Growing Pains, Instagram, and the Promise of Enduring Faithfulness

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Savior of the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.

To begin today’s sermon, I have a question for you all: when was the moment that you realized you were no longer young? It’s hard, for many of us, to realize the truthfulness of the reality that we, as human beings, simply age: we mature, we no longer identify with the culture of youth and youth identities, and oftentimes we feel it in our bodies: our joints crack, or we see laughter lines. We grow in wisdom, as well, and watch our children and our grandchildren grow up. The moment for me, when I realized I was no longer young, was when I was confronted with the reality that while leading our confirmation classes, I don’t get the newest language or memes that are popular on Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat. I was confronted with the reality of my age when I realized that my spouse is teaching first-year college students who did not live through September 11th – rather, they will hear stories and histories of it, but it is not a part of their collective conscious. It’s been a weird feeling – watching my brothers grow up and become adults, and to see my parents now looking at the last decade of their working years and looking forward to the future. Aging, for all of us, is a reminder of life’s porousness and temporality – that there were generations before us, we are here now, and others will come after us – and while we are here, we are all trying to make the best of our experiences and our days.

Our second reading for today, where we hear the author’s words from 1st Timothy, is also an example of what it means to grow up. The early church, in its beginning, immediately following the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, was a decentralized collective group of people healing, baptizing, and sharing meals and good news with one another – they did not gather in large houses of worship as we do today, but rather met in homes and in small gatherings. This was because the early church believed that Jesus would be coming back more immediately – that the new heaven and the new earth were to be brought into existence in their lifetimes. The need for institutions and structures was not as central to their identity as people following the way of Jesus of Nazareth – rather, they wanted to focus on living out Jesus’ mandates in literal ways, continuing the social transformation in his footsteps.

However, as we see, this didn’t happen – the Church is still in existence, and God’s new heaven and new earth are still visions and promises that we are bringing into reality. We are still here over 2,000 years later. In 1st Timothy, one of the Pastoral Epistles, we see the church effectively “growing up” – the earlier followers of Jesus realize they will be around for a while, and so they need structures and systems and leadership in place to guide the Church, particularly in theological teaching and faith formation, so that the Church does not go astray. The letter of 1st Timothy is awash with warnings of false teachers, qualifications for bishops and deacons, instructions for being a good servant of Jesus, and the command to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. These become moral instructions for a lifetime, and teachings that will be passed down from generation to generation. The Church in 1st Timothy is going through growing pains and changes in identity: no longer are they only a mobilized group caring for the sick and feeding the hungry and baptizing in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, but they now need instruction that will provide for the generations that will follow them, because Jesus is calling them to continue to work in the legacy of salvation given to us by God. Our text tells us to make supplications, intercessions, and prayers for everyone, for all people in leadership positions, that life might be lived in peace and dignity. Our text tells us that God desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truthfulness – that through Christ’s human death God has made us new, and that truth changes how we are to live our lives.

And so, today, 2,000 years later, the Christian Church continues in its calling to live out the love of Jesus – we see this when we gather for worship, we see this when we commune, when we baptize, when we care for the sick, the lonely, the destitute among us in and in our communities. This work is not done because it is expected of us or it makes us feel good when we do good things, but rather the work of the Church is done because we are responding to God who has called us. When we live our lives in peace, honesty, and dignity, when we make prayer and thanksgiving central to our daily experience, we are doing nothing less than re-ordering the world as we know it. We hear of an awful lot of violence and harm done in these days, whether around the world or at home – we hear stories of death, stories of conflict, stories of flooding, stories of fire, we hear words spoken to us that cut to the quick – to only scratch the surface of the realities of pain and injustice. Our world has an incredible capacity for violence that makes me think that as the Church we still have a long way to go in casting an imprint on our human condition to bend it toward mercy, peace, goodwill, and hope.

So, my friends, what do we do? What do we do, realizing that the Church is continually growing towards the likeness of Jesus Christ, toward the reality of God’s love among us? Today, we baptize. We are thrilled to welcome Benjamin Bergey as the newest member of God’s family, receiving the promises of God that will sustain him in his lifetime. Today, we pray. Today, in our words and actions, let us resist the desire for conflict, harm, and discord. Let us do the difficult work so that we really, truly understand one another and our perspectives, holding to the truth that is found in our 1st Timothy text for today – that with Jesus Christ as our mediator, we realize that each of us are beloved of God. And when we realize God’s presence in us that changes the tone of our words and the attitudes of our presence with one another. It is these things – these seemingly small things in our lives – that will speak a word of active resistance to the sites where hurt is being sowed.

Today, may we as the Church and in our own lives experience growth. May we know that God’s mission has been active and thriving around the world for over 2,000 years, and the Church has continued to respond faithfully to the work given to us. Henrytown and Union Prairie are indeed a part of it. Might you ask yourself this question this week, and journal or consider a few answers: what does God want to begin anew in you? Where would you like to grow in your faith, or understanding? What is one thing you could do when you hear of evil, or harm, or anything that tries to renounce God and God’s coming kingdom? As it was important for the recipients of 1st Timothy, so it is also vitally important to us in 2019, for God is not finished crafting and creating with us yet. Let us continue to lean into personal and spiritual growth, realizing that it is then and only then that we can receive a word that will sustain us: that God has come among us in human flesh, and in this body of Jesus Christ we have received salvation eternally. As God’s beloved, that truth is for us and in us. Thanks be to God for this promise, and most of all, thanks be to God. Amen.