There are some conversations in which you know exactly what someone is going to say even before you begin, especially if the conversation is with a family member. Imagine pulling out a notepad and writing at the top of the page: My Talk With Mom About End Of Life Care. I’m sure most of you could write down in advance how the conversation is going to go. So help me fill in the blanks.
ME: Mom, we need to talk about your health.
MOM: But I feel [fine!]
ME: But what if you get sick? This house is too big for you.
MOM: I don’t want to go into a [nursing home!]
ME: But why Mom?
MOM: Because nursing homes are full of [old people!]
No one is leaping up and down to go to a nursing home, move to an assisted living place, or down-size and leave their homes. But more than all that, no one wants to have a sign placed around their necks saying “Old Person.” Raise the topic about end of life care and people imagine showing up at the nursing home door, carrying their one suitcase of possessions and a toothbrush, and they immediately have a sign placed around their neck: Unable to live alone. At risk for falling. Old Person. Sometimes the real conflict isn’t about where someone needs to live to get proper health care; sometimes the issue is simply about the signs being placed around our necks.
No one likes being stereotyped. No one likes being labeled “Old Person” or “Widower” or “Battling Cancer” or “Unemployed” or “Recovering Alcoholic.” No one likes being depersonalized into simply a category of life. That is part of the reason we don’t like to share some personal details, because we’re afraid that is all others will see when they look at us. We tell someone that we struggle with depression – that our finances are a mess – that we’re estranged from our children – and then it feels like we have been permanently labeled. This is also part of the difficulty associated with “coming out” to others about our sexual orientation, for fear that naming we are gay or lesbian or transgendered will cause others to see nothing else except that one part of who we are.
I mention this dynamic because one of the biggest challenges ministers face is that we teach how stereotypes and prejudices are bad, and yet we exhort congregations every week to live into their identity as followers of Christ. We encourage people to proudly wear a sign around their neck saying “I’m a Christian,” which can be quite difficult in today’s world. Now, I don’t want to suggest that being a Christian in American society is harder than being labeled by others as a Jew or Muslim, an immigrant or homeless. But it is true that, whether you are young or middle-aged or old, figuratively wearing a sign about your neck proclaiming your Christian faith at work or at school or out in the world can make things difficult.
This fact was true back in the days of the early church. It is part of the reason why the Letter to Timothy was written, which is a letter in which an older teacher of the faith provides guidance and encouragement to a young person of faith. It is also part of the reason why we remember Children’s Sabbath each year – to remind ourselves how vulnerable children are, how at risk they are in this wealthy nation to poverty, gun violence, and abuse, sp we will recommit ourselves to care for all God’s children – for as Jesus said “of such is the Kingdom of God.”
Maybe the first step in this process is for children and adults alike to imagine what it is like to wear around the neck a sign saying “Christian.” We feel the weight of this sign upon our shoulders, especially when we hear the opening verses from today’s scripture passage: As for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Timothy is told to continue in what he has learned, and remember from whom he learned it. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius gave some parting words of wisdom to his son Laertes, saying “Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; neither a borrower or lender be; and this above all, to thine ownself be true.” All of us have learned from others. Not just from a single teacher, but from many. When the writer of 2 Timothy says “know from whom you learned it,” the word “whom” is plural, not singular. Elsewhere in that letter, Timothy is commended for the faith he gained from his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois. In slipping on the sign saying “Christian,” we have all had multiple teachers – some from whom we’ve learned positively, others from whom we’ve learned negatively, from their flawed ideas and examples.
There is no denying the importance of instruction from an early age about the values of faith. A warning about false teaching is built into the lyrics from an old Rodgers & Hammerstein song from the musical South Pacific:
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year; it’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a diff’rent shade; you’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate; you’ve got to be carefully taught!
We’ve seen too much of this world’s type of negative teaching. What exactly does positive teaching of the faith look like? Well, as I mentioned, it is a group process. It involves multiple mentors, who guide, correct, and encourage us at different stages of our life. No one ever learns all about Christian faith from one source. That is freeing, if you are a parent or a teacher; but it is also challenges each of us to remember we are teaching at least one lesson to every child we meet. What is the lesson you are passing on this day? Likewise, no one ever learns about Christian faith all in one moment. That is why we have to be diligent and persistent, picking ourselves up from defeats, pushing over and over again for the common good, for the end goal of true justice, true equality, true peace.
Related to this idea of shared instruction is an important reminder about Christianity: You can’t really know a religion from the outside. There are lots of books and advice available to you on how to be spiritual, but that is not the same as being religious or faithful. The Platte River flows across Nebraska, but it is not a very good river; locals characterize it as being a mile wide and only an inch deep. Mark Twain once said it would only be a respectable river if it could be laid on its side. A lot of faith material available outside church walls is like the Platte River – a mile wide, but only an inch deep.
Yet consider for a moment that there has been no time in which true faith, or any kind of continuing life lived in relation to God, has existed apart from common worship. Shared worship – in which God’s word is shared and studied, in which different experiences are poured together into the crucible of congregational life; that has always been the place of Judeo-Christian faith. It was true in the temples and synagogues. It was true in the gatherings of the disciples and early house churches and it is still true today. It is in coming together as imperfect-yet-praying congregations that people are prevented from making a private religion out of their private ideas about God. It is the exact antidote to what Timothy was warned about, when his teacher said “Beware! The time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and wander away to myths.”
Christian Wiman was diagnosed with a rare, incurable form of cancer and wrote a book about grappling with his faith once he’d been forced to put on the sign of cancer patient. He struggled with his doubts, but ends up believing that the reality of God and Christ does exist beyond the imperfect ways we talk about faith. And the lasting comfort of believing in Christ is found in the promise that God is truly with us, not somewhere beyond us. It’s as simple as that.
God in Christ is with us. What does that look like? Think about the famous phrase from this passage in 2 Timothy when it says “All scripture is inspired and useful for teaching, correction, training in righteousness.” In our Wednesday bible study group, I asked people to think of synonyms for “inspired.” If you pull out a thesaurus, you’ll find words like ‘animate,’ ‘enliven,’ ‘excite’ and ‘stimulate.’ But the deep meaning of the word “inspiration” comes from the image of breathing, respiration. Scripture is in-spired, God-breathed. Scripture, common worship, shared prayer are times when we share faith like we share the air we breathe. And we believe that God is the source of that air, that life-giving breath, that faith. You don’t stumble onto this awareness. You and I and every child around us are taught this from childhood – taught this by example, by study, by sacraments and hymns, by scripture and humble prayer.
The sign you carry may vary, depending on whose eyes from the world are looking at you and defining you – or what you see in the mirror and decide to write and hang around your own neck. But in this place, with its God-breathed, inspired words, all those signs are wiped clean by Christ’s love, grace and mercy. That is the gospel message we are to teach our children and by grace allow them to teach us. You are a child of God – no other label need ever be attached to you in this life or the life to come.
Thanks be to God!
Copyright © 2013 to the author of this sermon. All rights reserved.