Where the Paper Clips Don't Go--October 3, 2025

Where the Paper Clips Don't Go--October 3, 2025

"As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides everything for our enjoyment. They are to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life." [1 Timothy 6:17-19]

I'd like you to imagine something absurd with me for a moment. 

Imagine I get my acoustic guitar out, and I notice it's hollow on the inside, and I think to myself, "I know--that would be a great place to store stuff!" And so I start cramming that guitar full of whatever small possessions I can find: pencils and pens, sticky notes, tissues yanked from the box, thumbtacks and paper clips. And laughing in triumph, I think to myself, "Look at all this stuff I have amassed for myself--and nobody can take it from me, because I've squirreled it all away here in the soundbox of my guitar! Ha ha--just try to come and take them away from me now, suckers!"

And you would think, watching this scene unfold, "What an absolute moron that Steve is!"

You would be right. 

Stuffing one's guitar full of paper-clips is an act of monumental buffoonery, because it makes both the paper-clips and the guitar unusable. Now, none of it is going to work rightly, because I have tried to hoard what is not meant to be hoarded, and I have filled what was meant to be kept empty.

Take a look at that sentence again:  none of my possessions would be useful in this scene, because I would have hoarded what is not meant to be hoarded, and filled what was meant to be empty.  

I'm not sure we are trained to think in those terms, honestly.  I'm not sure we are taught that it is not always a good idea to amass more and more for myself. We have even less instruction in the possibility that some things in life are meant to be held empty.  Instead, we are told over and over that the way to "win" in life is to acquire and accumulate, endlessly hungry and never satisfied. And we are told that it is nonsense to build your life around giving toward others rather than holding on to as much for yourself as possible. We have been raised in a system that told us you were the winner at life if you stuff your guitar full of office supplies, and then of course we are then set up to teach our children to do the same with theirs.  Trouble is, we end up with a deathly silence instead of music, because we have all ruined our instruments packing them full of things we have hoarded.  And then we wonder why we are joyless and full of strife in our communities, convinced that we should be happy because we've got lots of "stuff" and confused because we're not.

I want to suggest that the New Testament has been telling us all along why we are so out of sorts.  The letter we call First Timothy says it plain as day:  the life that "really is" life is not a matter of acquisition, but of self-giving.  And when we get it backwards (like so many voices around us are actively training us to do), we end up ruining the good things entrusted to us by hoarding what is meant to be shared, and filling what is meant to remain empty.  We end up with guitars that won't play, and paper-clips we can't actually use because were too obsessed with keeping them all.  We end up less than fully alive.

So when the pastoral voice in these verses, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, says that those who are rich in the present world are to be generous and share their possessions, it is for the good of both the giver and the receiver.  Those who receive get enough to eat and to feed their kids--they are brought to life.  And those who give have their guitars emptied out a little, which is exactly what their instruments need in order to be able to make music the way they were meant to.  The goal is for everyone to be resurrected from our different kinds of deathliness.  And maybe one of the epiphanies we are each waiting to have is the realization that each of our well-being is connected to the other's: those who are drowning in possessions, dying of affluenza, need to be brought to life by giving away what was never meant to be hoarded forever.  And those who are dying of hunger, drowning in the world's indifference, need to be brought to life by receiving the gifts God intended us all to share anyway.  When I share what I have with you, I honor you and regard you as worthy, as accepted, as companion.  And when I receive from you what you would share, I honor you and regard you as well--because sometimes what the would-be giver needs is the opportunity to give.  In that endless circle of sharing, we are all made more fully alive--we each find ourselves pulled a little out of the grave.  And maybe, just maybe, we get a glimpse of what God's own life is like in the Triune loop-de-loops of self-giving between the Persons we have come to call Father, Son, and Spirit.  Endless giving, endless receiving, endless honoring of one another in the flow.  That sounds, quite honestly, divine.

Perhaps we would do well on a day like today to hush those voices inside us that want to immediately react to a passage like this by saying, "No one can make me give what's mine to somebody else who doesn't deserve it!  It's mine!  They didn't earn it!  That's not the American way!" and instead to listen to what the apostle has to say here.  After all, whether it is or isn't "the American way" to hoard or to share isn't really the issue at hand.  We're not promised that "the American way" will love us into new creation.  We're not told that anybody's flag will give us the life that really is life.  Instead, we are told here by the apostle that the same God who gives generously to all of us has made us to share in that generosity with one another, because that is the point of life itself.

We are told, in other words, that it is high time for us to empty out our guitars of the paper-clips we have been hoarding in there, both so that the office supplies can be used as they were meant to, but also so that we can strum along with the music of God at last.

