Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Let the Little Children Come to Me - Sept. 7, 2008

Let the Little Children Come to Me

Matt 18, 2 Tim 1 & 3

September 7, 2008

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

That Epistle Lesson that was just read is one of a kind. For one thing, this is the last letter that Paul ever wrote that found its way into the Bible. For another thing, this is the only passage in the New Testament that refers to grandmothers. The apostle Paul here is writing to his student Timothy. Paul refers to Timothy as his spiritual child, the one who is going to carry on for Paul. In fact, Timothy is the first second generation Christian to be named in the Bible.

Paul is writing a letter to Timothy and begins it by saying, "I have been reminded of you sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also."

You know, you think of the people who get mentioned in the Bible as people who accomplished some major feat. But when you get to these two women, Lois and Eunice, what exactly did these two women contribute in order to get into the Bible?

Well, they contributed Timothy...Timothy, who was chosen by Paul to be his successor and who traveled with Paul for seventeen years. Timothy, after whom two books of the Bible were named, Timothy, who became the first bishop of Ephesus. And how did Timothy come by all this? Through a grandmother named Lois and a mother named Eunice.

The grandmother, Lois, had been Jewish and was probably about the age of Jesus. Lois received the faith and she passed it along to her daughter Eunice and then Eunice passed it along to her son, Timothy. So THAT is how it comes to be that Lois becomes the only grandmother ever named in the New Testament.

I was patrolling the picket lines as a police chaplain this week at the Republican National Convention. It got a little bumpy at times. Along the way someone asked me how I became a pastor. I told him it was a long story.

I'm not going to go through all that again with you just now. Most people ask that question expecting to hear about some big, fancy dramatic event or explosion of insight...kind of like how the apostle Paul got knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus.

I became a pastor in the same way that Timothy did. I got it through a long chain of other people. Other REGULAR people. Beginning with my parents. Except that dad got HIS faith from HIS grandfather, the only other preacher in our family tree, the Rev. Noah Garwick. So, again, just like Timothy got HIS faith through his grandmother, I got mine through my great grandfather. Well, AT LEAST through him, but maybe from many, many other grandparents as well.

But not just from grandparents. there were countless Sunday School teachers I don't even recall who taught me the Bible stories and the thing we say in church like the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed.

And then there was a girl I fell in love with when I was fifteen whom God placed in my path to gently lead me through the faith at a tumultuous time in my life when I was teetering on the razor's edge of just dumping the whole religion thing altogether. Her dad was a preacher who was the first pastor I ever got to know and respect. So I married the whole family.

Then there was the blind eighty-six year old retired pastor whom I have always claimed as my spiritual grandfather. He was my Paul and I was his Timothy.

And then there was his daughter who became one of the country's most famous parish nurses who kind of booted me into the ministry.

And of course, there were seminary professors, some of them now departed, who still speak to me.

My point is this: all of us came to the ministry the same way as Timothy - through countless other regular people, most of whom will be surprised in heaven when you tell them that they were part of what got you there.

In the Bible Focus that was read at the beginning of the service this morning, Jesus said, that "whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me."

Timothy was the proof of that pudding. So am I. So are you.

God has now given YOU the privilege of being the ones to pass on that same faith to other Timothys. That is why we have Sunday School which in this congregation we call Youth for Christ. This morning, twelve apostles in this congregation have accepted the Call to be teachers sent out to pass on the faith to our youth.

But not just teachers. Every single one of you who has children or grandchildren, nieces or nephews or who cross paths with young people in any other way - you have been placed in those paths for a reason.

That reason is to be one of the few people this child knows and respects who will ever offer the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. That is what got Lois and Eunice mentioned by name in the Holy Bible.

Imagine that child's name being listed beside yours in the Book of Life!

Amen. May it be so!