“Lessons From Grandmother”

2 Timothy 1:1-14

October 5, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I would like to invite us into a couple of scenes of our lives this morning. The first one might require you to wade through a lot of time and a thousand memories to get to it, but I know that you can do it. For this first scene, I want you to go back to when you were just a little kid. Are you there yet? Do you need a better time reference? Let’s say that you are four or five or six years old. Push back all the memories, the good ones and the bad ones, to get there. Now here is what I want you to do, I want you to imagine that you are at your grandmother’s house. I wish that you could see what I just saw when I said that last sentence. You should have seen the smiles that suddenly appeared on your faces when I mentioned grandma, grandmother, M, Gee-Gee, Mimi, or whatever it is that you call your parents’ mothers. Now there is not time for all of us to share all of the memories of what being in grandmother’s house was like.

Since I am the pastor of this church, have a microphone in front of me, and brought up the scene in your mind in the first place, I think that I will share a memory or two of my grandmother this morning. Some of you had to make a choice when you started thinking about your grandparents. Some of you had to decide which grandmother’s house you were going to be in. I did not have to make that choice. By the time I came along, only my father’s mother was still living. So let’s go to her house, in Conway, at 1133 Clifton Street, just a block up from the Methodist Church. Now, we have done this sort of thing in sermons before and so you know how it works. Somehow, through the power of our imaginations, we will all be able to fit into her house comfortably and see the things that I would like for us to see. So let’s walk up her driveway and climb the steps to her backdoor. Really, it is not so much the house that I want us to experience this morning as it is the things that happen inside of it. I can remember spending the night in this house of her’s, all by myself, without my brother and sister being there. I can remember sitting in the small den, a sitting room really, just off the kitchen, and playing dominoes with my grandmother and when I was tired of that, I can remember sitting in her lap, in her rocking chair, while she read one of my favorite books to me. I can remember that when it was time for us to go to bed, we would go back into her bedroom. I would have on my pjs and my grandmother would tuck me in. Later she would climb into bed and sleep on the other side of it. She learned after the first time that we slept in the bed that I was a wild sleeper, that I tossed and turned. I still remember that the second night I slept at her house, my grandmother pulled out several blankets, put them in between the two of us. Really it was more like a wall. It was built so that I could not climb over it. Come morning, when I woke up, I could smell the aroma of toast and by the time I arrived at the table, there was a bowl of Special K waiting for me.

I can remember being at her house on Thanksgiving evening with my sister and my brother and my uncle and aunt and cousins and a dining room table full of hot rolls and a perfectly browned turkey. I can remember all of us bowing our heads, but it was her, usually, who prayed. After the meal I can remember being in her living room, sitting next to the fire, that really was not a fire. It was logs with a light behind them, but it was a big deal for me to light the fire. I can remember those rare occasions when I was in town on Sundays. When your dad is a choir director, you have to be home on Sundays. So, I did not often go to church with my grandmother. But I can remember being there, sitting beside her in her pew, helping her hold a hymnal and singing a hymn about our faith and watching her as her preacher stood in his pulpit and preached. My grandmother is not around here these days. She died shortly after I went to seminary, but these memories of mine about her, well, they will live a lifetime. I hope that what happened while I shared my memories, you thought about your own. Did you do that? I know that not everyone has a great experience with their folks, but I have only met one, maybe two, who did not have a wonderful grandmother.

Well, that is the first scene. Now I would like for us to move to the second one. This one won’t be as pleasant. I think that I will punt in giving you a personal example of mine. Here is what I want you to imagine in the second scene: a time in your life when living was not easy. A time when your stomach was in knots. A time when your hopes seemed to be dashed. A time when your job was hard or your marriage was hard or your kids seemed impossible and you really thought about invoking the privilege that you had said a hundred times, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!” Or a time when you just thought about packing it all up and quitting. You have thought about doing that before, haven’t you? You have thought about just going home, laying on the couch and staying there for a while, haven’t you? I am sorry to bring it up, but you now have that scene in your minds, don’t you?

Well, I started our sermon by asking you to be a part of a couple of scenes of your own lives. Now I would like to invite you to be a part of someone else’s life. I would like to invite you to be a part of a scene of young Timothy’s life. Now you will know this, most of the letters that we have in our New Testament are written by Paul and intended to be circulated among the churches. There are some exceptions to that, of course. The letter that we looked at last week, the letter of James, was not written by Paul or intended for many churches. It’s audience was one church. And then there is this second letter to Timothy, written by Paul, but intended only for him. What is going on in Timothy’s life that he needs such a personal and powerful letter?

