Philippians 4:11
Who is the strongest person in the world? Physically, it’s the person who can lift 650 pounds. Constitutionally, it’s the person who is most resistant to disease. Psychologically, it’s the person who can’t be “bent” through brainwashing or torture. But who is strongest personally, humanly, spiritually? I think I have a surprise for you. The Greek word that our English bibles translate “contented” literally means to be possessed of unfailing strength, strength that is always adequate. To be contented, profoundly contented, is to be possessed of a strength that is adequate in the face of any assault, any threat, every temptation. Our contentment is our strength.
Before we discuss more thoroughly what contentment is we should be sure we understand what it isn’t. Contentment isn’t indifference, even though it can be mistaken for indifference and indifferent people often trade on a reputation for contentment that they don’t deserve. As a matter of fact indifference usually masks laziness or callousness. There’s nothing commendable about laziness or callousness. Furthermore, indifference, we must be sure to note, is the antithesis of love. (The opposite of love, we must understand, isn’t hatred; the opposite of love is indifference. People who hate at least take seriously those they hate; the indifferent, on the other hand, take no one seriously and thereby dehumanize everyone.)
Neither is contentment the same as apathy. Apathy is found in people who have given up on life, quit. Apathy is found in people who have come to regard themselves or their situation as hopeless.
Neither is contentment the same as inertia. Inertia is found most commonly in people who are depressed, and frequently don’t know they are depressed.
In his letter to the congregation in Philippi the apostle Paul insists that he has learned to be content in any situation. No one — not even his worst enemy — could ever accuse him of being lazy, callous, a quitter, indifferent, or inert. Everyone — even his best friend — is appalled at the hardships he’s endured: misunderstanding, slander, imprisonment, shipwreck, beatings. Still, he tells us he’s content in any and all situations.
And not merely that he is content, but that he’s learned to be content. He’s had to learn. In other words, the contentment he enjoys now he hasn’t always had. Then how did he get it? He sprinkles many clues throughout his writings, the most telling being his pithy pronouncement, “For me to live is Christ.”(Phil. 1:21) “Christ means life for me.” It sounds so very simple, yet it means everything: “Christ means ‘life’ — at least for me.” Here we are peering into his innermost heart and spirit. It’s almost embarrassing to peer. We feel like voyeurs, gazing at an intimacy that modesty usually clothes. Yet we have to gaze, for as surely as we know the dictionary meanings of the five single-syllable words — “Christ means life for me” — the dictionary can’t come close to capturing the secret of the apostle’s life and the ground of his contentment.
It’s as though we hear music that moves us profoundly. We attempt to speak of the event — the music, our response to it, its effect upon us — to someone else. We fumble and stumble, recognizing that what we’re saying sounds so very simple as to be almost simple-minded or childish even as what we’re saying is supposed to communicate what — yes, that’s the just the problem: what we’re saying is supposed to communicate what will always be ultimately beyond communication. Finally we give up on our fumbling, stumbling words. We know that if only the music moved our friend as it’s moved us, words would be superfluous; and if the music didn’t move our friend, words would be inadequate.
So it is with our Lord Jesus Christ. If your heart resonates with mine, you know that the words we use to speak of our common experience of him are as inadequate as words of the music reporter who speaks of Itzakh Perlman’s violin. Either words are superfluous or words are inadequate. In any case, if our pulse quickens when we hear the apostle say, “For me to live is Christ…. I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” then we shall also know how and why and where he has learned to be content.
There forever remains a deep-down heart-hunger in humankind. It isn’t grief; (no one has died.) It isn’t misery; (there’s no reason to be miserable.) It isn’t depression; (there’s no need to summon psychiatrist or pharmacist.) It’s the deep-down need to be reconciled to our Maker. We aren’t going to be content until we come to terms with this truth.
Contentment arises when Christ’s love for us surges over us and our hearts are captured. Contentment arises when the face of Christ is found to be the face of God smiling upon us and we know that our deep-down heart-hunger has been met even if we couldn’t name the hunger before and can’t describe its satisfaction now. Contentment arises as the one who calls his disciples “friends” befriends us with an intimacy other relationships reflect but never rival. This intimacy, like intimacy anywhere in life, is ultimately as undeniable as it is indescribable, undeniable and indescribable for the same reason: no language does justice to Christ’s penetration of our innermost heart. Lacking adequate language, we can’t prattle about it; modest and therefore reticent, we don’t want to.
