The Christian life can sometimes look like a hockey fight, but godliness is the goal!
1 Timothy 6:6-10; 2 Timothy 3:1-9
It’s no secret to my congregation that I am a fan of my hometown Pittsburgh sports teams. Even though we’ve been living out west for 15 years, it’s an indicator that the old Pittsburgh adage is true: you can take the boy out of the ‘Burgh, but you can’t take the ‘Burgh out of the boy.
One of my favorite hometown sports to watch is hockey. When I was in college, the tickets were a lot cheaper than they are now, and my friends and I could go down to the old Civic Arena and cheer on the Penguins. One of the first dates I took Jennifer on was to a Penguins game—amazingly, she married me anyway
Now, one of the reasons I love hockey is the speed and the skill that’s demonstrated on the ice. It’s constant action. Of course, a lot of other people like hockey because of the fights (another old adage: “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out). In most sports, you get thrown out of the game if you fight, but in hockey you get five minutes in the penalty box to rest before you can come out and do it again.
Funny thing is that you can predict when most of these fights are going to happen. They usually happen when one team is far enough ahead of the other on the scoreboard that a penalty won’t matter that much, so the losing team sends out a couple of goons (players with little actual hockey skill but who can punch hard) to pick fights with the winning team as a way taking out their frustrations in losing, or sending a message for the next game. The bigger the deficit in the score, and the more time that is left in the game, the more fights you are likely to see. When the winning team gets baited into these fights, they wind up with their players in the box or in the training room with missing teeth. It’s a way for the losers to drag the winners down to their own level.
When I read Paul’s description of the “last days” here in chapter 3 of 2 Timothy, I get the sense that he’s talking about a similar situation on a spiritual level. For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus had signified an ultimate win for God that put the idea of a comeback for evil and death out of reach. But, Paul understood, the game wasn’t quite over yet. The final buzzer, the return of Jesus, was still to come. In the meantime, Paul says, Satan and his minions continue to “goon it up” by taking out their frustrations on those who are on God’s winning team. The empty tomb was a massive win, but as the time ticks down the opponents of God are ramping up their nastiness such that “in the last days, distressing times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1).
Problem is, says Paul, that the winning team has a tendency to get suckered into playing the enemy’s game. Look at the list of penalty-worthy offenses Paul gives us here:
“For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power” (v. 2-5).
This isn’t a list that only applies to pagans (like the Philadelphia Flyers). In fact, Paul hints here, these are the kinds of behaviors that people within the church begin to take on when they give into the enemy. When we drop our gloves and drop our guard, we wind up looking and acting just like the goons the enemy is sending out in the “last days.”
These “Christians,” Paul says, have an outward form of godliness—they look like they’re on the winning team, they wear the same uniform, they sing the same songs, show up for team activities—but they deny the power of godliness in their own lives. When the people of God start acting this way, the church can start looking more like a bench-clearing brawl than a team with its eyes on the prize.
This was not only Paul’s concern about the church that Timothy was pastoring, it’s been the concern of thoughtful Christian leaders throughout church history. In our own Methodist tradition, John Wesley once wrote in his essay “Thoughts Upon Methodism:”
“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.” (John Wesley, “Thoughts upon Methodism,” Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, 9:527).
How do we live a godly life?
In other words, unless we have both an outward and inward form of godliness, we play into the hands of the other team. So, how do we live a godly life? What kinds of practice routines and disciplines do we need to work on in order to fully invest our one life in God’s victorious kingdom? Well, I think John Wesley agrees with Paul here. The form and power of godliness is forged through the sound teaching of scriptural doctrine, a spirit of contentment and generosity, and the discipline of training in godly character. These three things will help keep us focused on God’s future for us.
