Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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This is Paul in his mid-fifties. He's been a Christian for roughly thirty years. And he is staring death in the face. Once upon a time, as Saul of Tarsus, he had persecuted Christians and sent some to their deaths with morbid delight. His name had been utterly dreadful among the believers. But now, near the end of his short life, by the work of God's amazing hand, Paul is the church's greatest missionary and its premier theologian. (As he will always be.) His name is no longer dreaded. Soon he will be "Saint Paul." It will not be by natural causes that Paul dies. He will be martyred, will have his head cut off with a sword. And, as he writes this letter, he knows it will happen soon.

It is at the conclusion of this letter that Paul says his famous good-bye: "…I am already being poured out as a libation (or, as Peterson puts it, "my life is an offering on God's altar), and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day…." Hallelujah, Paul! You did, indeed, keep the faith, and passed it on to us.

He is writing to Timothy, a much younger man, whose mother and grandmother were both Christians and who, himself, was a leader in the church at Lystra (in today's Turkey). Timothy was a friend, and had been at times a travelling companion of Paul's. And now Paul is turning over to him the mantle of leadership. This will be the last time Paul will be able to communicate with Timothy. He wants to be sure the younger man understands what is central and what is peripheral . He wants to be certain that, in his leadership of the church, Timothy makes the main thing and keeps the main thing the main thing. So the first advice he gives (to Timothy who had been raised in a Christian home and steeped in the traditions of Jesus) - Paul's first advice is to remember the traditions and writings of the faith, not to forget his A,B,Cs. "Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching," reproof, correction, and so forth. There it is, what we cannot let go of even if we lose everything else: scripture and tradition, the backbone of our faith. And yet we have failed in that.

Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of the last century, during his Edinburgh campaign, thought he would begin a sermon to a bunch of school boys with a question, to peak their interest. So he began by asking, "What is prayer." He had thought no one would answer and he would then go on to explain about prayer - and that would be his sermon. But when he asked the question, "What is prayer?" lots of hands went up. He called on one fair-faced boy who stood up straight and said, "Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies." Moody recognized the boy's answer as part of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (written in 1643), and said, "Thank God, my boy, that you were born in Scotland!"

What is the point of that? That there was a time when Christians knew, indeed often knew by heart, the major traditions of their faith. They wrote creeds and catechisms (summarizing their beliefs), and after a few centuries (to be sure they met the tests of time) they made them official and committed them to memory. And, if they were lucky, they remembered the words for the rest of their lives. Some of these old faith statements knock our socks off even today. Those who know the Shorter Catechism will always remember that first famous question: What is the chief end of man? And its answer: "…to glorify God and enjoy him forever." Or that first searching question of the Heidelburg Catechism (written in 1563): "What is your only comfort in life and death?" And its answer: "That I am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ." Or, also from the Heidelberg Catechism, the two questions and two answers which helped convert me and changed my entire understanding of Christianity:

Question: What is required of you?
Answer: That I should love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my mind and with all my strength and with all my soul, and that I should love my neighbor as myself. (O.K. so far, but hold on!)

Next Question: Are you able to do this?
Answer: No. For by my nature I am prone to hate both God and neighbor.

We may not like the old creeds and catechisms, may not think that memorization is the best way to learn, but then we must suggest a better way for Christians not to forget the main things. What does the Bible really say? What were the core beliefs that sustained our fathers and mothers through tough times? We've lost the basic facts. In a recent survey of older Sunday School children, 81% didn't know what manna was. 90% couldn't name all four Gospels. Almost half didn't know how many disciples there were. How will they teach their children? Who will be here to teach little Emily Grace? We've eaten the seed corn. Every church is one generation away from extinction. Each one of us is the future of the church. We need evangelists outside the church, to be sure: bringing the world to Christ. But today we also need evangelists inside the church, to bring our people back to the fundamental truths about God and Jesus, to teach us our own faith. We cannot be good chemists without studying chemistry Why should we think we can become good Christians without studying and understanding our faith? Do not look for someone else to do this. It is the responsibility of each one of us. For some time people have been asking Billy Graham, "Who's going to take your place when you're gone?" He always answers, "You are."

There is a very practical reason to remember consciously (perhaps even to memorize) faithful facts and truths and to pass them on to the next generation with great care. The reason is this: there is a strong tendency for people not to want to know these things, not to want to remember. The Gospel is a stranger to this world. It isn't "doin' what comes naturally." There are easier paths to take. And people (you and I included) will go down those easier paths at the drop of a hat. Paul warns Timothy about that: "…the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth, and will wander away into myths." (Peterson says, "into spiritual junk food.") No words could better describe today's world. Itching ears: a morbid insatiable curiosity. While refusing to believe anything, we believe everything. I am stunned by the preposterous things that some people, today, claim to believe. The same people who will put no faith in God's power to heal, will trust copper bracelets, magic crystals, magnets in their shoes and every which kind of elixir. The same people who say they can't believe in the resurrection of Christ, because it's not proven, will believe that space aliens came to earth centuries ago and built the pyramids.

And there's another reason to preserve the truths of our faith, very apropos at this time. We must keep them safe so that they will be available when needed. Not the best reason, but important nevertheless. In personal disasters, or in national tragedies like those of September 11, people return to fundamentals. When all the things they thought were important, and invested their lives in, leave them in the lurch, they rush up into the attic of faith, all dusty and full of cobwebs, and frantically search for the spiritual things they stored there years ago. The economist, W. Brian Arthur, had a wonderful line in last Sunday's Post. Talking about people's response to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon disasters, he says simply: "Brushes with death cut the crap." We are suddenly more adult, more compassionate, more generous. In the same article, Francis Fukuyama remembers the day, right after the disasters, when a group of fireman rang the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange, and the brokers on the floor give them a seemingly endless standing ovation. Before September 11, Fukuyama points out, there was a lot of distance in social status between a fireman and a stock broker on the New York Exchange. The brokers made more money, dressed better, ate better, controlled more. But, at that moment, when those firemen rang the bell, all those petty differences evaporated into nothingness, and the brokers were saying, "you are our heroes." "You are more important than we are. And today we know it."

It's a shame we can't remember these things all the time. It's a shame it takes an emergency to bring us to our senses. Religion that is only appealed to in tough times is distressingly underutilized. But it is better than no religion at all, and sometimes leads to a deeper commitment. As followers of Christ it is our duty to take in those who, in heart break, have lost their way. And gently to teach them what is right, and what is good, and what is true. And to do that we have to know these things ourselves.