MERCY AND PATIENCE (1 Timothy 1:13-17)
Mercy and Patience
September 14, 2025
1 Timothy 1:13-17
By: Pastor Mike Connor
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This week, I attended a conference in Boise co-hosted by the Interfaith Alliance and the Western States Center. These two pro-democracy organizations, one national and one regional, brought together about 40 faith leaders from the Northwest to discuss the dangers that Christian Nationalism poses to our social fabric. The name of the conference was “Countering Hate,” and as I strategized with leaders from different faiths about how to resist the incursion of hatred in our contexts, I was proud to be representing a congregation committed to a practice of active kindness. I also felt affirmed about the inner work we’ve been engaged in all summer, the work of breaking the enemy-making cycle in our hearts through prayer, surrender, and love. It’s deeply important for the moment we are in.
It was a weighty week to be gathered around the theme of “Countering Hate”: the 24th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack; the breaking news about shootings in Colorado and Utah; the memorial service for Major General Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Four, who, as a college student in 1960, led a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina that catalyzed a mass movement of nonviolent sit-ins throughout the South and propelled the Civil Rights Movement to the height of its powers. The story of our collective brokenness is an old story, but so is the story of our collective struggle for peace, justice, and dignity for all. It was good to be doubling down on that work with Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims, Jews, Latter-day Saints, and others.
During the closing interfaith service at the conference, a participant offered a reading by Howard Thurman. Thurman was an African American Christian mystic, writer, and teacher who supported many of the twentieth century’s Civil Rights leaders from behind the scenes as a spiritual director. The words of his that were shared resonate with what I want to talk about today. He says, “There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one’s experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.”
To break the enemy-making cycle and be peacemakers in the world, we must have access to this ‘quiet courage.’ According to Thurman, such courage flows in us, springing from an unshakeable sense of life’s importance. The courage makes itself known, over the course of a life, in repeated acts of solidarity, hospitality, witness, and generosity. To connect this insight with words we’ve already meditated on this morning,
“Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.”
We must be committed to love for the long-haul. The work of building relationships, building trust, building movements is slow, patient work. The fruit of our committed loving grows only in God’s time. We’ll burn out if we only have immediate relief or immediate ‘results’ in view; there has to be a sense that we’re participating in a hopeful work that spans generations.
But God’s timing is a funny thing. From the perspective of ministry, the road is long and we have to follow a God who is, as Paul describes, “the King of the ages” (1 Tim 1:17). Each spring, you plant more trees. Patience is the principal virtue. But the transformation of our hearts, being claimed and appointed to this work by God’s mercy, that is something that can happen in a moment. The scripture says, “Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). Another says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26). And in this passage from 1 Timothy, Paul says “formerly [I was] a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy…” (1:13). Such a disruption and shift in direction, what the Bible calls repentance and faith, or death and resurrection, can happen today -- for you, for me, for us -- if we want it to.
Paul speaks both of God’s mercy and God’s patience, and he sees them as connected. “I received mercy,” he says, “so that in me, as the foremost [sinner], Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim 1:16). Mercy seems to understood by Paul as the immediate intervention of God’s grace in our lives, while patience is the aspect of God’s grace that such mercy reveals. When we receive mercy, we become aware of how patient God has been with us. God has been bearing with our faults, gently moving us through a process of re-creation, toward a moment of lasting commitment.
And being a recipient both of God’s long, loving patience and God’s immediate, radical mercy established Paul as an example for others. The Greek word Paul uses there for “example” means an outline, a sketch, a summary statement. Someone should be able to look at Paul and understand some things about God. His story became an object lessons: Look at me, and see how good God is. Take heart! Your life can change in a moment, AND your love can stretch out over the long road ahead. I’m living proof!
In his New Testament letters like the one we’re considering today, written to his protégé Timothy, Paul occasionally tells us about his conversion in these stark contrasts: formerly I was this, now I am that. The actual event of what he experienced is passed down to us by Luke in the book of Acts 9. Paul, an educated and powerful Jewish leader, passionately persecuted the earliest communities of Christians in and around Jerusalem. He authorized their imprisonment, torture, and execution. One day, while he was going about this work, he was blinded by a flash of light from heaven and heard the voice of Jesus, who told Paul to stop persecuting him and his people and to start loving him and his people.