A word here on “godliness.” This is one of Paul’s favorite words in the letters we call the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus), so we’re going to be using parts of all three letters as we look at what it means. For Paul, eusebia or godliness isn’t just outward worship, or a mere concept of God, nor is it simply a virture or idea. Instead, it’s all about our every day conduct in honoring God as creator and redeemer of the world. Godliness is living life in the present with God’s future in mind. It’s very practical, which means it requires practice! So, let’s look at the ways we can embrace godliness rather than goonery…
Sound teaching
The first thing that Paul says we need to focus on if we’re going to live a godly life is sound teaching. In I Timothy 6:3, Paul says that “the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ” are those that align us with godliness. It’s the witness of Jesus’ own teaching, which we read in the Gospels and Paul would have certainly heard from his fellow apostles, that constitutes the foundational doctrines of Christian faith and the godly life.
It wouldn’t be too off base to say that in many arenas the church treats doctrine like a hockey game: You know, “I went to a fight and a doctrinal debate broke out.” Others, like many in our increasingly mainline United Methodist churches go the opposite direction and say that doctrine doesn’t really matter. Whatever you want to believe is fine. Both sides completely miss the point.
What we believe matters because what we do flows from what we believe, and what we believe flows from what we worship. It’s like that Latin phrase that was part of the early catholic church tradition: “Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi” (As we worship, so we believe, and so we live). If we worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ, then we will believe what he says, and we will live according to his word.
That word, more than the doctrines we construct or ignore, is God’s revealed word and witness to us. Notice what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16 – “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Sound teaching and doctrine are grounded in Scripture, for it is there that we find the witness of the life and teaching of Jesus and the story of God’s redemptive mission in the world.
The late Methodist theologian Albert Outler said that John Wesley’s own understanding of doctrine flowed from Scripture as its primary source for life and faith. But it wasn’t his own interpretation of the text that had the authority. Instead, Wesley believed that the truth of Scripture should be discerned through three important lenses: tradition, reason, and experience. Tradition is paying attention to the way the church has understood the Scriptures for 2,000 years. Reason is using our God-given ability to think, to understand context and history, and to discern the depth of what we read. Experience is the observation of how the truth of Scripture gets played out in the laboratory of human experience. Doctrine isn’t just something to debate or debunk, it’s something to be lived out as we embrace the truth of Scripture and live the way of Jesus. That’s one key to living a godly life.
This is one of the main reasons we value sound Scriptural teaching here at TLUMC. It’s so you can discern what is true and what isn’t when you’re confronted with the goons and their false ways of living. In 2 Timothy 3:6, Paul talks about those goons, those false teachers, who make their way from house to house and captivate “silly women” by playing on their sins and desires (Paul is being a little patriarchal here—men are just as silly when confronted with a shiny new idea). He warns about those who are “always being instructed but never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” We don’t receive teaching just for knowledge, but so that we can live the live of Christ in the world—a godly life that reflects his glory.
I’m convinced that if we spent even half as much time reading and studying Scripture alone and with others as we do watching the news, watching trends, (and watching hockey), we’d be much more prepared to live godly lives. I know I am at my best when I am regularly learning from God’s Word. How about you? What changes do you need to make in order to make Scripture your primary rule of life and faith?
Contentment
The second thing that Paul links godliness to is contentment. We heard that in our first reading this morning. Godliness is never to be a means of gain, financial or otherwise. That’s a goon tactic. Instead, Paul says, “there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment” (I Timothy 6:6). In his list in 2 Timothy 3, Paul cites the love of money, the love of pleasure, and the love of self as key inhibitors to godliness. When we strive after these things, we’re playing into the enemy’s hands, and he will do everything possible to distract us from the real prize of life in God’s kingdom.
Nelson Rockefeller, one of the richest men in history, once said, “If I only had just a bit more money, then I would be content.” “How much would that be?” he was asked. “A little more than I get,” he said. Isn’t that true for most of us?
The truth is, however, that the correlation between more money and more contentment is a false one. I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book David and Goliath, and in there he talks about some research that suggests that there is a point at which more income, more money, stops making people happier. Take an average family, for example. The researchers discovered that there was cap to the amount of income that actually made a family happier—about $75,000 a year. After that, says Gladwell, a phenomenon that economists call “diminishing marginal returns” sets in. “If your family makes $75,000 and your neighbor makes $100,000, the extra $25K means that your neighbor can drive a nicer car and go out to eat slightly more often. But it doesn’t make your neighbor happier that you, or better equipped to do the thousands of small and large things that make for being a good parent.” In fact, that additional income might begin to make parenting harder again as the stress of working harder to maintain that income might degrade a family’s ability to take care of the most important things.
