Sun. July 26, 2009 (Helen Rose Pauls)

Helen Rose Pauls, speaking on 1 Timothy 4:1-16, gave us food for thought about our food, both good and bad food, fruits of the spirit, and noted that everything created by God is good. She introduced us to myths and facts about farming and where our food comes from and how it is marketed to us as something other than it is. She noted the ethics of farming are no different than the ethics of living, and our fresh and varied diet due to agribusiness should reflect our fresh and varied spiritual life as reflected in our godly living. Yet does it? Helen Rose favours backyard flocks in Vancouver as a way to engage people more personally with their food, and provide jobs as backyard veterinarians for her kids. People of a certain age born on the farm were raised with the 100-yard diet, but we should never count on raising all our own food these days. Similarly, our spiritual life ought to be larger than a 100-yard circle. How do we relate to our neighbours? Paul encourages Timothy with spiritual food, speaking of balance and spiritual strength, to be an ethical role model to serve and lead the church. Don’t argue doctrine - live it. Moral guidance is necessary, but how you give it is at least as important. Helen Rose noted the tremendous impact that mothers and grandmothers have on children as Eunice and Lois did on Timothy’s upbringing. Helen Rose outlined the spirit of ubuntu, learned while on a MCC tour of Swaziland, where AIDS coexists with the jacarandas in bloom. Ubuntu is that sharing and communion between us all, a compassionate willingness to share, celebrating the sacredness of all life, where the community faces hardship and deprivation with resilience. God asks no more of us than ubuntu, to walk, as Micah asks, humbly with Him. [AP] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, July 26th, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.

Sun. July 19, 2009 (Connie Siedler)

Connie Siedler continued our Timothy series by discussing the qualifications of church leaders (1 Timothy 3). The letter to Timothy is directed against false teachers, and describes the qualities and characteristics of sound leaders. These qualities include being temperate, having self-control, monogamy, an excellent reputation in the community and having the ability to teach. The characteristics of leaders are described, but this is not a detailed job description. Keeping hold of the mystery of faith and having a clear conscience are important. The expectation of Godly living is mentioned and this continues to be a challenge and something difficult to define. The idea of constant living with a spirit of generosity best describes what is needed in pursuing the “mystery of godliness.” (HN) Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, July 19th, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.

Sun. July 12, 2009 (J. Evan Kreider)

Evan Kreider dealt with the difficult texts found in 1 Timothy 2. Noting that the authorship of the Timothy letters is uncertain, Evan pointed out that content is often more important than authorship. Emperor worship in the 2nd century was strong and Christians were told to pray for but not to their political leaders. The writer silences women; they were second-class citizens - a position that would have found support from Romans and Greeks of that day. No one knows how much damage this passage has caused the Christian community over the centuries. Many churches ignore the order for women to remain silent just as we ignore Biblical injunctions about slavery. We need to view this passage as directed at a specific situation and, unfortunately, we don’t know what that situation was. Many churches follow Paul’s endorsement of Phoebe as a deaconess (Romans 16) and encourage women to use their God–given gifts to serve others. Evan expressed appreciation for women who have taught and influenced him. In viewing the totality of Scripture and how culture influences the church, we need to follow Paul’s direction in Galatians: in Christ we are all one; there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female [HN] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, July 12th, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.

Sun. July 5, 2009 (Henry Neufeld)

Henry spoke on 1 Timothy 1. The "Paul" in this letter rails against false teachings but we unfortunately are not told what those teachings were, and that would be interesting. The writer then decries dwelling on godless myths, endless genealogies (tracing your ancestry back to Adam, the very thing the Gospel according to St Matthew does for the ancestry of Jesus), and 'getting lost in a wilderness of words'. Stressing the importance of grace and mercy, the writer notes that he was the 'worst of sinners', yet was loved and used by God. Well, how do we identify false teachings? Luther and the Anabaptists, for example, were accused of false teaching but are now viewed as being ahead of their time. Sound teaching (in 1 Timothy) encourages us to love and help people, yet the author (chapter 1.20) publicly turns two people over to Satan, which hardly seems Christ-like to us, unless this simply implies expelling them from the fellowship until they change. What these snippets from 1 Tim 1 reveal is that as the church continued to grow in the 2nd century, it faced serious challenges, and a few of these were thought serious enough to be addressed, even if only briefly, by this writer. [JEK] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, July 5th, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.