From Our Archives

For earlier essays on this week's RCL texts, see Dan Clendenin, The Key to Sanity and Survival (2022); Debie Thomas, The Great Chasm (2019); Dan Clendenin, Acts of Hope in Times of Despair (2016); Poverty Reduction—Of the Soul: The Parable of Dives and Lazarus (2013); "Peculiar Respect" for the Poor of the World: Imitating God, Nourishing Our Own Souls (2010); and Lindsey Crittenden, He Knows My Name (2007).

This Week's Essay

By Amy Frykholm, who writes the lectionary essay every week for JWJ.  

1 Timothy 6:19: “So that they may take hold of the life that really is life."

In chapter six of the first letter to Timothy, the author describes three kinds of people. The first are those who are content with the material goodness of their lives, and combine this contentment with what the writer calls “godliness” (1 Timothy 6:6). If these people have food and clothing, that’s enough. Their material simplicity allows them to pursue “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness” (6:11).

The second kind of people are those who pursue riches. For these people, the desire for wealth leads into “senseless and harmful desires,” the author writes. Such people have “pierced themselves with many pains." 

The third kind of people are already rich “in the present age.” These people receive special and direct instructions: “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” By this, they will lay a good foundation for the future, and they will “take hold of the life that really is life” (6:17–19).

In reading 1 Timothy, this last phrase intrigued me. The rest of the passage is relatively unsurprising; it sounds the familiar refrains of good works and generosity.  But to experience a life that really is life — is that just the turn of a lovely phrase, words belonging on some motivational poster? Or could it mean more?

Approaching this passage returns me to the jungle of southern Mexico.  In my mind’s eye, I see a massive freight train, hundreds of cars long, roaring across a steep ravine over an impossibly high bridge. Behind it, I see Pico de Orizaba, the awe-inspiring 18,490-foot volcano. And then, as I peer up from the valley floor, I see a tiny human figure, standing on top of the train, arms spread wide.

Timothy Paul Schmalz, When I Was a Stranger (2016).

I had come to the town of Fortín de las Flores, Veracruz after reading Sonia Nazario’s book Enrique’s Journey. The book recounts the story of a young Honduran man who traveled to the US border on top of freight trains. While most of his journey was fraught with almost unimaginable danger, in this corner of Mexico he had found something of an oasis. The people of Fortín, rather than preying on passing migrants, were renowned for offering them help. I wanted to understand why the people of this small city of 20,000 responded to a crisis of human misery with “generosity and good works,” why they were in the words of 1 Timothy, so “ready to share.” 

After only a few hours in Fortín, I’d been invited, unannounced and as a complete stranger, into the courtyard of a house that sat alongside the railway. When I say “alongside,” I mean the house was in such close proximity to the train tracks that its inhabitants could reach out from a bedroom window and touch a passing train. The trains rattled and roared like massive beasts right next to the corrugated metal fence where the family sat outside and ate meals together. Inside that orange-tree dotted courtyard lived an 84 year-old woman. Several times a day, the relative peace of her life was shattered by the ground-shaking arrival of another train. 

Timothy Paul Schmalz, When I Was Naked (2016).

When the trains had passed, Señora Juarez picked up whatever had spilled to the floor, hung things back on their hooks, and went about her business. Often that business was carrying food, water, and supplies to the migrants who rode on top of the trains. When I asked about the trains, she described the devastation, the hunger, and the gruesome injuries the freight trains brought to her town. She described seeing people with lips chapped and bleeding from thirst, people without limbs, children younger than her youngest grandchild traveling alone. 

Sometimes she packed up chicken and tortillas and sent her grandchildren to the railroad crossing to hand food to strangers. Sometimes it was carefully sealed baggies of water that could be tossed up to those on top of the moving trains. This was a daily occurrence.

Most of the people I met in Fortín ran micro businesses — taco stands, carnitas trucks, tiny restaurants — and lived on a few dollars a day. Yet they addressed the needs of the migrants that they encountered. They fed strangers directly from their businesses, refusing any exchange of money. They worried that many of the travelers from Central America had no conception of how cold it would be in the mountains ahead, so they passed out sweatshirts and stocking caps for the journey. 

Timothy Paul Schmalz, Homeless Jesus (2013).

I admit that I was mystified by this simple response to human need. I came looking for a theory, or perhaps for a saintly and inspiring person. But when I asked the people of Fortín about their practices, with a directness that I am sure many saw as naive, they looked at me either nonplussed or baffled as to why this was of interest. It was just what you did. There is suffering that is right in front of your face. You have the resources to relieve a small portion of it. So you act. Señora Juarez’s daughter tried to explain it to me while I sat in the courtyard with a plate of pork and tortillas. I know she was trying not to be condescending, but she was at a loss about where the mystery lay. “Right now, we are eating,” she said. “When we are finished, there will be a little left over. That we can pass along.” 

Hugo Chávez, a man who worked at a local hotel, had a little better idea where my curiosity came from. He had lived for several years in Appleton, Wisconsin before returning to his hometown. He knew that what I was observing in Fortín was rare where I came from. “The central value of this society is compartir,” he said as he carried a bag of oranges toward a train that had briefly stopped not far from the hotel. “Even a business is primarily a place from which to share.” 

It is easy to romanticize what I saw in Fortín from my few weeks there, and yet the experience was profound and not easily forgotten. Ever since, I’ve carried with me a sense that these were people who knew “the life that really is life.” In the midst of relentless, daily, monumental human suffering, they shared this life with strangers, and even with me. 

Weekly Prayer

St. Brendan the Voyager (484–577)

The Journey Prayer

God, bless to me this day,
God, bless to me this night;
Bless, O bless, Thou God of grace,
Each day and hour of my life;
   Bless, O bless, Thou God of grace,
   Each day and hour of my life.

God, bless the pathway on which I go;
God, bless the earth that is beneath my sole;
Bless, O God, and give to me Thy love,
O God of gods, bless my rest and my repose;
   Bless, O God, and give to me Thy love,
   And bless, O God of gods, my repose.

St. Brendan the Voyager (484–577) was an Irish monk and one of the twelve apostles of Ireland. 

Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net

Image credits: (1) Toronto Scoop and (2, 3) TimothyPaulSchmalz.com.