2 Timothy 2:8-15
Proper 23 (28) - Year C
All words are imprisoning. Event as they leap to mind from their metaphoric ground to break new ground, they return to rest providing support for subsequent leaps beyond them.
How noble Paul can be as he sets the good of a select set of others above his own inconvenience. Presuming Paul to understand himself as a chosen one, no matter how thorn infested or out of time he may be, to work for other chosen ones is a limited and limiting understanding of resurrectional and pentecostal power.
We can’t seem to not be in a battle over words. From an earlier “Let it be” to the latest “Let it not be” guiding sentiment of government defunders we struggle to define all else in light of me. This sophomoric argument that everyone else is but playing a part in my dream has significant consequences when it turns out we are not dreaming but in the midst of a much larger and longer story.
Any attempt at interpreting some message of truth is full of stumbling blocks. Here it turns out that a beginning spot of rising up and descending down takes second place to a “faithful saying” that rallies like-to-like in a common defensive position rewarding loyalty.
Knowing only a few of my own limits and how easily movable are boundaries, I have great sympathy for these 8 verses plucked from a larger work as they note a grand transformational moment that keeps sliding back into a creed of exclusiveness after its burst of new life.
May we simply live together for, like it or not, we die. This carries a different sense that trying to avoid our death by positing a dreamy eternity and reinforcing a limited chosenness.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/10/2-timothy-28-15.html
"Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening."
Poetry is a great gift. It transforms words into meaning different than the dictionary, shifting us from denotation to connotation - from separating and distinguishing and wrangling about it depending on what you mean, a la Humpty Dumpty and our current politicians in heat to a picture of new relationships.
We had a congregational conversation about a difficulty in our midst - building - that has gone on for 7 years. In the listening to one another we identified a number of question areas but one stood out - what is our picture of the future? what is the spiritual gift this congregation has to offer the community for its common good? what is our purpose or what meaning will this offer to our ministries, our life?
One question expressed three ways? Now we will have to more clearly wrestle with what has been holding us in chains and how an unchained melody of G*D will transform us.
I wonder if our next mission/vision/purpose statement will be poetic enough to cast a picture worth following or a stringing together of accepted religious words that are vague enough in people's minds to pass because they sound good and we can twist them to our advantage in any given situation?
What would unchain you and wouldn't that be a moment of thanksgiving for both yourself and those you encounter?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/october2004.html
"Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David--that is my gospel...."
Remember Jesus Christ who lives between the future and the past, right here with us in the present.
Resurrection is a wonderful, future-oriented experience. It is filled with the energy of a new believer, a convert. Having experience resurrection, a repentant turn from hurtful, habitual ways, a touch of miracle unbidden, unexpected. What could be wrong with this? Well, it can lead to presumptuous, out-of-touch decision-making and the jumping to inaccurate actions that avoid connections with the experience of others.
Descension is a wonderful, past-oriented experience. It is filled with the passion of a Hatfield or McCoy. We come into the world as an empty book and fill our pages with the context into which we were born and the events of our lives. (see lyric) These are more pain than gain but it becomes so much a part of us that it is a real struggle to escape, much easier to simply go along.
So often we get caught flipping back and forth between these rather than bring them together to inform one another. We are excited about newness, we are comforted with the commonplace, we loose touch with first one and then the other.
What great thanksgiving there will be when we live in the midst of resurrection firmly in one hand and blessed/sinful firmly in the other. We will use resurrection to raise our reality and our experience to ground resurrection. Out of this connection better decisions in the moment will arise.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/october2004.html
Being exiled in a foreign country (deportation) or exiled in your own (captivity) is a death experience. Thus you may want to try translating verse 8 as: "Remember Jesus Christ, returned from exile...."
To have returned from exile is to face all the broken dreams of the way things used to be as well as to do the difficult work of rebuilding community. Returning from exile is no easier than going into exile. While we fantasize about returning from whatever exile we are currently experiencing, the reality is that fulfilling such a fantasy will be as problematic as the life we are currently dealing with.
Therefore, enduring is a good word with which to become reacquainted. Endure the exile; endure the return.
- - -
what
no wrangling over words
when all I have for meaning
in this unlooked for exile
are wordswords
clarifying our situation
encouraging endurance
fantasizing about change
presentwords
harboring a past
experiencing this present
anticipating a new creation
pricelesswords
so priceless
there is no choice
but to have dominion
wrangle
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
"Good soldier" imagery poses some problems.
No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs [military contract bribes].
The soldier's aim is to please the enlisting officer [fragging].
No athlete is crowned without competing according to the rules [steroids].
The farmer who does the work ought to have the first share of the crop [migrants].
Church people are to avoid wrangling over words ["self-avowed practicing homosexuals"]
There are none of these fine-sounding sayings from the Farmer's Almanac that can't be subverted. Simply stating them, doesn't make them real. They are utopian dreams. Staking an argument on them doesn't get very far and eventually leads us to our present bumper-sticker politics, dividing us from one another.
Finally this whole passages comes down to simply the 15th verse:
Do your best to present yourself to G*D, an unashamed advocate of telling the truth you know and honoring the truth others tell.
More than that brings us to verses 16-17a from The Message: "Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk. Words are not mere words, you know. If they are not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul." Pious talk, aphoristic talk, either/or talk is an easy way to speak, but, if the only way to talk, turns into simplistic, unrealistic, dreamistic poison talk.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/10/2-timothy-23-15.html