Today, may your paper-clips be accessible and ready to be used, and may your guitar be empty enough to play a tune for everybody around.

Lord God, empty us where we need to be empty, and allow both us to share what you have entrusted to us and to receive what you have sent others across our path to give.

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

"In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords." (1 Timothy 6:13-15)

Not only did Jesus have a hasty criminal trial in front of the Roman authorities, but the first Christians didn't try to hide that fact.  Rather than sweeping the details of the official imperial interrogation under the rug because they could hurt the reputation of the early Christian movement, they remembered it and held onto those details as an integral part of the story of Jesus.  

That really is remarkable.

Just think for a moment if you were starting a new mission-start congregation--or for that matter, even just a social club among your friends and neighbors.  Would you be keen to bring up the criminal conviction of your organization's founder, or the missionary pastor who was starting up the church?  Would you be likely to mention in your elevator speech or promotional flyers, "Our leader was convicted by the legal authorities as worthy of death for his subversive political claims" (which is basically the charge that Pilate cared about)? Even if you maintained that your leader was innocent, or if you thought the charges or the trial were unfair, my guess is that a lot of us would want to keep those unpleasant details from even seeing the light of day.  A great deal of our society's civic life is built on the premise of keeping the skeletons from "our side" locked safely in the closet, while we ruthlessly try to publicize the skeletons from "their side."  So it really is something that the first generations of Christians held onto the details about Jesus' own trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.

Of course, the Gospel-writers didn't shy away from giving us all the tragic details of Jesus' arrest, questioning before the religious leaders, and subsequent trial in front of Pilate. But even more curious to me is that a passage like this one, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as part of our epistle reading, makes a point of remembering Jesus being on trial before Pontius Pilate.  I mean, the Gospel-writers are giving us something like a biography or a history of events in Jesus' life--I suppose they would have inevitably had to mention Jesus dying a criminal's death after receiving a death sentence from the legal system.  But the first letter to Timothy is sort of a pep talk given to a new young pastor--you might think the writer would want to focus only on the positives and leave out anything that might make young Pastor Tim rethink his career choices.  But instead, here we have another reminder that "Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,"  deliberately addressing that potential elephant in the room by bringing it up.  There's no getting away from it: the One whom we confess to be Son of God, and indeed as we say in the Creeds, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God," is also the one we declare in those same Creeds who "suffered under Pontius Pilate."  What a scandalous thing to say, not merely about a human leader, but to claim about God!

And maybe that's the key to all of this.  If we were talking about just a human leader of an organization, it might be embarrassing to mention a criminal trial, or convictions.  I would certainly have a harder time trusting someone with authority if a duly appointed authority found them guilty of a significant crime.  But the Christian claim--like here in 1 Timothy--is that in this Jesus we meet the very face of the living God, and therefore, the trial, conviction, suffering, and death of Christ on a Roman cross are all signs of the depths our God is willing to go for the sake of redeeming the whole world.  And that means the scurrilous story of Jesus' criminal conviction isn't something to hide, but rather a truth a stand in awe of: the living God was willing to be so fully rejected and pushed to the margins that the power centers of the day (the Empire and its appointed Roman governor) convicted and executed Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwelt.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it once, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross."  In a culture bent on impressing, dominating, and presenting only "wins" and "strength" in order to look tough, that is downright scandalous.  But it is also our only hope.

The One we name as "King of kings" and "Lord of lords," the "Blessed and only Sovereign," is also a convicted criminal who received a death-sentence and was willing to bear all the scorn, rejection, shame, and reproach that pushed him outside the bounds of polite society, beyond the city walls, and out to a godforsaken hill called Golgotha.  It seems there are no lengths to which this God will not go for us.

That's another important dimension of our theme this season, of being "with Jesus on the margins." It's not just that Jesus goes slumming "out there" to occasionally meet with outcasts like it's a field trip or a novelty.  The heart of God's mission to mend the world means God's own choice to be pushed out to the margins, stripped of respectability, and to surrender all glory and pomp as a convicted criminal on a cross. 

For a lot of folks whose only impressions of Christianity are that we are a social club of people preening and posturing to look good through performances of piety, that's news that needs to be told.  That's news that needs to be lived and shared.  We are people who insist on telling the story that our Lord and Savior was put on trial before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, as one more evidence that there is no length to which God will not go for us, and no loss God will not endure to get through to us.

The next time you find yourself absent-mindedly reciting the Apostles' Creed on some Sunday morning, remember that.

Lord Jesus, we give you praise for your willingness to go to the depths of a trial, crucifixion, and death for our sakes.  Give us the courage to be willing to lose our respectability and standing for the sake of sharing your love with the people around us, too.