"THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church
on Sunday, October 1, 2000
Text: 2 Timothy 2:1-13
There is a true story that comes from one of America's largest newspapers of a gentleman who had his name appear in the Obituary even though he was still alive. Very reminiscent of Mark Twain who said, "The news of my death has been severely exaggerated!" So too this man decided he would write to the newspaper and ask them if they would make a retraction. However, they replied that there would be no such retraction as the newspaper does not retract anything except that which might have caused harm or damage in a person's life. But they did say that they would get back to him in a couple of days with a solution. They did. The editor wrote to the man and said, "We are prepared to do the following: tomorrow morning we will include your name under the list of New Births so you can start your life all over again." My friends, there are many people in this life who would love the opportunity to be able to start their lives all over again.
I'm reminded of the words of the great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who said, "Life must be lived forward but it can only be understood backwards." For many of us the fact that we live our lives now in the knowledge of what has gone before, makes us all the wiser. But unfortunately there are many people who because of one circumstance or another would love to be able to start their life all over again. I think of a man I went to visit who was an inmate in a penitentiary in New Brunswick. I visited a number of inmates but this one man in particular really impressed me with his depth of character. I asked him what it was that caused him to be in this prison and he explained. There was one line that stood out to me as he spoke: (I've heard it in other places but hearing it from the lips of this particular inmate brought it to me more clearly,) he said, "If I knew then what I know now I wouldn't be in here!" ... in other words, the chance to be able to look at like through the eyes of experience and wisdom.
This happens to many people. Many people confront problems and say, "If I knew then what I know now my life would be very different." I've been reading the magnificent auto-biography of the manager of my favourite soccer home-team in England. His name is Sir Alec Ferguson of Manchester United and he is a wonderful man. His auto-biography makes great reading for those of us who follow soccer. In it he tells the story of one particular player called Paul McGrath who was an outstanding member of the club. In fact I was one of McGrath's greatest fans. Unbeknownst to me the manager decided to trade him to an opposing team. I was so furious that he had done this that I actually wrote him a letter saying ”˜what on earth are you thinking? Our very best defenceman and you're trading him to one of our great rivals!' I received no reply of course, but I did read in the auto-biography that there was a reason. Paul McGrath, this great Irish soccer player, had a problem with alcohol which had so gripped his life that he wasn't good on the field or off the field. He'd gotten in with a crowd of people and they kept reinforcing his drinking problem and Alec Ferguson decided to make the sacrificial act; rather than keep the player in Manchester where he was surrounded by temptation and problems, it would be better if he gave him a new start, even if it meant trading this great player to a rival team. It is amazing that McGrath went on to have a superb career in the new club. But Alec Ferguson, you see, was a man who understood that there are some people in life who need a new opportunity, who need another chance to be able, in a sense, to start their life over again.
I think of people I have met who have had an adulterous relationship and who have found that after a few minutes of pleasure it has taken them years to rebuild a relationship of trust that has now been broken and they now regret it. They say, "If I knew then what I know now.......I'm not sure I would have done that." I think of people who make business deals which may go sour and all of a sudden they lose the opportunities that they thought they were going to have and they would say many times over, "If I knew then what I know now.....I would not be in this situation." I think of politicians who make decisions about the future of their land and sometimes are trapped into doing things out of expedience or just simply the need to be re-elected and find that their policies are not in the best interests of the nation and they say, "If I knew then what I know now......I probably would not have done it." There are a lot of people who ”˜if I knew then what I know now......' would have very,very different lives. But we are not afforded that opportunity in this life; we have to live it forward even if we understand it, very often, backwards.
This brings me to the message of our Gospel today. The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Gospel Paul was talking about when Paul was writing to young Timothy about new beginnings. It is a Gospel of new opportunities; it is a Gospel of a new life and a new birth and the chance, even in this life, through the grace and forgiveness of God, to wipe the slate clean and to begin again. To have the opportunity to embark upon a new life, a new life not just lived on your own wisdom, not just predicated on your own knowledge and experience, but is based on the living power and grace of God in your life. There has been some debate amongst scholars as to whether or not it really was the Apostle Paul who wrote the book of 2 Timothy. Some have suggested that because of a developed eccesiology because of very technical and advanced language that suggest that the church was quite old, that Paul could not have written these words. Others suggest that the grammar is different from what you find in Corinthians and Romans and isn't akin to the Apostle Paul. One thing I do know about the Book of 2nd Timothy is that there is still within it great Pauline themes. Themes which Paul over and over again stressed in the letters that he wrote and whether or not it was the hand of a scribe who wrote this or whether it was one of his disciples who later on wrote it down, the fact of the matter is that the word that comes to this young man Timothy and to this struggling, young church is really out of the heart of Paul. It speaks about the power of the Gospel and the Gospel literally means evangellion (Greek) -- GOOD NEWS. For the apostle Paul the great Good News of the Gospel is that it is both life transforming, life changing, and gives people the opportunity in their lives to begin as if they were having a new life.
