Rev. Dr. Eun Strawser—Year C Proper 24

Anthony: Let’s move on to our next text. It’s 2 Timothy 3:14–4:5. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 24 in Ordinary Time, October 19.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have known sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 4 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: 2 proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. 5 As for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

Eun, I’d be grateful for your exegesis of 2 Timothy 3:14–17. Feel free to preach, preacher.

[00:27:52] Eun: It’s a hard one, right? I do love that. I think a lot of times when people read this passage, they miss the point. I think that they can misrepresent what Paul is trying to tell Timothy to do. And I think most of the time it’s really for Timothy to just be a good preaching pastor, or a good teaching pastor, right? But no, the biggest thing that the Pastor Paul is telling why he’s talking about what scripture is like and what God’s Word is able to do, right?

Eun: It really is because he’s saying equip God’s people for every good work. Get them to a point where they are proficient in what it means to be a Jesus follower. That doesn’t necessarily just mean preach to them or teach them a scripture. It means get them ready, get them prepared.

Are all of your congregants able to be proficient? Are they competent in not just knowing a lot about God and who Jesus is and those kinds of things, but are they actually competent to live like Jesus? Are they competent and proficient to do God’s good work with their neighbors through their family, in their workplaces, at the coffee shop that they go to regularly, in the grocery store, in neighborhood parties, or neighborhood meetings, right?

I think that’s what the apostle Paul is saying, can you do the good work? Can you be faithful and endure and do this good work of not doing God’s work on behalf of your church? It’s can you get your church equipped so that they are doing God’s work together for the sake of the flourishing of the neighborhood around them?

I think that’s a strong emphasis to remember that the Apostle Paul is not telling Timothy to be a good preacher. He’s telling him to be a good equipper so that his congregation can participate in the good work that God’s already doing.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s an important word. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4 that our call is to equip the saints for the works of Christ. And I think the pastors moving forward, they really need to be taken a posture of a coach, one who empowers others so that we see the whole body mature into the head who is Christ, right?

And what this keeps us from doing is what we talked about earlier from being pastor-centric, right? If we’re equipping the believers, we’re going to do this together.

Eun: You must have already read my book, Anthony.

Anthony: I was going to say, if you need, if you’re a pastor and you need help in this area, I know somebody who runs a collaborative called `Iwa Collaborative. They may be able to help you out with this.

As we look on Paul writes to persist in proclaiming the gospel in unfavorable times. I get the sense that right now in a post-Christian neopagan world, these are unfavorable times. So, what does it look like, Eun, to persist?

Eun: Isn’t it so encouraging that the same problem that was written about all that time ago, it’s the same problem that we are facing today.

I think it’s great encouragement that Timothy and Paul are going through the same persistence in proclaiming the gospel in unfavorable times, and so are we. And I love that the apostle Paul gives Timothy a lot of clarity around what that ought to look like, right? He talks a lot about our motivation to lead.

Man, that’s so convicting, right? He’s saying, please double check why you lead, why you think God has given you this group of people to lead and love. If it’s for selfish gain and selfish desire, then you probably ought not to lead. But if it’s so that, again you are trying to proclaim God’s truth because you believe that God’s truth is the only transforming power that will actually, in real life, in real time, transform a community of people to also want to participate in what God’s doing in the world around them, man, what a call for all of us. But if it has any inkling of a selfish desire or selfish ambition, and this is why we are fulfilling our call, then we probably should step aside.

So, I think that the first thing around proclaiming the gospel in unfavorable times is really to review our own motivations as leaders. Do we do this because we think that there’s a personal gain for us in it, we get popularity somehow? We get to have power and control. We just feel good having this mantle. Or do we do it for the sake of other people?

I think the second thing about persistence is, I love that it just relies on God’s truth. That if you really stick to proclaiming God’s truth, you don’t have to do this weird, convincing, performative perfection dance. Let God’s Word do its thing. I think that is what the Apostle Paul is telling Timothy — live out God’s truth. Proclaim God’s truth in every way that you are equipping other people or living your own life or making decisions. Like, if you stick close to God’s Word and God’s truth, … that is the way to persevere through unfavorable times.

God’s Word is not that popular most of the time. When we are speaking truth against power, that’s not popular most of the time. If we’re naming the fact that there are people who are ostracized and marginalized in society, that’s not popular to talk about. If we talk about that, really, essentially, the gospel is really very comforting, it ought to be comforting to those who are the most uncomfortable in society and make uncomfortable those who experience most comfort in society. That is an upside-down way of thinking, right? It should have an impact. And so, I think that gospel is made for unfavorable times.

Anthony: It is, and I couldn’t help but think of that old statement that the gospel should comfort the afflicted. But it should afflict the comfortable. And that’s what it does, and I’m reading this a great new little book called Preaching in a New Key. And it’s about preaching to post-Christian societies like we’re living in.

And the author of the book said this. Are we — going back to what you asked — what is our motivation? Are we motivated because we’re called to preach or are we just offloading trauma? And I was like, whoa. It’s in your face, but it’s true.

We’ve got to check ourselves as ministers of the gospel. Is it love? Because that’s the motivation, right? It is love. The love of Christ may manifest in our lives, and that’s why we proclaim this good news in the face of opposition, for sure.