subtle than simply rooting for Jesus. Further, coming to an understanding of this requires that we make what is being said our own. Now, making it our own, grappling with this, is really very basic stuff. But it does go beyond simply rooting.
These basics are what I call God and Jesus 101. And I want to suggest we cannot get to a place where we understanding the meanings of and in the New Testament unless we study and think about and grapple with who God is and who Jesus is and, thereby, understand it for ourselves, make it our own. (Slight pause.)
Dan Smith, author of Pathway to Renewal says this about how a church can renew itself: “The church seeking renewal must look beyond simply improving its programs and its building.… What’s renewed in a congregation... what’s renewed in congregational renewal... is the people’s understanding of their relationship with God, their community and their sense of calling.” (Slight pause.)
I am grateful for the legacy of my Father and my Grandmother. I am grateful for the legacy of those who wrote the Hebrew Scriptures. I am grateful for the legacy of those who wrote the Christian Scriptures.
I am grateful for the legacy of those who founded and built this church, here in Norwich. I am grateful for the legacy of the cloud of witnesses who, over the centuries, have left a legacy of study, work and devotion which can be found in Christian history.
But unless I, personally, grapple with that legacy and make it my own, I am simply rooting. “Yeah, Jesus.” “Yeah, ancestors.” “Yeah, Norwich.” (Slight pause.) It does not work for the long run.
So, the challenge for us is obvious: are we willing to do the work to make the legacy which we have been left a true inheritance by making it our own? Are we willing to make that legacy our own legacy and, thereby, ourselves, leave an inheritance, leave a legacy, leave a richness of faith, to another generation? Amen.
10/03/2010
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is an précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “When I was in the Army, I learned a useful word: ‘nomenclature.’ It means description. Every piece of Army equipment has a description label, a nomenclature label— it actually uses the word: nomenclature— Army talk. I think a helpful question is this: ‘What is the Christian nomenclature of God?’ ‘How do we describe God?’ Islam, Judaism and Christianity are Monotheistic religions. But Christianity makes a subtle, texture claim for God. We claim there is one God, Three persons— Trinitarian Monotheism— or Monotheistic Trinitarianism. But that is the nomenclature, the description we Christians claim. For each of us to own, for ourselves, such a textured, subtle description of God requires study, reflection, work.”
No comments:
Post a Comment