Today we celebrate the feast of St. Clement of Rome, traditionally accounted the third bishop of Rome following St. Peter, and the author of the First Letter of Clement, an early Christian text that offered guidance and leadership to the Church in Corinth. Think for a moment of that troubled Church: in St. Paul’s day a constant subject of his own epistolary efforts, racked by division and controversy; now, a generation later, still stuck in the same rut.
Clement’s letter hones in on divisions that have arisen in the community. He congratulates them for having had a good reputation and for increasing in numbers (something bishops are always happy about), but now things have changed. “Envy and jealousy sprang up, strife and dissension, aggression and rioting, scuffles and kidnappings… the eye of faith has grown dim… each one walks after the desires of his own wicked heart” (Clem. 5). No matter how tough things get in our own day, we haven’t yet reached the kidnap stage.
Clement counsels unity and the spirit of love within the divided Church. “Love binds us fast to God… Loves knows of no divisions, promotes no discord; all the works of love are done in perfect fellowship. It was in love that all God’s chosen saints were made perfect; for without love nothing is pleasing to him. It was in love that the Lord drew us to himself; because of the love he bore us, our Lord Jesus Christ, at the will of God, gave his blood for us – his flesh for our flesh, his life for our lives” (Clem. 48).
The New Testament itself reminds us that in the early Church, the ministry of oversight was often exercised by letter. St. Paul’s letters that make up so much of our Scriptures were his attempt to supervise, encourage, and correct the small Christian communities that had grown up around the Mediterranean Sea, in the wake of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Some of them he had founded, while with others he had a more tangential relationship. The model of oversight was not so much bishop over diocese, but rather leadership exercised by a well-regarded pastor with apostolic credentials toward other communities that were in need of guidance.
St. Paul had to argue for his own credentials, but that is the sort of ministry he exercised. St. Ignatius of Antioch, a little bit later, exercised oversight by letter toward the Churches in Asia Minor and even to the Church in Rome. This is the sort of ministry we see in Clement, Bishop of the prominent Church in Rome, whose apostolic credentials, traced to St. Peter, were impeccable.
Our reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is a letter written from pastor to pastor. The Apostle is reminding Timothy of his ordination: “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Tim. 1:6). He writes as one leader to another, even though he’s clearly the senior. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that our apostolic author is not trying to pull rank, or to run things for Timothy. “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you” (2 Tim. 1:6): in other words, you already have the gift, everything that is necessary for the task at hand. He tells him in the second chapter to “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead” (2 Tim. 2:8). “Remember”; “rekindle”: Timothy already possesses everything he needs to know to accomplish his ministry.
So here are three words that Paul shares with Timothy by way of exhortation. “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline”(2 Tim. 1:7). First: “power.” The Greek has the connotation of movement and energy: not the weight of privilege or authorization (though authorization might be important too), but rather the dynamic element that moves a ministry forward. Though the Apostle does not press the point, ministry that is deprived of power is totally ineffective. Dynamic power is essential to effective ministry. The power, of course, comes from God, but it is exercised by human agents.
Second, “love.” Here the word is agape, the self-giving love that we see exercised on the cross, and which Jesus shares with the disciples. We’ve already heard how highly Clement valued this love as the mainspring of relationship and ministry. The love we see on the cross is not powerless, but actually the most powerful thing in the world.
Third word, “self-discipline.” This one has a long history in the pagan world in which the early Christians ministered. It meant something like temperance or moderation; in some earlier English versions you might find “sobriety,” a word which has certainly taken on a certain specific coloration in our day. The word could even edge into self-control, which is what our translation picks up on. My rough and ready translation is “Get a grip!”.
As St. Paul says later in the letter, “I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1-2). Like I said, “Get a grip.” He knew what St. Clement and all the saints knew: that ministry and community life calls for every gift we’ve been given. The good news is that God has already given us every gift we need for the ministry he’s called us to.