Philippians 1:1 -4:3 

 

(i.e., the entire epistle)

Encouragement.  It’s the predominant theme of the apostle Paul’s letter to the congregation in the city of Philippi . Encouragement.  I need to be encouraged, and so do you, because every day brings upon us much that can discourage us.  It’s not difficult to become frustrated, set back on our heels, and finally disheartened. Everyone needs encouragement.

In the year 64, from a prison in Rome , Paul wrote his warm letter to Philippian church.  It’s the warmest letter we have from him.  It’s not a systematic treatise (such as the much longer epistle to the five congregations in Rome ) that lays bare the totality of Paul’s understanding of the gospel, progressing from point to point to point.  The missive to Philippi is a personal letter, and he wrote it the way you and I write personal letters: we jot down whatever comes to mind, in any order at all, higgledy-piggledy. Higgledy-piggledy letters are always the warmest, aren’t they?  Paul had loved these people ever since he established the congregation in Philippi twelve years earlier.   The city had originally been named after Philip, father of Alexander the Great. The church there was the first congregation Paul had planted in Europe .   Now he’s detected that the people need encouragement, and he’s determined to supply it.

But of course real encouragement can’t be something unsubstantial, such as frothy well-wishing. Real encouragement has to have a foundation.  The foundation of their encouragement, Paul insists, is that the Christians of Philippi are God’s commonwealth or God’s colony.  “Remember”, he says, “our commonwealth (meaning theirs and his), our citizenship is in heaven, above.  We are God’s colony in Philippi .”

It was the custom of Rome to settle outlying areas of the Roman Empire by sending out retired soldiers, with their families, into the territories far from Rome . Since a soldier’s career is never long, these retired soldiers were still moderately young and energetic. They were transplanted in groups of 300. Together with their wives and children they formed a sizeable colony.  Regardless of how far from Rome they were settled, they always remembered that they were citizens of Rome . However far from Rome they might have to live, they insisted on wearing Roman dress; they spoke the Roman language; they lived by Roman law and custom.  Above all, they were sustained by resources sent from the great city itself. They were Rome ’s colony in an alien environment, and they were never to forget whose they were, therefore who they were, and whom they could count on.  “In the same way”, exclaims the apostle, “you Christians in Philippi are God’s colony. Your citizenship lies elsewhere.  Remember whose you are. Then you’ll remember who you are. And you’ll remember what resources you can draw on.”  This is bedrock. And this is the foundation of his encouragement.

 

I: — They need encouragement, first of all, in order to be content amidst life’s uncertainties. “I know what it is to have plenty”, he writes, “and I know what it is to have little. I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I can do all things – I have the strength to face all conditions – through him, Jesus Christ, who strengthens me.”

At any time you and I may have to be content with less. We need encouragement to understand and accept this.         Canada ’s standard of living peaked in 1972.  It has declined every year since then.  To be sure, it hasn’t declined dramatically; but it has never re-gained its peak of 1972. Perhaps this point isn’t as telling for me as it is for my children, since they will never know the economic privilege that I have known.

Privilege? I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  Far from it. Nonetheless, in terms of what economists call “real wealth”, each generation of Canadians, ever since Confederation in 1867, has been twice as wealthy as the preceding generation. I am twice as wealthy as my parents; they were twice as wealthy as their parents, and so on. But this pattern has ended: the next generation isn’t going to be twice as wealthy as the present generation.  The gravy train appears to have congealed.

Young people entering the labour force today aren’t paid a bonus of thousands of dollars to start just because they have a university degree. When Maureen wanted to begin teaching school in 1966 she had to be interviewed. Was the interview rigorous?  It lasted twenty seconds. “Sign here” said the Board of Education official as he shoved the contract under her nose.

When I was a young adult it was understood that every self-respecting Canadian was on the road to owning her own home. People who didn’t “own their own home” were thought to be short-sighted or shiftless.  Nobody talks this way now, as owning a house becomes increasingly difficult for Canadians.

For decades 20% of Canada ’s Gross Domestic Product came from the sale of non-renewable resources in the ground (such as copper, nickel, oil.)  I’m in favour of selling non-renewable resources.  Leaving copper or oil in the ground is useless; therefore let’s extract it and sell it. That is, sell it once, since it’s non-renewable.  In other words, 20% of the income we all enjoyed we never produced.

Is all of this discouraging?   “Listen”, says our friend from of old, “I’ve known economic privilege. I don’t have it now. But neither do I complain about not having it.  I am ready for anything through the strength of the One who lives within me”, in J.B. Phillips’ fine translation.

Several years ago I walked into a fellow-minister’s home and found nailed to the wall a line I shall never forget: “The more you have to live for, the less you need to live on.” A huge witness the Christian community can make to the wider society is just this: “There’s more to live for.”

So far in this sermon we’ve talked about scarcity and abundance, the “more” and the “less”, in terms of economics. But we shouldn’t restrict it to economics.  There are many matters in life that aren’t matters of economics, yet which still have to do with the “more” or the “less”. I have in mind something as commonplace as friends or acquaintances.         Is it better to move in an orbit of many acquaintances, be a hail-fellow-well-met, even the life of the party? Or is it better to have two friends with whom we could entrust anything and who would never fail us or forsake us?  The more we have to live for (our Lord, his truth, his kingdom, his promises), the less we need to live on (more-or-less superficial acquaintances who may stimulate us or flatter us but would never go to the floor for us).

We are God’s colony, Paul reminds his readers; our citizenship is in heaven; we live here on earth always remembering whose we are and therefore who we are and what we can count on from the eternal city whose outpost we are.

 

II: — Paul encourages his readers in Philippi yet again; this time he encourages them to resist mind-pollution, and therefore to resist heart-pollution.  “Whatever is true”, he says, “whatever is honourable, just, pure; whatever is lovely and gracious – think about these things.  Hold them up.” When he says “Think about these things” he doesn’t mean “Ponder them now and then; reflect on them once in a while; mull them over when nothing else is occupying your mind.”
“Think about these things”: he means “Hold them up; hold them up in your mind; soak your imagination in them. Whatever is true, honourable, just, gracious, lovely: steep yourselves in all this until it’s fixed in your mind and heart and bloodstream.”  It so happens that whatever is fixed in mind and heart and bloodstream will effervesce in us for the rest of our lives.  When we wake up, when we fall asleep, when our minds are relaxed, unguarded; when we’ve “let down” at the end of the day or haven’t yet “geared up” at the start of the day; when we are all alone by ourselves, when we come to lie week after week as we wait to die; what’s going to flood into our minds and soak our hearts? – precisely what we’ve hung up in our minds for years.

Everyone agrees that reason is part of the definition of the human.  In other words, reason is essential to being human.  Where we are frequently one-sided, however, is our restricting reason to reasoning.  We assume that reasoning is thinking deductively or inductively.  One instance of deductive thinking is logic: “All humans are mortal; Socrates is human; therefore Socrates is mortal.”  Inductive thinking is what we do when we experiment scientifically. Having performed many experiments and made many observations, we conclude that water consists of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.

The mistake we make is assuming that deductive thinking and inductive thinking are all there is to thinking, all there is to reason.  Too frequently we forget that there’s yet another kind of thinking: pictorial thinking, imagistic thinking, everything that fills up our imaginations. At the level of scientific thinking a child opens an encyclopaedia and reads “Horse: an herbivorous quadruped that runs on one toe.”  Perfectly true. But at the level of the imagination (where children live) the child thinks “Black Stallion”. And then there swims into the child’s mind a wonderful assortment of images around Black Stallion: adventure, danger, affection, strength, loyalty.

Years later the child, now an adult, hears at one level of reason such expressions as “immigrant”, “New Canadian”, “refugee”. At another level of reason, this time the level of imagination, he’s flooded with – with what? — “DP”? “Hunkie”  “Wop?” “Paki?” “Slant-Eye?” All of these images are negative; they foster contempt and hatred; these images are purely destructive.

Let’s be honest: adults, not merely children – we adults live in our imaginations far more than we live in deductive or inductive reasoning. Then what are the images that swim through our heads night and day?  What are the images that we foster in each other and nourish in ourselves? Paul knows that we live chiefly in our imaginations.  For this reason he urges, “Whatever is true (always a good place to start); whatever is just; whatever is noble, kind, gracious – hold these up. Soak your imagination in them. Because these images are going to effervesce night and day, always bubbling up from your unconscious mind to your conscious, then back down to your unconscious where they shape you when you aren’t even aware of it.”  The apostle is profound here: abstract ideas don’t govern our mind; images govern our mind.

Then when we hear the word “true”, what concrete image comes to mind instantly? When I hear the word “godly” the image that comes to me automatically is Ronald Ward and I sitting in his living room. Ronald Ward was professor of New Testament at the University of Toronto (1952-1963), and he was the most transparently godly, unaffectedly godly, believably godly person that I have ever met.  I think of the man every day.  In his natural, credible, transparent, uncontrived manner he said to me (among many other things), “Victor, if we genuinely fear God, we shall never have to be afraid of him.”

“Whatever is just, whatever is fair – think about it”, says the apostle, “Hold it up in your imagination.” Fair?  One day when I was 23 years old I was discussing the World War II with my father. I began to speak disdainfully of German history, German people, German military personnel. My father didn’t rebuke me or argue with me.         Instead he told me a story, a story about Winston Churchill.  When General Erwin Rommel’s forces were hammering the British Eighth Army in North Africa, hammering the Brits so badly that the Brits were on the point of going under, a British member of parliament rose in the House of Commons and spoke contemptuously of the German general, Rommel. Churchill took it for as long as he could, then he leapt to his feet and shouted, “I will not permit you to speak such villainies about so fine a soldier”.  That’s all my father said.  He had hung up in my mind, my imagination, a picture I shall never be without. “Whatever is fair.”

Whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is commendable, Paul says, “Think on it”.  He means “Catch the vision of it.”  Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch woman who survived Ravensbruck, the forced labour camp (death camp too); years afterward Corrie told a story about her sister, Betsie, who didn’t survive.  One day the two sisters were unloading boxcars when a guard, angry at the low productivity of Betsie (who was very ill), cut her with his whip. Upon seeing her sister struck and seeing her sister bleed, Corrie was enraged.  Betsie put her hand over the wound and cried, “Don’t look at it Corrie; don’t look at it. Look at Jesus.”

“Whatever is….”  You fill it in. Think about it. Catch the vision of it. Fill your imagination with it.  Because as it is with our imagination, so it is with us.

 

III: — The last point we’re going to note from Paul’s letter to the Philippian congregation has to do with humility.         Whereas the other congregations Paul wrote had horrific problems within them, the congregation in Philippi had no such problems. Paul was always joyful when he had this congregation in mind.  He wrote, “Do one thing to make my joy (my joy in you) complete: humble yourselves with the same humility wherewith Christ Jesus humbled himself in order that he might serve.  For although he was in the form of God…he chose to take the form of a servant.”

We must be sure to understand what humility is not.  Humility isn’t self-belittlement.  Self-belittlement is the pathetic overflow of low self-esteem.  Jesus didn’t lack self-esteem.

Humility isn’t pretending we lack the gifts we know we have and everyone else knows we have.  Such pretending is phoney. Jesus never pretended he wasn’t the world’s sole Saviour and Lord.

Then what is humility?  It’s self-forgetfulness; self-forgetfulness in the work Christ has given us to do on behalf of his people.  Humility is self-forgetfulness in the service of a purpose bigger and nobler than our ego and its clamouring.

As in any congregation there were tensions in the congregation in Philippi . Luke tells us in Acts that a woman named Lydia belonged to the congregation. Lydia was an extremely wealthy businesswoman.  A slave girl belonged as well.  In first-century society a slave girl wouldn’t have been regarded as a human being, merely as a useful tool that had to be fed.  Lydia and the slave girl would have brought very different social histories to the congregation.

This particular slave girl, we are told, spoke Greek. Another person in the congregation was a Roman jail-keeper, and he spoke Latin.  We can feel the tension as these three people sat side-by-side in church and whispered to each other, “There’s much about you I don’t understand. I don’t come from your social set. I don’t live in your financial world.         And I have little facility in your language.”

