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2 Timothy 1:1-14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

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.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, and this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day the deposit I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

We go from 1 Timothy to 2 Timothy this week, but we are in for something completely different. 1 Timothy was to Timothy, yes, but it was really to the group of Christians whom Timothy would be guiding— rules, advice, standards to live by, some good and moral, some hierarchal, not super in line with the true roots of Christianity. But today, we get the beginning of a letter that is really and truly written for and to a single person. It is personal, it is genuine, and it is emotional. And this is because the author, purporting to be Paul, but likely a different prisoner in the name of Christ believes death to be imminent. So this letter is not-Paul passing the torch to a new leader— and he seems to be passing it to someone who might be on shaky ground right now, someone who might be a little scared.

Remember your faithful mother and grandmother, Paul tells Timothy, and use their memory, and my encouragement to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you.” The recipient of this letter (called Timothy, but again, likely not the actual apostle Timothy) is having a crisis of faith. In verse 4, Paul recalls his tears, and hopes he will soon be filled with joy again. We don’t know exactly why Timothy is weeping, but we can assume it has something to do with the shame and the uncertainty of Paul being imprisoned. “Do not be ashamed…of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner…”. This is really the theme of this letter—don’t be ashamed of your faith. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that I’m in prison for our faith’s cause. Stay strong, “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather, a spirit of love…”.

Surely this was a frightening time for Timothy. His mentor, this man who seems to be a father-figure, may soon not be on this earth anymore, and he must carry on the work in the midst of persecution, in the midst of confusing and dueling ideologies and competing theologies. And he must be prepared to suffer for all this, as his mentor is suffering… his mentor who, it would seem, may be put to death soon.

While these particular circumstances are dire, the description of a true martyr’s life coming to an end and passing the torch to a movement’s next leader, we all know something about needing to have faith during difficult times—whether on a personal level, in dealing with grief or mental or physical illnesses, or on a larger scale, worrying about our country in turmoil or the world as a whole. It’s easy these days, in times of division and hatred to lose our faith—whether that be our faith in an all-loving God, or our faith in our fellow humans. I have to wonder if Timothy is struggling with both. In that golden age of early Christianity, when the first apostles were evangelizing and worshipping, they believed Jesus’ second coming to be imminent, they believed paradise on earth was just around the corner. But as time went on, as people waited and waited for what had been promised, many lost faith. Many realized that when Jesus said, “…about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only God,” that the day and hour could be a long ways away. So faith in God was probably running thin amongst many Christians— and surely faith in humanity as well. Persecution and imprisonment are to be expected when you’re openly worshipping in a new and suspect belief system under an oppressive government; plus there are warring factions and troubling fractures even within the Jesus movement itself. It’s not wonder Timothy is in tears. It’s no wonder his faith needs to be rekindled. So Paul, even from prison, looking death in the face, tells him: “join me in suffering for the gospel…”; “Hold to the standard of sound teaching… in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” He’s showing the strength one is capable of having with a faith in Christ, and a faith that a better world is possible, even if it’s not one he will see in his lifetime.

There’s been a conversation that’s been going viral and really making the rounds, at least in my bubble of the internet, between political commentator and journalist Ezra Klein and the author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. The conversation came to be as a response to Klein’s kind of fawning, in my (and Coates’) opinion, white-washing op-ed about the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk, versus the realistic and stark vision of the life of a man spent denigrating people of color, women, immigrants, the list goes on. The conversation between Coats and Klein was civil, and it also eye-opening to how different each man’s view of that murder, and this country as a whole, in spite of being both, in theory, on the same side of the aisle. At one point towards the beginning of the conversation, Klein asks Coates, “Why are we losing?” Coates responds, “We’re losing because there are always moments when we lose.” Klein’s kneejerk reaction to this is to say, “…that feels very fatalistic to me.” I had a gut reaction to Klein’s response there—I thought, ‘How is that fatalistic? Isn’t it just a fact of life that sometimes, while we’re still trucking along in this broken world, waiting and working for an earth as it is in heaven, there will be good times and bad times, times of feast and times of famine, times of plenty and times of want. But Coates then patiently and beautifully explains where he’s coming from:

I have a tradition, I have ancestry, I have heritage. What that means is that I do whatever I do within the time that I have in my life, whatever I’m gifted with, and much of what I do is built on what other people did before them.

