"In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching." (2 Timothy 4:1-2)
In the end, it will be Jesus' verdict that matters, not Caesar's. In the end, it will be the Reign of God that endures, not Rome's empire or whatever other regimes come and go in the mean-time. In the end, it is the character of Christ that is the true measure of how we have spent our lives, and not anybody else's definition of "winning" or "greatness" or "success." Remembering that gives us a great deal of guidance as we step out into the world to face another day.
I think that's the underlying message here in these verses from Second Timothy, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday. When the apostle reminds his young protege in ministry that "Christ Jesus... is to judge the living and the dead," and that it is Christ's kingdom and coming for which they wait, it's not to scare young Pastor Tim. It's to remind him whose voice to listen to, and whose values to hold onto. I've got to admit, an earlier version of me would have heard these verses as something of a veiled threat, along the lines of, "You had better do a good enough job preaching and toeing the line with the right message, Timothy, because after all, Jesus is a-comin' and will judge the world!" But because of who Jesus actually is, I don't hear these words as intimidation any longer, but rather encouragement. I think it is a reminder that even though there are a LOT of other voices out there, clamoring for our attention and allegiance, it is only Jesus' voice that is worth listening to. I think it is the apostle's way of saying, "There are a lot of other folks who think they are Big Deals out there, and they will look at the way of Jesus and call you a loser, a weakling, or a dangerous subversive for following it--don't listen to 'em. Jesus is the One whose opinion matters when all is said and done." And I think it's a reminder, both for a young pastor just starting out back in the late first century, as well as for us in the middling days of the twenty-first, that the powers of the day will rise and fall, come and go, and they are not worth us building our lives on. Neither the folks in power today, nor the party in power after the next election cycle, nor the administration coming down the pike in twenty years, do not get to tell us who to be or how to spend our lives. We are called to live in light of Jesus' kind of kingdom, in which the towel and basin are the signs of true leadership rather than Caesar's crown, and in which we shower even our enemies with goodness and mercy, rather than the sewage of hatred and the filth of cruelty.
In the late first century, when this letter was written, that would have been a word of encouragement to keep telling the news of Jesus, practicing the way of Jesus, and welcoming people into the community of Jesus, even though the Empire was increasingly hostile toward them. It would have meant choosing to believe that it is still worth giving your life to following Jesus even if that doesn't translate to more power, status, wealth, or comfort. It would have meant a commitment to the Gospel's message of God's grace even to a culture that dismissed it as nonsense and foolishness. These words have the thrust of saying, "I know that the ones who are currently on the throne arrogantly think they will rule forever, but we know differently--we know that in the end, Jesus is the One who reigns, and that his kind of authority looks like a cross rather than conquest." That means we are always called to think in longer-range terms than "How can we curry favor with the current regime?" since emperors come and go, but rather to think in terms of, "What will truly matter, and what will really last, in light of God's Reign and the authority of Jesus?"
Now, that doesn't just mean that we should pay attention to Jesus' kingdom because it will endure when other regimes have gone into the dustbin of history; it's also a reminder that because of the kind of king Jesus is, we don't have to be afraid. Jesus will indeed "judge the living and the dead," but he is the same one who, when he was condemned under the judgment of Pontius Pilate, prayed for forgiveness for his executioners. He is the same one who restored Simon Peter back to belonging after Ol' Pete denied even knowing Jesus, and who showed up to convince Thomas he was alive, even when Tommy Boy declared he couldn't belief unless he got to poke around in Jesus' wounds. He is the same one who invited himself over to dinner at tax collector (and outcast) Zacchaeus' house, who refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery as the story in John's Gospel tells it, and who didn't zap Saul of Tarsus for ferociously persecuting the early church, but instead claimed him to become a leader within that church. If Jesus is the judge, we don't have to worry about merciless condemnation. If Jesus is the king whose opinion counts, we don't have to fear being oppressed or intimidated under a tyrant's heel. If Jesus is the One who tells us, ultimately, what really matters, then we don't need to care one bit what the other voices bark and bellow about.
To read these verses and remember that it is Jesus whose verdict matters in the end also calls to mind just how upside-down Jesus' values are from the conventional wisdom of the world. When the common sense of our culture uplifts the rich, the well-connected, the ambitious, the comfortable, and the vindictive ones who hate their enemies as the models of "success" and "winning," we remember that Jesus declares God's blessing in the opposite direction: on the poor, the grieving, the meek, the persecuted, the peacemakers, and the merciful. We recall that Jesus regularly declared that the first will be last and the last will be first, that the exalted will be humbled while the humble will be exalted, and that the way to show your greatness is to become the servant of all. Jesus' ordering of things really does flip the script on what the powers of the day think is really important. So at some point, we really do have to decide whose voice we will listen to: the powerful and influential Big Deals of the moment, or the voice of Jesus. The letter of Second Timothy calls us to keep the bigger-picture perspective in mind, and to remember that the kingdom we truly belong to, in the end, is Jesus' reign. All these centuries later, and nobody really remembers who happened to be on the throne in Rome when this letter was written--the Caesars all blur together in the haze of history. But Jesus' reign, as countercultural and upside-down as it is compared the world's empires, is the one we pin our hopes on. In the end, Jesus is the One by whom we measure our lives. And because Jesus is both just and merciful, we do not have to be afraid.
Lord Jesus, keep us oriented around your kind of reign and your way of being in the world.
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