I: — Let me say it again: to be contented, according to scripture, is to be possessed of unfailing strength. In the first place, contentment is the atmosphere in which faith thrives and character flourishes. Faith and character add up to godliness. “There is great gain in godliness,”, writes the apostle, “for we brought nothing into the world, and we can’t take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” (1st Tim. 6:8)
I have spoken several times at the Toronto Board of Education Christian Teachers’ Association. One fellow I came to know well, a high school chemistry teacher and a Mennonite, ran into me after we hadn’t seen each for a year or two. “How’s it going?”, I asked, expecting nothing more than the usual shorthand greeting. Instead he began blurting out ever so much that my greeting had never intended to elicit. I noticed too that his self-possession seemed to have deserted him, and he appeared as forlorn as a child lost in a department store. His story unfolded. A few years ago he had decided to speculate in real estate. He made money at it. Whereupon he speculated some more. And made more money. And then speculated some more. Lost it all in a sudden reversal? Oh no. On the contrary, he made an even bigger bundle. And the entire matter of speculation became a preoccupation with him, an all-consuming preoccupation. His wife told him he had lost his Mennonite simplicity and down-to-earthness, as well as Christian profundity that is part and parcel of non-simplistic simplicity. In addition, she could no longer recognize the man who came home now night by night; not only could she not recognize him, she became fearful for their marriage in that she began to wonder just what man she was living with. Most tellingly, he had lost every last shred of contentment. “My head is all messed up,” he wailed to me, “my head is all messed up and I don’t know where my heart is.” Then we had to depart. When next I heard about him I was told that his marriage was tottering and would likely collapse.
We hear all the time, don’t we, about how great a stress insufficient money is on a marriage; we hear much less frequently that too much money is no less a stress. And of course we prefer to lose track of how many couples we have seen blown apart when their pursuit of wealth succeeded and they found that their newfound fortune had made them different people, and discovered as well that now they couldn’t live with the person they hadn’t married.
Think about ambition. In one sense there’s an ambition that is entirely appropriate. We encourage it, especially in our young people. People should be eager to develop and use whatever talents they have. We should be eager to maximize the qualifications that will permit us to do more satisfying work. There’s another kind of ambition, however, that is frightening. This kind of ambition is a conscienceless “climb to the top.” It is driven by a desire to gain superiority, to be a showboat, to dominate others, to strut. It scares me because I have learned that ambitious people in this sense, the conscienceless climbers, are highly dangerous. For the ambitious person nothing matters except his climb to the top: his friends don’t matter, his colleagues don’t matter, truthfulness and loyalty and kindness and integrity don’t matter. And if the ambitious person is also insecure, he’s twice as lethal.
“There is great gain in godliness with contentment. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” Contentment is the atmosphere, the only atmosphere, in which faith thrives and character flourishes.
II: — Contentment is essential, in the second place, if our human relationships are to prosper and be for others and us that richness in our lives before which everything else pales. Three thousand years ago in Israel a young man decided to move from his village into the wider world. The text tells us (Judges 17:8) that he intended to live “wherever he could find a place.” Find a “place?” It doesn’t mean find geographic space: there were open spaces everywhere. “Find a place” means “find a fit”, live someplace where he belonged, where he was cherished, where his life was enhanced. The young man came upon an older man, Micah (not the same person as the prophet Micah.) “Stay with me,” said the older man. The young fellow did. We are told that the fellow was “content” to stay with Micah, the result being that he became to Micah “like one of Micah’s own sons.” In other words, a bond was forged that was as unbreakable as a blood relationship.
As unbreakable as a blood tie? You must have noticed that among Jewish people there are no in-laws. The person we call “son-in-law” Jewish people call “son.” My mother isn’t Maureen’s mother-in-law; she’s Maureen’s mother – and Maureen has always called her this.
Two hundred years before the incident with Micah, Moses was fleeing for his life when his flight landed him among seven foreign women, Midianites, who were struggling to care for sheep. These women (they were sisters) told their father Reuel. Reuel invited Moses into his home for dinner (a most significant gesture in those days, telling everyone that Reuel wasn’t the slightest bit hostile to Moses, a stranger.) We are told that Moses was content to stay with Reuel. Reuel gave Moses Zipporah, one of his seven daughters, as wife. Their first child they named Gershom. “Ger” is Hebrew for “sojourner”; “shom” is Hebrew for “there, in that place.” “Gershom” means “sojourner in that place.” Moses told everyone why he had named his son Gershom: “I have become a sojourner in a foreign land.”
