May 10, 2013
Morning keynote message given by Rev. Donald Ng at the PCBA 2014 Spring Conference, “Igniting Our Gifts for Service,” Shell Ridge Community Church, Walnut Creek, CA.
When my wife and I were starting out in our marriage, one of our weekly routine dinners was using Kraft’s Shake ‘n Bake that was first introduced in 1965. For you who are not familiar with this easy and often healthier claim to being less greasy, Shake ‘n Bake comes in a box with flavored bread crumb-style coating for chicken and pork. You put your raw meat pieces in a plastic bag containing the coating, close the bag, and you shake so that the crumbs and seasoning adhere. The coated meat is then baked in the oven. No frying, less mess, and fully contained in your oven.
This may be a baked alternative to frying chicken but is it better? Now as a vegetarian, I rather not shake ‘n bake anything but vegetables! My cooking metaphor is just to make my point.
My point is: have we become only a “shake ‘n bake” people that we have forgotten to stir-fry? Have we become so conventional that we only know how to follow the directions on the box?
Share n’ Bake is cooked in a moderate oven temperature while stir-frying is hot and usually spattering grease and water all over the place. Shake ‘n Bake is like maintaining the way things are while stir-frying is throwing this and that into the wok and what you have is this exciting and delightful dish. Shaking and baking comes out of a standard box that you can use anyplace and it’ll still taste the same. Maybe we need to do less of Shake ‘n Bake and more grilling and stir-frying in our faith?
Baked Faith
In 2 Timothy, we see a young disciple who is wavering in his faith. The question is whether Timothy will remain faithful to his calling in spite of the suffering and shameful aspects of the Christian life. Since his grandmother Lois was faithful; his mother Eunice was faithful; Paul was faithful; God is faithful; Timothy must in turn be faithful.
Are we like Timothy when our faith may be wavering? Is our faith only baked or perhaps even half-baked and have lost that stir-fry sizzle that is filled with joy and excitement?
Timothy was the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. This probably meant that the faith of Lois and Eunice as good Jewish women was the source of Timothy’s faith.. While this collection of faithfulness would have endeared Timothy to have faith, his own faith is in question.
The cause of his wavering faith appears to be stated in Verse 8. Timothy is ashamed of the suffering of Paul, and perhaps he himself, must endure for the sake of the gospel. Paul is under arrest and has endured one “defense,” at which “no one came to his support” (4:16). In general, people abandoned Paul. Timothy’s tears that are recalled in verse 4 probably represents anguish over Paul’s imprisonment and may be a prelude to his own shame and abandonment.
Although there is a powerful tradition of the glory of martyrdom and suffering in early Christianity, there was still shame in this. Jesus himself model for them martyrdom, but these traditions do not eliminate the sense of shame that Christians experienced that many endured particularly when Christ was crucified on the cross for once and for all in the forgiveness of sins. Timothy’s faith was wavering against such shame perhaps his faith was simply baked or half-baked.
Shame & Abandonment
We often talk about this passage in the context of how one generation transmits the faith to the next generation. We are delighted to hear about how grandmother Lois and mother Eunice nurture and share their faith with Timothy. But is this happening to us?
What if our congregations are full of baby-boomers and older members who tried passing along their faith only to have their children go off to college and desert the faith altogether? Faith transmission through families might leave a sense of failure among those who tried but didn’t succeed. How many of you here have children who were brought up as Baptists but are now members of a different church?
In a Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life study in the early 2000s, it found 44% of all Americans have left their religious traditions in which they grew up and were nurtured by their families. According to research, we shop for our religious or spiritual home, much as we shop for anything else. Is this something that we are ashamed about as American Baptists? Have we lost our faith in our future?
Most of us here can still remember how things were like in the 60s and 70s when we had more people in the pews, inspiring association rallies, an ABCW that was proud to be American Baptist and a host of programs like regularly scheduled Leaders Faires. We seem to have everything going for us. In fact, we may have been proud and confident that God is looking favorably on us. But we now live in a very different world today. And there are moments like these that we feel ashamed and abandoned that things can’t be like in the past.
Even the mighty Southern Baptist Convention is not exempt from the changing of times. The Glorieta conference center has closed and Golden Gate Seminary located in Marin County is being sold to a developer. We are living in a post-denominational era with no clear path to go. And for the most part, some of us are simply too ashamed that what we thought would be permanently established in place is now dismantled and discarded.
What about the shame of being a Christian today? We were once cuddled and welcomed to the tables of influential people in government and industry. But today, when there may be an important meeting, people with religious convictions are usually bypassed for those who can bring financial resources or political capital to the table. Are we ashamed that we are no longer significant for the most part in the eyes of the world?
Rekindle
The question for us and for Timothy is not whether or not that Timothy believes or even what Timothy believes, but whether he can be faithful to his calling. Are we faithful to our calling in the midst of such times? The challenge is to “rekindle the gift of God” (v. 6), to “not be ashamed” (v. 8), to “hold to the standard of sound teaching” (v. 13), and to “guard the good treasure” (v. 14).