And then there were Euodia and Syntyche, two women who had had a tiff at a church meeting.  The tiff had spilled over and now was upsetting more than merely the two of them. Paul urges the two women to “agree in the Lord” – which is to say, he encourages them to humble themselves, forget themselves as once more they are taken up into the kingdom pursuits of Christ’s people.

“Remember”, says the apostle, “We are God’s colony. We belong to a different country and possess a different citizenship.  Then let’s be different. Let’s be like our Lord.” Different in what respect? “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

And what will be the result of such unselfconscious humility? In the first place, our arrogant, obnoxious self-importance will be curbed.  In the second place, our fellow-believers will be edified.  In the third place – let’s let Paul tell us himself: “You will shine like stars…in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” It is Christ-modelled, Christ-inspired humility that corrects us, helps the congregation, and scintillates in a world that boasts of its corruption.

 

Paul wrote his warm letter to the Philippian congregation when he was in prison awaiting execution. He knew he had only weeks to live. Still, he was preoccupied with his friends in Christ, the joy they have brought him (in this one letter Paul speaks of joy more frequently than he does anywhere else), and the encouragement he has wanted to impart to them.

Then may you and I find in the apostle’s word encouragement too, for we need

encouragement to find contentment in our Lord at all times and amidst all circumstances;

encouragement to steep our thinking, our imaginations, in what is true and just and gracious and noble;

encouragement to forget ourselves in humble service on behalf of Christ’s people.

 

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd
October 2005

 

Philippians 1:5

Hebrews 2:14        1 Corinthians 1:9              2 Corinthians 8:23

 

The five year old beavers must surely outnumber all other groups in the Boy Scout Organization, even outnumber all other groups taken together. The beavers are the little fellows who tell us they belong to their beaver colony. They wear the brown hats edged in blue with a beaver tail hanging down the back.

I am sobered every time I hear the beavers reaffirm their promise and motto. Their promise is, “I promise to love God and help take care of the world”.  Imagine: only five years old, and already taking care of the world. Their motto is simple: “Sharing, sharing, sharing.”  Here is something every beaver can do: share, share in the life of the colony, share with others, share out the knowledge and skill gained in the colony, just share, always sharing, sharing, sharing.

Sharing is a most important biblical notion as well.  There is a group of New Testament words that has to do with sharing. The noun-form is usually translated “fellow” (e.g., fellowship, fellow-worker, fellow-prisoner, etc.); the verb-form is usually translated by “share” (e.g., to share in something, have a share in something, give a share in something, etc.) The person who does all of this we could speak of, in fractured English, as a “sharer-in-er”

Today, on “Presbyterians Sharing” Sunday, we are going to look at this word group that we might be nourished, like the five year old beavers in their colony, for our life and work in the household and family of God.

 

I: — The book of Hebrews reminds us that we “share flesh and blood”.  We are all creatures, not deities; we are earth-beings of flesh, not gods of pure spirit. We share a finite human nature; we share fragility, vulnerability to fragmentation. In the words of the psalmist, we are frail creatures of dust.  We are mortal.

Be sure to underline the last word, “mortal”.  We are fellow-mortals. We are all subject to death. Death, however is not a bizarre twist, a sudden reversal that appears out of nowhere at the end of life. Death is not the jarring conclusion of a life that has unfolded death-free. On the contrary, what we call “death” is simply the final work of the power of death, which power has been at work in everyone’s life at all times.

Because the power of death is operative in the world at all times and in our individual lives as well, there is always a brokenness about us; there is always something fractured about us, somewhere.  And since fractures hurt, all of us are always hurting somewhere.

Not everyone admits this. Some people boast of “having it all together”.  Many others know they don’t “have it all together”, and therefore try extra hard to seem to “have it all together”.

You must have noticed that everyone else’s job seems easy.  (And of course the better a job is done, the easier the job seems to an outsider.) Everyone else’s life seems easy (at least easier than ours); everyone else seems to be so much more free of complications and contradictions and anguish.  We are left lamenting or fuming, “Why don’t I have it all together?”

Either we own that we “share flesh and blood” or we deny it.  If we deny it unconsciously then we are unconsciously driven in such a way that sooner or later we collapse.  If we deny it consciously then we consciously drive ourselves to “get it all together” or appear to, with the result that we render ourselves compulsive or artificial.

Why don’t we avoid all this and own one truth about us: we share flesh and blood? We are ordinary folk, as ordinary as everyone else.  However distinguished we may be in terms of social standing, intellectual ability, or vocational achievement; however distinguished we may be, we never transcend our sharing in flesh and blood.         We are finite, fragile creatures, already fractured here and there, already in a measure of pain, already riddled by the power of death on its way to a conquest that no one can deny in any case.  We are ordinary folk in a world of ordinary folk.  Why don’t we simply admit this?

In a Christmas sermon several years ago I spoke of the Incarnation as an affirmation of ordinariness, a God-ordained ordinariness that we should be pleased to own for ourselves: after all, what’s good enough for our Lord should be good enough for us.  At the door of the church following the sermon a woman looked at me with disdain and disappointment in equal measure as she remarked, “Shepherd, I never thought I’d see the day when you defended mediocrity.”

I hadn’t defended mediocrity; I never shall, for mediocrity is sin. Ordinariness, however, is entirely different. To own our ordinariness is to admit without dissembling that we all share flesh and blood. There is no one who “has it made”, no one who knows no brokenness, no one who isn’t in pain, no one in whom death isn’t operative right now.         All of us are suffering more than we are letting on.

 

II: — Yet as Christians we share ever so much more than flesh and blood.  In the second place we share in the life of our risen Lord.  Paul exclaims, “God has called us into fellowship with his Son”. To say we are called into fellowship with Jesus Christ is to say we are the beneficiaries of his victory now and shall be eternally.  Our sharing in the victorious life of our Lord is the warrant, the only genuine reason, for everything we do in church life.

We keep the organ tuned. Because we are aesthetically sophisticated and an out-of-tune organ would grate on our musical sensitivities? We keep our organ tuned for one reason: an off-key musical instrument impedes us in our praising God for giving himself to us in his Son.  God has called us into fellowship with his Son.  We have responded to God’s call, and we want to move closer to that Son who is our elder brother.  We want no impediment to our praise of God week-by-week.  This alone is why we keep the organ tuned and pay the hydro bills.

As long as we own our shared fellowship with Jesus Christ as the foundation of our congregation; as long as this is the core, the focus, the goal, the glue of our life together; as long as this is the motivation and the dynamic of our life together, we can cheerfully welcome all sorts of diversities and differences in congregational and denominational life.

We modern Christians assume that while there is much diversity in congregational life today (not to mention the proliferation of denominations throughout Christendom), things were simpler in the earliest days of the church when individuals and congregations and groups of congregations were carbon copies of each other.

Not so. Individuals like Paul and Peter were not carbon copies of each other.  On one occasion at least Paul said of Peter, “He’s dead wrong and I told him so to his face.” The congregation in Philippi and the congregation in Corinth were not carbon copies of each other; they differed enormously.

In the earliest days of the church there were three major groupings of Christians: Palestinian Jewish Christians, Greek Jewish Christians, Greek Gentile Christians.

The Palestinian Jewish Christians lived in Jerusalem and surroundings. Certainly they acknowledged Jesus to be Saviour and Lord (else they wouldn’t have been Christians at all). At the same time they continued to observe Torah in all its details.  They even took their lamb or dove to the temple at Passover and placed their hand on it in identification with it as the temple priest sacrificed it. They felt that any Gentile who became a Christian ought to be circumcised and observe Torah. After all, since Jesus was a Jew, shouldn’t all his followers be or become Jews as a condition of becoming a Christian?  James was a Palestinian Jewish Christian.

Greek Jewish Christians were Christians of Jewish parentage who lived outside Palestine in the wider world. They lived in Rome , Philippi, Ephesus , even North Africa . Christians though they were, they were also determined to remain Jews — at the same time as they never felt that Gentiles had to become Jews in order to become Christians. They tended to be more affluent, more exposed to the wider world than their Jewish Christian cousins in Palestine . They tended to be merchants and traders and artisans rather than peasants and fisherfolk like the Jewish Christians in Palestine . Paul was a Greek Jewish Christian.

Greek Gentile Christians (people like you and me) were just that: Gentiles with no Jewish background at all, folk who lived anywhere except in Palestine . They didn’t know a yarmulke from a yo-yo. But they knew enough to know that they weren’t going to be circumcised and didn’t want to observe every last jot and tittle of Torah. Why shouldn’t a Gentile Christian eat bacon?  Why not ham and eggs and milk and lobster, all at the same meal and all off the same plate? Gentile Christians, however, seemed to have enormous difficulty staying on the rails morally. They had to be reminded constantly that while they didn’t have to observe every last item in the Torah they were committed to obeying Jesus Christ.  Eating lobster didn’t excuse them from the Ten Commandments.  The fact that their wine didn’t have to be kosher never meant that they could drink any quantity of wine at all.  Titus was a Greek Gentile Christian.

What is the point of this lengthy history lesson?  All three groups, however different, knew they had been called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. All three shared equally in the life of the risen Son of God.

Yes, there were enormous differences among them.  Nonetheless, when the poorest of them, the Palestinian Jewish Christians in Jerusalem , were faced with famine, the others, better-off financially, made enormous financial sacrifice to help the poorest.

A worldly-wise, affluent Gentile Christian living in the capital of the Empire ( Rome ) was as much removed in every respect from a Palestinian Jewish Christian as we today are removed ethnically, educationally, culturally from black Seventh Day Adventist Christians living in sub-Sahara Africa . Still, at the end of the day we all know that we share two huge commonalities: a vulnerability to suffering, and the invitation to live in the company of Jesus Christ.

 

III: — Yet we share even more. Paul thanks the Christians in Philippi for their “partnership in the gospel”.  He looks upon the congregation as a symphony orchestra.  He never thinks of himself as the star soloist, everyone else in the congregation merely a spectator.  Everyone has a part. In some sense the apostles are the first violins of the orchestra; still, no orchestra consists of first violins only. Music is made only as everyone shares in the effort of music-making.  An orchestra that doesn’t have piccolos and bassoons and triangles doesn’t make the music it is meant to.  To the extent that it doesn’t it is both ineffective and unattractive. There is certainly a place, necessarily a place, for piccolos and bassoons and triangles. The apostle thanks the Christians in Philippi for their “partnership in the gospel”.

By “partnership in the gospel” Paul means that all Christians share in the proclamation of the gospel; all Christians share in the Christian mission. The gospel isn’t simply food for you and me to consume.  It is also food for our children, for newcomers to our congregation, for people not yet in our congregation but on their way here and therefore known only to God, for people on the other side of the world who need feeding as much as we.  All of us are partners in thrusting the gospel outwards; all of us are essential to the Christian mission.

Some people mistakenly think they aren’t.  Some people think they are consumers only, not because they want to be consumers only, but because they feel they aren’t gifted like Mr. or Ms. So-and-so. To say this, however, is to say that because not all of us are first violins there is no place in the orchestra for piccolo or triangle.  Not so.

As I reflected on our shared partnership in the gospel I thought of the congregation and the denomination in terms of a football team.  There are players on a football team who look like what comes to mind when we hear “football player”.  They are built like gorillas and eat who knows what for breakfast. They even have names like football players. When I was eight or ten years old and the Montreal Alouettes were winning Grey cups their fullback was Pat Abruzzi.  Bruiser Abruzzi . Brute Abruzzi . Bonebreaker Abruzzi . He ran like a tank.  A real football player.

And then on every football team there is a player who doesn’t meet the stereotype at all. He is 5’6” tall and weighs 145 pounds.  He wears less padding than anyone else.  At the end of a game played on the muddiest field his uniform is still white. He is the field-goal kicker. He kicks the ball through the uprights, over the crossbar, and scores three points for his team. Furthermore, he kicks a three-point field-goal only when his team can’t score a seven-point touchdown. Is he important?   Whenever a football team wins the game with only seconds left on the clock, who wins it for the team? The field-goal kicker.

