I Timothy 6:6-19

“…That you may take hold of the life that is life.”

“…That you may take hold of the life that is life.”

I chose this text because I thought it was easier. Luke’s Gospel has been challenging these last few weeks and I thought this text would give us a different flavor message.

By mid week though, I was wishing perhaps I chosen the psalm … anything but Timothy! When you look at the lectionary readings for this week, there is something to challenge and offend just about everyone this week. All the readings present their challenges, so I suppose Timothy was as good a choice as any.

I was pretty sure I knew where I was headed with this sermon. It’s Neighbors in Need Sunday and the text warns that the love of money is the root of many evils. It was to be a sermon on charity and caring for others, maintaining a sense of balance in relation to one’s possessions. I would develop the theme and remind us all that hearses do not have luggage racks ...

I worked away at my sermon ... and it was pretty bad.

One thing about being a preacher is true … the preacher works on the text and the text works on the preacher.

Something about the lines that begin and end the periscope made the passage more than a sermon about dealing with material things and a laundry list of things one should and shouldn’t do as a follower of Jesus.

There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.

And the last line … that you may take hold of the life that is life …

The writer, probably not Paul but a disciple of Paul, is addressing Timothy, a young convert to Christianity and a leader in a newly forming Christian community and essentially giving advice. The early chapters of the letter have to do with church governance, how the community should be structured, the roles of various leaders. This closing chapter is to Timothy the person and addresses issues of Christian formation, spiritual growth and development.

The writer is addressing the inner qualities of being a person of faith. This is a text about the stuff of life. “Stuff” is, I believe, one of the most theologically important words of our time. It describes not only what we possess, but that which possesses us. This text is about both.

While it would be easy to poke at our First World materialism and encourage greater generosity, by the end of the week it was clear the text deserved better treatment.

This text reminds us that underneath what we do is who we are. And the deep transforming complete love of God in Christ reaches to that place, the heart of who we are.

Bringing what we do and who we are into more consistent relationship is the heart of discipleship. And isn’t that the hardest part? We know what’s right; we just don’t always do it.

I know I shouldn’t eat potato chips for breakfast … but I do sometimes anyway.

I know I shouldn’t drive 80 miles an hour on the highway, but I do most of the time.

I know I should give more of my time and myself to things that matter to me, but I don’t.

I know I should budget my personal money better, but I don’t. My favorite sweatshirt is from the wireless catalogue … when I have a little extra money I buy books. If there is any left over, I buy food and clothes.

I could add to the list; you all have your list, too. We know; we just don’t do. In another letter written by Paul he said, “The good that I would do, I do not do and the evil I would not do, I do.” Paul knew what we all know sitting here.

Now we could just leave it at that; all go home feeling guilty and vow to do better. But the texts points us beyond that. Whatever failures and foibles show up in what we do or fail to do point beyond to something deeper, more profound …

Godliness combined with contentment … taking hold of life that is really life.

The text draws us beyond the daily grind to the richness and fullness of life that is found in Christ, and we have known it in glimpses.

Real life is when we know in our bones that giving is what makes us truly alive. Those moments when we get out of our own way and go beyond ourselves and something deep inside comes alive.

Real life is remembering that loving other is the way …. and we have known moments, when love, maybe not perfect, but as near to perfect as we can come, has cast out fear. Relationship is born, or healed or strengthened as a result.

Real life is giving up the illusion that we are captains of our own fate, that we are in control and opening ourselves to the life giving presence of the Holy Spirit. We have seen that truth … fleeting moments when God is known in the face of one who stands before us or beside us and nudges us beyond what is familiar … and there is new understanding, new purpose, new peace.

Sometimes on Saturday mornings, on our way to do the day’s errands we will stop at Snoopy’s Diner in North Kingstown. It’s a 1950’s vintage diner car, complete with table top juke boxes that give you two plays for a quarter.

Its only nod to modernity is one of those scrolling marquees that advertises the omelet special and the kinds of muffins they’re serving that day. A couple of weeks ago when we stopped in, the marquee said, “make your life matter” followed by a couple Scripture references. Snoopy’s is the only place I know of where you can get a side of Bible Study with your hash and eggs. Make your life matter.

I guess it’s no secret that it’s easy to spend time bowing at the wrong altars, letting what is truly valuable slip through our fingers … time, relationships, justice, peace …

Whoever is writing to Timothy knows that the deeper rhythms of faithfulness are planted in the spirit.

And that life’s truest joys are known when what we do and who we are come together.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer says it best in The Invitation:

(Loder, Ted: The Haunt of Grace: Responses to the Mystery of God’s Presence, 2003, Innis Free Press, Philadelphia, PA)

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive …

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to now if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic …

I want to know if you can life with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes!’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.”

Life that is really life … godliness combined with contentment, as if either were truly possible without the other. This text is an invitation to live at the very edge of being and doing, to risk it all for the sake of a vision and a promise because that vision and that promise are finally what really matter.

Real life is about being in the center of the fire where everyone else is, with all of our humanness and theirs, trusting that God is present and making something more out of all of us than we could be on our own.

Let us pray.

God of infinite possibilities, draw us from life to life, from complacency to challenge, from boredom to growth, from solitude to community. Bring us to the place where we can stand with others in the great adventure of faithfulness. Amen.