"I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands, for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:3-7)
Let me pose a thought experiment for us to mull over together. If I strike a match and then take the newly formed flame to a candle to light it, does that burning candle now have the same flame as the match held? Is it the same fire?
The same question would hold on Christmas Eve, as we pass the flame from one small white candle to another while "Silent Night" strikes up as the closing carol and the lights of the sanctuary are dimmed. Is it all the same fire, since the flame has been passed from one central candle to all the rest?
Or on a larger (like global!) scale, when the Olympic flame is carried around the world in advance of the next round of Olympic games, and it moves from country to country by runners, dignitaries, and athletes, is it the same fire when that individual torch is used to ignite a large fire during the opening ceremonies at the stadium where the games will be held?
I'm not trying to mess with your heads as if this is merely a brain teaser like the old philosophical paradox they call "the Ship of Theseus" thought experiment (although, boy, there's an interesting rabbit hole to go down sometime!). But my reason for asking is that the early Christian community saw itself very much like a series of runners in something like a relay race, or like the Olympic torch bearers, carrying something that was constant (faith rooted in Christ Jesus) but which was also brought individually to each person, in whose care the flame burned in its own particular way. In a very real and important sense, we are only stewards of something that was first given to us, not inventors of something new. No matter how many new church programs, denominational slogans, spiritual trends, or inspirational TED Talks come and go, there is something constant about the Christian faith, something which doesn't have to be re-approved, voted on, repackaged, or marketed.
And yet at the same time, the torch by which we carry the flame today might look a little different from the torches they used a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago--or even two thousand. The torches they used for the Olympic flames long ago were merely sticks with a fuel-soaked rag on one end, and today's are elegantly crafted in modern curvilinear forms, and are fueled with hidden cartridges of butane and propane, but it's all supposed to be the same fire, right? Well, as these verses from 2 Timothy, which many of us heard this past Sunday, describe it, that's much how the Christian faith is passed, too. It's in some sense the same fire, passed from one wick to another, one candle to another, one torch to another, but with each individual instrument carrying the flame differently. In the case of this letter written to a young still-green-behind-the-ears pastor named Timothy, that same faith had been burning bright in his grandmother Eunice, and then was passed along to his mother Lois, and had eventually come to Timothy, too. And as the writer of this letter addresses him, he does so again with the imagery of carrying a flame: "I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you." Maybe the whole Christian life is a matter of tending a fire--keeping the one that is already burning within us ("like a fire in the bones" as Jeremiah once put it), but also passing it along to others who are waiting for the light.
That perspective has a way of humbling us, especially us preachers, who sometimes like to imagine that it falls on us to come up with a way to make the Gospel "trendy" or invent a marketing campaign to make the church look "cool," or to craft, at long last, some "new" expression of theology that will finally answer everyone's questions and remove all the paradoxes, tensions, and confusion. None of that is our task. We are torchbearers, all of us, who first find ourselves as recipients of a flame we did not ignite by our own ingenuity but received as a gift, and who then pass it along from one wick to another that is waiting for the light, without needing to worry that the sharing of the fire with others diminishes the brightness of our own one bit. Or, as the late Robert Farrar Capon put it, echoing that imagery of runners in a long relay, "We are, when all is said and done, only preachers of a word we have received. When we stand up on Easter morning and say, ‘Christ is risen!’ we are not arguing for the abstract possibility of resurrection; we are simply announcing what was announced to us. We arrive in our several pulpits not as the bearers of proof but as the latest runners in a long relay race; not as savants with arguments to take away the doubts of the faithful but as breathless messengers who have only recently spoken to Peter himself: The Lord is risen indeed (gasp, gasp) and has appeared (pant, pant, pant) to Simon!”
You and I were first handed the flame by somebody else--maybe a parent or grandparent like Timothy had experienced from his mother and grandmother, or maybe a Sunday School teacher, a mentor, a pastor, an author, or some long-dead saint whose story or words sparked something in you. And after receiving the light from those who first shared the love and way of Jesus with us, now we pass it out further--we share our faith with other people who are waiting to receive the same fire we were first given. Some will be young children who are hearing it all for the first time. Some will be people who grew up in church and left their faith to wither on the vine or dwindle like old spent charcoal. Others will be people who have been burned before by people who weaponized their faith and used their torches to kick people out who didn't fit in or match expectations. And still others will be the ones with burning questions about the Big Things that have been waiting for someone to meet them in their curiosity without getting defensive or scolding them for their doubts.
In other words, you and I will always be sent outward to pass the light to people who have their wicks ready to receive it, again like the shared flame of candlelight on Christmas Eve radiating out from the center of the room and the flame of the Christ Candle. Being a follower of Jesus will always push us toward the margins, toward the edges, in that place between the familiar brightness of those who shared the light with us first and the new unseen places we cannot yet see or grasp. Being a follower of Jesus will always direct us toward the margins, in other words, to offer the same fire we have found compelling with others who seek the same warmth and radiance. And once again, we are back at that insight of Madeleine L'Engle: "We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."
That's today's work: to offer the light first given to you to the people around you. Not as arrogant know-it-alls who think the light is our invention; not as angry culture warriors who weaponize the flame to threaten or intimidate others with it; and not as inward-looking comfort seekers who only stay where the flames are already burning just fine. But rather, we take the same fire that was first kindled in us, the one whose story traces always the way back to the dancing tongues of flame as the Spirit blew through the room on Pentecost twenty centuries ago, and we pass it out, lavishly and extravagantly, to whatever wicks are around us, waiting for the light.
Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for the witness and words of those who shared your good news with us first, and we ask for the courage and love to share it with those you send across our path today.
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