I think that’s what Paul is trying to illustrate here. Money itself isn’t evil—it’s neutral. It’s something all of us need, but we only need so much. But it’s the love of money, the need to tie it to our happiness, that is the “root of all kinds of evil,” Paul says in I Timothy 6:10. Indeed, he says that the pursuit of wealth, the eagerness to be rich, has caused many to wander away from the faith and be “pierced themselves with many pains”—a knuckle sandwich from the enemy.
I remember going to an old barber shop when I was in college. It was the kind of place where they had a deer head on the wall and Field and Stream magazines on the stand. Old Mr. Fairman cut hair there while a bunch of other older guys sat around reading the paper. One day while I was waiting for my bi-weekly buzz cut, one of the men said from behind his paper. “Fairman, says here that the lottery jackpot is over $20 million bucks. What would you do with all that money? Old Fairman stopped cutting hair for minute and scratched his chin. “Well,” he said, “you know a man can only eat so much.”
I’ve always thought that was profound. “We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it,” says Paul, “but if we have food and clothing we will be content with these.” A godly life is one that doesn’t rely on more and more money in order to be happy. Instead, it’s a life where one uses what he needs and then holds the rest loosely. A godly life is a generous life, an open-handed life. It’s a life that pursues happiness by pleasing God through managing resources with God’s future in mind. John Wesley would say that we should make all the money we can, but then save all we can and, most importantly, give all we can to God and those who need it most. Cleanliness might be next to godliness, but generosity is a lot closer!
Discipline
Sound teaching, contentment. Lastly, a godly life requires discipline. Hockey coaches talk about this a lot. Players need discipline in order to not respond when the opposing goon sticks a glove in their faces or slashes the back of their legs. In hockey, it’s usually the one who retaliates who goes to the penalty box, not the original instigator.
The Christian life requires such training in discipline as well. In his letter to Titus, which is one of the lectionary texts for Christmas Eve, Paul says that “the grace of God [Jesus] has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11-14).
Notice what Paul says here. A godly, disciplined life is “self-controlled”—it’s not a life that seeks to satisfy selfish desires, but is designed to be passionate about doing good to the bodies and souls of others. It’s “upright”—actually the word is “just” or “righteous” in the Greek. A godly life does not stand idly by while the goons get their way, but stand up appropriately for others without stooping to goon tactics. “Avoid them,” Paul says, lest you be like them. Instead, do the right thing. And a disciplined, godly life is a life devoted to God. It’s a life that invests daily in building a relationship with God, developing a deep love for God that finds its way outward in love for neighbor as well.
That discipline, as we have been saying throughout this series, requires practice. Jesus gave his disciples plenty of opportunity to practice discipline. Sometimes they failed, but Jesus continued to instruct them. He will do the same for us if we are willing to follow him, but that takes daily attention to the things and people that matter to Jesus. Prayer, eliminating distractions, speaking the truth in love—these are just some of the ways that we gain the discipline of godliness.
One of the iconic images in Pittsburgh sports history is Hall of Fame player Mario Lemieux carrying the puck to the net while two opposing players hang on to him. Nothing—not an illegal hold or hook, a slash of the stick, an enemy player draped over his back would take his eyes off the goal. Notice that on this play, which is now a statue outside Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Lemieux isn’t even looking at the enemy. He only cares about lighting that goal lamp (which he did 690 times in his career, even as he was battling cancer).
A godly life is a life with one clear goal—to turn on the light of Christ and to declare God’s victory in the world and in our lives. When we are living a godly life, nothing can stop us from doing what God has called us to do. May we live our one life with that goal in mind. No goons allowed!
Source:
Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
