Trinity XVI, Sunday 5th October, by Fr Jack

Lamentations 1. 1-6
2 Timothy 1. 1-14
St Luke 17. 5-10

It is wonderful to hear the opening of St Paul’s second letter to St Timothy today as the epistle. And there in plain sight are these two wonderful women: Eunice and Lois. Mother and grandmother of St Timothy. St Paul knows them by name, he evidently knows their story. It is wonderful when the women of the Bible aren’t invisible-ised, as so often they have been.

 I wonder what Lois and Eunice were like. How did they first hear the Gospel, so that they might bring up little Timothy in the faith? What made them follow Jesus? And their son and grandson, the bishop Timothy? What do we know about his life? 

 He was a bishop in the Early Church, as I say, (Presbyteros in the Greek of the New Testament sources - Presbyter, priest, elder. Just at the time that the Bishops and their deacons were beginning to become distinct from newer local junior Presbyteroi who ran the emerging network of smaller churches as the Christian community grew beyond one church per big city. In many ways, the same structure holds us today: Bishop Sarah down the road at the mother church, and lots of vicars vicariously in her place in the many local churches across the Diocese of London). 

 So we see already, apart from anything else, that St Timothy serves as a key example in our understanding of what happened to the Christian Church in the generation after the Apostles; as we settled into the patterns of life we now call, well, Christianity as we know it.

 What else do we know about St Timothy? He travels with St Paul on his missionary journeys. And St Paul seems fond in other epistles of dispatching St Timothy here and there to support, encourage or guide. St Timothy is thought to have been a key editor of St Paul’s letters as they come to be in the New Testament too. A really important person in our Christian family story.

 And here we pause to remember that some Pauline epistles are the oldest texts in the New Testament canon in terms of when they were written. For a long time after St Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, Corinthians and Galatians, the Gospels were still shared orally, eventually being written down (we think) in the second half of the first century, 20, 30, 40 years after Jesus Resurrection and Ascension.

 What about today’s epistle from Paul to Timothy? Scholars suggest that the letters to St Timothy are amongst the last New Testament  texts to be written. So St Paul’s letters chronologically book end the New Testament, being amongst the first and last New Testament documents to be written. Corinthians (one of the earliest) is the fresh, chaotic, still dazzled by the glory of St Paul meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road. He’s asking, how are we to live? What is the basic DNA of living in the light of Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension, writing as he was in the middle of the first century, just a few years after Jesus? Whilst today’s texts to St Timothy show us how the Church is maturing, maybe fifty years on, at the turn of the first into the second century, about 100 AD. The Jesus Movement is finding its way into a second generation of Christians. 

 And perhaps that’s why it poses questions like those that emerge from today’s epistle. Amongst them: how we live with hardship. Paul is writing about this today. 

 What tools of faith do we employ in times of hardship? What resources and relationships (internally, on earth, and in heaven) do we call on? What reservoirs of hope do we drawn from? St Paul lays out his and invites us to do as he does.

 And this isn’t just a New Testament story. Deep in the Old Testament today, Lamentations records the ups and downs of history of ancient Israel. That history continues in Middle East - starkly present for us at the moment. But it’s not just the Mediterranean Middle East, the whole human family’s story is one of ups and downs, to put it mildly! Difficult times in life and faith are not strangers or imposters, they are simply part of reality.

 So, perhaps the sensible thing to do is dig good roots for when (not if) trouble comes. 

Perhaps that’s what we learn from today’s readings.

 For example, I often reflect that Resurrection hope may not be very useful or easy to grasp for someone in the first tidal waves of grief. Instead, we need to lay those spiritual and theological foundations for when grief comes, and then we can call on on strong foundations, rather than be desperately trying to retro-fit them.

 Likewise when we undergo suffering of any kind. Suffering is real and inevitable. Suffering can even be transformed by grace into great gifts, for ourselves and others. But you can’t say that to yourself or another very easily at the time of acute suffering! Instead, we have to lay the theological and spiritual foundations of life before, invest in a deep and prayerful personal relationship with God, so that He can hold us and gradually lead us on to hope when the time comes.

Returning to today’s readings: Saints Eunice and Lois laid foundations for St Timothy. 

We do that for ourselves and others. How do we lay these foundations? In a million different ways: as we speak the Gospel normally and naturally at home, work, elsewhere. As we pray for people - sometimes we tell them we are praying for them, sometimes we don’t. 

 As we invite people to join us in church. A personal invitation from a fellow lay person is a thousand times more effective than a poster, or website or me and Revd Lucy wearing sandwich boards at Moorgate Station.

 When I was first ordained I was nervous about inviting people to be Confirmed or Baptized. I didn’t want to make them feel awkward if they didn’t want to. I assumed they knew they could. But then more than once when I did happen to ask people said things like ‘I’ve waited 10 years to be asked’. And I wanted to say ‘its been in the notice sheet every week! You were asked in black and white. But that’s not the point.

 More than once I have stood at a church door next to big poster that says: ’pleeeeease come to services’. And people ask, ‘am I allowed to come to morning prayer?’ What!? I’d love you to, that’s why I put all these posters up! 

 I have learnt and re-learnt that people are waiting to be invited. And they never mind being invited, even if they decline. And even the most hardened cynic, or member of another faith doesn’t mind being told - ‘I’ll pray for you’. Or ‘I prayed for you’. 

 So, we bring our mustard seeds, as in today’s gospel: we do our little bit. 

We don’t claim to be anything other than servants of this much greater story (just as Jesus says today). Our faith may seem small, but the adventure in which we find ourselves is the greatest story ever told. 

 Jesus’ rather extravagant language today, as He is wont to do, calls us to be extravagant in return. 

 Extravagant in humility, yes, and extravagant in the joy and life we have been promised. 

Extravagant in our hope, and knowledge that God’s Holy Spirit IS at work, even in little old me and little old you. 

 And if we pray and invite and serve, and rejoice and love, we are doing simply what we have been called and fed and sent to do. Nothing remarkable, just what we has been entrusted to us, for us to share.

 We are servants who have been sent. And that is enough for us. Absolutely. 

 But, if we do it, we will find that it is not a burdensome duty or a painful labour, but an abundant and overflowing gift for us and for everyone around us. From Lois and Eunice, to Timothy and Paul, from them to us, and from us to the world.