II
Timothy 2:8-15
Three of the letters in the New Testament are called the
“Pastoral Epistles” because they specifically address the ways that the early
Church was beginning to organize itself for the long run. They give advice to church leaders, not so
much people like Peter and Paul, but to the next generation or two that
followed them. It’s the sort of advice
that mentors pass on – not details about specific situations, like appears in
Paul’s letters to Corinth and Thessalonica, but broad outlines and things to
keep in mind over a lifetime. It’s
advice like:
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved
by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of
truth.” [II Timothy 2:15]
You would think that is
sort of self-evident and basic: “Don’t be ashamed of doing your job.” It isn’t always that simple, though. It doesn’t just apply to preachers, either,
though that’s where this observation starts.
There’s a Lutheran preacher in Denver named Nadia
Bolz-Weber who has a very effective ministry to people who are not the
traditional church-types. Her preaching
style is very earthy, which is why when I quote her there are some words and expressions
that I’m going to leave out or alter.
It’s also one reason that she tells about being very nervous when her
arm was twisted to get her to speak in front of a national gathering of
youth. She wrote out her speech and
practiced it, then shared it with her own kids, who told her point-blank that
it was lame. That set off a search for
encouragement that only made things worse.
“As soon as I was able to tame my self-pity, I called my
friend Kristen and ran through my talk with her. She had been in youth ministry for over a
decade and was kind enough to take my panicked call. Surely she could bolster my fading
confidence.
‘It sounds like you’re talking to their parents. Here’s what you might think of saying
instead,’ and she outlined an entire message for me, all of which was solid and
none of which was anything I would ever say.
Freaking out, I just walked the dog faster and called my friend Shane,
who had spoken at these large-scale youth gatherings before and, like myself,
was not a ‘youth ministry person.’
‘Oh honey, you should
be scared. Teenagers are a rough
audience.’
Before going to bed that night, I remember thinking two
things: (1) I’m going to eat it with a fork in front of thirty-five thousand
people; (2) I need better friends. I lay
awake, anticipating the deafening sound of the crowd not laughing at my
opening. I spent most of that night
fantasizing about ways to miss my plane, become ill, or have a nervous
breakdown.”[1]
Honestly, who cannot feel for her? It doesn’t have to be thirty-five thousand
people, mostly between the ages of 12 and 18.
One article that I read claimed that about 75% of the population has
some level of anxiety about public speaking.[2] It runs all the way from that uneasy
nervousness that guarantees there will always be prayer in school, “Please don’t
let her call on me! Please don’t let her
call on me!” to the churning stomach of a doctor or nurse thinking, “How do I
tell the family it looks like suicide?”
In between are a whole lot of other situations that are generally just
as inescapable.
When it comes to sharing the gospel, though – which, by
the way, is up to all of us and not just the so-called “professionals” –
there’s the added pressure of “who am I to speak?” coming into it. That was one of the problems that was going
on with Pastor Bolz-Weber. She was still
worried sick on the plane when she found herself sitting next to a girl she
describes as having “dyed pink bangs hanging over her face like a protective
visor, at once inviting and rejecting attention.” The girl started copying an Anime character
onto a sketch pad she had in her backpack and, says the writer, “Her shoulders
turned in and down as though she were trying to hide what her pink bangs
couldn’t.”
Now, one thing I didn’t mention about Nadia Bolz-Weber is
her own appearance. She was going to
allude to it in the opening line that had fallen flat with everyone, setting
off her spiral into self-doubt. She had
planned to start out:
“Some people don’t think I
look very Lutheran because of the tattoos, but then I show them that I have the
entire liturgical year inked on my left arm, Advent to Pentecost. I’m like, hey … you can’t get more Lutheran
than that!”[3]
The girl on the plane
noticed them, though, and they got into a tentative conversation about how much
some of them had hurt, and eventually the girl opened up about some of the real
hurts in her own life, which were pretty serious. Only slowly did it occur to either of them
that they were headed to the same place, because neither of them looked like
most of the other passengers that she says “were wearing matching T-shirts from
various Lutheran congregations, like Midwestern gang colors.”
Now this is where the story intersects again with what II
Timothy is saying, when it says,
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved
by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed…”
We are who we are, and
God loves each and every one. Jesus’
suffering on our behalf is proof enough that we matter in God’s eyes even when
we may think that we don’t merit that.
In fact, we don’t merit that, but that doesn’t stop God from loving
us. The problem is learning to trust
that notion, because we are so very often harder on one another and harder on
ourselves than God is. Bolz-Weber
again:
“Sometimes I’m so thick
that God has no choice but to be almost embarrassingly obtuse. Like sending me a hurting kid with glistening
lines cut in her arm – a kid with protective pink bangs, a kid who doesn’t fit,
a kid who in her own way said to me, Oh,
hey, God told me to tell you something: Get over yourself.”[4]
When you do that, then you can stop being so
self-conscious about every little thing.
That, in turn, lets you put attention where it belongs: on loving God
and loving your neighbor, which is the ultimate and most effective way of “rightly explaining the word of God”.
So let me put it in my own words. Who cares if you get all the details right,
let alone the words? There is nobody who
isn’t going to fit in some ways and not others.
Share the good news however you can, and don’t worry how it turns out
every time – leave that in God’s hands.
Cut yourself a break when you do that, and not just then, either. There is nobody who has their whole life
totally together. If you listen to that
short poem or hymn that the reading this morning includes, it talks about how
we get things right and also get things wrong and how even Jesus may get
frustrated with us at times, but in the end he sticks with us through all of
it, like we are part of him – because we are.
“The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.” [II Timothy 2:11-13]
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.” [II Timothy 2:11-13]
Do your best, and don’t
worry so much. He’s the one whose
opinion matters the most, not even yours.
And he says you’re worth everything.
[1]
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints:
Finding God in All the Wrong People (New York: Convergent Books, 2015), 34.
[2]
Lisa Fritscher, “Glossophobia: the Fear of Public Speaking – Symptoms,
Complications and Treatments” at https://www.verywell.com/glossophobia-2671860
[3]
Bolz-Weber, Ibid., 33.
[4] Ibid., 37.
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