When I was growing up, I have distinct memories of going to my grandparent’s church in Northern Minnesota. Yes, we were often there for Christmas and Easter, but we also spent a decent amount of time there during summer weekends too. In many ways, it became my second church home. It was the church where my grandparents had gone my entire life, where my mother grew up, and even where my parents got married. It was one of our family churches; we’ve got a big family though, so we’ve got lots of family churches across Minnesota especially, which was lucky for one of my Seminary classmates who got a call to one of those and now gets to spend time with my relatives every week! But, being one of the family churches, it held a lot of significant memories.
For those of you who were here for my ordination/my first Sunday, you know that my mom and I look very similar; it’s clear whose kid I am, as people always say. And, one of the most distinct memories I have from going to my grandparent’s church, was how the pastor always got a good chuckle when he would see my grandma, my mom, my older sister, and I all sitting in a pew and he would comment on how he could tell which family we were all from. He thought he was being funny, but really we hear it a lot since all the women in our family look the same. All joking aside though, I came to really value that connection of my faith with my grandmother’s and my mother’s, as they were my earliest teachers of the Christian life.
While I often want to have an argument with Paul, today’s letter to Timothy is not one of those times. It is touching to hear Paul’s care for Timothy, and to hear him acknowledge that it is difficult to be away from his communities. Whether it was imprisonment or traveling to other towns, Paul really didn’t get to spend much time with the communities he helped pastor to, and I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. He has to miss out on so much of the daily life of his community, yet, he still cares for them and recalls them to their work for the Gospel’s sake. Paul doesn’t go to these communities telling people that he is the only one that can lead, but he empowers his communities to speak out and us their voices too for the proclamation of the Gospel.
One of the other things I love about Paul’s letter this week is that he understands the value of faith in community, that this is not an individual activity, but it is learned and lived out with the people among us. I think about today’s Gospel parable, in which Jesus is reminding the disciples that they are not the ones in charge, but they are in fact workers, in this case for the sake of the gospel. There is importance in the plural, because we do not go through life or our faith journeys alone. Instead, we work together to support one another during our lifetimes. We do not do the work of the Gospel alone.
I’ve been thinking about that togetherness in faith in relation to the mustard seed and moving the mulberry tree that we also hear in today’s Gospel (Luke 17: 6). I have always heard this talked about from an individual faith perspective, but what if it is referring to the collective faith of the group. One person might not be able to move a mulberry tree, but several people might be able to, if they really wanted to! We do not, nor do we have to, live out our faith alone, instead our faith grows through community. Whether that is learning from Scripture, from other peoples’ faith stories, or from our families, we are surrounded by other peoples’ experiences of God and the world, and it shapes our faith in the process.
Paul was onto something when he notes that Timothy’s faith first lived “in your grandmother Lois, then in your mother Eunice, and now, I’m certain, in you as well” (2 Timothy 1:5). Not only does he understand the ways faith can be passed down through families, but he also acknowledges the faith of the women in Timothy’s life, which I think is absolutely beautiful. Despite what Scripture and other Christians like to tell us, it is not just the faith of the Patriarchs that matter. All expressions of faith are valid, not just those that were written down and deemed to be “correct” throughout history. By expanding this further, Paul acknowledges the work that God is doing in the world, in and through all of us.
While I learned about faith from my father too, I was deeply influenced by the faith of my mother and grandmother. Partially because my mother was my Sunday school teacher for most of my life, but also because of those distinct memories of being in church together with my grandma, mom, and sister, as the pastor commented on how he could tell which family we were from. Even though I was often annoyed by comments like that as a kid, in reading Paul’s letter to Timothy this week, I have come to realize that those repeated comments have helped create a stronger, more tangible connection between my faith and my families’ faith. We inhabited those spaces together, not individually, but as a family unit learning about faith together. After all, had they not encouraged my faith when I was growing up, maybe I would have been building bridges or studying ocean life instead of serving as your pastor. Yet, it was also others who I have come to know that helped get me here today too. And, sometimes, my faith was shaped by unexpected people and experiences along the way.
When I was in college, I took my first course on the topic of interfaith engagement. As a part of that course, we read a book called Faithiest by Chris Stedman. Throughout the course of the book, Stedman talks about what it means for him to be an atheist, especially one that doesn’t hate other faiths, but acknowledges that they are not for him. Throughout the course of reading his book, I came to think a lot about my own faith, which I was wrestling with at the time, as I tried to figure out what it meant for me to be both gay and Christian. When it came time for our final project, one of the options was to write a letter to one of the authors that we read. Naturally, I chose Stedman. And, conveniently, my professor noted that she had his email, and thus had me send my letter to him. And, by letter, I mean a ten-page final paper for class! But, he read it and he responded, and we proceeded communicate as we worked together in the interfaith field, all the while we never actually met in person. Until yesterday when he was in Seattle for a book event for his new book about what it means to live real lives in the digital age! But, like Paul’s letter to Timothy, I learned so much from him, even when we had never met in person. I don’t know how my life and my faith would have looked different if I didn’t encounter his book when I did, but I do know that my life would have been different. We never know who it is that are going to be the people who help us along our faith journey. Instead we get to love the uniqueness of our world and the beauty of learning from one another across time and space; after all it’s part of why I so deeply appreciate our theology of the communion of saints. We get to constantly be learning and be shaped by the communities around us.
So, keep sharing your stories of faith, even when it feels like you don’t have the right words to talk about it. And, just as importantly, listen to others’ stories too, because we can never know all the ways that God is speaking to us or who God is speaking to through us. Yet, I am certain that God is still speaking to us, in and among community with one another. May we open our ears and hearts to those who God is sending to accompany us on our faith journeys, knowing that they may be with us in person, or they may only be someone that we know about from books and the internet, but God is inhabiting that space too.