C, Post-Pentecost 18, Proper 23 - 2 Timothy 2:8-15 "Chewing the Fat of Faith"

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “chewing the fat”. This is what people do when they sit round the campfire, the bar with a beer, or at the kitchen table — killing time, talking, perhaps gossiping, or just discussing the day’s events in a bid to overcome boredom. One chews the fat by having a chat with someone else. Chewing the fat is usually done with friends.

But from where did such a saying arise? Is chewing the fat a healthy thing to do, or not? Or is chewing the fat neither good nor bad — just a way of remembering and reminding, a mental regurgitation, coughing up what was once buried deep within the mind?

There are a number of legends that seek to explain how the phrase “chewing the fat” entered common speech. However, in recent times there’s an army of health experts warning people off eating fat. To eat lean, they say, is to live a serene, healthy life. One must deny oneself fat, let alone chewing the fat.

Yet this is what soldiers would do to pass the time of tension and boredom before battle broke out. They would chew on tough salted meat or fat to distract the mind and socialise with one another — in the calm before the storm, to keep calm.

Or “chewing the fat” may have been a saying that arose from people doing so in times of food scarcity or on long voyages across the ocean, chewing the fat to get every last morsel of goodness out of a limited supply of food. Even so, it was still a communal activity.

Another possibility is that the saying came from a Native American cultural practice where, during peace talks, “chewing the fat” was a ritual.

Another possible derivation is that “chewing the fat” may have come from another saying, “chewing the rag”, where musket ammunition was kept in paper or cloth soaked in animal fat, which was bitten off when loading the musket. It is thought that the bitten‑off ends of rag or paper soaked in fat would then be chewed to reduce nerves amid the battle. Here again, chewing the fat was a communal exercise amongst comrades.

Saint Paul calls himself a soldier bound in chains as he encourages Timothy also to be a good soldier. He says to Timothy, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!” (2 Timothy 2:3,8–9 ESV)

Chewing the fat, like chewing gum, requires muscle memory. Paul encourages Timothy to chew over the word of God, which is not bound as he is bound. Remember Jesus Christ, remember his resurrection, remember he is the offspring of David, remember my preaching of these things — which is my gospel, for which I am suffering. Make it yours too! Chew over the word of God, remember the word of God.

Although “chewing the fat” of God’s word is not literally tearing pages from the Bible and eating them, the symbolic saying does bring to light an issue from Old Testament law. The fat was the most valuable part of a sacrificial animal; eating it, let alone constantly chewing it, was forbidden. The fat and the blood belonged to God:

“And the priest shall burn them (that is, the fat on the entrails, together with the kidneys, the liver, and the fat covering them) on the altar as a food offering with a pleasing aroma. All fat is the Lord’s. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places, that you eat neither fat nor blood.” (Leviticus 3:16–17 ESV)

There would be no literal eating or “chewing of the fat” in Jewish practice. Yet today we eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. We remember what Christ did to be our Saviour at the cross as we eat his physical and spiritual body and drink his physical and spiritual blood, hidden in the elements of bread and wine. In this we gather as congregation to remember Jesus Christ, to chew the fat, one could say!

Paul, imprisoned, encourages Timothy to share in these things with him despite being separated by prison bars and fifteen hundred kilometres as the crow flies — and further if on foot. Likewise, we gather not just here, nor just at this time, nor just as a parish, nor as a Lutheran denomination, but with angels, archangels, and the whole company of heaven as we are faithfully gathered by the Holy Spirit to “chew the fat” of God’s word, and his Word made flesh in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

This is a mystery that takes Holy Spirit‑given faith to grasp, and it also takes Holy Spirit‑given faith to pass on to others so they too can “chew the fat” of this faith mystery and receive salvation.

Paul also reminds Timothy of this, since he is a minister of these mysteries at Ephesus. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul lists what is required of Timothy and others who serve, saying: “if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:15 ESV)

Then Paul calls Timothy to chew over the following trustworthy saying: “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3: 16 ESV)

Now in his second letter he gives Timothy another piece of truth to chew over as he says: The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:11–13 ESV)

On hearing this saying at first you might hear the law of God, as Paul says, “if we deny Jesus, Jesus also will deny us.” This certainly is a dire place to be! I imagine none of us want to be denied by Jesus Christ. Chewing the reality of being Christless is more hopeless than an Anzac assault from the trenches of Gallipoli.

However, I want us to hear the inclusive language of Paul to Timothy: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:11–13 ESV)

One might think the last statement, “he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself”, is not inclusive. However, Paul wants Timothy to chew over the richness that has been given to all: to him, Timothy, the congregation at Ephesus, and to us as well. Even though Jesus can deny us when we deny him, and leave us to our own devices, to discipline us, he will always be faithful to us, because the Holy Spirit has been planted in us in baptism. The Holy Spirit reminds us to remember and endure — or remain — in Jesus Christ, and to chew over the truth that allows us to reign with Jesus. Although it is hidden and only seen by faith this side of our physical death and resurrection.