In church-life there are people who don’t speak well in public, can’t dazzle the congregation at announcement time, can’t draft the motion that gets the board past an impasse.  Are they essential? Not everyone in the orchestra plays first violin.  Yet without everyone who doesn’t play first violin there wouldn’t be an orchestra at all. Football teams will go to the ends of the earth to get that one fellow — the field-goal kicker — who looks like anything but a football player.

Remember: the person or the congregation who appears least able to supply what someone else needs is the person or congregation we can’t do without.

Paul thanks the believers in Philippi for their partnership in the gospel.  He knows that we all share in the outward thrust of the gospel; we all share in the church’s mission.

 

IV: — We share one thing more. We are “fellow servants” of the congregation.  Paul speaks of Titus as his “partner and fellow worker in the service” of the church in Corinth .

“Service”. It has to do with servanthood. “Service”.  It reeks of inferiority. My grandmother used to tell me she was “in service” before she married.  She worked as a resident servant in the home of her social superiors. She had to wait on them, wait for them.

“Service”. Even in our era it sounds demeaning. “Service personnel please use the back door.”  Service personnel can’t even enter the building through the front door, just because they have dirt on their overalls, which dirt they acquired, of course, by doing the bidding of those who can use the front door.

But Jesus washed feet, didn’t he.  More than that, he said that we ought not to think ourselves above him; we too must wash feet — and do it gladly, willingly, ungrudgingly. Paul named himself and Titus servants of the congregation in Corinth . He and Titus shared the footwashing detail.

Let’s change the metaphor. Let’s think of compost. Leaves, twigs, grass-cuttings, kitchen scraps, even bovine manure (you know what the popular expression is); all of this finds its way into the compost heap. In a few months something valuable is going to appear at the bottom of the heap.  At least something valuable will appear if one more thing is present: warmth. Compost piles need warmth. If the pile chills, the process shuts down.

What we have to contribute to church life and community life both here and anywhere at all in the world may not appear much.  All of us are busy, all of us are tired, all of us have 101 commitments. Therefore it appears that we have little to offer Christ’s people here and elsewhere except a few scraps and scrapings and even a bit of bovine manure. We should offer it anyway. As we do, and as we surround it all with our warmth, humus appears sooner than we think.

“Humus”. It sounds like “humility”. “Humus” also happens to be the Latin word for earth.  Our humility, our shared servanthood, reinforces our earthliness, our ordinariness.

 

And so we come full circle. All of us in this congregation share a fragility on account of our mortality. All of us also share the risen life of him who has conquered death.  We share a partnership in the proclamation of the gospel and the church’s mission. And we share the humble of servanthood of him who washed feet — as well as hands and hearts — and without whose washing we wouldn’t be a congregation at all.

 

“Sharing, sharing, sharing”. The five year old beavers have much to tell us.  In as much as we are always sharing it will become plain that we do love God. In loving God, and in sharing, sharing, sharing, we shall even help take care of the world.

                                                                                                     Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

September 2006

 

  Humility: The Antidote to Pride

          Micah 6:6-8                 1 Peter 5:1-6      Philippians 2:5-13        John 13:1-5

 

I: — Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century philosopher, despised Christianity.  “A slave-mentality”, he labelled it.         The worst feature of Christianity’s slave-mentality, said Nietzsche, is that Christians think there is something virtuous about their own enslavement, and therefore they seek it and languish in it.  They think there is something virtuous about self-belittlement and the psychological crippling that goes with it.  Nietzsche despised Christianity just because he felt it undermined self-confidence; it promoted psychological feebleness; and it regarded all of this as honourable.

Was Nietzsche correct in his assessment?  Yes, at least to some extent.  (Remember now, we are not talking about the gospel or about Jesus Christ; we are talking about “Christianity”, the religious expression that Nietzsche saw every day.)  Psychotherapists tell me, for instance, that as a physically or psychologically abused woman (if she’s physically abused she’s certainly psychologically abused as well) loses self-confidence, her self-confidence erodes to the point where she no longer has enough self-confidence to leave the man who is tormenting her.  At this point she is trapped by her diminished ego-strength.  As her self-confidence continues to erode she sinks deeper into the swamp of immobility. Psychotherapists tell me it takes six months to eighteen months of intense therapy to bring an abused woman back to the point where she has enough self-confidence to escape the man who is assaulting her.

Is “Christianity” (so-called) responsible for this?  Yes, very often. Haven’t women been told it is their “Christian” duty to be submissive?

Nietzsche maintained that “Christianity” fostered passivity in people. It fostered capitulation, conformity, resignation.  It turned backbone into wishbone or worse.  It undercut protest, resilience, assertiveness; it replaced these with docility, apathy, sheepishness.

Was Nietzsche correct in his assessment?  Yes, very often. But we must be sure to note that it is a distorted “Christianity” that has done this, never the gospel itself.  The gospel (which is to say, Jesus Christ himself) never fosters self-belittlement, self-denigration, self-contempt; never. To be sure, the gospel does insist that we humble ourselves under God. But to humble ourselves under God is not to wallow in self-contempt.  It isn’t always to be putting ourselves down; it isn’t chronically to think ourselves inferior.

Yet this confusion is made all the time.  I understand how the confusion can arise.  Many people have been raised in homes where childhood difficulties, especially the fears and distresses and hurts of childhood, were not taken seriously.  It was assumed that adults have the right to feel insecure, but not children. Adults, after all, find themselves wounded at the hands of life.  Children, however, are never insecure or wounded.  It was assumed that the child’s pain doesn’t hurt; the child’s bewilderment isn’t upsetting; the child’s question isn’t important; the child’s opinion doesn’t count.  What else can the child conclude except that her grief or confusion or unnamed need doesn’t matter? that she doesn’t matter? The grooves that are etched in the tender psyches of little people are etched very deeply and are exceedingly difficult to eradicate.

Other people have been raised in a home where neighbours and relatives and colleagues were belittled regularly.  The atmosphere was one of contempt and the imagined superiority that underlies contempt. After they had heard everyone else put down for 20 years, their unconscious mindset became one of self-putdown. How could it be anything else? Why would they ever think themselves an exception?

The humility that the gospel urges upon us has nothing to do with a self-deprecation that leaves someone with zero self-esteem.  The humility that the gospel urges upon us has nothing to do with Nietzsche’s slave-mentality, fostering self-contempt and sheepishness as it does, all the while regarding these as virtuous.

 

Before we specify where gospel-humility differs from poor self-image and flattened self-esteem we should identify the signs of poor self-image and flattened self-esteem.

One sign is self-advertisement.  Self-advertisement is a cover-up.  It covers up deep-seated anxiety at being overlooked, at not being deemed important.

Another sign is sarcasm. The habitually sarcastic person speaks as she does in order to portray herself as superior; she portrays herself as superior lest others find her inferior.

Another sign is bullying. Inside every bully there is a frightened, shaking, little creature.  Yes, the bully is always a nuisance and frequently dangerous; yes, the bully has indulged his childishness for years in getting his own way. As difficult as it is to put up with the bully, however, he remains pathetic.  His insecurity is glaring. His trembling knees are pitiable. After all, his bullying covers up the greatest fear of his life: losing, losing any conflict, losing any struggle; and above all, losing face.  For him, losing even an argument amounts to annihilation.

All of these signs cloak or disguise a self-esteem that has largely crumbled, a self-image that is not only damaged but distressing and destructive to the person who is sarcastic or a bully or a ceaseless self-advertiser.

 

II: — Then what is the nature of the humility the gospel requires of us?  Where do we find it? What will it do for us and others?

Peter writes (1^st Peter 5:6), “Humble yourselves under God, and in due time he will exalt you.”  The key is humbling ourselves under God. Simply to humble ourselves (or to try to) will result either in our belittling ourselves or bragging of ourselves (for now we are proud of the fact that we are humbler than most). The only self-humbling that is safe is to humble ourselves under God. For in humbling ourselves under God we shall always remember, with the psalmist, that God is for us. God is always for us. Because he is always for us, our humbling ourselves under him can be only positive. Not only is it always safe to humble ourselves under God, it is more than safe; it is salutary.         It can only prosper us.

 

Under God I recall that human beings and animals were made on the same “day” (Genesis 1:24 -31). Plainly, the animals are our “cousins”. (Not our brothers and sisters, to be sure, but certainly our cousins.)  I am humbled whenever I reflect on the fact that medical experiments with animals (who are themselves creatures of God) benefit human beings because — and only because — we and the animals have so much in common. (The digestive tract of the alligator, organ for organ, is virtually identical with ours. And is there any aspect of animal psychology that doesn’t have immediate relevance to us humans?) Under God I cannot pretend that animals haven’t suffered much through experimentation in order to spare me suffering.  Under God I cannot pretend that I don’t need them to survive (even as I know that they don’t need me to survive).

Yet under God I am exalted, for God has made us humans unique; God has made us “little less than God himself”, says the psalmist.  While God loves all his creatures, God addresses, speaks to, human beings only. Note this: God loves us and the animals, but he speaks to us, and equips us to speak to him in return; more than merely equip us to speak to him in return, he expects us to. He makes us able to respond, response-able, and because response-able, response-ible, responsible. Under God we are crowned inalienably with glory and honour.  What’s more, under God and in Christ, I am the person whom God identifies with his only begotten and beloved Son.  Which is to say, whenever God looks upon that Son with whom he is ever pleased, he sees me too; he can’t help seeing me in the same light, since I stand with Christ the Son by faith.

 

In the second place under God I am humbled to know myself a sinner. When all the allowances have been made for my upbringing, my present social environment, the victimizations I have suffered, the emotional deprivations visited upon me, the genes I inherited from my parents (my gosh, I do sound hard done-by, don’t I?); when all allowances have been made for the warps in me for which I am not entirely accountable, there yet remains that “I”, that “me”, which scripture speaks of as “the man of sin”. There is a perversity in me, a bias to ungodliness as irrational as it is deep-seated, for which no one else and nothing else can be blamed.  The more I search my heart the more aware I am of the subtleties and the subterfuges of the man of sin.

Yet under God I am exalted, for in Christ I am a pardoned sinner whom God cherishes. In Christ I am identified with the One whom the New Testament knows to be without sin. Have you ever noticed that while the Apostles’ Creed affirms the fact of sin, it does so only left-handedly, only in passing?  The Apostles’ Creed states, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty… I believe in his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord…” and so on. Nowhere does the Creed say, “I believe in sin.” It says, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” The Creed invites us to admit we are sinners only at the same time that it insists, with much louder voice, that we are forgiven sinners. Yes, under God I am humbled to admit (to have to admit) that the designation, “man of sin” fits me; but I am exalted, exhilarated too, that since I am “in Christ” the designation, “man of righteousness” is the final truth about me, the characteristic truth about me, the “real me” despite all appearances, all contradictions.  I shall always be eager to humble myself under God since God exalts me eternally.

In the third place under God I am humbled to hear Jesus tell the disciples that at the end of the day they must say of themselves, “We are but unprofitable servants”. If James and Bartholomew, Andrew and Alphaeus must say this of themselves, I am not about to tell my Lord that I, on the contrary, am an enormously profitable servant and he is remarkably fortunate to have me on his team.

Unprofitable servants that we are, however, it is precisely unprofitable servants whom God exalts; as God exalts us he renders us profitable for his kingdom. It is unprofitable servants alone whom God can use. Whatever use would God have for servants who boasted that the kingdom couldn’t survive without them? We must never think that there was a “golden age” in the church when all was rosy and the church consisted only of “profitable” servants.  There was never a golden age.  The New Testament epistles were written to address the elements in the church that were anything but gold.  While the problems in Corinth differed from the problems in Galatia, and both of these differed from the problems in Thessalonica, at the end of the day the apostle Paul reminds Christians everywhere — even in the most troubled congregations — that they and they alone are the body of Christ; it is their work and witness that lend visibility to the rule of Christ throughout the world; they are the only manifestation of him whose triumph over the deadly powers they extol.

