Keswick 22.1: Baton passing for beginners……..

It’s July, it’s hot (record-breaking hot), and it’s time for the Keswick Convention once again. Today (Monday) was the first day of this year’s Week 1 “Bible Readings”. The theme of the week is “Grateful” and this week’s messages will be from 2 Timothy, delivered by Alistair Begg. And I’ve already been amply reminded of lots of reasons to be grateful.

Some of these are to do with my own past. In listening to the Begster (as a friend of mine called him recently - I would never be that cheeky), I was reminded of seed-sowing, mind-shaping experiences of student days in the Christian Union in the University of Glasgow. In fact I last heard Alistair Begg in the Queen Margaret Union common room (actually just a big beer-stained party space) in the early 1980’s. The older I get the more I appreciate those far off days when with a group of like-minded and like-aged individuals started to grow up – a process that continues. Home and family provided a good foundation, but it had to be built upon. A whole range of speakers at CU “teaching meetings” and a network of Christian friendships provided both means and materials. That is now 40 years in the past. I have no doubt that there are those who do not look back so fondly. For me it may only have been a stage but it was no passing phase. It was critical.

This morning, Alistair Begg mentioned in passing his friend Eric Alexander. The Rev Alexander, who retired from ministry in the Church of Scotland some years ago, in my day was something of a hero to many of us. A faithful and gifted preacher of the Word of God, and a man of faultless courtesy, he and his congregation in St Georges Tron in the centre of Glasgow provided a spiritual home to many of my contemporaries. He also figured in an early Keswick I attended, again in the ‘80s. There have been so many of these figures. I attended a memorial service for Peter Maiden yesterday in the Keswick tent. I suppose those whose formative days are today will have their own heroes, models and influences. But today the subject of baton passing was definitely front and centre.

This is one of the big themes of 2 Timothy, a parting letter from Paul to his young (or at least younger) associate Timothy. There is truth, ‘sound words’ to be guarded. Believing this truth, teaching it, obeying it, living it, would be costly. It would entail suffering because to live in this way would inevitably evoke opposition, and that opposition would bring pressure. To resist that pressure would involve cost and suffering. Paul endured suffering, and invited Timothy to share in it. This all sounds a bit grim. And it would be if we were talking about suffering for a philosophy or creed. But the Gospel is much more than that. Much more than a set of human propositions. It is both a person to whom we are drawn and united, and the truth that reveals that person. Paul calls it the “testimony about our Lord”. It was transformative in Paul’s life, and in Timothy’s. But would it, could it, survive the passing into history of the likes of Paul and the other Apostles?

This was Paul’s concern. He would tell Timothy (I’m assuming we’ll come to this later in the week) to pass it on to faithful men and women. Others who, having been called and transformed, would themselves pass it on, unaltered and untainted (otherwise it would not be the Gospel). Paul need not have worried, indeed he probably didn’t. He had both conviction and confidence. Not in himself, and not even in Timothy. He reminds Timothy (I’m fairly sure this was ground they covered many times) that the resources available to accomplish this task were primarily not human but divine. The same God who authored the Gospel (Paul calls it the “Gospel of God” in Romans), provided the resources for its preservation; the “spirit of love, power and self-control”, the Holy Spirit who through His indwelling would empower Timothy to guard the good deposit. This is hardly surprising given that the Gospel is God’s rescue plan for sinful, fallen creatures, initiated in eternity past, with an objective in eternity future. Its execution is not likely to want for resources.

But Paul’s letter to Timothy was written a long time ago and long way away. How is it all going? Well, Timothy found those trustworthy men and women, and then they, in their turn, found others, and so on down the years. All the way along there were probably those who fretted that things were so bad that the whole thing was running into the sand. But eventually the very same Gospel was entrusted to the likes of Alexander and Begg, who have spent their lives doing exactly as Paul instructed Timothy. It happened again, today, in a big tent in Keswick. I owe a great debt to the likes of them, and many others. In a sense that same message has been entrusted to me.

Many thanks. Now to pass it on.