Summer Series on the Pastoral Epistles
1st Timothy 3, 4
27 June 2010


Last week we began our summer series on the Pastoral Epistles … 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus … and, later, the book of James … by jumping headfirst into the first two chapters of 1st Timothy.  And boy, did we get in some deep water!  Those verses … indicating the wish of the author that women would be excluded from any kind of leadership in the church … over the centuries, they have brought discussion, dissension, arguments, hard feelings, church fights, and church splits.  
Those verses … and the author’s wish for the church not to call undue attention to itself … they had value in the infant church of the first century, a time and place in which women did not exercise spiritual leadership except in the most “far-out” of religious sects.   But the influence of those verses has lasted long past their cultural relevance.  They continue to highlight one of the major differences between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – the denomination of which Nativity is a part – and all the other Lutheran denominations and configurations in this country.  For, even in this enlightened age of gender equality, we are still the only denomination in which women can exercise leadership completely equally, with men, as lay and ordained members of the church.
The problem is exacerbated because of our uncertainty in who exactly wrote the Pastoral Epistles.  Yes, the beginnings of 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus all cite the apostle Paul as author … but that’s, in the kindest word, a difficult link to prove … and in the hardest, a baldfaced lie.  Scholars point out to us what even a casual read will reveal … the language of these letters is much different than the others of Paul, like Thessalonians, Corinthians, and Romans … of which we are much more certain that Paul was the actual author.  And, some of the situations discussed in the Pastorals arose at a much later time than Paul’s actual lifetime … they describe an established church with a distinct structure which simply did not exist until the early second century … long after Paul was dead.
And so today we come to Chapters 3 and 4 … two chapters which clearly show that forming structure in the early Church … as well as, why these letters are called Pastorals … as the words here are pastoral advice for Timothy and those who joined and followed him in roles of servant leadership in the Church.
At first glance, they are far less controversial than the words immediately preceding, about women.
“The saying is sure:  whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task.”  
We hear that verse and probably, most likely, we get an image in our heads … Bishop Boerger, our synodical bishop … perhaps Bishop Rickel, the Episcopal Bishop of this diocese … maybe, perhaps, Mark Hanson, who is the presiding bishop of our denomination, the ELCA.
Public church leaders whose primary job is not pastoral but rather, church administration … the COO’s of the denominational church in a certain physical area, our area of the country.
But that would be putting a modern coloring onto the text.
Let’s put on our first century specs and see what’s really going on here.
The terminology used here is exclusively Greek Christian … Jewish Christians in Palestine would have used the term Presbyter (from which we get Pastor) for  the one who led a particular local faith community … most likely, a community made up of Jewish Christians who had been “kicked out” of their synagogue, who worshipped in a house or houses.  The presbyter would have been the one who had many of the tasks of a pastor today … teaching, leading worship … but he would have also had a full time job, a trade to support himself and his family.
But the Greek world knew other terms … the Greek word here is episcopos or “overseer” … yes, that is where we get our English word “Episcopal” and “Episcopate” … and the word itself points out a very different worldview than the Jewish one, in which Jesus carried out his ministry.
By the end of the first century, the original eleven apostles who remained … and Paul … they were either quite old, or, more likely, dead.  Jesus had not returned to earth, and so believers needed to make some provision for the furthering of the faith while they waited … and they knew they could be in for a long wait.  
Thus the episcopos … or overseer of the churches.  Part pastor, part modern bishop, the episcopos functioned as both prophet and priest for the church in a certain geographical area.  They led worship, preached and taught in the various churches … but you could also say that they were the “area representative” for the infant Church.  They may have had ministries of healing, or even worked what we would call today “miracles.”  And they did missionary work, going out, actively proclaiming the Gospel to those who hadn’t heard it yet.
There was also another churchly office … the diakonos or deacon.  If the episcopos was the “Word and Sacrament” minister for the area, the diakonos was the “Word and Service” minister.  The position of deacon in the church actually arose much earlier than that of bishop … in a story we read in Acts chapter six, when the disciples appointed seven men to take care of the servant ministry of the newborn Church, which was at that time overseeing the community food distribution.  Saint Stephen the Martyr … for whom our neighboring Roman Catholic parish is named … was one of these first seven … whom we by tradition call “Deacons.”
So the offices noted here … episcopos and diakonos … they indicate a church which was beginning to set up some structure.  (Note – interestingly enough – that women are also listed here as deacons … most certainly contradicting the word we had in the past chapter … evidently not everyone followed the ‘male-exclusive’ rule which the author’s words in chapter 2 were given to enforce.)   But we find no sense of hierarchy here … that these offices somehow stand in some kind of succession, or that “plain old lay people” were somehow “below” church professionals.  Episcopos and diakonos … they both were servant leaders for their faith communities, not seeking “privilege of office” or prestige by any means.  Indeed, during times of persecution, the bishop, the pastor, the deacon, they would have been the first on the line for torture, or martyrdom.
