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Teaching
Sound Doctrine and Itching Ears
2 Timothy 4.1-5
[An ordination sermon preached in Allisonville Christian
Church in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 14, 2001]
Dear friends and family of Susan F-K, it is a pleasure to
be here for her ordination into the ministerial leadership of the church.
It has been my delight to have had Susan as a student in several theology
and ethics classes at Christian Theological Seminary and even as my teaching
assistant in two other courses. I can testify before you that she is an
exceptional student and an earnest person of faith. She is well prepared
to receive the awesome ordination we the church are intent on conferring
today and to assume the responsibilities of leadership which that ordination
implies. You folk here at the Allisonville Christian Church have been
especially privileged to benefit from her student ministry and to observe
with tender and sweet joy the many gifts she has displayed among you.
I am sure all of us here today are confident of her promise for ministry,
and this is properly a grand occasion not only for her but also for us
the church.
But even in our joy and delight, it is well that we understand that this
act of ordination is a grave and serious act of the church: an act that
reminds us of our fundamental calling as the church of Jesus Christ and
an act that is profoundly defiant of the inclinations and ruling powers
of our contemporary social world in North America. We are not ordaining
her to run for the school board, to serve on the Mayor’s commission,
to be pleasing to the ruling powers in this city or in another town or
in this nation. We are not asking her to be all things to all people,
though she will be tempted by our desires to be what we variously want
her to be.
Rather, we are ordaining her to give leadership to the church in a time
in which the many churches around us and in our Disciples tradition seem
not only to be in numerical decline, but to be dramatically uncertain
about their own basic calling in Christian life and witness. We are ordaining
her for leadership to help us understand better, day in and day out, just
who we are before God and just who that God is and what we are to become.
Were she to fudge or burke or shirk in that task of leading us, she will
have forfeited the good faith authority of this very ordination.
What then are we to make of her ministerial calling and tasks today? This
is indeed a complex and many-sided question. But let us seek the guidance
of the Scripture read for today from 2 Timothy 4.1-5. We are led to believe
that an elderly Paul is writing to Timothy, foremost among Paul’s
protégés in ministry, to give advice about the tasks and
temptations of ministerial leadership, of engaging in the diakonia
of the church.
Much of what he says in this epistle and in this particular passage, pivots
around the conviction that the church has its most basic identity in being
called by the Gospel of Jesus Christ to witness in word and deed to the
living triune God for the benefit of the world. Witnessing to God is the
heart of being the church. And this witnessing is in words and deeds,
in discourses and practices, and where this witnessing is lacking, there
the people of the church are smothering and neglecting their own identity
and calling.
Now, if witnessing is essential to the church, then that witnessing must
have some distinctive content that keeps it focused, faithful, and true.
As Paul says ‘in view of Christ Jesus and his appearing and his
kingdom, I solemnly urge you to proclaim the message.’ There is
a message, a gospel, that is central to the church’s witness, and
according to Paul that message is wrapped up in the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus of Nazareth. Take Jesus away or neglect his centrality, and the
witness to God goes astray.
The Greek word Paul uses here for ‘message’ is logos,
a term so rich in connotations that we are still trying to unpack how
the NT writers use it. But clearly it is related to what Paul later in
this passage calls ‘sound doctrine’, or if we stumble over
the term ‘doctrine’, we can try ‘sound teaching’.
The content of Christian witness has some characteristic teachings about
God, about Jesus, about human beings, and what they are to become in the
light of the Gospel. Hence, if sound teachings are important, it seems
clear according to Paul that there can also be unsound teachings or even
confusion in the church about what the teachings are.
It is a further implication of Paul’s point about the message that
it is not something the people of the world already possess. It is not
a knowledge or teaching that they inherently or innately already have.
They need to receive the teaching, to learn it, to have their lives shaped
by it. Paul does not seem to be asking folk to look within themselves
to discover a gospel already hiddenly evident there. To proclaim the Gospel
means to give people some knowledge, some understanding, some teaching
that they do not already have and that knowledge is focused around the
God of Israel and Jesus Christ.
For our purposes today, we need to understand that for Paul there is no
distinction between being a teacher of the faith and being a preacher
of the faith. Proclaiming the Gospel means teaching the faith. It does
not mean captivating people with one’s attractive personality. It
does not mean being well-liked by all, though that might be desirable.