There are some things that we know about Timothy. We know that he was recruited by Paul on his second missionary journey. We know that his hometown was Lystra. We know that from reading the sixteenth chapter of the book of Acts. Luke tells us, in Acts, that young Timothy was well spoken of in his hometown, a town whose population was around one hundred. It was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone else. My guess is that you couldn’t walk up and down the streets of Lystra without knowing everyone that you passed. Young Timothy left that town, followed Paul, and Paul sent him to help clean up a mess or two in the churches of Ephesus. Going from Lystra to Ephesus might be like going from Mulberry, Arkansas to Dallas, Texas, from a population of one hundred people to one of two hundred and fifty thousand people.

Timothy had never seen anything like Ephesus before. There were temples to gods and goddesses on every street. On every street corner, there are philosophers talking at the top of their lungs about what they believe. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul had encouraged him with these words, “Let no one despise your youth.” Timothy heard that, but he finds himself trying to get churches in line who think that he is just a kid, while he himself wants to please everyone and tries to avoid any controversies. And if all of that is not bad enough, the one who recruited him for his work, the one he believed in the most, is in prison with little hope of getting out. And all around him the church is being persecuted. Opposition is hot and fierce. And here is Timothy, trying to stay true to what he has been taught, and teaching that to others, in the midst of a town where anything is taught and preachers say what others want to hear. I think that Timothy must have thought about high tailing it out of town, and returning to the town that spoke well of him.

I would have liked to have been there when Paul’s letter arrived. I would have liked to have seen Timothy break the seal, and pull his mentor’s words out of it’s envelope. I would have liked to have seen the tears start to form in his eyes as he read Paul’s words, “I am grateful to God...when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears...” I guess these tears weren’t Timothy’s only tears. “I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” You will know this, mentors, those who support us in life, their words, when they come are powerful and have the chance of changing us. There are no powerful words than encouraging words. And here are the words of a seasoned friend, now in jail, to a young pastor, just starting out.

Church, you might want to thank my dad, the next time that you see him, for my being your minister. In the fall of 1990 I went to Dallas, to seminary. I had never, really, been away from home. I went to college in my hometown. One week, my then girlfriend and now wife, Susie, and my parents helped me move into a dormitory at Southern Methodist University. The next day they were in the car on their way to Tennessee. Four days later, after three days worth of classes, I was ready to quit. My faith had already been shaken to it’s core. It was not a letter, but it was a phone call from my dad, my mentor, one of my heroes, who, if he had hinted that I could quit and come home, I would have. But instead he built me up with words. I am sure that they were these words, “John, you know that you can do this. You’ve got a firm foundation. You’re smart. You can do anything that you set your mind to doing!”

It was not a phone call, though I suspect that if a phone had been available to Paul, he might have used it. And the words weren’t my dad’s words, but it was these words, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure lives also in you.” By this time, Timothy is a third generation Christian. There was something in his grandmother that she passed on to her daughter, that she passed on to her son, this son, Timothy. Paul was convinced that this faith was in young Timothy, that his faith was taught and caught and was inside of him. It was his heritage. It was not like the family whose grandmother died and at the reading of the will heard these words, “Being of sound mind, I spent all that I had before I died.” No, Timothy’s grandmother and mother left him a faith heritage. They passed it down to him. And here is Paul reminding Timothy to rekindle the gift of God that is inside of him. The words here really mean to fan the flames of his faith as one might fan the flames of a campfire in the morning after it has burned all night, to ignite it again. And what is this gift of God that is inside Timothy? Well, it’s the gift that is given to pastors at ordination services. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit. I can still remember the power of hands being on my head and shoulders when I was ordained. It was a powerful feeling that I have a hard time describing. Paul reminds Timothy that he laid his hands on him and because of the Spirit he can do anything. “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but one of power and love and self discipline.

Now, before we go home this morning, I simply want to say this to you. These words of Paul to Timothy aren’t just for him and they aren’t reserved for bishops to use at ordination services. They are intended for all of us, everyone of us, who finds ourselves overwhelmed and bewildered and conquered and flabbergasted. They are here to remind us of a faith that is somehow down deep, sometimes buried, but always there.

We opened our sermon at my grandmother’s house, let me close in her nursing home room, the last time that I saw her alive. She had a stroke or two and couldn’t talk. All that she could do was to pat you and say one word, the word was “well.” Her eyes lit up when my mom and dad and I walked into her room. I wasn’t five any more and we weren’t in her house, but she gave me a gift I’ll never forget. Unable to speak, my uncle, a Methodist preacher, started singing the hymn Amazing Grace. We all sang it. I looked down at my grandmother who had not said a word in months, sing, by heart, everyone of it’s words. I often think about that when the fires of my faith are low. For this reason, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to my grandmother, Nora Fleming Roane, for the heritage and example she passed down to me. Thanks also to my grandfather, Louis Henderson Moore, and my aunt, Julia Lee Moore. You have given me a heritage. Thanks also to my dad who always gave encouraging words when I needed them the most). .