“[D]o nothing out of favoritism” (5:21).  Remember Joseph and his eleven brothers?  I guess Jacob just couldn’t help himself.  Well, he had learned from the best: his mother, who preferred him, and his father, who preferred his brother Esau (Gen 25:28).  And as for Jacob’s father, Isaac?  Young Isaac watched as, upon the demand of his mother Sarah, Abraham gave Hagar a bag of food, a skin full of water, and sent her and Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael away.  “[D]o nothing out of favoritism.”  Words for our times.  Bias, partiality—the exact opposite of justice.  Bias.  Does anyone here trust any media outlet anymore?  It isn’t difficult to figure out what side they love and what side they loathe.  They all seem so eager to pillory each other.

God is always bringing justice out of our bias—miracles of holy power.  God makes it clear many times in Scripture that He does not approve of favoritism.  He expects justice.  Leviticus, that stickiest, ickiest of books, tells us: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Lev 19:15).  Scripture tells us justice requires wisdom and discernment.  Wisdom and justice go together, just as foolishness and bias.  Scripture tells us that God loves justice and is Himself just.  Because He is Truth, He is also Justice itself.

Justice is without bias, hard as that may be for us.  Aren’t so many of our current political woes attributable to rampant favoritism, stacking the deck, tipping the scales?  Oh, all from the best, noblest intentions—“We meant well”!  I thought it was a dictum of justice that the ends could not justify the means, but history seems to demonstrate that people tend to act otherwise, with the usual murderous results.  Favoritism is only possible where there is power, authority—those in a position to confer and withhold favor.  Bias as virtue?  Bias as justice?  Beloved, when bias is taught as justice, society is in trouble, not to mention the church.  Let us “do nothing out of favoritism.”

It sounds as if part of the problem Timothy was at work in Ephesus to correct was rampant favoritism: groups, cliques, blocs.  Paul warns Timothy, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands” (5:22).  Don’t rush to ordain.  Carefully look into the matter for yourself.  Trust, but verify.  Properly vet.  Know those with whom you are working and worshiping.  When I moved to South Carolina, I was unaware of what “straight ticket” voting was—that wasn’t a thing in Oregon or Michigan.  In the voting booth there in Charleston, I made a choice, and suddenly every other choice was made for me, too.  That got my attention.  Be an informed voter, we might say today.  Be an informed leader—another reason to pray for our elected officials: who is advising them?  Our sources of information shape our understanding of reality, of meaning, and value.  And they know that.  Where are you getting your information?  What do they want you to think?

Caesar Augustus was famous for his saying festina lente: make haste, slowly.  Make progress wisely, deliberately.  One potential problem for any institution or organization is that decision-making can become concentrated, confined, to a small group.  In Congress, as in our Presbyterian way of being church, that problem is meant to be checked in part by brief terms.  In our way of doing church, our two-term limit is intended in part to prevent concentration of power in any one clique within the congregation.

We’d never say it doesn’t matter who is serving as president or governor, in the legislature or on the courts.  Likewise, it matters who serves in the ordained offices of the church: pastors, elders.  In our denomination, ordination for prospective pastors is at least a three-year process, with a lot of input from many people and a lot of prayer, seeking the will of God.  And still we have a hard time hearing.  We can’t ordain perfect people, as there are none, but we can do all that we can to be assured we are ordaining people of faithful faith and faith-filled living.  Only, we must always consider carefully what faithful faith and faithful living is and is not.  People even in the church have a tendency to become confused about that.

Advance wisely, “and do not share in the sins of others.  Keep yourself pure” (5:22).  I don’t think Paul has debauchery in mind as he’s cautioning Timothy.  I don’t think Paul is writing primarily about temptations outside the church.  What are these “sins of others”?  Every sin is a sin against love, against the Love of God and love of neighbor, the best welfare of others.  My hunch is that the sins Paul has in view are those that happen when church leadership does not advance wisely, when church leadership does not seek God or God’s will through prayer and close attention to God’s Word.

This sin against which Paul warns happens when people no longer anchor themselves in the Word, when they no longer pray as they were taught, no longer pray as they ought.  It’s to join in with culture, cliques, factions, and blocs, to exercise authority with favoritism, to sway the circle your way rather than God’s way.  I haven’t been in a church yet that hasn’t had blocs, cliques.  All meant well, I’m sure.  All operated out of what they believed was good and right and true.  Most have been benign, thank God!  Some have been cancerous.  And all of them, even without intending to, can cause hard feelings, feelings of exclusion, different levels of worth.  In group and out group—those who matter and those who don’t, those whose voices are heard, and those who are not heard, those who are thought about and those about whom no one ever seems to think.  We know this is the way of the world.  Why do we allow it to happen, though, in our churches?

When Paul urges Timothy to keep himself “pure,” I think part of what he is recommending is a sort of godly neutrality, which is always the hardest position to maintain in any pull and push situation.  Even neutral Sweden and Finland are now seeking to join NATO.  I guess so long as Switzerland is holding everybody’s stash, the Swiss will be alright.  Don’t be a partisan, be a disciple.  Don’t seek your way—tall order!  Seek Christ.  Collaboration, the work of maintaining relationships, which requires ongoing communication and ongoing personal responsibility.  We are all responsible to the Lord.  We are all responsible before the Lord.  He will have each of us give an accounting.

Don’t be hasty, don’t rush, advance slowly, wisely, because most of the time it’s only over time that truth and the reality of a situation, the reality of a person, emerge.  Paul observes that “The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them.  In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever” (5:24-25).  Seek and keep to God’s way in each situation, in each choice—peaceful, quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.  Choose godliness and holiness.  That’s work, ongoing work, even hard work, sometimes, but God sends the Spirit for this reason; He gives us one another.  We are not without help.

We all have sins that precede us to the judgment seat: dreadful, doleful!  There, we all have sins that will be brought out into the light—nothing is hidden in the presence of God.  Our confidence is not in our sinlessness, our purity, but in Christ’s perfect sinlessness, his perfect purity, God’s gift to us.  Our confidence is not in our superhuman will but in the divine power of the Spirit, transforming, reforming us after the pattern of Christ, up to the measure of Christ.  God is reforming us, day by day.  Seek and keep to God’s way in each situation, in each choice, and you will be as those who leave a trail of goodness for others to enjoy and follow, a testimony.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.