 

It is plain that to humble ourselves under God is never to be humbled only; to humble ourselves under God is always also to be exalted, just because God exalts the humble. Simply to humble ourselves might sink us into the slave-mentality that Nietzsche rightly deplored; but to humble ourselves under God will never sink us into such a mentality; to humble ourselves under God will always find us exalted — and therefore fit, ready, eager to be as active in the world as God himself is active in the world.

 

III: — I trust no one here today now confuses humility under God with self-belittlement or self-denigration.  To humble ourselves under God, rather, is to have a sober, realistic, yet positive understanding of ourselves.  Sober because our self-assessment is no longer emotionally inflamed, driven by emotional need or emotional distortion. Realistic because in Christ we have the freedom to acknowledge any and all negativities about us without thereby crippling ourselves or collapsing ourselves. Positive because in Christ we know that God is for us; God has made us the pinnacle of his creation, has soaked us in a pardon that discloses our guilt only to drown it, and has promised to use us on behalf of that kingdom which can never be shaken.

All of this adds up to enormous freedom; namely, freedom from self-preoccupation. After all, humility, free and cheerful in equal measure, is simply self-forgetfulness. We must always remember, on the other hand, that self-contempt (so often confused with humility) is still a preoccupation with oneself, and therefore a form of selfism. A false and destructive so-called “humility” remains no more than complicated self-preoccupation. Genuine humility, on the other hand, is always self-forgetfulness.

We see such self-forgetfulness over and over in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ruler of the universe, he subjected himself to Roman authority.  Saviour of the world, he went to the Synagogue every week and listened to a preacher who didn’t have much to tell him. As sensitive to pain as any of us, he pleaded for mercy for those who were nailing him to the cross. The result of all this? “God has highly exalted him”, says Paul, “and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9)

 

Nietzsche may have been right concerning what he called “Christianity”, the religious expression of people who, at best, only half-understood the gospel. But concerning the gospel itself; concerning the surge of Jesus Christ within his people; concerning this Nietzsche was utterly wrong.  The humility that the gospel requires of us does not sink us into a slave-mentality; it does not make a virtue of self-victimization; it does not encourage passivity and sheepishness and apathy.

The humility the gospel requires of us is but the other side of our exaltation at God’s hand; which exaltation elevates us as sons and daughters of God, servants whose kingdom-service is unfailingly profitable, self-forgetful people whom God is going to remember and cherish eternally.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             April 2006

 

 

 

                                                                                                     Philippians 2:25-30

 

[1]   How much do you know about Epaphroditus? What does his name mean? Let’s look at his name: Epa-phroditus. It is very close to “Aphrodite”, isn’t it. It was meant to be close. The man’s parents gave him a name which was the masculine equivalent of the feminine name of the pagan goddess. The parents belonged to the cult which burgeoned around her. In the ancient world Aphrodite represented deified sex. The cult around her — the world has never been without those who deify sex — gathered up the devotees. These sex-worshippers had built a temple which perched on a hill, 1800 feet above the city of Corinth . One thousand priestesses were attached to the temple. These priestesses were clergywomen whose job-description included religious prostitution. To join oneself to a temple-prostitute rendered the worshipper at-one with the spirit of Aphrodite herself. At night the temple prostitutes descended the hill and plied their trade in the streets of Corinth . In this way sex-worshippers could bow to Aphrodite without the bother of an 1800-foot climb. The sin-blinded sordidness of it all was beyond description.

Epaphroditus came from a home sunk in such sordidness. Yet his parents had thought so highly of it all that they had named their son after it. They had pointed their son toward the lifestyle that they pursued themselves.

But then it happened: the miracle of grace — deliverance — as the gospel was declared and Epaphroditus heard with ear and heart. A Christian now, with a life-style that repudiated everything his foolish, sin-blinded parents had thought desirable for him, he found himself a parishioner in the congregation of Philippi . The people there cherished him.

When the apostle Paul, the much-loved, much-esteemed friend of the Philippian Church , was imprisoned in Rome whom did the Philippian congregation send to Rome , with a gift, to look out for the older man? They sent the young Christian they trusted, Epaphroditus.

Epaphroditus was exceedingly brave. He was, after all, friend and personal attendant to a notorious fellow who was awaiting trial on a capital offence. Eddie Greenspan wasn’t on hand to defend the apostle, and therefore when the full weight of the Roman Empire fell on Paul it would surely crush as well the younger man now labelled an accomplice. Epaphroditus couldn’t have been braver.

Then Epaphroditus fell ill; so sick that he was regarded as good as dead. As he struggled back to health Paul thought the younger man should return to his home congregation in Philippi . In the first place Paul didn’t want to endanger the young man any more. In the second place he knew that the congregation in Philippi was aware of Epaphroditus’s illness and wanted to see for themselves that he was well again. In the third place Epaphroditus himself had had his fill of Rome , the Big Apple, and wanted to go back to the smaller city and the congregation that loved him. In the fourth place Paul wanted to get a letter (really, a short theological treatise) to the congregation in Philippi , and having Epaphroditus deliver it would guarantee its safe delivery. The decision was made: Epaphroditus would return to Philippi .

Now while the Christian fellowship in Philippi was rich and warm and without major problems Paul knew that nonetheless there would be two or three “snarky” people in it who were suspicious gossipers with curdled sentiments. The two or three snarky people would gossip that Epaphroditus was a coward and a quitter, and was returning to Philippi only because he had “chickened out” of supporting Paul in Rome . Paul knew he had to state unambiguously that Epaphroditus was neither a coward nor a quitter if only to silence the sour gossipers. For this reason Paul underlines to the congregation that Epaphroditus has been a brother, a fellow-worker, a fellow-soldier, and a minister to his need.

 

[2(i)] Brother. The Greek word for “brother”, adelphos, literally means “from the same womb”. Brothers (sisters) come from the same womb, the same source, the same origin. “Think as highly of Epaphroditus as you think of me”, Paul wrote the congregation, “because he and I are possessed of the same spiritual genes”.

When people became Christians in the first century often their families turned on them and disowned them. The day Epaphroditus embraced Jesus Christ in faith his family wrote him off as a religious extremist who was disloyal to the family and its traditions.

Throughout our Lord’s earthly ministry his family had not understood him either. One day they came to take him home, hoping to end the embarrassment he was causing the family. “Your mother and your siblings are waiting outside for you”, he was told as he spoke. “My mother?”, Jesus had said, “my brothers? my sisters? Who are they? Here is my family. Whoever hears me and heeds me; whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother”. Mark cherished this incident and included it in his written gospel just because he wanted to lend comfort to the readers of his gospel, thirty years later, who had been disowned by their families the day they announced their love of Jesus and their loyalty to him. These people had found a new family, a greater family, in the fellowship of Christians who now clung in faith to the elder brother of them all.

Epaphroditus was brother to Paul as Paul was brother to him. The bond that bound them together was stronger than any other tie anywhere else in life. Furthermore, the last thing Paul, the most widely-known of the apostles, wanted to do was suggest that because Epaphroditus had conveyed Paul’s letter to Philippi Epaphroditus was a mere errand-boy, mere flunkie, mere mule. He is brother to the apostle, from the same spiritual womb because born of the same Spirit of God. “Be sure to look upon him as you look upon me”, Paul says to those who might be prone to look upon Epaphroditus as inferior.

Brother. My friend Reginald Miller, now retired in Chatham, N.B.; Miller spent six years as a common sailor on a British warship in World War II. You have to know the traditions of the Royal Navy to appreciate the unbreakable, unbendable line that divides officers from sailors. Yet there was one exception, Miller used to tell me; the exception was the fellowship of shipboard Christians — officers and sailors — when they were ashore. Naval rank meant nothing as iron fast traditions melted before the warmth of the gospel.

In the days of the early church slaves were slaves while free persons were free. There was nothing a microscopic church could do to overturn the empire’s legislation. But within the Christian fellowship slaves frequently taught free people the rudiments of the gospel-faith and encouraged them in it.

The highest wall, the insurmountable wall above all walls, was the wall between Jewish people and everyone else. Yet even this wall, Paul states in his letter to the congregation in Ephesus , Jesus Christ has crumbled. Therefore Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian reach out and embrace each other precisely where the insurmountable wall used to be. Those who think the wall to be standing yet, whether Jewish or Gentile, perpetuate the standoff. Let’s not forget that Paul was a Jew whose moral rigour had been faultless; Epaphroditus was a Gentile who had learned promiscuity before he had learned the alphabet. “He’s my brother, you should all know”, the apostle reminds those who need to be reminded. The apostle claims no superiority at all but rather insists on both an equality and a oneness with the younger man, since Epaphroditus is possessed of the same faith and loves the same Lord. Brother.

 

[2(ii)] Fellow-worker. What kind of fellow-worker? Fellow-tentmaker? (Paul, we know earned his living as a tentmaker.) No. We don’t know what Epaphroditus did for a living. When Paul speaks of Epaphroditus as “fellow-worker” he is thinking of work as Jesus had used the word when he said, “My father is working still, and I am working.” Here our Lord means that energy, passion, activity which magnify the kingdom of God . On one occasion Jesus came upon crowds who were spiritually clueless; they meandered, groped, stumbled, could only land themselves in spiritual disaster. Then the master turned to his disciples, “See? The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” There are hordes who are hungry for the bread of life, even as there are too few who care to feed them. The crowds stumble blindly; therefore we need more who can take them by the hand and bring them to the sight-giver himself. In other words the work which Epaphroditus has done so well as to have Paul name him “fellow-worker” is the kingdom-work of introducing people to Jesus Christ, nurturing the growth of faith, instructing them in the way of faith, confirming them amidst the trials of faith.

This is not to say that the ministry of Epaphroditus was identical in all respects to that of Paul. Paul always wanted to announce the gospel where it had never been heard before. There is no evidence that Epaphroditus thought this to be his calling. We don’t know what the young man did in his kingdom-work. He would certainly have prayed. He may have been like Barnabas, whose name, “Son of Comfort”, tells us what he was about. Perhaps he had unusual discernment as to what God’s plans were for this person or that or for one of the five house-churches in Rome . Perhaps he was so transparent to the light of the gospel that he shone like a lighthouse, telling life’s storm-tossed that there is refuge in the risen one. One aspect of his kingdom-work, obviously, was the help he rendered Paul during the latter’s imprisonment. He is never named an apostle; nevertheless the prince of apostles doesn’t hesitate to call him “fellow-worker”.

Every last person in any congregation has a unique ministry. Theirs isn’t mine and mine isn’t theirs, but theirs and mine have the same weight and are essential to each other. One Sunday morning, a few years ago, an ordinary Sunday morning when I was expecting nothing extraordinary, two things happened to me that I shall never forget. Following the service a woman older than I, a relative newcomer to the congregation, looked me in the eye with that look which renders two people so transparent to each other that they have X-ray vision into each other’s heart. She said a few simple words which, like most simple words, were incalculably weighty: “Victor, I prayed for you this morning; I pray for you every day”. Fellow-worker! Minutes later a woman whose love for our Lord makes mine look anaemic spoke to me at coffee-hour. She handed me an envelope and said, “Put this toward your next book.” Unknown to her only that week I had agreed to enter a joint publishing venture in reprinting my book of devotions, Ponder And Pray. Her gift was a substantial contribution toward the cost of reprinting the book. For in the envelope were five $100-bills. Fellow-worker.

 

[2(iii)] Fellow-soldier. Soldiering implies conflict. The gospel invariably collides with a fallen world. Jesus was immersed in conflict every day. When John Wesley was a spiritually inert clergyman he knew no conflict. Once his heart was “strangely warmed” (24th May, 1738) and he quietly apprehended the truth of the gospel he was knee-deep in conflict for the next fifty-three years of his life: conflict with bishops, with magistrates, with mobs, with lazy ministers, with theological opponents, with distillers, with bankers who wouldn’t lend his people money for small business start-up. The kingdom of God collides with the very world it is meant to redeem. The only way the Christian can avoid conflict is to cease to be a Christian. Surely no one here prefers Judas to Jesus!

