February 19, 2006 Sermon

Aim High
I Timothy 6:11-16

Holiness is not cool. It never has been. But Jesus called on his disciples to follow his example. I Timothy tells all Christians to live holy lives, worthy of the Gospel. Aim high. Live holy lives.

Linda and I spent a summer at a church conference center at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. We were part of the college staff, 35 or so young people who helped run the ranch during its high season. We learned a lot about ourselves and about a group I will call “Presbyouth”. About 2/3 of the college staff were Presbyouth. The children of Presbyterian pastors and college professors, they were radical in their politics. They struggled to believe in Jesus but strongly believed in having a good time. They were friendly with the rest of us but an edge always remained.

I recall a conversation with one Presbyouth, whose real name was (and I hope, is) Tom Wilson. Tom roomed next door. We enjoyed digging at each other. Though we had little in common, I genuinely liked Tom. Once we had a revealing conversation. I have no idea what we actually said, but it went like this. Tom or I made a joke at the expense of the other guy’s ideas. The other one of us responded. We started arguing, congenially. A light bulb went off in my head. This guy honestly disliked his own country. I said something like, “You really think America is the source of most of the evil in the world today, don’t you?

“Yes, I do,” he matter-of-factly replied.

Tom belongs to a group of people who do not see virtue in America . They fear capitalism. They believe in the perfectibility of human nature but see all human systems as hopelessly corrupt. They value honesty but not because they believe in a God who commands truth. They admire Jesus’ teachings but do not see him as the Son of God. They suspect any call to holiness because the very concept of holiness strikes them as outdated, false and dangerous.

Does this describe you? Do you accept the call of Jesus, the Son of God, to live a holy life? Or does holiness make you uneasy? During high school I lived way out in the backwoods hills of southern Indiana . The culture there had more in common with Appalachia than with the farm and industry flatlands just fifty miles to the north. Three or four families of kids from an Apostolic Holiness Church rode our school bus. Their log-cabin church stood at the head of the deep hollow in which they all lived. The boys wore button-down shirts, dress pants and leather shoes. The girls wore dresses down to their ankles and never cut their hair. The rest of us—boys and girls—wore flannel shirts and blue jeans. We had nothing to do with each other.

We fear holiness in part because we don’t want to be the uncool kids on the bus. Holiness can make you lonely. Holiness also strikes us as at least a little hypocritical. We know human nature has a horrid side. We do not like it when others “pose” as holy and have no desire to put on the same act ourselves. If life were one big episode of the old situation comedy, WKRP in Cincinnati , we would fear that holiness would make us as nerdy as Les Nessman and as dishonest as Herb, the salesman.

To all of which the Bible says, so what? Jesus called on his disciples to follow his example. First Timothy tells all Christians to live holy lives, worthy of the Gospel. Aim high. Live holy lives.

I Timothy appeared just as the first generation of Christians was dying—possibly around 55 to 60 AD. Enough years had passed for problems to have developed. The church had grown and needed organizing. I Timothy mandates church offices to lead the church in the Way of Christ. Worship services were becoming more varied. I Timothy lists rules for spiritual worship.

Last but definitely not least, I Timothy addresses behavior. “As for you . . . aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” I Timothy, like Jesus, calls us to aim high. How high is holiness! We prefer not to look too holy, but the Bible calls for us to become impossibly holy. Look again at this list:

Righteousness: perfect behavior according to the law of God

Godliness: becoming like God

Faith: belief without proof

Love: self-sacrificial in action

Steadfastness: sticking to all the above

Gentleness: quiet, calm, caring treatment of others

No wonder we avoid trying to become holy! Yet I Timothy does not back down: Aim high. Live holy lives. We must try. Here’s how. Fight the good fight. Confess your faith in front of witnesses. Seek the presence of God. These three actions appear in the verses we read from I Timothy. This is our roadmap to holiness.

First, fight the good fight. Fighting language has gone out of fashion in church, and properly so. The world has enough war without making Christians into lean, mean fighting machines. But the text refers to spiritual warfare. The world does not have enough spiritual warriors. We conduct spiritual warfare mostly through prayer, but also through worship and hands-on service to others. A hundred years ago Christian leaders were calling for “muscular Christianity”. That call fits today. Act on your Christianity and your holiness will grow. After all, what matters is being holy, not looking holy.

Confessing your faith in front of witnesses is one powerful way to act on your faith. In its most complete form, this means speaking out publicly about your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. But we can confess our faith in many ways. We can quietly refuse to go along with the crowd because its behavior violates our beliefs. We can throw ourselves into serving the needs of broken people because Jesus calls us to do it. Again being a Christian, not looking like one, equals holiness.

Seeking the presence of God completes our list of how to aim high for holiness. The focus stays on Jesus, not ourselves. Music, prayers, Bible reading, fellowship with Christians, these and many other actions take us into the presence of God.

The common thread in all three paths to holiness is action. Christianity takes effort. Everything worthwhile does. We call what we do here at church on Sunday mornings “service”. If you come to church to receive service you have missed the point. Come to church to give service and you will grow in holiness.

I got a phone call last Thursday. It came from Iraq . Charlie Phelps was calling from “someplace about half an hour north of Baghdad and not a very nice neighborhood,” as he put it. He is alive and well and driving a truck on contract to the Army. Several men in his group have been injured. Roadside bombs explode as their trucks pass by almost daily.

He would resist what I am about to say, but that only makes the more true. Charlie Phelps is a deeply holy man. Oh, he is a sinner, just like all of us. But he relentlessly and sincerely aims high. He tries to behave as Jesus calls us to behave. He was calling to learn how he could contribute to Jill Justin’s mission trip to the Russian orphanage.

Holiness looks a lot like Charlie. Holiness looks a lot like certain older women in our church who sit at home and faithfully pray for the rest of us. Holiness looks a lot like the guys who come in here when they think nobody’s looking and fix stuff. Aim high. Live holy. Keep trying. It works.