Whose Faith?

Whose Faith?
Today is World Communion Sunday which is the day around the world where churches of all denominations take communion…It’s a reminder to all of us that no matter what denomination the church that we go to, we are all a part of the Body of Christ…That we are all connected, we are all one in ministry despite all of our differences…Even though we may not believe all of the same things, we all believe in the same Triune God, God—three-in-one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…
The letter from Paul in 1 Timothy is often viewed as the beginning of a “farewell discourse” or one of his final letters before he faced his own death. It is believed that Paul was close to his death and that he knew it and so chose to write letters to the churches and people that he met and nurtured along the way. There are words in this letter like “remember,” “charge,” “hold on”…As though Paul knows that he won’t be with them much longer and needs to get somethings out before that happens…This letter is to Timothy, one of the people that he met along his journey and nurtured him in the faith of Jesus Christ.
Paul tells Timothy that he worships God freely and with a clear conscience just as his ancestors did…Before Paul became a Christian, he was probably a Pharisee…The first time that we encounter Paul he was holding the coats for the people as they stoned Stephen to death…Stephen was the first person killed for being a Christian, or the first martyr…Paul was very strong in his faith as a Pharisee, as a Jewish man…Paul’s reminder that his ancestors worshiped God connects him not only to the Christians, but also to the Jewish people…One in ministry to all the world…
Paul continues to write to Timothy and tells him that he remembers the faith of his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice…Paul reminds Timothy of his past…That his mother and grandmother were believers in Jesus also…When Paul sees Timothy, he’s reminded of these women and their faith…
At the last UMW meeting, we shared people who had been helpful to us along our faith journey…Can you think of someone that you have encountered along your way who has helped to nurture you in your faith? These people that nurtured us in the faith are important especially as we remember them and what they mean to us…Sometimes they are still with us and other times they have passed on…There’s nothing that says that these people need to be a certain age, older or younger….Take a couple of minutes and turn to the person sitting next to you and share about that person for you...(wait about 3-5 minutes)…
Have you ever thought of the people who have nurture you in your faith before you knew them…Or maybe the ones who have nurtured you in your faith and you’ll never meet them? Certainly faith of people like Paul or the other disciples are ones that we won’t physically meet, but we get to know through the pages of Scripture…They’ve nurtured us in faith as they’ve kept the stories of Jesus circulating and kept telling people about Jesus and about their faith even as the persecutions were happening and Christians were being killed for the faith…People who were influencing and nurturing our faith without us knowing them…
Did you know that you nurtured my faith before I came here? 7 years ago I attended an event called Exploration which is a national conference for United Methodist students in high school and college who are feeling a calling into ministry…This conference lasts a weekend the last Exploration event in 2006 there were 860 students who attended and 200 made a commitment to take the next step in pursuing ordination…At Exploration 2000, I made that same commitment…So, how did you nurture my faith through this event? This event is funded through apportionment dollars…By paying our apportionments we are helping to nurture the faith of 860 students and giving them the encouragement to take the next step in pursuing a career in ministry…Did you realize that we were nurturing people in the faith like that?
But beyond large events and groups within the United Methodist Church that function on a large level, there are also the events that happen on a local or conference level…Did you know that you continued to nurture my faith and helped me pursue my calling? I received scholarships both from the larger United Methodist Church, but also specifically through the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church…Without these scholarships, I wouldn’t have been able to complete seminary…Which means that I wouldn’t be standing here this morning…These scholarships were made possible by churches like ours paying their apportionments…Did you realize that you were nurturing people in their faith without ever meeting them?
It’s something that we do without even really thinking about it…I would imagine that most of us don’t see someone and think about how we can nurture their faith…Maybe we do think that whenever we see someone…Maybe it’s just so inside of us that we just do it without realizing…For the people that you talked about that nurture you in your faith—do you think that they knew that they were nurturing you? Do you think that they woke up in the morning and thought “How can I help this person in their faith today?” or do you think that they just did it?
The truth is that the things that have happened to us in our past, whatever that past may be have helped to shape us into who we are today. Those people that we encountered along our way, both that we know and those that we don’t have helped to get us where we are today…And it’s probably just as important to point out that there have been people along our way who have been discouraging to us…Those people who have been negative influences…And those people may also be people that we know or people that we don’t know…And just as we have been nurturing to people, there have probably been times when we have been discouraging to someone else as well…
Paul is reminding Timothy about those who have nurtured him in his faith, while at the same time acknowledging that there are those who will discourage…For Paul it was a literal death, but for others that discouraging can lead to a spiritual death or a lack of belief…For most people who claim not to have a church connection or a belief in God at all, they have had a negative experience with someone in a church or an entire church…Brennan Manning, author, pastor and theologian has said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” Whose faith are we nurturing that we don’t even realize? I recently received a joke about a driver who was cut off in traffic and coming up to a stoplight, the driver who had been cut off started honking at the car in front and screaming and yelling and swearing and causing a big scene…A police officer pulled up on the scene and immediately pulled the driver out of the car and began to arrest them…The driver got upset and said, “Why are you arresting me? The other driver is the one who is driving terribly and will hurt someone else.” The police officer said that he noticed the Christian bumper stickers on the car and heard the driver swearing and threatening, so figured that the car must be stolen.” Whose faith are we nurturing without even knowing it?
At some point in the journey, a person accepts their faith as their own…Because of someone else they were introduced to their faith and are continued to be nurtured, but at some point we all have made the decision to believe…That’s what Paul reminds Timothy as well…That he is reminded of the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother, but he sees it in Timothy as well…As a result of the nurturing of Timothy, he accepted his faith as his own and made the decision to continue to grow. Timothy didn’t worship or have faith because his mother and grandmother told him to, but because he believed for himself…Those people that nurtured us along our way…Maybe we started to have faith because they told us to, but at some point we began to believe for ourselves…And in believing for ourselves, we live our lives that way…
We don’t pay our apportionments because we’ve been told to…Although that is part of being a United Methodist Church…But we pay our apportionments to be faithful…Because we are nurturing someone in their faith without them knowing it…We are encouraging someone along their journey and we may never physically meet them…If Paul didn’t write letters because he thought that people he didn’t know would read them, where would we be? Whose faith are we nurturing without realizing it?
We are nurturing others’ faith a lot more than we realize it…Maybe it’s the cashier at the store, the car that cuts us off in traffic, or the person sitting next to us this morning…whose faith are we nurturing? How are we helping people to accept their faith as their own? We do it more than we know…
The charge can seem big and hard to do…Because there are times that we have a bad day or we wake up crabby or we accidentally hurt someone…There’s a song by the Christian group, dc Talk called What if I Stumble, Toby Mackeen wrote the song but has said that it shouldn’t really be titled “What if?” when “When I”…One of the verses says, “What if I stumble? I hear you whispering my name…you say, my love for you will never change…” There’s grace when we stumble and faith…There’s grace that helps us to pick back up and continue on…There’s grace that covers all of our mistakes…There’s grace that nurtures us in our faith without us even realizing it…
Beginning this week, in the back of the sanctuary and downstairs there are some study guides…Don’t be scared by the idea of a “study guide,” but look at it as a way to continue to be nurtured in faith this week…A way to be able to continue to reflect, refresh, and renew…A way to continue to believe and accept your faith as your own…