So let us acknowledge that Paul is saying to us today that teaching the
faith—which means making sound doctrine accessible and intelligible
and vivid to folk—is central to the sort of leadership to which
we are ordaining Susan.
But Paul is also advising Timothy about the situation in the church and
in the world of his time. I wonder if that might apply to us today as
well. Let us listen to Paul: “the time is coming when people will
not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate
for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away
from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” These are
indeed chilling words. For the sake of Susan’s ordination and her
understanding of her calling and for our own sake as the church of Jesus
Christ, let us explore what Paul is saying.
Apparently Paul thinks sound doctrine is in for a hard time in which people—and
here we must assume he means people both within and beyond the church—will
not put up with sound doctrine. ‘Will not put up with’? Other
translations have it as ‘will not tolerate’, ‘will not
stand’, and ‘will not accept’ sound doctrine or sound
teaching. Why might this be the case that people become so intolerant
of such Gospel teaching? In pithy and salty metaphoric language, Paul
says this happens because people have ‘itching ears’! What
does it mean to have itching ears? And why do the ears of some folk itch?
What sort of scratching of itching ears leads people astray?
Apparently, if we follow along with Paul, people’s ears become itchy
when they hear teachings that do not fit their desires. Surely all of
us know about ourselves that we are a veritable cauldron of desires, and
Paul thinks that maybe we get itchy ears and do not want to hear the Gospel
teachings when our desires are not flattered by what the Gospel commends
and commands. Now we understand that to have itchy ears is to want to
hear something that suits us and our given and restless desires.
So what are people inclined to do who have itchy ears? They scratch their
ears by ‘accumulating teachers’ that will suit them and satisfy
their desires. They reject the sound doctrine that is intended to build
them up in the faith and nurture them in the truth. And they look endlessly
for those teachers that will flatter their already existing desires, passions,
and inclinations. Other translators say itchy-eared folk look for those
who will ‘tickle their fancy’, or who will teach ‘according
to their own tastes’. Would this be a fair way of putting Paul’s
point: itchy-eared people are consumers looking desperately for that teacher
and those teachings that will give them a gospel on their own terms, on
the terms of their own raw desires, their own tastes, their own fancy,
their own preferences?
We can pause now and listen to those voices in our minds saying that this
sound doctrine idea is too elusive and dangerous. Haven’t there
been doctrines in the past of the church that have been harmful to folk
and even demonic? Let us forget about doctrines and simply live according
to love and justice. So some will say. But are there teachings about what
love and justice are and does the whole world agree with those teachings?
It is hard to escape teachings of some sort, and it is a real illusion
in the church to suppose that we can get along without doctrines and teachings.
Of course, we Disciples are leery of doctrines and definite teachings.
They divide people, we say. I have even heard some Disciples say ‘we
have no creed but Christ’, and then they whisper that it really
does not matter what you believe about Christ. It is like what the beloved
Dwight Eisenhower said: “I think everyone should have faith, and
I do not care faith in what.” Such language would appear to concede
the world to folk with itching ears: believe whatever suits your fancy.
I know it must be a comfort to Susan to realize that she will not have
to deal with such itchy-eared people in her ministry as teacher. Who in
church and world today is stalked by these itching ears and who flits
about in a desperate search to find some teaching that will justify their
way of life and assuage their haunting guilt and nervous grasping for
self-esteem? Surely itching ears do not want to hear of a Jewish Savior
who died on a brutal cross for the sins of the whole world and who gives
life free from the clutches of selfishness and self-absorption and who
calls folk to live in love at the side of the least of these in the world.
But for the sake of a shorter sermon and for learning some more from Paul,
let us imagine that Susan might indeed be cast as a teacher in a situation
strikingly similar to what Paul has described. What would it mean for
her to be a teacher of the faith?
Having affirmed the overarching task of proclaiming the message, Paul
counsels Susan to be persistent. He could also have said ‘be constant
and not fickle’ or ‘be not daunted by itching ears’!
She is to persist in faithfulness to a Gospel that is wonderful good news
for those who have ears to hear, but which does not sanction our desires
in their messy randomness and givenness. And, of course, she could not
persist in her teaching without constant prayer seeking the guidance and
upbuilding of the Holy Spirit. We are ordaining Susan to persist in teaching
the faith and being accountable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let us herein grant what seems implicit in Paul’s words: discerning
sound doctrine is not an easy task. It is indeed arduous work to discern
and teach those teachings that are essential to the Gospel. But Susan,
and even we, is to persist in the task of discerning the Gospel message
and of teaching the Gospel.