A sojourner is a resident alien. Both words should be emphasized: resident alien. “Alien” in the sense of “not exactly at home;” “resident” in the sense of “not able to escape, in for the long haul.” Everyone has the feeling of being a sojourner in life. In light of how the world unfolds, Christians especially know they are sojourners. If it’s true that we are sojourners, resident aliens, not exactly at home in the world yet in it for the long haul, then it’s all the more important that we forge the deepest, strongest bonds with other people and especially fellow-disciples.
Such bonds are possible only amidst profound contentment. And I have seen friendships without number dry up and blow away as someone ceased to be content. It happens like this. Two people profoundly “meet” each other and sustain each other and nurture each other — until; until one of them finds a higher-paying job; until someone’s youngster is awarded a university admission scholarship; until one of them inherits a substantial sum from a relative; until the wheel of fortune propels one of them into greater social prominence. The person who is now anything but contented, thanks to her newly accursed social inferiority, becomes ever so slightly jealous at first, then, resentful, soon critical, and finally hostile. At this point the friendship is heading down fast, soon to disappear amidst bitter, envious denunciation. Only one thing can stop the downward spiral before it even begins: contentment. If we are profoundly content (which is to say, if our contentment arises, as in the case with Paul, because to have Christ is to have everything,) someone else’s apparently good fortune won’t poison us and ruin our dearest relationships.
The young man from the Israelite village, and Moses fleeing out of Egypt ; they profited through enduring human relationships that sustained and nurtured them even though they were sojourners in a strange land. Since all of us are sojourners in a strange land, long-term aliens who have to reside where we aren’t exactly at home, all or us are going to find ourselves cherished and find ourselves free to cherish others only as we are profoundly content and therefore aren’t susceptible to toxic envy and resentment and hostility. Contentment is the inner fibre that lends resilience to relationships.
III: — Finally, contentment is a qualification for leadership in the church. Leaders are not to be greedy, says the apostle, not greedy for anything, whether fame or recognition or money. It’s easy to understand why contentment is a qualification for leadership in the church. The person who lacks contentment will always use his position to feed his greed and his ambition and his self-advertisement. Leadership in the church, rather, ought always to reflect the lordship with which Jesus Christ rules us. He is named “Lord” and is such in truth for one reason only: he has been to hell and back for us. In his earthly ministry Jesus spoke of self-important people who exhibit no self-renunciation at all. Instead they “lord it over” others by browbeating them, manipulating them, twisting their arms or pouting petulantly. Those who “lord it over” others, says Jesus, are the grasping, ambitious, uncontented people who look upon the church as their opportunity to be a big toad in a small pond. Contrary to this it always remains the case that the genuine leader leads by way of self-renunciation, not self-importance. The only one big enough to summon followers is the one who is small enough to consider nothing beneath him. Several years ago I was asked to pray at a Mississauga highschool graduation, and I suspect I was asked, being a United Church clergyman, as the speaker that evening was Dr. Robert McClure, a United Church medical missionary whose reputation was deservedly huge by this time. When McClure had finished addressing the graduating class in the Mississauga highschool a student asked him, “It’s been said that in India , where the class system is blatant and rigid, you always ride the train on a third-class ticket. Why?” McClure smiled at the student and said, “I ride third-class for two reasons: one, there isn’t a fourth class; two, I have noticed that third-class train travellers arrive just as quickly as first-class travellers.” It takes a small person to be big and a big person to be small. Better put, it takes a profoundly contented person to exercise credible leadership in the church of Jesus Christ , for only the profoundly contented person can be trusted not to use his office for inflating himself.
How important is it then? How crucial is it that we learn (yes, it has to be learned) in whatever situation to be content? Let’s pretend for a minute that we aren’t content; let’s pretend that we are out-and-out malcontents. The apostle Jude has some startling things to say about us. He says that malcontents are easy to identify, since malcontents are customarily found in the company of grouchy grumblers, loudmouthed boasters, self-serving flatterers, leering lusters. It sounds so bad I don’t even want to repeat it. (If you think I’m putting words in Jude’s mouth, have a look at one verse alone: Jude 16.)
Let’s conclude positively. To be content is to be possessed of unfailing strength, according to scripture. For amidst contentment
faith thrives and character flourishes;
intimate relationships are forged that nothing can corrode;
leadership in the church exemplifies the self-renouncing lordship of Jesus himself.
We learn such contentment, says the apostle, as our life in Christ becomes dearer to us than all else.
Victor Shepherd July 2006
“Not that I complain of want; for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.”