Where Paul calls Timothy to remember Jesus, his works of denying and being faithful, now he encourages Timothy to continue being faithful to his call as pastor at Ephesus, saying: “Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:14–15 ESV)

Paul calls Timothy to rightly handle the word of truth, by remembering and reminding. Like a cow chewing its cud, Paul remembers and reminds as he “chews the fat of the faith”. He calls Timothy to do so too. And Paul does this so the church can continue to be gathered and pass on the faith, chewing the fat of God’s richness in Jesus Christ, given and shed for the salvation of souls, so people might participate in the reception of God’s peace. To “chew the fat”, to receive the peace of God.

As we hear Paul speak to Pastor Timothy too, we’re called to chew the fat of faith for our eternal peace as well. We’re called to remember and remind others of God’s faithfulness to us. To gather with our friends and family, our colleagues and neighbours, to chew the fat of our faith and peace. Be it sitting round a campfire, at the bar with a beer, or at the meal table — killing time, talking, demonstrating our desire to glorify God, as we discuss the day’s events in the light of our salvation from sin as we patiently wait for Jesus’ return.

Amen. 

B, The Baptism of our Lord, Epiphany 1 - Acts 19:1-7 "Epiphany in Ephesus"

There were many things going on in the years leading up to Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension.

For two to three hundred years within “Jerusalem Judaism”, murder, scandals, power battles, and political jockeying for favourable positions were occurring at a time when big social changes outside the temple were causing much chaos and confusion in a Greco-Roman world.

Jews whom God had allowed to be exiled to the east, were now not returning to Jerusalem.  Instead, they were spreading as diaspora throughout this new world and were seeking to come to terms with paganism and the philosophical thoughts that abounded in the Hellenisation of the Greco-Roman world.  

Years before, the Greek ruler, Alexander the Great, had annexed the known world under his control.  His kingdom spanned from India in the East to Europe in the west.  He became the father of Hellenisation, which sought to integrate Persian and Greek culture, religion, philosophical thinking, language, and identity.  This was the era in which the philosophical thoughts of Socrates, Plato, and the like, spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.

There were both positives and negatives for Jews in this world.  They were allowed to practice the Jewish faith, and at this time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek by seventy-two translators at Alexandria in North Africa.  The translation is called Septuagint, commonly referred to as the LXX, or seventy, for its numbers of translators.  This was a notable positive for the mission of God the Father of the Jews amongst the Gentiles.  But the danger for Jewish faith was monotheism was now challenged by a pantheon of polytheistic male and female gods and ideologies.

Into this Jesus was born.  John the Baptist baptised Jews in the Jordan, preparing and refocusing the people of God, for the fullness of time came for God to fulfill his promise to Israel, made through the prophets of old.  Three full years saw the completion of God’s covenant with humanity, and then the work of the Holy Spirit continued in a new way, revealing Jesus Christ as “the way of God” for both Jews and Gentiles in Greco-Roman society.

The way of God born of one man and his remaining eleven disciples, at face value, was not going to survive, for all that long, amongst a hostile Jewish culture, from which it came.  Nor did anyone expect the “way of God” to survive the deluge of polytheistic gods and ideologies competing for people’s attention in this diverse new world.

But it did!  Why?  It was the power of God the Holy Spirit!  The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, the Son of God, who put his divinity aside, and suffered on earth as did any other person.  But he finished it without sinning!  Jesus allowed the Holy Spirit to lead him in life and death, fulfilling God the Father’s will in the fullness of time!  The Holy Spirit then raised Jesus from the dead to the right hand of the Father at his ascension after the resurrection.  Now the Holy Spirit would continue revealing the ascended Christ to both Jews and Gentiles!

The spread of the Gospel through the way of God was helped by what God allowed to occur in the dispersion of Jews in the four hundred years since the exile to Babylon before Jesus’ coming.  Jews are notable traders, and they were found along the trade routes of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in the Roman Empire, that had grown and won out over all former empires.

Ephesus, once a seaport, was one of these trading places enroute to somewhere else!  But not only were goods traded, many ideas and philosophies were exchanged and intertwined along these routes that passed from the Far East to Rome and onto Western Europe.

Artemis was a female goddess in Asia Minor.  The world worshipped her.  (Acts 19:27) Ephesus housed her temple and the town relied on Artemis for its honour, as well as trade. 

To the Greeks she was known as Artemis, to the Romans, this same goddess is known as Diana.  We might consider her as a Mother Nature cult, since she was the patron goddess of nature, hunters, wildlife, and childbirth, to name a few.

The way of God, the Gospel, first came to the Jews at Ephesus, as Paul briefly passed through its port and synagogue on his way to Caesarea.  This was his second missionary journey.  (Acts 18: 18-21) 

Next came a man named Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria in North Africa.  Being from this town named after Alexander the Great, and encouraged as a centre of academia, diversity of thought, and culture, Apollos was well equipped in the art of rhetoric and debate, and was competent in the Old Testament Scriptures, most likely the Greek Septuagint.

