The
reading
Philippians
1:1-19
Paul
and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who
are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: 2 Grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 I thank my God every time I
remember you, 4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all
of you, 5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring
it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to think this
way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share
in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and
confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you
with the compassion of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love
may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to
determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and
blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through
Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. 12 I want you to know, beloved,
that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, 13 so
that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone
else that my imprisonment is for Christ; 14 and most of the brothers and
sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to
speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. 15 Some proclaim Christ
from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. 16 These proclaim Christ out
of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; 17
the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending
to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. 18 What does it matter? Just this,
that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true;
and in that I rejoice.
The message
We
are now in the third part of our Sunday reading list. Since September, we have spent time with the
Old Testament, the first reports and stories of God’s communication with and
work in the world meant to teach us we are known, loved, sustained and called
to action by God. Since Christmas, we
have spent time going through the Gospel of John, a book that focuses on Jesus
ministry, 7 signs of power and 7 timeless I am statements (like I am the good
shepherd, I am the vine and I am the gate).
About a third of John focuses on Jesus last days, Jesus trial, death and
resurrection. It was written to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ, the word
of God made flesh, who rose from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins.
Over
the last few weeks, we have started our third section of the narrative
lectionary, our focus has been on what
Jesus disciples have done about it, how the people and communities that
first experienced God’s revelations and work accomplished through Jesus
responded. We have been inspired by the work of Jesus disciples’ as shared in
the book of Acts. After all the misunderstanding, anxiety, confusion and fails,
they finally get it. People like Peter, James and John are out in the world,
healing, teaching, proclaiming the good news.
New converts like Paul and Lydia are quickly getting to work as well. They
are connected in that each have received the Holy Spirit and they are sharing
it in word and deed. Today, we hear the start of Paul’s letter to the church at
Philippi.
Phillipi
was located in an area known at the time as Macedonia. (Today it is Northern
Greece, the Republic of Macedonia and part of Albania). After being the site of several war victories
for Rome and some time as a military colony, Phillipi was established as a
Roman colony (the only city in that region with this important status). This
meant the Phillipains did not have to pay taxes, had their own independent
government and were basically treated like they lived in Rome. The main highway from Rome to the East passes
through Phillipi, making the community a major center for trade and commerce.
Paul visits this city 2 or 3 times during his missionary journeys.
Paul’s
letter to the Phillipians is the most positive and joyful. We do not read the
same sort of serious criticism and spiritual correction found in his Letters to
Corinth and other churches. We learn of
the founding of the Phillipian Church in Acts 16
From Troas we put out to sea
and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day we went on to Neapolis.
From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that
district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days. On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate
to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and
began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was
a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She
was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s
message. When she and the members of her
household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer
in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us
This
event, the start of the church in Philippi and Paul’s follow ups with them,
have a great deal of significance for many reasons. The one I want to look at
is that, as Paul writes to the church in Rome, all people are sinners who have
fallen short of the glory of God. God
works grace in and through all different people, therefore the church is made
for all different people. Lydia, a
successful woman, becomes the head of the church there. She hosts, leads, teaches and funds the
ministry (as a dealer in the very expensive and royal purple cloth, she has
significant status and wealth). Paul himself basically ordains a woman. Her story, like Saul’s is an example that God
calls and works through all different people, that the ways we separate
ourselves from one another do not matter to God.
This
idea that all people matter to God can be seen throughout Paul’s work,
missionary journeys and arguments with the church in church in Jerusalem over
the need to become Jewish before Christian. We see this radical inclusion in the first
line or two of this letter to the Philippians. Paul writes this letter to the
church in Philippi, specifically, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, with the
bishops and deacons. The idea that a
message of such great importance would go to a whole community, with various
levels of education, ability, power and statue or time as a baptized Christian
would have been laughable. It was strange. Outisders would wonder, Your writing
to those people? Paul would say, Yes because God’s spirit is with all of them. Who are they? Paul would say “children of God saved by the
same underserved grace”. “What if they
are too foolish to understand” Paul would say “Its about revelation, none of us
would understand these things without the gift of faith”. Paul
sees the church operating and organized in a really different from the ways of
the world. The Roman model was hierarchy. This is beyond rich or poor (although
that was part of it too). There were centurions, commanders, generals, and
officials, people were divided as citizens or non-citizens, entire cities or
regions were considered self-determining or not. There was a clear chain of
command, responsibility and reward. There was a way that orders and instructions
were distributed.
We
see the origins in this model of church as a place where all people are saved
and all people have something to contribute in 2 of the upcoming holidays. The
Ascension, coming up this Thursday and Pentecost coming up 10 days after that
(celebrated here on May 20th).
The
Ascension marks 40 days after Christ is Risen, when Jesus having completed his
work, returns to heaven. He gives some
final instructions to the disciples, telling them to care for each and baptize
all nations. This is a change of plans
for some of the disciples, we need to keep in mind, Jesus does not say baptize
all jews, or baptize all gentiles, or baptize all Romans, or baptize all people
with beards, all men, all women, all attractive people, all rich people, all
poor people or any other limit, In
response, the disciples celebrate. They sing songs of praise and go to the
temple to worship and pray. They finally get it. The fears, anxieties and worries that
accompanied their time with Jesus is now quieted. They are ready to be the church, the visible,
encountered and experienced presence of God in the world.
Well
they are almost ready. Jesus also tells them to wait for the Holy Spirit. They would not be the church without it. On
Pentecost, we see the Spirit of God come as a violent wind, touches all of
Jesus followers, We see them quickly after start to speak all different
languages, communcating the news of Jesus Christ, living, dead and resurrected for all to all.
There
are a few Pentecosts. We can eat pork,
bacon and all that good stuff because of another Pentecost, when Peter hears news of welcome in a vision and then
witnesses the Holy Spirit descend on a group of gentiles, non jewish people in
Macedonia. There is the moment in John’s
Gospel when Jesus breathes on them, instructing them to receive the Holy
Spirit. In that case, they get off to an immediate start. Paul, hearing about these events and knowing his own story, addresses
the letter to the Phillipains To all the
saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:,
knowing each has value, each has dependence on God’s grace, each has received
the Holy Spirit (the indication that God has reached out to them) each has
something to offer. Lets look at the world the same way.
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