Reading: 2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5

(As the early church became more organized and settled in the world, it struggled sometimes to maintain its real message and witness.  In the marketplace of ideas in Roman cities, it was influenced by other philosophies and teachings as much as it sought to influence them.  In the reading today, the church leaders are encouraged to remember the stories and writings of their Scripture that have helped heal their lives and make them whole, and to keep sharing these teachings and writings with others at all times.)

In her 2006 book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor writes of her decision to leave the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church (which she loved, and in which she received much affirmation) to begin a career as a college professor of religion (to which she also felt called).  One of the things she explores is that whereas in the church everything she thought, said and did made sense to other church-folk, out in the world she now has to find new ways to express what she thinks is important, if people are to be able to understand her.

Q: Do you find this as you make the shift every week from Sunday worship, to weekday work and life?  That it's not easy to express in the world, what seems so easy and natural in church?

In the midst of this world-shift that she experiences, Taylor reflects on what she actually wants to take with her from the church and her ministry in it, to translate into her work and life in the world.  To help her know what is essential, she asks herself a question she was asked years earlier at a church conference: "Tell us what is saving your life now?"

Most of us, she says, know what's killing us -- either ourselves individually, or all of us as a community, a country or a species.  And the point of any true religion -- Christian or otherwise, is that it helps save us from the things that destroy our life.  So, from the enormous pile of stuff that we call our tradition, Taylor picks out the handful of teachings and practices that are actually saving her life now, and this then is what she will take into the world with her, and do her best to translate into words and ways that will be understandable to other folks around her outside the church.

Q: If I boiled my Bible down to five or ten stories or teachings that are saving my life right now, what would they be?  What few religious practices are saving my life right now?  Can I talk about these things and practice them in ways that are understandable and meaningful to others who are not part of the church?