I think for
many people there is a misconception of what seminary life is like. Shut your eyes for a moment and imagine what
you think it would be like. Many of you
are probably imagining men and women in their Sunday attire, ties and suits for
the men and dresses for the women, sitting around classrooms and library tables
discussing theological matters. Arguing
the veracity of substitutionary atonement theory versus the Christus Victor
theory of atonement. Or skillfully
translating the Greek New Testament and then writing eloquent sermons. Or spending hours painstakingly crafting
prayers. In reality, seminary is more
like a grown up and more religious version college in all its good and more
crazy moments. Or an older version of a youth camp on it worst days. One of my best friends in seminary, by virtue
of the fact that he lived next door to me, was also one of the oddest but most
thoughtful student. During his first
year, he would routinely write a paper or complete a test by including a recipe
for brownies. Now to this day I am not
sure why he did this exactly. I know it
had something to do with seminary being too serious of a place and him wanting
to lighten the mood. Surprisingly, many
of his professors not only did not mark him down for this random addition to
his papers, but would tell him that his recipe actually made a very tasty
dessert. He would spend hours writing
papers or taking a test only to finish by spending an additional fifteen
minutes writing out the recipe. [1 cup margarine or butter, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, 4
eggs, slightly beaten, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa, 1/2
teaspoon salt, 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (coarsely chopped), 1 cup pecans,
chopped. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease a 13 by 9-inch pan. In medium saucepan over low heat, melt margarine.
Add sugar, vanilla and eggs; blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring
cup; level off. Stir in flour, cocoa and salt; mix well. Add chocolate and
pecans. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until set. Cool.
Cut into 36 bars.] I’m not sure what is more impressive or scary, that he had
the guts to randomly include a brownie recipe in a graduate level paper or the
fact that he could remember that whole recipe and the answers to all the test
questions. Nevertheless he did it. Before you start to question the credibility
of the seminary I attended, let me make my point.
As
I was reading through this passage in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, I was
reminded of a recipe. The recipe for a
Christian. Add one part scripture and
faith, mix with preaching and teaching, yields one Christian disciple. It is a simple recipe, but as Paul writes in
this letter, an increasingly difficult task.
The case is no different today.
As Paul’s context is in a time of persecution, ungodliness, opposition,
suffering, and deception, so too we find ourselves in a similar context. Living in a society that is increasingly
focused on worldly things, money, power, possession, rather than on godly things. While persecution of Christians is rare or
less serious here, around the world Christians are persecuted or killed every
day. Paul writes to empower Timothy to
greater faith. The key to the this faith
is the sacred writings.
The
sacred writings that Paul writes about here are not necessarily the bible as we
know it. Keep in mind that what we know
as the New Testament was largely an oral tradition early on. Paul’s writings got copied and passed around,
but the Old Testament and New Testament like this did not come around until
much later. The sacred writings that
this passage is probably referring to are the Old Testament texts. That does not mean however that this comment
about sacred writings should not be applied to all the sacred writings we
recognize today. We truly do believe
that this book, this bible does and will make us wise. And not just wise for worldly things, but
wise about Godly matters. It is a key
ingredient in this recipe for Christian disciples. Now whether you believe that
every word of this bible is 100 percent factually and scientifically and
historically true or you believe something else, as I am sure there are many
opinions, what is most important is the centrality of these sacred scriptures
to our lives. What is important is our
faith that these words can change our lives and not just our lives but can
change the world.
The
second part of this recipe is faith. The
kind of faith we are talking about here is faith founded on the revelation of
God. Faith comes about in one of two
ways. Either from me or from the
outside. If comes from me, it is my own
creation. It is my thoughts, ideas, and
wants. God looks like and wants what I
want. A lot of the time this is how
cults or misguided new religions begin. Real
Christian faith comes from the outside in.
Instead of us creating our own vision of God and what God is like, God
reveals God’s self to us through grace and the scriptures. God is distant but is made known to us
through Jesus Christ, the Word as John’s gospel begins, and through
scripture. The scriptures show us in a
variety of ways and through a long passage of time who God is and what God is
doing in creation. As Dan Migliore
writes, “It is the unique and irreplaceable witness to the liberating activity of
God in the history of
Unfortunately,
we live in a time and place where the bible is seen as a weapon to beat and
wear down the unchurched to faith. They
must get saved at any cost. I remember a scene from the movie Saved that came
out a few years ago. It was the story a
group of friends at a staunchly evangelical and fundamentalist private high
school, where acting holy meant more than being holy than being transformed. One of the teens did not want to be apart of
their group of friends anymore, which the group immediately assumed meant she
was “falling away from the Lord.” After
a brief argument the girl walks away from the group, only to be hit in the back
of the head by a bible. She picks up the
bible and says, “this is not a weapon.”
All too often we treat it as one though, instead of a liberating message
meant to be a source of renewal, freedom, and joy. As Paul says elsewhere, we are meant to be
slaves of Christ, but not the kind that are oppressed, the ones that have been
made free for service in the world.
That
service is the next ingredient.
Preaching and teaching are often associated only with the pastor. This is one of the gravest errors in
Christianity. The most important issue
of the Reformation was about this: taking the Christian religion out of the
hands of the clergy and putting it into the hands of everybody. Their truly is a priesthood of all believers,
as all of us are called by God to preach and teach as part of our Christian
faith. We truly are to witness and
evangelize. Now that w- word and that e-
word are not words that Presbyterians like to here and that is
understandable. For generations we were
the majority in this country and in at least in the realm of cultural life, we
were a Christian nation. Once upon a
time we could open up the doors of this place and people would file in. That is not our context anymore. It is not.
For years, we all collectively had either hid our heads under rocks or
bemoaned the death of our denomination and protested doing the use of that e-
word and that w-word. That has to stop. Luckily today, more and more Christians, and
particularly Presbyterians, are recognizing the fantastic opportunity that God
is giving us now to spread the faith in ways that haven’t had to happen in
generations. We have the joyful mission
to reach out to this community. We have
the joyful mission to share our faith.
We have the joyful mission to be disciples and disciple-makers for
God. And this is what it means to be a
Christian: to rely on the scriptures, to have faith, to preach and teach about
our faith. That is the recipe. It is a
joyful mission and a mission that we have all been called to.