January 6, 2008 Sermon

How to Stick Together
I Timothy 5:17-25

When I started ministry at my first congregation a representative from the Women’s Association came to see me.  She was excited; the ladies had decided to make a set of liturgical stoles for me to wear with my robe.  They would be works of art: colorful, with embroidery and counted-cross-stitching and the like.  “No thank you,” I said.  “Not only do I not wear a robe, but I feel that the recent trend of Presbyterian pastors doing so is wrong.”  Actually, I do not recall exactly what I said.  But I am reasonably sure it was even less sensitive and intelligent than that.

Five years later we accepted the call to serve a church in another state.  A woman about our age (30 at the time) approached me with a careful question.  Would Linda, my wife, be an officer in the Women’s Association?  The pastor before me had insisted that his wife serve in this way; that way he could keep tabs on a group he did not trust.  Or so they thought.  At any rate, I replied to this young woman that it was 1990 and I felt the pastor’s wife did not even have to belong to the Women’s Association.  Actually, I do not recall exactly what I said.  But I am reasonably sure it was even less sensitive and intelligent than that.

These true stories illustrate important points.  First, they show that as a young pastor I was even less sensitive and intelligent than I am today.  Second, they show that forgiveness is alive and well in the church.  In both cases, the person who approached me later became a friend.  Both women, taken aback as they must have been, overcame their feelings.  They forgave me.  They did not stir up trouble, for me or for the churches.  In a word, they exercised forbearance.  So should we all.

After a break for Advent we have returned to the first letter the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy.  Now we re-enter it near its end.  But first we ought to review.  The Apostle Paul was a Jew and a Pharisee, a dedicated scholar of the Jewish law.  At first he bitterly opposed all claims that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.  In fact, the Book of Acts tells us he ruthlessly hunted down Christians.  But Jesus struck Paul blind and instructed him to find a man who would use the power of God’s Holy Spirit to restore his sight.  He followed these instructions and when all happened as the Lord had predicted, Paul became a Christian himself.

Paul immediately started preaching that all people must believe in Jesus as the Son of God.  Paul also recruited and trained a number of young men to join him in this work.  Once he sent them out on their own, he corresponded with them.  He wrote to encourage them—and to make sure they performed precisely as he wanted them to do.  Our passage today comes from one of the letters Paul wrote to Timothy, one of his protégées.  In it he has already urged those preachers to speak the truth as God has revealed it.  He has laid out his ideas about how to worship Jesus and how to run a church.  He has railed against false teachers. 

 Our verses begin, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor.”  Elders rule.  Different denominations use different words for their leaders.  Baptists call them deacons; Roman Catholics, priests; etc.  As a Presbyterian elder and pastor, naturally I think the title we use matters.  The New Testament word for elder is actually the Greek presbuteros, which ought to sound strangely familiar.  The term elder/presbuteros carries much more meaning than simply “older”.  Presbuteros means gifted by God to lead.  Elders have authority and accountability.  Elders rule.  As of this writing our Nominating Committee faces its annual job of finding three people it believes God has called to serve as elders at the Northern Lakes Community Church.  So far they have found just two of their three candidates.  But I would rather they take their time and find exactly whom God has called to serve as elders.  As Paul writes, “Do not ordain anyone hastily.”

Paul cautions the church never to accept accusations against elders “except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.”  How often have you heard (or, God forbid, said), “Some people are really mad at Elder Jane or Pastor John”?  Perhaps you have heard that perennial favorite, “A lot of people say (fill in the blank with an unsubstantiated rumor against one or more church leaders).”   Let this congregation utterly renounce such destructive behavior.  By all means, if anybody has misbehaved, and if witnesses will testify to it, then let the elders hear the complaint and let them settle the matter in the wisdom and love of Christ.  Let the church seek repentance, forgiveness and healing.  Our elders have done this more than once in the brief history of our church.  But let no false witness injure the ministry of Christ as accomplished through our leaders.

Paul concludes this section with the observation that both sin and virtue will out.  His argument goes like this: We have too much to do to get distracted by infighting.  God is not mocked.  Sin cannot hide forever.  Good works also will reveal themselves.  Let both happen in God’s own time.  Exercise forbearance.  Do not rush to believe the worst about others.  Do not spread rumors.  Listen patiently for the Holy Spirit to tell the church who should lead it.  And then honor those leaders. 

Every two years Presbyterians hold a national meeting called the General Assembly (or GA).  GAs elect church-wide leaders, set the budget of the whole church, and make policy on the issues that confront the church: what makes for a “just war”, what sort of theology our denominational Christian Education materials will teach, why and where to send missionaries, whether to allow openly gay and lesbian people to serve as pastors and elders.  I served as a delegate (or commissioner) to the GA of 1996.  I have been elected to serve again in June of this year. 

Just before I traveled to that 1996 GA I, along with all other commissioners and church officials at every level, received a letter that accused my congregation of harassing a family with a 16 year-old who had just come out of the closet as gay.  I was not named; but the letter accused “the pastor” of masterminding a campaign to intimidate the boy at school, in town and at church.  The author of the letter had heard rumors that originated with an enraged former member of our congregation.  Because those rumors gave her a convenient weapon for a crusade she was already waging, she used them without making the slightest effort to research their truth.  She never spoke to me.  She never spoke with anybody in our church beside the angry former member.  In fact, Linda and I saw the young man in question at a county fair that summer.  He was not angry: he even said he missed us, as we did him.

After the GA met that year, I took the author of that false and sinful letter to church court.  I forced her to testify under oath that she had done nothing to learn the truth.  I “won” (though I did not feel particularly victorious).  She was convicted and given a nasty old black mark on her permanent file.  Now I have started receiving materials for this coming summer’s GA.  In the very first email I received I read that she would be serving as a commissioner this year, too.  She and I will certainly meet at that meeting.  We might even serve on the same committee, meaning we would spend dozens of hours together in a small conference room.

This woman failed to exercise forbearance.  She did my congregation and me injury.  Now I must exercise forbearance.  Now I must work with her, possibly quite closely, and pray that our work will honor Jesus Christ.  I ask you to pray that I would have the God-given forbearance to do this.  I ask your forgiveness for the many times I have failed to exercise forbearance with you.  And I ask that you would use every spiritual resource available to you to join in making ours a church in which Christians truly exercise forbearance: toward each other, and toward the world.

Forbearance means using the love of Christ to prevent ruptures in relationships.  Exercise forbearance.