It’s plain that to be a fellow-worker is always to be a fellow-soldier, since kingdom-work will always entail kingdom-conflict. And like soldiering anywhere, kingdom-soldiering entails not only conflict but hardship, suffering, even sacrifice.

Think for a minute of the horrors of the twentieth century, just concluded, beginning with the slaughter of the Armenians in the second decade, the executions of Lenin and Stalin, and so on right up to the ethnic cleansing in Croatia and the rape of 20,000 women. These conflicts that are frighteningly visible — conflicts of class, nation, race, economics, culture — are but a partial manifestation of invisible spiritual conflict that seethes ceaselessly and courses ubiquitously. And then lest we distance ourselves cavalierly from all this we should recall the word of Solzhenitsyn, Russian thinker and writer: the spiritual conflict that bedevils nations finally passes through every last individual human heart.

A world whose distinguishing feature is conflict does not welcome the gospel. When the gospel is held up those who hold it up are immersed in conflict immediately. What do they do next? Capitulate? Compromise? Deny him whose gospel it is? Or do they take their share of the hardship, suffering and sacrifice that are the lot of any soldier, as Paul reminded another young man, Timothy?

Paul commended Epaphroditus to the Philippian congregation as his “fellow-soldier”. Epaphroditus was anything but a shirker.

 

[2(iv)] Lastly the apostle insists that Epaphroditus has been a “minister to my need”. What was Paul’s particular neediness that the younger man met? We are not told. Perhaps he brought Paul food that was better than the wretched stuff fed to prisoners on death row. Unquestionably Epaphroditus met Paul’s need for companionship, alleviated his loneliness, brought news of the triumph of the gospel as the gospel flooded more widely among unbelievers and penetrated more deeply within believers.

I think too that one reason Paul doesn’t tell us what his particular need is is that he doesn’t want us to know. We each have that need which we do not advertise not because we are ashamed of it but because it is so private, so personal, so deep in us, so close to our heart that only our soul-mates can meet it and therefore only our soul-mates are permitted to see it. I know whereof I speak. And in the providence of God I have been given those who know me so intimately and love me so dearly that they meet that need which others do not know of and never will. Paul didn’t tell the Philippian congregation that every last Christian in Rome ministered to his need; he said that Epaphroditus did. You and I are ministers to the need of fellow-Christians. Then every day we must thank God for those who give us privileged access to them, even as we thank God for those whom we give privileged access to us.

 

[3] Paul rejoiced in the person Epaphroditus had become by the grace of God. No longer in the orbit of Aphrodite and all that the goddess-cult represented, Epaphroditus knew a new lord and cherished a new lifestyle. Paul loved the younger man and wanted to make sure that the congregation in Philippi kept on loving him too. “Brother, fellow-worker, fellow-soldier, minister to my need.” What is this but a description of our sisters and brothers in Christ? Which is to say, the profile of a parishioner in Rome or Philippi or King Township, the profile of a parishioner anywhere, that man or woman you and I have been called to serve in the name of Jesus Christ.

 

                                                                                               Victor Shepherd             

April 2003                                                                                  

 

Philippians 2:25-30
Mark 3:31-35
Matthew 9:37
2 Timothy 2:3

Philippians 2:25-30

 

[1] I have always admired courage. The courage I admire doesn’t have to be dramatic: a military hero outnumbered twenty-five to one, fighting off enemy commandos when the whole world would think he had no chance at all. The courage I admire can be so undramatic as scarcely to be noticeable: the woman with advanced arthritis who has struggled valiantly for decades to get herself up one flight of stairs, the elderly widower whose grown-up children scorn him yet who thrives amidst rejection and isolation, the psychiatrically wounded person who braves the day despite nameless terrors that no one else can be expected to understand.

Epaphroditus was never a hero in the sense that Paul was deemed a hero. Paul, we know, had been beaten several times, had been shipwrecked, had escaped pursuers on several occasions, and was even in prison when he wrote his brief letter to the congregation in Philippi. Epaphroditus, on the other hand, appeared to be a little-known fellow in a small congregation. Yet when the congregation wanted to support Paul during his imprisonment in Rome, and when the congregation wanted to get a gift to the apostle it loved, it sent Epaphroditus.

Make no mistake. Epaphroditus was exceedingly courageous. He was, after all, friend and personal attendant to a notorious fellow who was awaiting trial on a capital offense. Eddie Greenspan wasn’t on hand to defend the apostle, and therefore when the full weight of the Roman empire fell on Paul it would surely crush as well the younger man now labelled an accomplice. Epaphroditus couldn’t have been more courageous.

Then Epaphroditus fell ill, dreadfully ill. As he struggled back to health Paul thought the younger man should return to the congregation in Philippi. In the first place Paul didn’t want to endanger the young man any more. In the second place he knew that the congregation in Philippi was aware of Epaphroditus’s illness and wanted to see for themselves that he was well again. In the third place Epaphroditus had had his fill of Rome, the “Big Apple”, and wanted to go back to the smaller city and the congregation which loved him. In the fourth place Paul wanted to get a letter (really, a short theological treatise) to the congregation in Philippi, and having Epaphroditus deliver it would guarantee its safe delivery. The decision was made: Epaphroditus would return to Philippi.

Now while the Christian fellowship in Philippi was rich and warm and without major problems Paul knew that nonetheless there would be two or three “snarky” people in it who were suspicious gossipers with curdled sentiments. The two or three snarky people would gossip that Epaphroditus was a coward and a quitter, and was returning to Philippi only because he had “chickened out” of supporting Paul. Paul knew he had to state unambiguously that Epaphroditus was neither a coward nor a quitter if only to silence the sour gossipers who are found in small numbers in any congregation. For this reason Paul underlines to the congregation that Epaphroditus has been a brother, a fellow-worker, a fellow-soldier, and a minister to his need.

 

[2(i)] Brother. The Greek word for “brother”, adelphos, literally means “from the same womb”. Brothers (sisters) come from the same womb, the same source, the same origin. “Think as highly of Epaphroditus as you think of me”, Paul wrote the congregation, “because he and I are possessed of the same spiritual genes”.

When people became Christians in the first century often their families turned on them and disowned them. The day he embraced Jesus Christ in faith the family of Epaphroditus wrote him off as a religious extremist now disloyal to the family and its traditions.

Throughout our Lord’s earthly ministry his family hadn’t understood him either. One day they came to take him home, hoping to end the embarrassment he was causing the family. “Your mother and your siblings are waiting outside for you” he was told as he spoke. “My mother?” Jesus had said, “my brothers? my sisters? Who are they? Here is my family. Whoever hears me and heeds me; whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother”. Mark cherished this incident and included it in his written gospel just because he wanted to lend comfort to the readers of his gospel, thirty years later, who had been disowned by their families the day they announced their love of Jesus and their loyalty to him. These people had found a new family, a greater family, in the fellowship of Christians who now clung in faith to the elder brother of them all.

Epaphroditus was brother to Paul as Paul was brother to him. The bond that bound them together was stronger than any other tie anywhere else in life. Furthermore, the last thing Paul, the most widely-known of the apostles, wanted to do was suggest that because Epaphroditus had conveyed Paul’s letter to Philippi, Epaphroditus was a mere errand-boy, mere flunkie, mere mule. He is brother to the apostle, from the same spiritual womb because born of the same Spirit of God. “Be sure to look upon him as you look upon me”, Paul says to those who might be prone to look upon Epaphroditus as inferior.

Brother. My friend Reginald Miller, now retired in Chatham, N.B.; Miller spent six years as a common sailor on a British warship in World War II. You have to know the traditions of the Royal Navy to appreciate the unbreakable, unbendable line that divides officers from sailors. Yet there was one exception, Miller used to tell me; the exception was the fellowship of shipboard Christians — officers and sailors — when they were ashore. Naval rank meant nothing as ironfast traditions melted before the warmth of the gospel.

In the days of the early church, slaves were unalterably slaves as surely as free persons were free. There was nothing a microscopic church could do to overturn the empire’s legislation. But within the Christian fellowship slaves who were mature Christians frequently taught free people (superior everywhere outside the church) the rudiments of the gospel-faith and encouraged them in it.

The highest wall, the insurmountable wall above all walls, was the wall between Jews and everyone else. Yet even this wall, Paul states in his letter to the congregation in Ephesus, Jesus Christ has crumbled. Therefore Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian reach out and embrace each other precisely where the insurmountable wall used to be. Non-Christians think the wall is still standing and therefore perpetuate the standoff! Let’s not forget that Paul was a Jew whose moral rigour had been relentless; Epaphroditus was a Gentile whose family had trafficked in promiscuity. (Epaphroditus had been named after the goddess Aphrodite.) “He’s my brother, you should all know”, the apostle reminds those who need to be reminded. The apostle claims no superiority at all but rather insists on both an equality and a oneness with the younger man, since Epaphroditus is possessed of the same faith and loves the same Lord. Brother.

 

[2(ii)] Fellow-worker. What kind of fellow-worker? Fellow-tentmaker? (Paul, we know earned his living as a tentmaker.) No. We don’t know what Epaphroditus did for a living. When Paul speaks of Epaphroditus as “fellow-worker” he is thinking of work as Jesus had used the word when he said, “My father is working still, and I am working.” Here our Lord means energy, passion, action devoted to the kingdom of God. On one occasion Jesus came upon crowds who were spiritually clueless; they meandered, groped, stumbled, could only land themselves in spiritual disaster. Then the master turned to his disciples, “See? The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” There are hordes who are hungry for the bread of life, even as there are too few who care to feed them. The crowds stumble blindly; therefore we need more who can take them by the hand and bring them to the sight-giver himself. In other words the work which Epaphroditus has done so well as to have Paul name him “fellow-worker” is the kingdom-work of introducing people to Jesus Christ, nurturing the growth of faith, instructing them in the way of faith, confirming them amidst the trials of faith.

This is not to say that the ministry of Epaphroditus was identical in all respects to that of Paul. Paul always wanted to announce the gospel where it had never been heard before. There is no evidence that Epaphroditus thought this to be his calling. We don’t know what the young man did in his kingdom-work. He would certainly have prayed. He may have been like Barnabas, whose name, “Son of Comfort”, tells us what he was about. Perhaps he had unusual discernment as to what God’s plans were for this person or that or for one of the five house-churches in Rome. Perhaps he was so transparent to the light of the gospel that he shone like a lighthouse, telling life’s storm-tossed that there is refuge in the risen one. One aspect of his kingdom-work, obviously, was the help he rendered Paul during the latter’s imprisonment. He is never named an apostle; nevertheless the prince of apostles doesn’t hesitate to call him “fellow-worker”.

Every last person in every last congregation has a unique ministry. Theirs won’t be ours and ours won’t be theirs, but theirs and ours have the same weight and are essential to each other. We speak incorrectly when we say of someone, “He’s studying at seminary with a view to entering the ministry.” With a view to entering the ministry? What do we think he’s been about up until now? When we speak of someone “entering the ministry” we really mean not that he is now a Christian, not that he is finally rendering a service to the kingdom, but rather that he will shortly earn his living as a paid professional in the employment of the church-institution. Since this is what we mean, this is what we should say. According to scripture it simply isn’t correct to say that the clergy are “in the ministry” while other Christians aren’t. To be a Christian and to have a ministry are one and the same. The particular service each of us renders the kingdom varies from person to be person, to be sure; still, we are all alike ministers and therefore fellow-workers.

 

[2(iii)] Fellow-soldier. Soldiering implies conflict. The gospel invariably collides with a fallen world. Jesus himself was immersed in conflict every day. When John Wesley was a spiritually inert clergyman he knew no conflict. Once he became “lit” (24th May, 1738) and thereafter exalted the truth of the gospel he was knee-deep in conflict for the next fifty-three years of his life: conflict with bishops, with magistrates, with mobs, with lazy ministers, with theological opponents, with distillers, with bankers who wouldn’t lend his people money for small business start-up. The kingdom of God collides with the very world it is meant to redeem. The only way the Christian can avoid conflict is to cease to be a Christian. Surely no one here prefers Judas to Jesus!

