“Passing It On” 2 Timothy 1: 3-7; February 10, 2019; Women series; Richard B. Culp
I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 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. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
Introduction: We continue to reflect on various women in the biblical texts.
Today we read about Lois and Eunice, two women mentioned specifically by name, which as you know, is not always the case.
We are given their names, but not much else about them (in Acts, we are told that Timothy’s mother was a devout Jew). Perhaps that is an invitation to imagine the role grandmother Lois and mother Eunice play in the life of Timothy, who will go on to work with Paul and Silas spreading Christianity throughout their region of the world.
Some scholars suggest this letter references ancestors and then lists Eunice and Lois to give credence to the Christian faith in the Greco-roman world that greatly valued religions and gods who had been passed down from the ancestors.
Move 1: To me, the references to Eunice and Lois begs the questions: Can my mother, or grandmother, make me do it? that is, make me be a faithful Christian?
a. As I read these comments about the faith that is lived on in Timothy, I was reminded of my Southern Baptist friends growing up who used to say that there are only first-generation Christians.
1. I always thought that was an odd comment, particularly since so many of us are brought to church for the first time by a parent or grandparent.
2. On the other hand, I recognize their point - we cannot inherit our confession of faith in Jesus Christ.
3. Each of us has to make that profession on our own.
c. The biblical text, however, is full of connectedness through the generations.
1. the faith life of Timothy traces back to those who professed Christ as their Lord and Savior and shared that faith with others.
2. Before Christ, God’s people would trace their faith back to the great leaders of Israel.
3. No one comes to faith in a vacuum. There always seems to be someone inviting, or someone looking.
4. But, at the moment we profess our faith, it is each of our moment that no one else can do for us.
d. Confirmation
1. We begin the year by pointing toward the question - “Do you trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
2. It is the question for each of them - they may go through the process together, but each confirmand will have to answer the question for himself or herself alone.
3. Parents can make them come to confirmation (maybe) but parents cannot make them profess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
4. Many of the confirmands were baptized as infants, so when they profess their faith they are confirming the profession of faith their parent made at their baptism.
5. but, only the confirmand can confirm the faith and claim it as his or her own?
Can my mother/grandmother make me a Christian? at this point in the sermon, I would answer a tentative “no,” with the strong reminder that each of us must lay claim to our faith in Jesus Christ.
Move 2: But, We do recognize the Influence of others - or we might say, “yes, my mother/grandmother can make me do it.”
a. Again the confirmation process tells us something important about the role others play in our lives of faith.
1. Each confirmand has a mentor assigned because we understand the importance of others modeling a life of discipleship for us and nurturing us as we grow in the faith.
2. An image you might remember from the worship service when our confirmands profess their faith is their mentor standing behind them.
3. Not forcing the profession by twisting the confirmand’s arm with only the choir seeing, but the mentor standing with, supporting and encouraging the confirmands as they proclaim their faith.
b. Perhaps you have heard of Tony Campolo, an evangelical Christian preacher and writer. He says that whenever anybody asks him, “How were you called into ministry?” he tells them his story of growing up with a mother who would repeatedly say to him: “You were brought into this world to love other people in the name of Jesus Christ, to serve other people, especially the poor and the oppressed. Do you understand that, Tony?”
After telling about his mother, he then goes on to say that we was never “called” into ministry - his mother told him he was going into ministry.
When people invariably push back that a parent cannot decide things for their children, Campolo asks, “Why not? Why shouldn’t my mother tell me what to do?” Everybody else is telling their children what to do with their lives: the media, their peer group, the counselor at school. What is wrong with a parent standing up and saying, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ My calling to serve Jesus Christ came from my mother and that’s a good place for it to come from. I advise all mothers and fathers to do that for their children.”) (1) Tony Campolo, “Becoming What God Intended You to Be,” sermon and interview broadcast, Chicago Sunday Evening Club 30 Good Minutes, January 25, 2004. www.csec.org.
b. maybe that’s what Lois and Eunice did for Timothy.
1. We do not know, but I can imagine the way they might have nurtured Timothy.
2. Lois, Timothy’s grandmother (only time the word grandmother is used in the Bible), perhaps telling him stories about Jesus, or King David, or Abraham. Maybe chuckling as she told him how Esther saved God’s people by outsmarting Haman.
4. Timothy, hearing these stories that make him yearn to claim faith in Jesus Christ and
3. Perhaps Timothy’s mother did not tell stories as much as she lived out her faith, witnessing for him what it meant to follow Jesus’ command to love neighbor and care for the widows and orphans.
4. Timothy, witnessing her life of faith and learning how to live the faith in his own life.
c. Not bound by our history.
1. Frank and Ernest cartoon: the two are sitting on a park bench. One says, “I asked my mother what she’d say if I told her I’d been born again.” she said, “good, we did it all wrong the first time.”
2. One of my grandmothers was a Southern Baptist, living our her faith in Virginia in the complicated and challenging times of segregation and integration, race relations, and other social issues.
3. when we spent time in the summer we would go to her local Baptist church. Well, in trut, we only wen there half the Sunday because her brother-in-law was a Presbyterian elder, so we went to church with him every other Sunday.
4. As I remember time spent in her church, there were differences in how they did things and thought theologically than I would do and think now.
5. We do not learn the faith by rote memory, whereby we just repeat exactly what we have seen and heard.
6. Her witness of faithfulness lives on, but takes on some different understanding and approaches in the faith I claim.
6. we are called to be faithful in our own context that may demand changes to how those who have come before us have lived out their faith.
Can my mother/grandmother make me do it? At this point in the sermon, the answer is a tentative, “yes,” with the reminder that our faith is ever evolving and must speak to the time and issues in which we live.
Move 3: We are not our own
a. Timothy, child of Lois, child of Eunice, is not his own. Like Israel, he is united in his parents, scatter in the bribe and gathered under the covenant (Lamir Sanneh, Christian Century, October 4, 1989, 975)
1. “the biblical meaning of our faith cannot be reduced to individualistic voluntarism (John Rollefson, Christian Century, September 21, 2004, 21).
2. While we may profess our faith on our own, we are connected by that profession to those who came before us and those who will follow us.
b. the Apostle Paul often uses the image of imitating as a way of growing in the faith.
1. he urges new Christians to imitate Christ or even imitate Paul himself at times.
2. I like the image of Timothy learning to be faithful by imitating Eunice his mother and Lois his grandmother.
But it also sets the stage for those who will imitate timothy.
Or move it forward to today, it sets the stage for those who will imitate you? A huge responsibility.
Conclusion: Robert Fulghum, What on Earth Have I done, Fulghum tells the story about being at a Ritz hotel with concierges in suits to help the guests. He imagines that the concierges can get him tickets to opera, a jet to Dubai, but what he needs is a leather wristband for an old watch and one brown shoelace. They are befuddled by his request. Finally, they go to the young woman who is at the front desk, who then calls someone, and then has two addresses for the places he can get the items. Later in the stay, he asks the young woman whom she called for the info. She tells him, “when all other information resources of the concierge desk of the Ritz Hotel fail, we call my mom” (261-264)
Eunice and Lois - answering the questions of faith for Timothy?
Who have you imitated in your life of faith?
Who is imitating you?
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