What does it mean to “rekindle the gift of God?” God did not give us cowardice but has given us the spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. The greatest gift we have been given is the grace that comes “not according to our works but according to Christ’s own purpose and grace” (v.9). To “rekindle the gift” means to stir up the grace and faith and love and power that we have received, and we stir them up by putting them into practice. It’s not just shaking and baking in the oven but stir-frying all of the powerful gifts from God.
No one knows when the world will once again turn to the mainline Protestant Christian faith that we have only known and return us to the hey days of abundance. No one knows if we would ever return to those golden days. But that’s not the answer anyway. God is not calling us to be in the past—God is calling us into the future to not be ashamed of Jesus Christ who was on the cross unashamedly so that our sins would be forgiven forever. God is calling us to hold to the standard of sound teaching of the truth of Christ and to guard this good treasure from our own delusional thoughts that we need to be important in the eyes of the world. Shaking and baking using conventional ways is over.
Rekindle the gift means that we value the rich past but we live in the present and look forward to the future believing that no present day suffering and challenges would ever waver our faith.
Rekindle the gift means that we are not ashamed of our discouragement when we know that in suffering, we receive endurance…and hope does not disappoint us.
Rekindle the gift means that we hold to the sound teaching of our Baptist principles and the truth of Jesus Christ even if our children have deserted their beliefs that we nurtured.
Rekindle the gift means that we guard and take care of the good treasure of faith in Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit even against the disinterest of our society and pluralism in our beliefs.
Rekindle the gift means that we extend hospitality to everyone irrespective of beliefs since Baptists believe in soul freedom while at the same time holding one another in covenant as a beloved community.
Rekindle the gift is coming together today as a community of disciples faithful in our calling and unashamed in our faith in the Lord by encouraging and blessing one another with the power of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of our hands on one another.
Big Picture
When we are discouraged and ashamed about the setbacks and the challenges to the faith, we are helped by how Timothy was able to see that he was a part of something so much bigger than himself. He was a part of Christ’s ministry. When we face setbacks, pausing to give thanks can make all the difference in the world. Gratitude puts things in perspective.
There was a 62-year old man in Britain who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told that it was untreatable and he would be dead within a year. The man decided to live as if there were no tomorrow, buying clothes and cars and cruises and traveling and eating out. In a year he ran out of money and was unofficially bankrupt. The only problem was that he was showing no sign of dying. So he went to his doctor, and a new series of tests overturned the original diagnosis. The man became enraged. He had been given a new lease on left; yet he was contemplating a lawsuit.
This 62-year old man couldn’t see the big picture of getting a new lease on life. He didn’t rekindle the gift of gratitude and couldn’t stir up the grace and faith and love that he has received.
As American Baptists with a big picture in view, we see that there are many ways that God is blessing us. God is blessing us with new Burmese friends who are bringing renewal and resurrection in our churches. The Burmese Baptist Church in Oakland on Telegraph is a sign that God is not just happy with the status quo of Shake n’ Bake but stirring up things and new life is here.
Last year at the Biennial Mission Summit in Kansas, we saw over 1000 people sitting around tables engaging in table conversations on topics relevant and important to the life of American Baptists. We were rekindling our gifts from God.
The Transformed by the Spirit initiative continues to gather teams of people together over topics that can’t simply be solved by technical or tactical answers but requiring adaptive solutions that go down deeply to our values and norms and beliefs. Only such hard and focused work would we become once again transformed into being a movement rather than a bureaucracy.
American Baptists were once people in the peripheral, at the margins and not truly what we like to refer to ourselves as the “mainline” churches. Historically, we are not the mainline when we were the ones who protested against the mainline churches. But when we desire to become like the mainline and established churches in America, perhaps we have lost our identity of soul liberty and the priesthood of all believers. Returning to becoming a movement instead of a bureaucracy may lead us to ultimately rekindle the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
In the end, it’s not “Shake n’ Bake” or even stir-frying but “relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to Christ’s own purpose and grace.” We will only rekindle the gift of God when we trust God’s grace and mercy on us.
Be not ashamed of being a prisoner for Jesus. Be not ashamed of finding yourself at the peripheral or margins of society. Be not ashamed that you may suffer ridicule and abuse for your faith in Christ. But instead, rekindle the gift of God that was lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now in you.
Stop doing “Shake ‘n Bake” and begin stir-frying God’s grace, and faith, and love and power, and self-discipline and all the other ingredients of the faith in Jesus Christ to make this world come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior!
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord, you were not ashamed of us to become one of us and lived among us to reveal your love and mercy for the world. Today, we are living in a world that has changed from the one we were used to. It feels like we are being bypassed and no longer are we as important as we once thought. But Lord, perhaps that is the message that you are trying to teach us today—that to be in the peripheral or out in the margins might we once again reclaim in our lives the love that you have for your people. Help us not to waver in faith but to stand strongly on the good treasure of Jesus Christ is Lord in the American Baptists and in the world. In Christ, we pray. Amen.