How different that model is from what the offices of professional ministry have become over the ages.
Plenty of bishops, pastors and deacons have enjoyed the “privilege of office” and the rewards of the hierarchy to which we humans so often fall in our structures … but, in my opinion … and as Paul says, I think I have the mind of Christ here … no worse service has been done, to church, or church professionals, than to put them … us … up on a pedestal.
A church is not its pastor … or its bishop … or its deacon.  Likewise pastor, bishop or deacon do not “make” the church … this church, or any church.  We church professionals are no more or better people than anyone else … than anyone else.  
Yes, there can be such a thing as “respect for the office” … really, respect for the Word of Christ which is behind and legitimizes it … that Word’s proclamation, and service … but that respect should not elevate clergy into a place and space we never should have been put into in the first place.
Bishops, pastors, deacons … we are called, first, last and always to be servant leaders … Servant … Leaders … called through God’s word for a specific purpose, not set aside for privilege … that list of duties and responsibilities which takes up the majority of chapters three and four … words read at so many ordinations and installations of pastors, bishops and deacons, still, today … are they not, indeed, good instructive words for anyone who follows in the servant way of Christ?  Certainly they are.
We also need to understand that bishops, pastors and deacons are still, also, always, sinners.  I’ve had some good bishops in my 16 years of service in the ELCA ... our current one falls into that category … but this church – as any other human institution - has also suffered fools, pompous blowhards and mean-spirited hierarchicrats.  Many a church congregation could also say those words about their pastors … as my preaching professor used to say, there are two kinds of preachers, the good ones, and the long winded gasbags.  I hope that I fall into that first category, but I know myself and there have been, are and will continue to be weeks when I’m in the latter.
Certainly, church leaders are called to live exemplary lives, in their community, in their church, and in their families.  There is a higher standard to which we are held.  Those of us who don’t “get” that should not be in positions of church leadership.
But we must not let that “higher standard” cloud the fact that bishops, pastors and deacons are people too … people who are entitled to their own lives … but also, people who can make a mess of their own lives … by working too hard or too much, ignoring their own health and well-being or, that of their families.  
It is true … bishops, deacons and pastors are people and that means they sin.  Not just sins of commission … things they have done … as this and too many other congregations unfortunately know all too well … but also, sins of omission … things we have failed to do … where mental or physical health or well being of themselves or their families can suffer.  We as a denomination and a congregation have very clear disciplinary procedures for the most heinous offenses that clergy commit… but we also need to make sure that we proclaim grace to church professionals and their families for those other proscribed behaviors … and misbehaviors … which are common to us all.  
There is no sin listed on that list that has not been committed by a church professional … this is true … but, I would add … we must never forget that they are common to all people.  As we all need to hear the call to repentance and amendment of life, so we must also hear the word of grace and forgiveness.  Society … and the church … are too often stingy with the latter … with tragic consequences to servant leaders and their families, and the congregations where they serve.
Perhaps if we stuck to the advice given in chapter four, we’d be better off.
“Give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching.  Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders.  Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress.  Pay close attention to yourself and your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.”
Again … I think I have the mind of Christ here… would that pastors, bishops and deacons  … and the communities they serve … would pay more attention to the advice given in these words, than just to the stuff in chapter three.  Not that those earlier words aren’t important … they are vitally so … but these words in particular speak to the office of the Word … Word and Sacrament, Word and Service, in Jesus’ name, which is given to those who are called church servant leaders.  
It is a Holy Ministry after all … but, it’s not made holy by the office holder, or the bishop who lays on hands, or the clerical collar, the robe or the stole … or the academic degree from the seminary.  And it is not solely the province of the ordained or set aside.  
In the end, it is the Call of God, through the Word of Scripture, the Word in the Sacraments, the Word in the discerning and calling community of believers … that Call is the one which makes one’s calling to the particular servant leader office of bishop, pastor or deacon Holy … it is the work, not the person, which is Holy.
Thus, it is the same holy calling which is common to each and every one of us who are called through our baptism, called through the Word, read and proclaimed, called and fed in the Holy Communion … called and sent out into the world … to be Christian … literally, to bear Christ… to our neighbor, wherever and however we find them.
We Lutherans have put it in our organizing documents … our Confessions and constitutions … that we will be a Church which has Servant Leaders … for good order, we will organize ourselves with pastors, bishops, and deacons.
May we also be a Church which honors those Servant Leaders as fellow servants, on the journey of faith, together … a Church in which each of us may hear the empowering, forgiving, grace filled Word …
And may we, each one of us, take that Word in, chew on it and inwardly digest it this week, as together …. servants all of the One Christ …. walking in the shadow of his Cross … as we follow our calling to be Christian … to bear Christ … to as many different parts and places of God’s world as there are of us.
Amen.