I want to look at this text of Paul to Timothy with two vibrant phrases that come out of this passage that speak to you and me and many others who in their lives would like the opportunity to ”˜know then what they know now'. The first of these words is remember. Paul writes to young Timothy and says, "I want you to remember Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead and was a descendent of David." Two things then were central to what Paul wanted Timothy to have, they are part of the early church's kerygma, part of what is known as the early church's very foundational creed, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and that Jesus Christ was a descendent of David. That the resurrection is the central, pivotal thing in the life of Jesus and the fact that he was a descendent of David, that he was a Jew, connected to the Hebrew people, was the other one. Paul didn't want either of these two things to be lost so he writes to Timothy and says that he wants him to remember this. He wants Timothy to remember, precisely because in the early church there were those who wanted to introduce a sort of legalism that oppressed people and kept them down. There were those who wanted the law to so rule people's lives that there was no chance, if you weren't obedient, to be able to rise above the situation in which you found yourself. No new chance, no chance to begin again.
There was another Greek idea which said that all we have to do is sort of work our way slowly up to heaven, become wiser and wiser and life becomes a gentle flow upwards to perfection. The apostle Paul said, "No, no. The resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us that even in the moments of sin and injustice, even in moments of danger, weakness, even in moments when we have fallen short there is the continued grace of the risen Christ who from the very ashes rose, who from the very depths of sin gave new life, who from the very shadow of the darkness of life brought light and hope and peace." It is that resurrection therefore, that became the point of reasoning for all Christians. It is the point of reasoning that causes us to look back into the past and look forward to the future all from the central moment of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We look back to the past realizing that the past cannot have a hold on our lives because of the newness of the life in Christ and the future that we anticipate is a future of hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nowhere was that more clearly seen than in the art and paintings of my favourite painter Rembrandt. In his early days, Rembrandt's paintings were sort of dark and gloomy and were lacking in passion. It seemed as if he was just painting photographs for somebody. But he continued to paint with backgrounds of dark blue and black and very heavy. Then a central moment occurred in his life: he lost his wife. When she died at a young age he was distraught and couldn't paint. But after awhile he returned to painting at a point in his life when his faith in Christ became strong. This faith was so strong that even in the midst of his mourning and grief, Rembrandt felt the very power, the lightness and the hope and peace of God. So much so that he painted the magnificent piece called "Nightwatch" which you can see in Amsterdam. You look at the "Nightwatch" and see a painting of light, a painting of hope, a painting of great new beginnings. From that moment on he began to paint the themes of the bible and depicted The Appearance Of Jesus To His Disciples On The Emmaus Road eighteen different ways! Such was the impact of the resurrection on him, so was the hope that filled his heart and soul that although he missed his wife desperately Rembrandt had found something new that had changed his life and had given him a whole new vision and hope. Rembrandt had been changed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I remember some years ago my father came home and with words we didn't usually hear from my father, after taking off his clerical collar and put it down on the table, said to my mother and me, "This has been a hell of a day!" (If you knew my father you would know that a phrase like that came out of his mouth once every fifty years.) "It's been a hell of a day!" And he began to tell the story of what had happened. On that particular day he had gone into the famous Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town (a hospital back then that separated blacks and whites in different parts of the building) and my father had accidentally gone into the black area and he himself being white was looked upon with great disdain by the authorities. Nevertheless he went there to perform pastoral visits and as anyone who knew my father would know, did so vigourously and lovingly. He came to one woman who cried out to him, "Father!" My father didn't know to whom she was referring, but she cried again, "Father!" and pointed to him. He turned to her and she said, "Father, I am dying. My life is misery, my family lives in poverty, my body is weak, I am full of sin, I was wondering if you could give me the last rites." My father didn't have the heart to tell her that he was a Protestant minister and therefore couldn't do anything for her and so said, "Well, I can't do that but is there anything else I could do for you?" She said, "Would you hear my final confession?" My father, seeing the longing in her eyes and not wanting to let her down because he knew she was in dire straits, did so and listened to her. She recounted her life to him and afterwards she said to him, "Now, do I have forgiveness?" My father, not schooled in knowing what to say at such moments, simply did what any reasonable Christian would do, said, "Because of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection your sins are forgiven." A smile came over her face and a joy. My father walked out and drove home and realized he'd left his bible beside her bed so he phoned the hospital asking if he could retrieve the bible and they informed him that the lady he'd just visited had died. My father realized for, if not the first time in his life, certainly the most powerful, that the forgiveness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes one's whole life even if it was for one fleeting moment. That is the power of the Gospel. That is the power of the word remember. When you and I come today to the table of the Lord and we say that we do this in remembrance of him, we bring everything that we are and we ask for Christ, over and over again, to make it new.