It’s plain that to be a fellow-worker is always to be a fellow-soldier, since kingdom-work will always entail kingdom-conflict. And like soldiering anywhere, kingdom-soldiering entails not only conflict but hardship, suffering, even sacrifice.

Think for a minute of the horrors of the twentieth century, beginning with the slaughter of the Armenians in the second decade, the executions of Lenin and Stalin, and so on right up to the ethnic cleansing in Croatia and the slaughter in Rwanda. These conflicts which are frighteningly visible — conflicts of class, nation, race, economics, culture — are but a partial manifestation of invisible spiritual conflict which seethes ceaselessly and courses ubiquitously. And then lest we distance ourselves cavalierly from all this we should recall the word of Solzhenitsyn, Russian thinker and writer: the spiritual conflict which bedevils nations finally passes through every last individual human heart.

A world whose distinguishing feature is conflict doesn’t welcome the gospel. When the gospel is held up those who hold it up are immersed in conflict immediately. What do they do next? Capitulate? Compromise? Deny him whose gospel it is? Or do they take their share of the hardship, suffering and sacrifice which is the lot of any soldier, as Paul reminded another young man, Timothy?

Paul commended Epaphroditus to the Philippian congregation as his “fellow-soldier”. Epaphroditus was anything but a shirker.

 

[2(iv)] Lastly the apostle insists that Epaphroditus has been a “minister to my need”. What was Paul’s particular need which the younger man met? We aren’t told. Perhaps he brought Paul food which was better than the wretched stuff fed to prisoners on death-row. Unquestionably Epaphroditus met Paul’s need for companionship, alleviated his loneliness, brought news of the triumph of the gospel as the gospel flooded more widely among unbelievers and penetrated more deeply within believers.

I think too that one reason Paul doesn’t tell us what his particular need is that he doesn’t want us to know. We each have that need which we don’t advertise not because we are ashamed of it but because it is so private, so personal, so deep in us, so close to our heart that only our soul-mates can meet it and therefore only our soul-mates are permitted to see it. I know whereof I speak. And in the providence of God I have been given those who know me so intimately and love me so dearly that they meet that need which others do not know of and never will. Paul didn’t tell the Philippian congregation that every last Christian in Rome ministered to his need; he said that Epaphroditus did. You and I are ministers to the need of fellow-Christians. Then every day we must thank God for those who give us privileged access to them, as well as for those whom we give privileged access to us.

 

[3] How much weight do you attach to the “fellow” aspect of our “fellowship” here in Streetsville? From time-to-time some people tell me they are enormously disappointed. Others tell me they are startled how much we care for each other. Where we are deficient we should lose no time in intervening so as to re-value the word “fellowship”. For myself, I have known myself cherished in this congregation, upheld, cared for, trusted and simply loved, as I have nowhere else. For here I have found dozens of people of whom I am glad to say, “brother (sister)”, “fellow-worker”, “fellow-soldier”, “minister to my need.”

 

                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd

August 1998

 

Philippians 3:12-16       Ephesians 4:11-1p6        Hebrews 5:11-1

 

When a scrawny, listless, dull-eyed baby is brought to a physician and the physician pronounces, “Failure to thrive”, the parents are in trouble. “Failure to thrive” suggests that the parents are negligent, or abusive, or psychologically unfit, or at the very least too immature to be entrusted with a baby.

For a long time I have thought that congregations should be far more concerned about the spiritual neo-nates among us who may fail to thrive.

The apostles were certainly aware of the challenge. John speaks of the need for birth. Peter adds that milk must be fed the neo-nates if they are to develop. Then Paul tells the Christians in Thessalonica how pleased he is that their “faith is growing abundantly.”

Still, Paul isn’t content to see that some believers at least have moved from birth to infancy and beyond. Why stop with childhood, even adolescence? The goal of his ministry, he insists, is to proclaim Jesus Christ so as to “present every man [woman] mature in Christ.” The apostle knows that infancy in infants is fine, but infancy in a 30-year old is tragic. Infancy in anyone except an infant is infantilism. There is never anything commendable about infantilism. Paul is horrified merely to think of Christians who might fail to thrive. We must grow up!

I: — In the first place it is essential that we mature, says the apostle, or else we shall remain “children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles.” When he speaks of “doctrine” in this context he doesn’t mean Christian truths; he means false teaching, ideology, fads and fancies which invariably lead people astray. Those who do not mature as Christians are vulnerable to whatever is blowing in the wind.

Think of the newest therapy from New York. I mention New York City only because two-thirds of the world’s psychoanalysts live in the one city. This fact does not seem to render NYC a better mental environment. And psychoanalysis is only one of 200 recognized schools of therapy. The 201st school is not going to be our salvation. Only the spiritually mature will be able to ensure that whatever is blowing in the wind isn’t going to be their spiritual seduction, even their spiritual destruction.

When I entered seminary sensitivity-training was “all the rage”. I noticed two things about fellow-candidates for the ministry who were the keenest on sensitivity-training, “T” groups, etc. Invariably they disdained the gospel, were ignorant of it, and appeared to lack any experience of it. The “sensitivity” fad had become a substitute for the gospel. In the second place they were consistently the most insensitive people I had met. They shredded others in class or in their “T”group, and were unconcerned that those who had been shredded haemorrhaged emotionally for several days. Imagine someone saying to you, “In this group today we are going to share our most intimate experience. What, Sally, you aren’t going to share your most intimate experience with this group of strangers? You appear to have hang-ups. Don’t you trust us? Have you internalized all your mother’s inhibitions?” Then Sally’s emotional haemorrhage began. The vocabulary had to do with sensitivity; the technique was coercion; the outcome was catastrophe.

After sensitivity-training (by now I was a newly-ordained clergyperson) it was bio-feedback. Then it was small group dynamics. Then third-world political leftism. (Crypto-communism had been newly sainted by the church’s left-wing “loonies”.) Then it was environmentalism. Jesus saves — seals! But what about codfish? The save-a-seal folks who hijacked the church didn’t seem to grasp the fact that one seal eats 22 pounds of cod per day. Why don’t we admit that baby seals were spared because seal pups have a cute face, while baby cod were not spared because they have an ugly face, and are first cousins of reptiles? (Have you ever wanted to cuddle a cod?)

Next it was the new-age movement. The new-age, upholding pantheism as it does — pantheism being the notion that God is the essence of all that is — conveniently lacked any understanding of evil or sin. For the new-agers there can’t be evil or sin, just because God is the essence of everything. No sin! What a bonanza! What a convenient religion for baby-boom yuppies! The moral disasters brought to me through the new-age ideology you would have to hear to believe, but I am not about to tell you.

Next it was the ridiculous extremism of wilder feminism. It isn’t the blood of Jesus that saves; now it’s women’s body-fluids, say the devotees of Sophia. (Before you dismiss this you should know that The United Church’s national office sent 50-plus delegates to the last Sophia conference.)

I am not denying that some of these groups may have had something profound to say; I am not denying that some have had a corrective that needed to be heard; I am not denying that some aspects of these groups may have developed in response to deficiencies in the church’s understanding of the gospel or its embodiment of the gospel. Nevertheless, precisely what is it that is profound? Where is it a corrective? How has there come to be a deficiency in the church’s understanding or embodiment of the gospel? Only the spiritually mature can answer these questions. Only the spiritually mature can resist seduction and victimization. Only the mature can recognize the swirling winds and resist being blown every which way.

Speaking of winds. When our more ancient foreparents began to sail they could sail only in the direction in which the wind was blowing. If the wind was blowing where they didn’t want to go, too bad. Either they took the sail down and drifted or they put the sail up and were blown off course. As our more ancient foreparents became more sophisticated sailors, however, they learned how to sail across the wind, even how to sail against the wind. Regardless of where the wind was blowing now, they could use the wind — any wind — to go where they were supposed to go.

It is a mark of Christian maturity that we can advance, go where we are supposed to be going, regardless of the most contrary winds that are blowing around us. We can sail across some winds (those winds that have something to say to us), while we sail against other winds (those currents that we must repudiate.) Nevertheless, regardless of the winds Christ’s people are surging ahead. Only the mature can do this!

In the passage we are examining in Paul’s letter to the congregation in Ephesus he tells us that we come to “mature manhood” as we come to “knowledge of the Son of God”. Then week-in and week-out we must be resolute in our coming to know Jesus Christ. Otherwise maturity will escape us, and we shall be defenceless against anything and everything that blows around us.

II: — There is another aspect to maturity. “Forgetting what lies behind”, writes Paul to the congregation in Philippi, “and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature be thus minded.”

“Forgetting what lies behind.” The Greek word Paul uses (eplanthanomai) means to forget not merely in the sense of lose awareness of (“I forget where I left my umbrella”). More importantly, the Greek verb means to forget in the sense of no longer care about; have no interest in; can’t be bothered with; have no time for; never want to think of again. What lies behind, says the apostle, we no longer care about, can’t be bothered with, never think of. Why? Because we are preoccupied with what lies ahead. And what lies ahead? “The prize [reward] of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I don’t know if Paul had any athletic talent. I do know he was fond of athletic images. When he speaks of “straining forward to what lies ahead” he has in mind a sprinter in the last few feet of a race leaning forward into the finish-line tape. The finish is only milliseconds away. The sprinter “lets it all out” and extends himself, leaning forward for the tape. Imagine the runner’s intensity, his concentration, his determination, his absorption. Is the crowd cheering or booing? He doesn’t hear. Is there even a crowd? He doesn’t see. Is it a hot day? He doesn’t feel. Forgetting what lies behind, he is absorbed in what lies ahead, so close to the finish-line he can almost touch it.

Speaking of forgetting what lies behind, in my boyhood days I looked upon the Hebrew story of Lot’s wife as the most stupid narrative I had ever read. She was told not to look back at the city she and her husband were fleeing. She stole a backward glance — and was “zapped” into a pillar of salt! What kind of primitive superstition was this story about? About a whimsical deity, as cruel as he was arbitrary, who lost his temper because someone didn’t conform to a pointless prohibition?

Now that I am old I return to the story constantly. I know now that the prohibition wasn’t pointless. Lot and his wife were fleeing Sodom, a city on which the judgement of God had fallen, as God’s judgement inevitably falls on all of history. Why did Lot’s wife look back? Did she secretly hanker after what Sodom was about, even though what Sodom was about had incurred God’s judgement? Even if she didn’t; even if she didn’t secretly hanker after Sodom’s sin, her looking back meant that she believed more about the past than she did about the future. She thought that the past held more for her than did the future. At the very least she sinned in resisting the summons of God toward the future. God’s people don’t look back longingly just because God himself is the God of the future! God’s people look ahead! The final, full manifestation of the kingdom of God is ahead of us. We are racing towards it! What sprinter ever ran looking backwards?

On Easter morning several women went to the city cemetery to deodorize a corpse. They were greeted with a word that startled them: “He isn’t here. He is risen. He is going before you to Galilee.” What we have to take home today is this: “He isn’t here…. He is going beforeyou.” We persist in looking for Jesus Christ amidst decay and death when the only way we can meet him is to look ahead. He is always before us, never behind us!

Lot’s wife: she looked back and was petrified, frozen, fixed forever in frustration and futility. Who wants to be fixed forever in frustration and futility? Then we shan’t look back, expecting more from the past than we expect from the future.

Being frozen would be bad enough. What’s worse in those who keep on looking back is the metamorphosis they gradually undergo. Those who look back persistently grieve for the past. Regret fills them.

As they continue to look back regret slowly turns into resentment. Somebody, several somebodies, “did them dirt” back then and now they are resentful.

As they continue to look back resentment curdles into rancour. Rancour is through-and-through bitterness, even hatred. Now they are full of pus and poison themselves.

As they continue to look back rancour hardens into retribution. Now they are vindictive, and the poison inside spills outside onto others.

