All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16)

Homily for June 5, 2026 at Holy Name, Birmingham.

https://youtu.be/q4BGKuoPT2c?si=Xj5u_6zgLfW_AVWt

Transcript

We're winding up our reading from the second letter to Timothy. In the opening verses of the letter, Paul recalls Timothy's sincere faith, “a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I'm sure lives in you.” (2 Timothy 1:5)

Paul calls Timothy “my beloved child,” (2 Tim. 1:2) So Paul himself has a hand in Timothy's formation. In today's lesson we read, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16)

I'd like to reflect on that single phrase. “All scripture is inspired by God. “What lies at the heart of the word inspired is much more profoundly theological than any claim to literal or infallible truths about biblical text. Inspired in Greek is theopneustos. Theo, of course, is God, and pneo, p-n - like pneumonia, to breathe out. literally understood as something like God-breathed. This word only appears in 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, and it seems that Paul might have made up the word. 

But in the Old Testament, the idea of God's breath is connected to what gives life. God's breath is creative, life and faith-giving. Think of Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Barbara Brown Taylor points out that “our gorgeous blue-green planet is wrapped in a protective veil we call the atmosphere, which separates the air we breathe from the cold vacuum of outer space. 

Beneath this veil is all the air that ever was. No cosmic planet cleaning company comes along every hundred years or so to suck out all the old air and pump in some new. The same ancient air just keeps recirculating, Which means that every time any of us breathe, we breathe stardust left over from the creation of the earth.” The same breath that was breathed into Adam's nostrils. The very breath that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross. and then breathed into his disciples, locked in the upper room, as shalom, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit all at once. “Isn't it wonderful,” Father Richard Rohr says, "that breath, wind, spirit, and air are precisely nothing, and yet everything.“

The four-letter name of God, Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, Y-H-W-H, Yahweh, is not really pronounceable, but breathable. Breathe in, Yah. Breathe out, Hey. Yah… weh. God's eternal mystery cannot be captured or controlled, but only received and shared as freely as the breath itself, the thing we have done since the moment we were born and will continue until the day we die. God is as close to us as our very breath. 

The word conspire means to breathe together. Maybe that's one of the best descriptions of the church at Pentecost. People breathing together with the breath of God, one spirit moving through many lives, a holy conspiracy of healing, mercy, courage, and love. At the center of these words, inspire, conspire, you can hear the word spirit. One of my favorite images of the spirit is from Romans 8, verse 26. “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

All Scripture is inspired by God. Inspired, the word Paul gives us today, is a summary of the way in which God and God's breath and Spirit is at work. All scripture is a means by which God can breathe life and faith and hope and love and forgiveness and resurrection into people.