2 Timothy 2:8-15

Pentecost +21 — Year C

2 Timothy 2:8-15

All words are imprisoning. Event as they leap to mind from their metaphoric ground to break new ground, they return to rest providing support for subsequent leaps beyond them.

How noble Paul can be as he sets the good of a select set of others above his own inconvenience. Presuming Paul to understand himself as a chosen one, no matter how thorn infested or out of time he may be, to work for other chosen ones is a limited and limiting understanding of resurrectional and pentecostal power.

We can’t seem to not be in a battle over words. From an earlier “Let it be” to the latest “Let it not be” guiding sentiment of government defunders we struggle to define all else in light of me. This sophomoric argument that everyone else is but playing a part in my dream has significant consequences when it turns out we are not dreaming but in the midst of a much larger and longer story.

Any attempt at interpreting some message of truth is full of stumbling blocks. Here it turns out that a beginning spot of rising up and descending down takes second place to a “faithful saying” that rallies like-to-like in a common defensive position rewarding loyalty.

Knowing only a few of my own limits and how easily movable are boundaries, I have great sympathy for these 8 verses plucked from a larger work as they note a grand transformational moment that keeps sliding back into a creed of exclusiveness after its burst of new life.

May we simply live together for, like it or not, we die. This carries a different sense that trying to avoid our death by positing a dreamy eternity and reinforcing a limited chosenness.