"The word of God is not chained": Sermon for 9 October 2016
Sermon for Sunday 9 October 2016
The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Long, long ago, before email and Facebook messenger and Google chats, my dad sent a handwritten letter to my summer music camp.
At 16 years old, I was living in the mountains of Colorado all summer long, studying piano and oboe performance with other high school musicians from around the country. It was a long way up the mountain, and a long way from home, and it was no summer vacation—we practiced our instruments for four hours a day, along with orchestra rehearsals, recitals, music theory classes, and of course regular camp duties. I had been one of the last to arrive at camp, which meant I received one of the least desirable work assignments – cooking breakfast. All summer long, I was up at 5:30 am making pancakes for hundreds of other campers.
This was basically boot camp for young musicians considering a career in music. Think you want to be a performer? Survive this summer. After only a few weeks, I was already starting to doubt my decision. The work hours were crazy. My teachers had high expectations. The competition with other students was often downright mean. Already I wasn’t sure I had what it took to be a musician—for the rest of the summer, or for the rest of my life.
And then the mail truck arrived on the mountain, carrying my dad’s letter. It was written on a greeting card with a silly Far Side cartoon on the front. Today I can’t remember what the cartoon was about, but I definitely remember the letter. My dad wrote how proud he was of me. He reminded me of what a good musician I was. The letter encouraged me to seize this opportunity, to really commit to practicing and learning from my teachers. He told me he loved me, and to have fun. Most of all, my dad reminded me I was there to make music.
It was just a few short sentences on a silly greeting card, but it was just what I needed. I needed a reminder of who I was, and why I was there in the first place. I was there, I was working hard, and I was sometimes struggling, for the love of music—and I stayed because of the love of my dad.
I thought about that letter from my dad this week as I studied the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy. The portion we heard this morning, from 2 Timothy chapter 2, begins like this:
“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel.”
In the same way that my dad reminded me of who I was, what I loved (and who loved me!) Paul writes Timothy from his prison cell, saying:
Remember who you are! Remember who loves you! Remember Jesus who was resurrected in Jerusalem, and born in Bethlehem! Remember the Good News.
Now the situation at that time was very difficult for the new Christian communities: Followers of Jesus were being persecuted. False teachers within churches were leading people away from the true Gospel. Preachers, like Paul, were imprisoned. In fact, this was shortly before Paul himself was martyred. So it stands to reason that a disciple like Timothy might need some encouragement to stay on the path, to fight the good fight of faith, to be bold in sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.
For this reason, Paul writes a letter to Timothy. The letter begins with these encouraging words we heard in last week’s assigned reading:
“To Timothy, my beloved child: I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you…for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline…my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
And then, as we heard this morning, Paul’s letter continues:
“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David…”
But he doesn’t stop there! Paul says:
“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.”
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, hear those words again: The word of God is not chained! Amen!
I hear these seven short words of a letter from the Apostle Paul as if they had been written on a greeting card, sent across the country, and carried up a mountain in a mail truck just for us this Sunday morning.
The word of God is not chained!
These seven words, written from a prison cell and sent to an unsure disciple, are a love letter to all who wonder if love really wins.
These seven words come to us as a much-needed letter of encouragement this Sunday morning, because there are some weeks when the brokenness of the world can really bring a disciple down.
Almost every day this week brought shocking news out of Syria…or out of the United States.
This week a long and hard-fought peace deal fell apart in Colombia…by the vote of the people…just days before their president won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to negotiate it.
This week, Israel once again announced the building of a new settlement, deep in the West Bank, in direct violation of previous agreements with the international community…and my country is still sending 38 billion dollars.
All around us, it seems the Gospel principles of love, peace, justice, and dignity for all creation are being imprisoned by walls of fear.
All around us, we see the preachers, advocates, and workers for this same Gospel being persecuted, reviled, and mocked…while the voices of division, racism, sexism, and even fascism seem tolerated and accepted.
So who could blame us for feeling a bit like Timothy?
Who could blame a disciple for feeling, at times, that maybe we just aren’t up to the task of preaching peace, of advocating for justice, of promoting human rights, or of speaking truth to power?
Who could blame us for hesitating before following the Apostle Paul to prison—or following Jesus to the cross—for the sake of a Gospel the world seems determined to fight against?
But hear again the words of Paul to our brother Timothy:
The word of God is not chained!
It’s true, the powers and principalities of the world may oppress and imprison the preachers of love and liberation…
The powers and principalities of the world may conspire to bind the Gospel of love, to keep it from being preached and lived…
But such attempts will always fail, because the word of God is not chained!
The word of God is not chained because Christ is both crucified and risen, liberated from the tomb!
The word of God is not chained because we have been given an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who teaches us and reminds us of all Jesus has said!
The word of God is not chained because it is alive within all who have been washed in the waters of baptism!
Therefore, the word of God is a bird flying freely over the separation wall.
The word of God is freely moving from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Ramallah, without checkpoints, without passports, without I.D.
The word of God is amplifying the voices of all those who speak for justice.
The word of God is lifting up the poor from the dust and freeing the oppressed.
The word of God is speaking to the lonely, to the grieving, to the suffering, saying “I am with you always, to the end of the age”.
Dear disciples, because Christ is both crucified and risen, because we are baptized, because we are filled with the Holy Spirit--the word of God is on the loose in the world in the world today. The word of God is alive and free in our hearts, in our hands, and in our feet – therefore no one can contain it! No one can destroy it! No one can chain it! Amen!
This morning, at the beginning of new day and the beginning of a new week, we give thanks for this wild, liberated, unchained word which comes to us when we need it the most.
We give thanks for the love letter we know as Holy Scripture, which has traveled across centuries and cultures and languages to encourage us today.
We give thanks for the word of God which reminds us of who we are—beloved children of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.
We give thanks for the word of God which sustains us when we suffer persecution for the sake of Jesus and his Gospel.
Like the one leper who turned back to give thanks to Jesus for being healed, this morning we pour out our thanks at the feet of the one whose death, resurrection, and ascension have brought us here.
I pray that after we have given thanks, after we have sung our songs, after we have shared the bread and the wine in this place, that each one of us will answer the call to go out as living letters of encouragement for others. For it is for their sake Christ was crucified. It was for their sake Paul was imprisoned. And it is for their sake that we continue to preach, to teach, to advocate—and sometimes to suffer—for the one Gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen!
May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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