Regret, resentment, rancour, retribution: from nostalgia-grief to a sour heart to a public menace. Lot’s wife was pillared into salt she was a traffic hazard to all who, more mature than she, were bent on moving ahead!

More mature? “One thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I go flat out for the finish-line, just because my Lord and his kingdom await me there”, says the apostle, only to add, “Let those of us who are mature be thus minded.”

III: — Let’s listen as well to the unnamed author of the epistle to the Hebrews. “Everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” Solid food is needed to move people to a maturity which equips them to distinguish good from evil.

What is more important than being equipped to distinguish good from evil? What is more difficult? Most people assume it’s easy to distinguish good from evil; they assume that any slovenly sleepyhead can discern evil. Quite the contrary. Evil is subtle; evil is sophisticated; evil is blatant one instant and cleverly disguised the next, all of which keeps us off-balance and prevents simplistic diagnoses. Only the mature who have become mature through ingesting solid food; only the mature are equipped in this regard.

Not only is evil both blatant and subtle, there is no end to the complex interweaving of evil’s endless dimensions. Think, for instance, of those among us who are detained by the criminal justice system. Recently I spoke with a clergyman, an Anglican, who moved from being a parish priest in suburbia to a chaplain in a facility that incarcerates young offenders. These boys (I think they should be called “boys” rather then “men”, not least because the government has deemed them too young for trial in adult courts); these boys have committed horrific crimes. That’s why they are locked up. When my Anglican friend began his work among them he learned something that he hadn’t found in suburbia. These boys had to be taught how and when and why to brush their teeth; none of them had ever owned a toothbrush. More chilling to hear (so dreadful, in fact, as to be almost unendurable), none of the boys he met in the “young offender” prison had grown up in a family where they had had their own bed, a bed to themselves. Not only are these boys evildoers whose evildoing has victimized others; plainly they are victims of evil themselves. Then should they be punished or pitied? Are they to be punished and pitied? The criminal justice system, however crude and imprecise it might be (it is crude and imprecise), is the ready-to-hand instrument that has to be used in the face of a societal emergency. But is the criminal justice system subtle enough subsequently to assist evil-steeped youngsters who are themselves both victims and victimizers?

Then there is the evil which strikes us (some of us) as undeniably evil when others don’t see it to be evil at all. Not so long ago the newspapers told us of the court-decision which permits a pregnant woman to sniff glue and continue sniffing glue regardless of the damage done to her soon-to-be-born child. The court decided that to pronounce against glue-sniffing in this case would infringe a woman’s rights.

Lest we think that stupefying inability to sort out evil from non-evil is found only outside the church let me tell you of something else. I am a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada, and at one time I sat on the Rights and Freedoms Committee of The Writers’ Union of Canada. At one committee meeting we discussed an Alberta politician’s attempt at having a book banned. In the course of the discussion we were acquainted with several attempts in Alberta to have many books banned. A group of Christians there has sought to ban C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on two grounds: it is anti-Christian, and it promotes witchcraft.

It takes genuine maturity to understand what is genuinely evil, how dimensions of evil interpenetrate, and what discerners should do in the midst of it all.

The maturity which enables us to distinguish good from evil is the same maturity which keeps us from being victimized by everything that is “blowing in the wind”. And of course the same maturity will find us looking ahead to that day when discernment will no longer be needed just because the kingdom of this world will have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.

 

No doubt you are thinking that the sermon has ended. It has. I cannot refrain, however from adding a postscript. From time to time throughout my 32-year ministry I am asked to make the sermons shorter, simpler, easier to grasp, less advanced, couched in less mature language. I dare not. Solid food, solid food, is needed if we are ever going to mature.

 

Victor Shepherd     May 2002

1 Peter 2:2
2 Thessalonians 1:3
Ephesians 4:13-15*
Philippians 3:13-15*
Genesis 19:26
Mark 16:6-7
Hebrews 5:13-14*

Philippians 3:2-16

 

[1] Why did he put up with it? Listen to the litany of hardship: imprisonment, beatings, stoning, three times shipwrecked, adrift at sea for a day and a half, hunger, thirst, exposure. “He” is the apostle Paul. Why did he put up with it all? Very simply he tells us why in the warmest letter he ever wrote, his letter to the congregation in Philippi : “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” These nine words say it all. If our hearts echo the same nine words; that is, if our experience of our Lord echoes his, then we understand the apostle. If, on the other hand, “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” finds no echo within us, then we must conclude that Paul was either a masochist or a fanatic. He must have been a masochist, putting up with extraordinary affliction because he liked to suffer. Or he must have been a fanatic, and like any wild-eyed fanatic, so very intense, hysterical even, that he was beyond feeling any pain.

But there’s no evidence of derangement in Paul. There’s no evidence he was ever masochistic or hysterical. Then “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” sufficiently explains why he put up with tortuous hardship.

It all began for the apostle when the risen Lord seized him. Paul was seized precisely when he expected nothing of the sort. It wasn’t the case that he had been badly depressed or anxious or confused or conscience-stricken and then had one day found relief in “religion.” He wasn’t looking for something to counterbalance assorted personal deficits that he had dragged along (“baggage” we call it today) since childhood. Neither was he calculating how much better it might for his career if he joined the service club, the historical society and the church. He had been overtaken. As he was overtaken he was overwhelmed. What possessed him now was light-years beyond anything he had expected, anything he had ever wanted, anything he had ever thought possible.

 

[2]   Don’t get me wrong. I’m not belittling in any way those who look to Jesus Christ out of fear or anxiety or guilt or loneliness or bereavement or illness or approaching death. Such is our Lord’s humility that he welcomes those who come to him for any reason. Such is our Lord’s mercy that he accepts those who look to him from any motive, however self-serving. And such should be our delight that we too cherish fellow-believers who have come to him for who knows what reason.

My only point is that Paul didn’t look to our Lord because he felt needy; he wasn’t even looking. He was overtaken. Once overtaken and overwhelmed he found himself possessed of what he hadn’t even known to be available.

I am often asked how the gospel is going to gain a hearing with secular suburbanites, since secular suburbanites already seem to “have it all.” Decades ago preachers zeroed in on what people didn’t have: they didn’t have peace or joy or contentment; many were reminded they didn’t even have morality. But today’s suburbanites appear impervious to the older approach. Today’s suburbanites don’t fret because they fear their lives are empty. Life is so full they are chronically tired. (You must have noticed that exhaustion, not boredom, typifies suburbia.) They don’t flagellate themselves on account of moral failure. Either they feel they have morality enough or they don’t care that they haven’t. They don’t look to the church for help in dealing with emotional difficulties. Emotional difficulties are dealt with by therapists and pharmacists. Then where is the vulnerable spot, the “landing spot,” where the gospel can gain entry? There is no vulnerable spot, apparently, in our friends who “have it all together.” At the same time, it isn’t the preacher’s task to create such a landing spot. After all, the last thing we want to do is foster emotional fragility in those who feel themselves psychologically stable. Nobody told Paul that he wasn’t nearly as well put together as he thought himself to be. (Had he been told this he would have laughed.) Had some well-meaning Christian come alongside him prior to his arrest on the Damascus Road and said, “Brother, you need Jesus,” Paul would have snorted, “I need him about as much as I need a hole in the head.” Then how had the gospel gained a hearing with him? Not through glaring personal defects that a clever preacher could enlarge and exploit. He was overtaken and overwhelmed. What then possessed him he had never anticipated and could never have expected. He was captivated by “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

“Surpassing value” or “surpassing worth” – what is it? Huperechon is a Greek word which means that which is loftier, recognizably better, and more telling, and all these at once. Loftier, recognizably better, more telling. It doesn’t mean that what preceded was bad or worthless; it means that what has come surpasses even what is very good. What has come is simply loftier, recognisably better, more telling.

 

[3] What Paul had inherited was good; what had surrounded him from birth was rich. He was fortunate.

   “Circumcised on the eighth day.”  Unlike converts to Judaism who were circumcised in adulthood upon joining themselves to the congregation, Paul was circumcised in infancy. In other words he was raised by parents who were serious about the spiritual formation of their child.

I grew up in a home that was serious about my spiritual formation. When I was three weeks old my parents promised publicly, in a service of dedication, that they would do anything and everything to encourage me in the way of discipleship. They meant it. For years I saw my parents gladly endure inconvenience and cheerfully make sacrifices for my sake, hoping that it would all bear fruit in me.

   “Of the tribe of Benjamin.” Benjamin was the only patriarch privileged to be born in the Promised Land. The tribe of Benjamin had given Israel its first king, Saul. Jeremiah and Micah, faithful Israelite prophets of gigantic stature, had been Benjaminites. Mordecai, a folk hero in Israel , had belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. To belong to the tribe of Benjamin was to be privileged.

I have always felt myself privileged. When I was eight years old my father had me read the editorial page of the Sunday New York Times newspaper. He had me read it on Monday evening when he bought it in downtown Toronto . Since I was only eight I didn’t understand half the words on the editorial page. And certainly I hadn’t a clue as to what issues the editor was writing about. Still, my father kept me at it. He told me he wanted to improve my facility in English lest I grow up lacking precision in verbal expression.

The sermons in our local church were usually bad, so very bad that my father, always charitable, would only comment on our way home, “At least the text was good.” (Frequently I reminded him that the text was the one thing an inept preacher couldn’t ruin.) As a result my parents would go anywhere in Toronto , dragging along me and my sisters with them, in order to hear better preaching. Since they had no car we had to travel on the TTC, even if it meant two or three streetcars.

“A Hebrew of the Hebrews,” Paul says of himself. He knew Hebrew, the sacred tongue. Most Jewish people of his era didn’t know Hebrew. They were biblically and theologically disadvantaged.

I know the logic of scripture. I am extraordinarily privileged in the theological formation I have received.

 

None of this is to be slighted in any way. All of it is good. It’s far better to have it than to be without it. Paul never pretended anything else. He never said it was insignificant. He does say, however, that it pales compared to the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ.

Let me repeat: I am everlastingly grateful for the Christian privilege to which I was born. It’s much better to have it than to be without it. Nevertheless, of itself such privilege guarantees nothing. While it points me toward knowing Jesus Christ it can’t generate this. I myself, at some point, must seize the one who of his grace seized me as first he overtook me and overwhelmed me. Every privilege in my background is important. Nonetheless it pales compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

 

[4] A year or two ago I met Dr Helen Huston, a Canadian missionary surgeon who has spent her entire working life in Nepal . Having read much about her, and having read a biography of her, I was eager to see her. I had already read a letter of hers, written earlier still, in which she had spoken of Christians who had been willing to suffer for their faith. Now she was telling me (and others) of fellow-believers in Nepal who were being persecuted. Some are ostracized, some are in prison, hundreds are out of jail only because they have posted bail and must report to the courts every month, many have mortgaged their lands in order to pay their bail. And then Dr Huston’s bottom line: “We must stand in solidarity with them. It is worth everything to know Jesus.”

I wish to draw our attention here to three matters.

The first. Helen Huston went to Nepal right out of medical school as a missionary of The United Church of Canada. As she came home on furlough every six or seven years she noticed a theological erosion in The United Church, which erosion developed into a theological abyss. Finally she distanced herself publicly from the several anti-gospel agendas that the denomination had adopted. Whereupon she was denied access to United Church pulpits. (Missionaries on furlough always itinerate from pulpit to pulpit, don’t they, if only in order to raise awareness of overseas missions and raise financial support as well.) She was also denied access to United Church seminaries, denominational authorities deeming it better that she not address candidates for the ministry. This amounts to denominational harassment.

The second matter. She has known much hardship herself in Nepal , having lived among Christians for whom persecution for their faith is as certain as the sun’s rising in the east.

The third. None of this has daunted her: “It’s worth everything to know Jesus.”

