"You Is Smart"

1 Tim 6:3-19  (The Message)

A devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God. Since we entered the world penniless and will leave it penniless, if we have bread on the table and shoes on our feet, that’s enough. 1 Tim 6:6-8

How do we best offer instruction to the next generation?  Is it by telling them to read their BIble for an hour every day? Is it by telling them to take a bunch of Advanced Placement classes in school so they can hopefully earn an academic scholarship and get into a 'good' school?  Is it by encouraging them to study a field where they can make a lot of money and be successful?  Is it by living the life we want them to see us living?

The instruction offered in 1 Timothy suggests that money is not the way to get rich in the eyes of God, but living a devout life is.  And notice in this version from Eugene Peterson's The Message (above), he suggests that devoutness isn't so much about trying to be holy as it is about being yourself before God. Being who God made you to be. That might be the best instruction possible to the next generation.

In The Help  by Kathryn Stockett, the young college-educated Skeeter decides to write a book about the lives of the African-American maids employed by all the white families she knows, including her own.  She tackles the project perhaps a little naively at first, but quickly understands the danger in crossing the racial lines of Jackson, MS and the black women who gather to tell her their stories give her a quick education in what 'real life' is like for them, rather than the secluded bubble of 'life' that Skeeter grew up with in her white world.  She sees first hand what discrimination is and, though she can't ever know exactly how they feel, she gets a sense of the ways their reality creates a finite sense of limitation, in ways that hers doesn't, even in a very gender-biased 60's world.

This letter, attributed to Paul but likely written by another person using him as a pseudonym, is written to offer instruction to the faith community still in development.  Much of Timothy is written to instruct on how to avoid false teachings.  Setting down some game rules, so to speak, to keep the next generation of Christians on the right path.   I think an important piece in the study of the letters to Timothy is in understanding the very complicated concept of 'false teaching.'  Is what is false teaching to one person automatically false teaching to another?

In the upper crust world that raised Skeeter, she was taught to see black people as persons to be pitied who were destined to a life of servitude.  We can easily see that as a false teaching today, but we would not necessarily have seen or felt that way in early 1960s Mississippi.  

We are only as knowledgable as we allow ourselves to be in any given moment. The maids grew in knowledge of the white world through Skeeter, learning that it wasn't all filled with people who couldn't see past the color of someone's skin.  Skeeter learned that she could have a college degree and still no nothing about the world she was raised in without talking to people about their own stories.  

In the end, the maids of course stay in Jackson and confront the continued racial bias, now with their stories made public, though supposedly anonymous.  Skeeter takes a job in publishing in New York and moves away. This makes her feel somewhat guilty, leaving them there in the midst of the drama she helped to create., but she is encourage to go and set her wings to flight.

 Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life. 1 Tim 6:17-19

 What makes us smart as we journey to unknown tomorrows?  Being kind and treating everyone we meet as important.  I'm reading a book The Happiness Project  and the author lists as one of her mantras "There is only love."  Great words.  If we look at the world, no matter how unknown it is, ahead of us and see only love, and act only with kindness then we are doing the smartest possible thing we can do.  And you don't have to have a college degree to know that love and kindness will carry your farther at the end of the day than any amount of money.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.  Remember those words in all you do in the name of Christ.  See your role as a disciple as the most important thing you do.  See your role  of 'being yourself before God' as the most important task you have.  

This week we honor those graduating from high school.  Please join us as we explore more in what it means to follow God into the unknown days ahead.  And join us as we circle around our graduates and bless their beautiful journeys ahead.

Thoughts? Questions? Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.