After Paul’s first visit, Apollos made a stand for Jesus Christ in the synagogue in Ephesus.  However, Priscilla and Aquila, known tentmakers and acquaintances of Paul, having heard him, took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately.  From there Apollos moves onto what we would know as Greece today.  (Acts 18:24-28)

After these two encounters some of the Jews begin to believe in the way of God.  They know of Jesus Christ but not of the power of God through the Holy Spirit.  We hear what happens from Acts chapter nineteen…

Paul said to the disciples in Ephesus, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”  And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.”  And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.”  On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.  There were about twelve men in all.”  (Acts 19:2–7 ESV)

Apollos, like John the Baptist brought a baptism of repentance, preparing for the coming of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.  Now Paul, in the fullness of time, brings Jesus Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Water and the Law came through Apollos, then through Paul the Holy Spirit brought the fullness of the Gospel.  Just as Jesus has called twelve into service during his ministry on earth, God did the same through Paul’s laying on of hands at Ephesus.

Paul remained in Ephesus for about three years on his third missionary journey.  (Acts 20:31) For the first three months he boldly persuaded them about the kingdom of God in the synagogue (Acts 19:8), but then moved to the hall of Tyrannus, where for the next two years, he continued to preach and teach, not only the Jews, but the Gentiles as well. 

The Holy Spirit gave Paul extraordinary healing powers while in Ephesus.  The sons of Sceva, sons of a Jewish High Priest, sought to copy Paul with their own exorcisms, but were overcome by the evil spirits they were trying to exorcize, because they sort to do it by their own power, without the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here stands a warning to anyone who seeks to work apart from the Holy Spirit, through their own human spirit.

So extraordinary was the event, the Sons of Sceva, were wounded and fled the house naked, bringing a sense of awe upon all at Ephesus.  So much so, a greater depth of reverence for Jesus Christ was fostered.  Even believers came confessing and divulging their practices.  Imagine that!  Such was the faith generated by the Holy Spirit in this event, they made public what they were doing, rather than chance being cut off from the power of God, by continuing in their hidden deeds.

Nearing the end of three years, as the Holy Spirit grew the way of God through Paul and the gathering in Ephesus, some became concerned their livelihoods were being diminished as more and more worshippers of Artemis became believers in the way of God through Jesus Christ.  There was much chaos and controversy in Ephesus, so much so, Paul’s fellow believers would not let Paul speak to the mob for fear of what might happen to him.

So, Paul left after being in Ephesus for just under three years, to continue his third missionary journey in Greece. 

On his way back to Jerusalem from Greece, Paul stopped in Miletus, to the south of Ephesus in Asia Minor and called the elders of Ephesus to him.  Paul teaches the elders in the wake of what had occurred earlier in Ephesus, and by what power he did it. 

He says, “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia,  serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews;  how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house,  testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.  And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.  But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.  …for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.  Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  (Acts 20:18–24, 27b-28 ESV)

Paul knows these overseers at Ephesus will be attacked by those seeking to subvert the way of God to the ways of men. (Acts 20:29-32) In fact, Paul was so gifted with discernment in the Holy Spirit, the ministry to Ephesus continues to them through his epistle to them (the book of Ephesians) and in his encouragement for Timothy to remain at Ephesus.  (Paul’s first and second letters to Timothy)

Paul’s letters to Ephesus and Saint Timothy, give us great insight into the congregation and the pastoral care of it in the face of pagan and Jewish persecution of the way of God.

Through Paul, the Holy Spirit leads the church in this era of transformation.  As the pendulum of change swings, Paul seeks to keep the centrality of the cross before the people of Ephesus. 

Paul places the fulfilment of God’s fatherhood in Jesus Christ before the Ephesian congregation, which is caught between, the fatherhood through circumcision in the Law and its extreme opposite uncircumcised fatherless chaos and corruption.

Through Paul and Timothy, the Holy Spirit seeks to put the brakes on the pendulum swing from Judaism to pagan chaos and disorder in the church.  He does this by encouraging faith in the complementarian order within the church, as God had originally ordained in creation and then corrected and restored in Jesus Christ at the cross.  This is done in the face of “new woman” Artemis cultic worship in Ephesus, which is not unlike the mother earth and egalitarian imbalances pushed in our society today.  Not to mention, the Artemis magic similarities with the powers and principalities of the occult.

During 2024, as the LCANZ considers the expectations put before us in the last Synod, we will do well to further investigate and listen to the work of the Holy Spirit in Ephesus in the book of Acts and through Paul’s letters to the Ephesian congregation and Timothy it’s young pastor.  We know and do this trusting the Holy Spirit will keep us in Christ Jesus so like Paul amongst the Ephesians we can be faithfully testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Further reading: Acts 18:24-20:1, 17-38, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and letters First and Second Timothy, the pastor at Ephesus when Paul wrote to him.