2 Timothy 1:7-10

16th Sunday after Trinity

Pastorin Kornelia Schauf

2 Timothy 1:7-10

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Dear Congregation,

“If only you had been here!” Maria and Martha reproach Jesus. The sentence continues:
“If you had been here in time, Lazarus would not have died.”
Jesus enters the home of his grieving friends. Their distress, their fear, their helplessness, and their sorrow in the face of loss move him.

Jesus steps into this house of mourning and perceives just how deeply the death of Lazarus
has thrown the women off balance.
That is the nature of death. It enters our lives and wields immense power. It has the
power to throw us off course.

Timothy, too, has this experience. He witnessed Paul being humiliated and persecuted, and facing the threat of death. Timothy himself was imprisoned and feared he would be killed.
The fear of dying and of death is real.
Jesus is moved by this distress.
And Paul, too, is deeply affected by the distress of his colleague Timothy.
Anyone who deals with people in whose lives death is currently a very present reality
will understand.

We do not escape death. Not even with the resurrection of Jesus. This is what occupies John
as he writes his Gospel.
That desperate cry—“If only You had been here in time!”—is the lament of the young Christian community facing persecution in Rome. They are awaiting the return of Jesus and
are convinced that all suffering and death will be overcome when Jesus comes back.

Yet Jesus is in no rush. He takes His time. He takes His time even on the way to Mary and
Martha. He does not spare them from death. None of us becomes immortal
through faith.

But what, then, does the resurrection of Jesus mean for us and our experience of death? It has often been expressed this way: death is stripped of its power.

Paul describes it thus in his letter to Timothy:
1. God’s Spirit works within us, enabling us to remain level-headed, loving, and strong in the face of death.
2. Jesus Christ strips death of its power and, through the Gospel, brings life and an imperishable nature to light.
When Jesus goes to Mary and Martha, they experience the power that emanates from Him: Lazarus comes back to life. It is not only Jesus who is raised from the dead; this applies to the rest of us as well.
“Lazarus gets his life back. We do not simply get our old lives back—but we receive the hope of new life.”

Or, as Paul puts it: an imperishable nature is brought to light.
When I read this, many different experiences of death come to mind, as do situations where this truth becomes real: death is deprived of its power.
Whenever this happens, it is a miracle. It is something we can only understand with the heart.
I see it in the fearlessness granted to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Nazis, even though they killed him, had no power over him. He remained free in his trust—so free that, even in prison, he could write: “Wonderfully sheltered by good powers.”

“The ‘good powers’—as I understand it—are an image for God’s Spirit, which can preserve a person in the midst of a threat: not necessarily from death itself, but from letting death determine everything.”
I have often witnessed such fearlessness and composure in the face of death—people who remain loving even as they mourn their loss.

Mary and Martha called Jesus to come to them. Since Jesus no longer lives among us in the flesh, this seems much harder for us today at first glance. Yet, fundamentally, it is a matter of prayer. Mary and Martha pray; they ask and implore Jesus to come.
We, too, can do this in prayer. When Jesus comes to them—when they sense and experience how deeply their brother’s death affects Him—they find comfort and experience the power of the resurrection.
This is what I read and hear in this story, and it encourages me to turn to prayer.
In prayer, a space opens up and a time is created where God’s Spirit works within us.
In prayer, anger, frustration, and helplessness in the face of death can be transformed; there, in prayer, we can receive love and composure.
In prayer, the lament “If only You had been here!” shifts into the experience that Jesus *is* here. He and the Spirit of God are at work. They are alive. They strip death of its power.
A second realization comes to me: the love that sustains people in the face of death. Timothy surely gained new courage and vitality through Paul’s letter. Mary and Martha were comforted by Jesus. We should not underestimate the strength we can give one another during the phases of death and dying.
To be sure, we often feel helpless and at a loss for words at a deathbed.
There is something within us that wishes to spare the other person this loss, and
something that makes us doubt. In those moments, we feel powerless in the face of death.
Yet at the same time, if we remain present—loving and connected—and compassionately
perceive what those experiencing the loss need, we will realize: In the midst of death, love remains alive.
I began grappling with dying and death at an early age. Both my parents had narrowly escaped death. We knew about the senseless slaughter of the Second World War, and we understood that sense of helplessness.
I can well understand why people doubt God in the face of all this.
Why the thought arises: God is dead.

And I can also understand why, confronted with so much senseless dying, people eventually say:
Then we will simply give up hope. Then perhaps we will give up on humanity, too.
But ultimately, this only gives death even more power.

Viktor Frankl helped me see this differently. Frankl was a Jew who survived the
Nazi concentration camps. He witnessed people being humiliated, stripped of their
rights, and murdered. Yet, it was precisely out of this experience that he grappled with the question of what remains for a human being even under the worst conditions: the inner freedom to adopt a stance and to give meaning to one’s life.

For me, this resonates with what Paul wrote to Timothy. God’s Spirit does not remove us from the reality of death. But He can keep death from dominating our thoughts, our actions, and our hearts.
When we ask for a spirit driven not by fear, anxiety, and anger, but by prudence, hope, trust, and love, then miracles of resurrection can occur in the midst of death.

Perhaps that is the decisive question in the end: How do we recognize that death is losing its power? Not by the fact that no one dies anymore. Not by being spared every loss. But perhaps by the fact that life goes on in the midst of death. That people remain there for one another. That one person holds another’s hand. That someone listens, even when there is no answer. That we weep together and yet hope. That we do not let death drive us to give up on love. For that is precisely where the power of the resurrection lies for me. Death can take people from us. But it need not take our love. It can take a person away. But it need not take away our ability to be there for one another. It can shake our certainties. But it need not take away our hope. And perhaps this is what is meant when Paul says: “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

This Spirit does not make us immortal. But it makes us alive. That is why we can pray like Mary and Martha: “If only you had been here!” We are allowed to lament. We are allowed to question. We are allowed to bring our pain before God. But perhaps, in prayer, our lament slowly transforms. Not necessarily into an answer. But into a presence: Jesus is here. God’s Spirit is here. Love is here. And in the midst of death, something new begins. That is resurrection. That is the miracle we cannot always explain, but sometimes can only recognize with the heart. God brings life to light. And that is why we do not walk through this world without hope. For death has less power. Christ is risen. And his Spirit is alive—right here among us.