But Paul did not stop there. He also said to young Timothy, "I want you to look to the future." He used three metaphors to describe what that future would look like; three metaphors that Christians and the church should live up to. I don't think that we should be full of a pedantic literalism and avoid using these phrases just because they remind us of things that we don't like; these are great words in many ways. The first is ”˜I want you to be now in this new life, like a soldier'. I know there are those like Constantine at Milvian Bridge, like those who were full of the Crusades and others who have used the phrase of the soldier and twisted and manipulated it to turn it into a justification for militarism --- but that's not here in what Paul is saying at all. Paul is saying that he wants you to be like a soldier of Christ, ”˜I want you to have from this moment on the obedience that does not just follow the commands of the world, but follows the commands of the risen one who calls you'. A soldier of Christ is someone who struggles against tyranny and injustice; a soldier of Christ is one who does so by bearing the scars of the one who calls him.
Some years ago I was driving along the A1 Motorway in England with my parents and a dumptruck in front of us dumped all his gravel onto the road and as we turned around a bend doing 70 miles an hour, all of a sudden our car hit the gravel and we spun several time and flew into the air and landed smack onto the median in the middle of the roadway. My mother, the great driver that she was, realized the importance of backing up slightly from the oncoming traffic. We got out of our car but as soon as we did so another car hit the same gravel and did exactly the same thing, spinning towards us with tremendous ferocity and landed just a few meters from us. Out of the car got three young men all of whom were soldiers who had been serving in Northern Ireland. One of them with a classic phrase and twist said, "Wouldn't this be bloody marvelous to have spent two years facing the bullets in Ulster to drive home your first day on your break and be killed on the A1 Motorway?" These three young men who met with us and spoke with us and whom we got to know decided after awhile to correspond with us. One of the young men, whose name was Ryan was particularly impressive. He was so moved by the fact that in that accident his and our lives had been spared that he started to re-examine his life and as he did so he realized he needed a new set of priorities. After a while we received a letter from Ryan and he informed us that he and his wife Sonja had made a very solemn decision: with the support of their minister they had decided that it was time for them to do something different in their lives. They went back to Ireland but this time not as a soldier in the British Army but as people who opened a home for children who were orphaned and had been maimed by the violence in Belfast. He and his wife took these children in and raised the funds themselves and made it a lifelong commitment to help children who had been victims of the war. You see, here was a soldier who was now marching to a different set or rules and orders. Someone had called him to be obedient to a higher and greater and nobler cause, the cause of the compassion of God. That's what it means to live a new life.
The second phrase that he uses is that of a farmer. A farmer is someone who is diligent and works hard. He says, "You should be like the farmer who is the first one to get the new crops and have the rewards of your own labour." There is a wonderful phrase by Oscar Wilde which says ”˜Hard work is the curse of the drinking classes.' There are many people who look at work in such terms; but not in the bible. The apostle Paul knew that young Timothy would have to work hard and endure hardship, would have to be able to be solid and firm in the grace. The new life in Christ is not easy! The new life in Christ is not just a ticket to happiness and glory and fun-living; it requires a diligence and hard work just like a farmer. But this new life has rewards for those who put their lives and souls into the work of the kingdom and will actually in the end, find great joy.
There is one last one which I think is most fitting today as the Olympics come to a close: Paul says, "I want you to be like an athlete. I want you to be an athlete because an athlete is someone who plays by the rules of the game." I was looking through some of the things about my life that my mother had kept and was shocked to find that she had kept a certificate that was from my days in primary school and it was for the Bosmere, County Primary Pat Ball Prize where I had come first and won a gold medal. Pat Ball, for those of you who don't know, is simply a race in which you take a ball, bend over and run as fast as you can, while patting the ball forward, to the end of your lane and the one who gets to the end first with the ball is the winner. A very simple game! The only problem was that I tended to run a little more slowly than I could pat so I patted the ball and all of a sudden it just disappeared and wandered into the lane of another player and I just kept running but I had no ball so I couldn't win. So what did I do? I went over into the lane of the boy next to me and took his ball, brought it back into my lane and continued to the end. Got to the end, jumped up like Rocky, "I've won the gold medal Pat Ball Bosmere County Primary School!" Every time over the last thirty-odd years I've looked back at that I've been sick. All I needed was for my mother to keep that certificate to remind me what a crook I had been. Kind of a humbling thing!
I think of the Olympics and of those who have done so well and those who used drugs and steroids to get ahead. I wonder if in their heart of hearts, even if they had won a medal, they would think it was really worth it, knowing that. There is something you see, about integrity, about running the race of life and doing so on the basis, not just of the winds of those who are around us or who tell us the expedient truth is the right, but those who stick by their beliefs and their commitments and their faith because they know that Jesus Christ raised from the dead, the descendent of David, is the one who calls them by name into a new life of hope and a new life of obedience, a new life of endurance, a new life of integrity. A new life, which as Paul said to Timothy, is the Good News. Amen.