First Congregational Church

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New Testament Reading–2 Timothy 4:1-8

This morning I thought I would tell a fictional story about a running group. While any resemblance to our church’s running group is purely coincidental, one could interpret the running group as a metaphor for a church. The story begins as follows…

Rick didn’t like to think of himself as being conventional, so he was disheartened to realize that he seemed to be suffering from a textbook case of midlife crises. He had begun his career in cancer research more than 20 years ago with high hopes that he would establish a name for himself in the field through his discoveries. What he had come to realize, however, was that his discoveries had instead paved the way for other people to make a name for themselves. His research had made their research possible, but they received all the recognition and adulation. As he turned toward the second half of his life, he felt a crises of meaning. He realized his career wasn’t going to give him the kind of fulfillment for which he had hoped, and he became haunted by the question of what he might be able to do during this next phase of his life that would bring him a sense of challenge and reward.

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Many years ago the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote a story that goes as follows: There was once a house in which lived three generations: a grandfather, a son and daughter-in-law, and a grandson. As the grandfather grew old, his body started to fail. He could no longer walk, see, or hear. His teeth were all gone, and so “when he ate, the food dripped from his mouth.” As these changes occurred, the son and daughter-in-law decided that they would no longer set a place for the old man at the dinner table. Instead, he would eat by himself in the back behind the stove. On one occasion, when his dinner was served in a cup, the cup fell and broke as he tried to move it. The daughter-in-law was quite upset over this. She grumbled about the grandfather breaking cups and ruining everything in their house. She decided that from then on the grandfather would be given his dinner in a dishpan. The grandfather didn’t speak in response. He simply let out a sigh.

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Some years ago I was taking a class in Spanish, and one of my classmates was curious about my background as a theological student. Very quickly she somehow got a whiff that my Christianity was different than hers and that I didn’t believe the entire Bible was the literal word of God. She accused me of having a wishy-washy faith. People could just believe and do whatever they wanted willy-nilly. The accusation stung me. I don’t like to think of myself as being wish-washy or flying through life by the seat of my pants. There was also the implication that anyone who is simply left to their own devices in figuring life out is a long ways from not only doing what’s right but also a long ways from God. While I knew her claims rang hallow and that I certainly had views and convictions that were well-considered and reasonable to have, I could also understand how her opinion made a lot of sense to her. She viewed the Bible as a kind of rulebook handed to us from God. Given this foundational belief it is logical that someone who believes in God would think there isn’t much of an option for what one should do. From her point of view, she held God’s moral trump card and all else was human folly. For her, the Bible defined Christian ethics in a very rigid and exact way that rose above all scrutiny.

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