Then, after that, I leave the struggle where I leave it, and hopefully, it’s in a better place. Oftentimes it’s not. That’s the history in fact. And then my progeny, they pick it up, and they keep going.

He goes on to say that he, as a Black American, is “descended from people who, in their lifetime, fought with all their might for the destruction of chattel slavery in this country. And they never saw it… they died in defeat.”[i] And I, having read a decent amount of Coates’ work, I sometimes do find him to be a little too cynical, a little too pessimistic; I didn’t find that pessimism in this conversation. This is a man who sees the truth of the situation, who sees the reality of the world around him, who knows that it is very possible, that he will leave this planet in a worse state than it was when he was born, and yet—he continues to speak truth, he continues to fight, he continues to have faith in the people who will come after him that the fight continue.

Jane Goodall, the groundbreaking primatologist and anthropologist died last week at the age of 91, so naturally there were plenty of articles and videos and quotes floating around. But one quote that I saw that really stayed me in was very simple. It was Goodall talking about hope, as she did often, and saying, “We don’t want to bring children into a world where from the very beginning they believe everything is hopeless.” Even when things are bad, even when we’re losing, there has to be hope and motivation and faith to keep fighting the good fight. As mom to Frankie, I have to face the reality on a daily basis that Frankie might have to fight for rights and autonomy that should be givens. I am prepared to apologize to her for that, but I am also prepared to make sure she is prepared—for her to know her worth, her faith, and for her to believe in the real possibility of a better world. I am not prepared for her to be hopeless. Because it’s when our progeny, it’s when the people who come after us don’t pick up where we left off, that’s when all is lost.  

That’s why 2 Timothy is such a deeply personal and emotional letter. Paul is begging Timothy, a protégée and a de facto son, to not lose faith in spite of his beloved mentor and father-figure Paul being jailed and facing a death sentence; in spite of the possibility that the same fate could await him; in spite of the dysfunction and tumult even within his own faith community. It’s a big ask to keep the faith in times so chaotic and precarious, especially with the pressure of not only a father-figure, but also your ancestors before you, whom Paul invokes to emphasize the importance of Timothy to keep the faith. Timothy can’t let Paul down. He can’t let his mother or grandmother down, women who were Jewish-Christians, who helped to herald this new and beautiful Jesus movement fruition.

At Bible Study, the conversation went all sorts of ways, as it often does, and it at first seemed like we were getting off-topic; but as we continued our discussion we realized that what we were talking about was in fact very relevant to this passage—because we were talking about ways to stay hopeful, to fend off despair during these frightening and tumultuous times, which was ultimately what Paul was instructing Timothy to do. And the way to do that, is to do what we can, where we can, which means—do what you can here at Church, in Hartland, the Upper Valley, Vermont. It’s far too easy to fall into despair when we think about troops being pointlessly and violently deployed in Portland, Oregon for instance, or when we think of the war raging in Gaza—not to say we should pretend those things aren’t happening, of course—but in order to keep hope alive, and to stay strong in our faith, we have to act our faith out when and where we can. That might mean putting in some time at the food shelf, joining a church committee, joining some sort of club, finding some way to be with people in community, and doing the work together. It also means remembering the work that those came before us have done to get us here, and it means to continue that work—the work of community and togetherness, the work of compassion and peace. That’s how we stave of despair and hopelessness—with connecting to one another and continuing that connective work of all the faithful, civic and community-minded people who came before us.

And maybe the first thing we can do is encourage one another—we can encourage our peers, our students, our kids, our nieces and nephews; encourage anyone who is walking alongside you in this life, or anyone that will come after you. Invite them into community. Make it crystal clear that they can be a powerful force of love in this world, and that no matter how bad things seem, there will always be work to be done—the righteous and hold work of love and peace, and of joy and freedom. And the work is that of liberation—working towards a freedom from the kind of violence and hate that is being espoused by those in the highest levels of power; working towards a freedom that is only possible with the encouragement and hope of one another—a freedom, for us, as followers of Jesus, that is possible thanks to Christ’s work of salvation and capital-L Love.

“Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus,” charges Paul— a lesson in a post-truth world of disinformation that we must be encouraged by, and that we may encourage others with, in turn. May we all look upon the work that must be done with a clear and sober mind, not shying away from the harsh realities of all; may we never be ashamed of our faith and of the Love it represents; may we never, ever lose hope; and may we continue to remind all those who walk alongside us, and all those who come after us that an earth as it is in heaven is still possible. Amen.

[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html