As such a teacher of the Gospel, Paul also wants Susan to perform skillfully
some recognizable teaching practices: she should try to persuade, to address
real questions with convincing responses, even to advance arguments, though
perhaps knowing full well that few people will give up their itching ears
because of good arguments. In short, Paul wants Susan to know her way
around in the teachings of the faith, to know how to articulate those
teachings in a faithful and fetching way, to show how the teachings shape
life and give hope for the future. She is to help folk understand who
God is and what they are to become before God. Susan is to be a practitioner
of discerning the true from the false, the sound from the unsound, the
authentic from the counterfeit, the permanent from the passing whim.
In the midst of such teaching, Paul does not rule out rebuking and reproof.
Paul would be dismayed if Susan never became prophetic and even judgmental,
as though she wanted everyone to be content and undisturbed. But Susan
is not being asked to reprimand from some general moral consensus in the
larger social world, but from the gravity of the judgment in the cross
of Jesus Christ. She should know that such rebuke is always for the sake
of folk hearing the Gospel and not for the sake of her own angry loathing
of what is wrong with the world.
Further, Paul wants Susan to always be encouraging, which elsewhere he
calls being upbuilding. Argument, rebuke, and teaching are for the sake
of encouraging people to receive new possibilities and a life far beyond
their own small imaginings, and for the sake of encouraging folk to trust
in God, to have their terrible fear cast out, to have the morrow look
like a time of meeting God’s grace and having the power to live
on behalf of the neighbor, even on behalf of the enemy. A Christian teacher
aims to encourage people in the faith and its passionate life.
All these phases of teaching the faith, according to Paul, will require
patience on the part of Susan. Of course, she cannot be patient in the
right way if she is not also hopeful that the Spirit of God is there with
her in her teaching activities. She will be patient because she knows
that God will win hearts by loving persuasion and not by coercion. Patience
does not mean making room for and accommodating the false and the random
desires and passions of itching ears. But it does mean she will patiently
strive to understand those itching ears we have and our proneness to embrace
the myths of our contemporary world. Such patience will also alert her
to her own penchant for itching ears.
But let us reflect further about desire and passion. Desire and passion
as such are not bad or shameful. They are the great engines of human life.
But the human problem is that our given desires and passions are often
so unruly, destructive, and confusing to us. They pull us this way and
that, without constancy of direction. We seem to desire that which cannot
confer human fulfillment and peace. Teaching the faith is not a mere intellectual
exercise. It involves the patient use of the teachings to reorder and
reshape our desires and passions such that we learn how to live more abundantly
and graciously and thereby more obediently to the God who created us and
who intends to redeem us.
There is much more Paul says about ministry and the church in other places,
and much more that we might emphasize, but this is an agenda of calling
and tasks that can keep Susan inspired for a lifetime of ministerial leadership.
She will not be the only teacher in the congregation; there will be wise
and competent others among the laity. But she cannot escape the injunction
to teach sound doctrine, to witness to the reality of God’s grace
in Jesus Christ for the benefit of the world.
Is Susan ready to be that teacher of the faith? Are we ready to be the
church that has that faith and rejoices in it and seeks every way in which
to witness to the love of God for the benefit of the world? I will let
you answer the church question for yourselves. But if we are not ready
to support teachers such as Paul commends, do we really understand what
we are doing today in this ordination?
But I can vouch for Susan. She has the intelligence, the skills of language,
and the compassion to teach the faith with insight and empowering persuasion.
She has the learning in the faith—from the study of Scripture and
other books, from disciplined courses, from writing essays and taking
exams, from ardent and engaged conversations, from the many ministerial
leaders in her life, from the concerned lay persons in family and church
who have counseled her, and from her own devout living of the faith. If
there are any itching ears around her, she will know how to scratch them
graciously with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let us rejoice that this young woman from our midst wants to give leadership
to the church and to embrace boldly the task of witnessing to the Gospel
though teaching the faith and vivifying sound doctrine. In ordaining her
today, we must also promise to keep her in our prayers that she be not
overwhelmed by the temptations of itching ears.
All this dear friends I have dared to preach in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, Mother of us all. Amen.
Copyright © Joe R. Jones
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