Paul was blinded for three days; he fasted and prayed until a Jesus follower named Ananias, came to where Paul was hiding out, laid hands on him, and prayed for him. When Ananias did this, Paul regained his sight; no longer “a man of violence,” he was a man who had “received mercy.” He was touched by the overflowing grace of God. He learned experientially -- which is the only way any of us can learn it -- “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15).
Paul went on to organize many of the first Christian congregations. And the letters he wrote to teach, encourage, and correct these early believers now form about a quarter of the New Testament scriptures. This was work for the long-haul, requiring great patience. It cost Paul a great deal of comfort -- eventually it cost him his life. But it was work that began in a moment of mercy: he was ignorant but then he knew; he was blind but then he saw; he was lost but then he was found.
I’d like you to take your worship bulletin and turn it to the front page. The graphic there is an artistic rendering of Paul. The painter, Gracie Morbitzer, who works out of her Modern Saints studio in Columbus, Ohio, wrote this artist statement to go with the image:
“Bearing some scars and an exhausted expression from his tireless work and travels, I still wanted St. Paul to have a gleam in his eye, representing the mission that was more important to him than his life and freedom.”
To be tireless in the work, yet still keep the gleam your eye. That’s the grace of patience, first experienced from God, now offered as a witness and a gift to others.
Gracie Morbitzer also wrote a prayer to accompany personal reflection on her image of Paul. The prayer says this:
“It is so scary to have a shaking up of our entire worldview and all our beliefs. We feel we have no solid ground and wonder if we’ve done anything right, and what to do now. Help us to know that changing beliefs can be for the better, even when scary, and we will feel solid again. Amen.”
The cataclysmic changes that God’s love sets in motion in our hearts and minds and habits; that’s the grace of mercy. God the Creator is also our Re-Creator. God can claim us in a moment and then appoint us to service for a lifetime.
I think that God wants us each to have a story that serves as an example to others. God’s love and grace are always meant to be for both our good and the good of the others. Paul came to realize, on the other side of mercy, just how immeasurably patient God had been with him. He had been so arrogant, so committed to his understanding of the world. His certainty and pride drove him to commit acts of violence, to exclude others from the community of faith. And all that time, God had been stretching out his purposes for Paul, stretching out his love, stretching out his grace, until finally there was a breakthrough.
With God, there can always be a breakthrough. We shouldn’t test God’s patience, but we can certainly trust it, and come to celebrate it. God will not forsake us no matter how far we wander. God will pursue us, call to us, show us mercy, and give us better work to do.
Having experienced divine patience, Paul put it into practice in his ministry from that point forward. Elsewhere he names patience as one “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22-23). As a recipient of mercy, as a person appointed to serve a God of Patience, Paul took on the slow work of forming faithful communities. He championed forgiveness, reconciliation, peacemaking, sound teaching, and generosity. He passed on to others what he first received from Jesus.
That’s what it really comes down to: Often, the very grace that God offers us is what we are best equipped to share with the world. We might all ask: ‘What’s my story? What does it reveal about who God is? When people consider me, what aspects of God’s character to they see? Am I a living example of God’s kindness? Or God’s generosity? Or God’s justice? What about God’s peace, compassion, or gentleness?’
And if you’re not sure, perhaps the invitation for you today is to pray for a breakthrough of mercy, for a transformation of heart. God’s great patience holds you even now: but what if today is the day of salvation? If that’s the case, in the moments that follow as we reflect on our stories, I invite you to simply ask God to meet you with that overflowing grace, to catch up your life in the great unfolding story of love, and to transform your heart and mind. Jesus says, “Ask, at it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Questions for group reflection:
How has my life been changed by knowing, following, and being loved by Jesus
What is God demonstrating to others about his mercy, patience, and love through my story?
How might I reflect on my story and celebrate God’s love for me this week?