 

[5] In all she has written and done Helen Huston has drawn our attention to something crucial in Paul’s letter to the congregation in Philippi : to know the surpassing value of Jesus Christ is alsoto share in Christ’s sufferings and to know the power of Christ’s resurrection.   Nothing can be more vital and visceral than this. To know Jesus Christ immediately relativises everything that we might otherwise regard as supremely important. In addition, to know Christ is immediately to share in Christ’s anguish as well as to share in Christ’s resurrection. Once we grasp how vital, how visceral, all of this is we shall understand immediately how unsubstantial, how frothy, most other things are by comparison. Remember, “surpassing value” translates a Greek word that means loftier, recognizably better, and more telling – all at once.

We suffer with our Lord’s suffering inasmuch as we immerse ourselves in those situations that cause him to suffer. He suffers wherever the world is broken; he suffers wherever people are flayed; he suffers wherever there is one pained person pained for any reason at all, her fault or somebody else’s. In his parable of the sheep and the goats it’s plain that our Lord suffers in the suffering of the distressed and the victimised whether these people are believers or not. What’s more, it’s plain from scripture that our Lord suffers additionally in the extraordinary sufferings that believers endure inasmuch as they are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

Our Lord’s resurrection, on the other hand, means that he triumphs in all such situations.   You and I suffer as much as anyone else in life simply on account of the human situation. In addition we increase our suffering by deliberately standing with the distressed and victimised of the world. And then we increase our suffering still more by standing up with Christ’s people. And just because we have shared our Lord’s suffering in all this we are going to know his triumph in the midst of it all. We are going to learn how wonderfully effective he has been in situations where we thought he was handcuffed and where others never thought of him at all. It all begins with the surpassing worth of knowing him.

 

[6] I began today by asking us to ponder why Paul put up with it all: the beatings, the shipwrecks, the imprisonments – that is, why he put up with the torment he received at the hands of authorities as well as the pain inflicted through his extraordinary exposure to natural disasters. So far I haven’t mentioned the suffering he endured at the hands of the church: his pain at the congregation in Corinth that promoted party-spirit and bickering, even tolerated incest; his heartbreak at the congregation in Galatia that submerged the gospel in Spirit-less legalism; his dismay at the congregation in Thessalonica, some of whose members, misinterpreting the second coming, had quit their jobs and become bums. My question now is, why did Paul put up with what he did from the church?

He did so for one reason: that surpassing worth which can’t find words to describe what it longs to commend to others. This is the only reason, but this is reason enough. Knowing this, and knowing as well what it is to share Christ’s sufferings and see the efficacy of Christ’s resurrection; this is reason enough.

Ultimately this is the only reason why the church is in business, why I am speaking, why you are listening, why we encourage those among us and invite those not yet among us to praise God for his unspeakable gift, Christ Jesus our Lord.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                                                           

August 2004

  Philippians 4:4-7    Habakkuk 3:17-18    John 16: 20-22   

 

I:– It’s easy to be happy some of the time; when things are going our way, when the ball is bouncing for us, when our ship is coming in day after day. Yet it is the command of God that we rejoice all the time. If our circumstances are what give us joy, then what happens when our circumstances change, as they always do?

I have used the words “happiness” and “joy” as though they were synonyms, but in fact they are not. Happiness depends on circumstances and therefore is relatively superficial; joy depends on something else and is eversomuch deeper.

The difference is illustrated in the correspondence between Martin Niemoeller, a pastor in the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, and his wife Else. Niemoeller had been a submarine captain in World War I. When Hitler came to power and molested the church Niemoeller opposed him vigorously, with the result that Niemoeller was imprisoned for eight years. In one of his letters to Else he allays his wife’s anxiety about him by telling her that he is faring better than she fears. His life now resembles the fierce storms he encountered during his submarine days: terrible turbulence on the surface, but unfathomable peace in the depths. A threatened man can “rejoice always” only if there is something so deep in his life that it is beyond anything which circumstances can alter.

We should be realistic and sensible about the distinction between happiness and joy. There are circumstances where no sane person is happy. When people are bereaved we expect them to be sad; when people are in pain we expect them to groan; when people are betrayed we expect them to be shocked. These are normal responses. When responses are not normal (that is, when someone’s emotional response doesn’t square with what is happening in her life) that person is psychiatrically ill.

Not only should we be realistic and sensible, we should also be compassionate. St. Paul instructs us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. Our hearts are to be attuned to theirs. We are neither to disregard their sorrow out of insensitivity nor diminish their joy out of envy.

And of course there is one situation where we are never to rejoice. “Love does not rejoice at wrong”, the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 13, “love rejoices in the right”.

 

II: — Let’s look again at the command of God, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” To rejoice in the Lord — always — means that we have settled something in the deepest depths of our lives. Think for a minute of John Newton, Anglican clergyman, hymnwriter, counsellor and former slaveship captain. John met Mary Catlett when he was fourteen and she twelve. They loved each other ardently. Newton spent years at sea on merchant ships, warships and slaveships. He saw Mary infrequently. Yet their love for each other was undying. By age thirty-nine Newton had become a beneficiary of the “amazing grace” for which he would be known ever after. He was now finished with the sea and would spend the rest of his long life as a preacher and pastor. He had always assumed that he would predecease his wife, unable as he was to imagine living without her. She, however, died first. Mary was buried on a Wednesday. Four days later, on Sunday, Newton stood up in the pulpit of his church in London. Everyone wondered what text the broken-hearted man would preach on that day. It was from the book of Habakkuk. “Though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines… the flock be cut off the from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, YET I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD, I WILL JOY IN THE GOD OF MY SALVATION” (Habakkuk 3:17-18). “I will rejoice — not in my circumstances (for the time being at least they were dreadful) but in the God of my salvation”.

So far from being exceptional, in the early days of the church Newton’s experience was considered normal. Paul exults in the fruit which the apostles’ preaching brought forth in the people of Thessalonica. “For our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction… you received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit”. The cumulative force of Paul’s vocabulary is unmistakable: “gospel”, “power”, “full conviction”. The climax is Spirit-inspired joy which comes to birth and thrives even in the midst of hardship. The gospel is the bedrock of it all.

 

III: — Bedrock suggests foundation. As we probe scripture we learn that the Christmas announcement of the incarnation — gospel-bedrock — is the foundation of all rejoicing. “Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy… for to you is born this day… a saviour.” The people of God rejoice for one reason: we have been given a saviour, the saviour, that saviour apart from whom any human being is undone.

Christmas is nothing less than a “Search and Rescue Mission”. During my teenage years I read everything I could about the Battle of Britain. The exploits of the small number of young men who flew against overwhelming odds thrilled me. The tension mounted in their stories whenever one was shot down and had to parachute into the English Channel. Immediately a Search and Rescue Mission was mobilized to seek the downed flier and find him and recover him lest he be lost to future battles where he would be needed; indeed, lest he be lost. The Search and Rescue Mission had to find him, or else the downed flier would soon be a drowned flier. When at last, in the story I was reading, he was pulled into the recovery vessel my joy was scarcely less than his must have been!

Christmas is important for one reason: the search and rescue mission we need has been mobilized on our behalf. Our joy at the news of the rescuer himself is the measure of our awareness of our need and our gratitude for the gift.

Jesus sends out seventy missioners two by two. They are to speak in his name. They do. The seventy return elated. What spiritual triumphs they have witnessed! Why, they have even expelled evil spirits in the power their Lord has given them! Jesus tames their exuberance as he tells them what should set their joy a-throbbing. “Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Obviously there is nothing more important, because nothing more elemental, than having one’s name written in heaven. Assurance that it is is the basis of our joy.

It is no wonder, then, that when Zacchaeus found himself overwhelmed by mercy and freed to abandon his hiding place in the tree he took Jesus home joyfully.

It is no wonder too that when Phillip proclaimed what Luke calls “the good news of Jesus” to the Ethiopian Eunuch the latter fellow “went on his way rejoicing”. Because he was black he was the butt of racist slurs, and because he was a eunuch he was the butt of vulgar taunts. Yet he went on his way rejoicing in spite of it all, for through hearing the good news of the saviour he had met him whose news it is. This is the bedrock reason for rejoicing in any man or woman.

 

IV: — As we rejoice in our salvation we find that other joys are added to us.

(i) For instance, the psalmist writes, “I will rejoice and be glad for thy steadfast love… thou hast taken heed of my adversities”. There is no one whose life is not riddled with adversities. All of us are identical in this regard. Where we differ is in what adversity does to us. Does it grind us down like an emery wheel? Does it make us more bitter than lemon juice? Does it suffocate us in the deadly gases of hopelessness and apathy? Or are our adversities (still unpleasant) occasions when God’s love soaks us with even greater penetration? The more mature Christians become the more we echo Jeremiah’s conviction. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” The philosopher Kierkegaard used to say, “Life has to be lived forwards but it can only be understood backwards.” He’s right. Life can only be understood backwards. But to say this is to say that the longer we look back the more obvious it is that the steadfast love of the Lord has never ceased, and his mercies have never come to an end. Then life can be lived forwards even more enthusiastically! The One whose love gave up his son for me; such love would never withhold from me what I need now. To know this doesn’t mean that we grin stupidly when adversity next settles upon us. It is, however, to rejoice in the sense of which Martin Niemoeller spoke: turbulence on the surface, rejoicing in the depths, for God’s love is as steadfast as his mercies are endless.

(ii) And then there is the writer of Ecclesiastes. “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love.” The same writer urges us, “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart.” In other words, it is our foundational rejoicing in Christ that enables us to rejoice in all the creaturely joys God has given us.

It is a commonplace that those who pursue happiness never find it, since happiness is that by-product which surprises us when we are pursuing something else that takes us out of ourselves. People who expect creaturely joys to yield foundational joy always find creaturely joys a disappointment. Of course! — for the reason just cited.

Everyone knows that human beings tolerate (in the medical sense of tolerate) any pleasure-giving stimulus. As we tolerate something it takes more and more of the same stimulus to give us the same pleasure. At the crudest, it takes more and more cocaine to generate the same “high”. Similarly it takes a bigger and bigger stereo to keep the buff happy. And what boating enthusiast has ever decided he needed a smaller boat? No wonder we have to have more and more to stave off feelings of “ho-hum”, boredom, and disappointment.

Not so with those who rejoice in the depths. For to be possessed of joy in Christ is to be rendered able to “enjoy life with the wife whom we love”, enjoy the simple pleasures of bread and wine. We don’t need ever more intense, more costly and more superficial stimulation to be content. “Because you are Christ’s”, Paul writes, “all things are yours as well.” Indeed, the whole realm of creation is ours richly to enjoy.

(iii) Lastly,”we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Do you ever wonder how your life will end up? By “end up” I don’t mean wondering whether it’s going to be the nursing home or a premature heart attack or a highway collision. I mean what are we finally going to become humanly. What is our ultimate destiny? To Philippian Christians already rejoicing in their restoration in Christ Paul writes, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” True. But what will the completion be? We are going to share the glory of God. The splendour that surrounds God eternally; the magnificence, majesty and grandeur of God — we are going to be taken up into this and bathed in it so that it spills over us and comes to characterize us. What other destiny could even approach this? No wonder the apostle rejoices in the mere anticipation of it!

My father died at age fifty-nine; one heart attack, no warning whatsoever, two weeks after he had been given a clean bill of health. My father-in-law, on the other hand, was ninety-four years old before his life seeped away in an institution. What about me? Which is more likely to happen to me? I don’t waste two seconds thinking about it. Speculation is pointless. There is point only to reflecting upon and rejoicing in our destiny in Christ: we are going to share the glory of God.

Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, was teaching at the University of Bonn in 1935 when the Gestapo arrived at the classroom door and told him not to bother finishing his paragraph. Barth was going to be deported to his native Switzerland. He had five children, no job, and faced many wartime years of difficulty and discouragement. Yet it was Barth who wrote in his largest work, “The person who hears and takes to heart the biblical message is not only permitted but plainly forbidden to be anything but merry and cheerful.”

The biblical message speaks of our Lord who is at hand, whose presence forestalls anxiety, and who summons us to rejoice always in him. The joy he lends us the world neither gives nor takes away, since he alone causes hearts to sing.

                                                                  

                                                                       Victor A. Shepherd                                         

  June 1994

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.” (1^st 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.”