Standing Under the Scriptures
October 17, 2010

Readings for Standing Under the Scriptures class, Pentecost+21, 10/17/10
Looking back at 2 Timothy 2.3-15 and Luke 17.11-19

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

NOTE: For the next three Sundays, October 24 and 31 and November 7, I will be away on my annual visit to the UK. But I am not leaving you orphaned even for that time, although it may not be quite the Comforter that I will send you. Instead, for the 24th and 31st our friend BJ Buracker has graciously undertaken to be in the library during the 9 o’clock hour or most of it. He will not present a formal program. Instead he will respond to questions, especially on biblical matters, that may be on your minds. I look on this not as a stop-gap but as a special opportunity, for you and perhaps also for him. On November 7 perhaps you can carry on for yourselves. I will be back, the Lord willing, on November 14.

Our readings for this Sunday are:

2 Timothy 3.14-4.5: The lectionary afforded the option of the account of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel in Genesis. But this 2 Timothy passage contains particularly memorable verses: concerning the functions of Scripture and the propensity to stray from sound teaching.

Luke 18.1-8: Jesus tells the parable of the importunate widow to convey the value of praying without ceasing.

There was that with which moved us in both our readings for last Sunday. The second brought us near even to conversion.

Continuing with our reading of 2 Timothy (2.3-15), we found it still to accord with our hypothesis that it was intended to fortify a leader and his church against opposition and persecution, impending or actual. As examples of appropriate stances in the face of it, it cites the willingness of a soldier on service to accept suffering and his concern to avoid outside entanglements, the need for an athlete to compete according to the rules of the contest, and the hard work of the farmer if he is to deserve the first share of the crop. A further example is Paul’s endurance of imprisonment for the sake of the gospel of Christ, risen from the dead and descended from David (in affirmation of both his lordship and his continuity with Old Testament tradition.)

This is followed by a remarkable hymn, probably pre-existing and thus already familiar to the letter’s readers rather than composed for it.

If we have died with Christ, we shall also live with him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with him,
If we deny him, he also will deny us.
If we are faithfulness, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

We could see the special meaning of the hymn for early Christians as they underwent persecution and other afflictions, For it assures them of living and reigning with Christ by virtue of their enduring, even dying, while cautioning against forfeiture of their prize through denial of him. Indeed, it conveys the same assurance to us in our difficulties and distresses. Regarding the hymn’s final verse, we had some discussion of how it could be that Christ remains faithful to us even when we are unfaithful to him. We concluded that this is because even when we fail to accept his salvation, we remain under his dominion as part of the world that he came to save. For him to regard us otherwise would therefore by in conflict with his essential nature and thus a denial of himself. I noted that this in fact is the view of the matter taken by Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics.

Our second reading was the account, peculiar to Luke (17.11-19), of Jesus’ cleansing of the ten lepers who met him, only one of whom returned to thank him. We were not inclined to pass judgment on the other nine, for in them we could see our own consistent failure to give thanks to the Lord for the benefits conferred on us. At the same time we recognized that it was the leper who returned who was healed in spirit as well as in body and thus truly made whole. Perhaps it was the fact, noted by Jesus, that he was a Samaritan and therefore of lesser status that opened him to full commitment to Jesus, amounting to his conversion. It was a matter not so much of his being brought under a different management, as we heard on Sunday, as of his coming under the true management, that which governs the world, in place of being left to the powers of darkness and chaos abroad in it. Only under this management is there real freedom, paradoxical as this may seem. It means, further, being brought to eternal life, than which there can be no greater joy. In the light of the Samaritan leper’s blessedness, we could not but wish to repent of our own ingratitude to the Lord and so be brought to conversion ourselves.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted