First Presbyterian Church. East Moline, IL
September 14, 2025, Pentecost 15C
Who Tells Your Story?
The groundbreaking Broadway musical Hamilton was noted upon its arrival for its deft blending of many different popular musical styles (of which hip-hop was most frequently noted) with solid dramatic technique and casting to create a riveting show, one which still commands audiences and popular acclaim even ten years after its premiere. (As if to make the point, a filmed version of a theatrical performance that was supposed to run for this past week was extended through this coming week by popular demand.)
The most arresting moment in the show, though (at least according to one viewer - raises hand) is quite the opposite of those characteristics; for all its brashness and volume-up theatricality, the show ends with a moment of near-silence, courtesy of Hamilton's widow Eliza. She retells, in the finale, how after his death she took up the work of preserving and telling his story; interviewing soldiers with whom he had once served as well as going through his voluminous writings to sort out how they might be preserved, not to mention raising funds for the Washington Monument, speaking out against slavery, and finally starting an orphanage in respect to Alexander's own orphan status. At the last, though, she can't help but wonder if she did enough; the company brings the show to a close with an almost-whispered restatement of the questions that have recurred throughout this finale: who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
I'm pretty sure that when we saw the show at a packed theatre in Orlando, no one in the audience made a noise for ten seconds. I'm not sure anybody breathed. I know I didn't.
So what does all this have to do with Paul and with this letter from which I've just read?
Clearly this reading is about Paul himself. While it doesn't directly repeat the account of Paul's conversion experience (you can read that in Acts 9), the circumstances and characteristics ascribed to Paul in this letter are clearly developed from that account of Paul's blinding encounter on the road to Damascus and his subsequent healing through the hands of Ananias.
It's not uncommon in Paul's letters to see him refer to his experience on that road, and he also describes in some cases just what kind of non-follower of Christ he was in the time before that encounter. He will in some places get quite dramatic in describing his state before the event, although in at least one case, in Philippians 3, he takes a seemingly opposite tack:
circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee' as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet in the very next sentence Paul brushes that righteousness aside with the declaration "Yet whatever gains I had, I have come to regard as loss because of Christ."
While the two are not necessarily incompatible, one might wonder if the passage in 1 Timothy is in any way informed by Paul's self-description in Philippians. One might be forgiven if one feels as if the two passages, while not at all contradictory, don't quite seem to line up with each other. It's not an end-of-the-world contradiction by any means, but it just doesn't quite sound the same. It still speaks of God's grace and redemption as experienced by Paul. It still speaks of the transformation in Paul, and of Paul's gratitude for God's work in him. But to be honest, when you've taken a few spins around Paul's letters, there are times such differences start to show.
Now here's where that finale from Hamilton comes in.
1 Timothy is, along with its partners 2 Timothy and Titus and possibly Ephesians and Colossians, increasingly regarded in biblical scholarship as unlikely to have been written or composed by Paul, even if his name is attached to the letter. Such letters are called the "deutero-Pauline" epistles. There are various reasons for such evaluations; sometimes the Greek is extremely not like Paul's writing, sometimes it's a lack of evidence that the letter was even written during Paul's lifetime (which ended at the hands of the Roman Empire around the year 62).
Whichever the case, most likely the letters were written by someone who had been associated with Paul, or perhaps a student of such a person. Such individuals likely sought to preserve Paul's reputation as years passed and other leaders came to the fore, or to apply Paul's teaching to situations in the church that had arisen since his death. It wasn't an uncommon practice at the time and was not remotely limited to the fledgling Christian church, even if it might feel a little bit ethically "icky" to us today.
So, if this letter is not actually written by the actual apostle Paul, what's happening here?
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Paul's significance in the early church was tremendous and widespread. As time passed and that presence waned, those of his students and coworkers who felt that loss sought to share that wisdom, that teaching, that presence that had made so much difference in their own lives and work and, at least in this portion of the letter called 1 Timothy, one such student of the apostle's work did so by telling Paul's story - not in the way that Paul would have told it, by any means, but as best as they could in an age where they felt that loss.
It's not like we don't see this play out in different settings, even in our own day. For example, every time you see in the news a conflict over the raising or lowering of a statue of a Confederate general, or the naming or renaming or re-renaming of a fort or camp for such a figure, you are seeing a struggle over who tells the nation's story. Even in this week of violence, we already see a struggle in which one side not only insists on the right to tell the shooting victim's story but also moves to silence anyone who dares tell a different story. Stories matter an awful lot.
We, the church, are historically the body charged with, among many other things, telling Christ's story. The church has sometimes done this well, and other times it has done so poorly as to make a mockery of that story. Of course, we are also charged to live that story, and frankly we sometimes struggle mightily with that task too. Then, when those who come behind us are charged to take up the task, what story will they tell of us?
It may well be that one of the great challenges we as the church face is what kind of story do we leave behind. Do we leave a story that can be easily twisted for darker or more nefarious purposes? Or is the story, the legacy we leave so intricately bound in the life and work and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ that it cannot be turned for false ends? For all of Paul's failings and fumblings his story inevitably led to the story of that Christ who so blindingly reordered Paul's life on that road to Damascus. Paul's story pointed to Christ. May that also be true of each of our stories and of our story as a church.
Who tells your story? What story do they tell of you?
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #620, PraIse, My Soul, the King of Heaven; #12, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise; #634, To God Be the Glory
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