Building a community of grace one word of thanks at a time (sermon from Sunday, Sept 20, 2020)

 Opening Focus:

I am sure that God who began this good work in you, 

will carry it on until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus.

Beginning a new worship series:  The Letter to the Philippians (and to us) 

We are in such a changed, and still-changing time.  How do we maintain and practice what’s important?  How do we know what is, or what are the important things to practice and maintain?

This week and for the next few, our worship is based on a series of readings from the letter Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, in the midst of a new normal they were suffering through.

The old normal was Paul travelling around the Mediterranean starting churches – little Christian communities of Jesus to help change and to heal the world of their time from within.  He would come to a town or city, gather a community of believers, get them started in Christian living together, then move on, do the same thing in some other places, and then come back and visit to encourage the new churches and help keep them on the right track.

Now his life and theirs have been changed.  The new normal is that he’s older, and that he’s in prison and may not be coming out.  They’re cut off from one another.  Disconnected and really socially distanced.

So now what?  How do they maintain and practice what’s important?  How do they know what’s important to practice and maintain?

From prison Paul wrote to the church in Philippi to help them find their way into the new normal, and to still be what they need to be.  As we read, sing and pray our way through what Paul wrote, maybe we’ll hear a little bit of God’s word for ourselves today. 

Reading:  Philippians 1:3-11

Compared to Paul’s letters to other churches, which can sometimes be harsh, critical and pontifical in their tone, the letter he writes to the Philippian church is warm, gentle and even intimate in its spirit of gratefulness for them.  Why the difference?

It doesn’t seem the Philippian church and its members were that much better than the other churches.  They struggled with the same problems as other churches.

There was dissension among them, with some members not getting on well and not working together in a very co-operative spirit.  They were also starting to water down their commitment to the way of Jesus, and were making compromises in their  life and work together – so much so that part way into the letter Paul actually quotes the whole of a hymn they knew about the way of Jesus being the way of humble and self-sacrificial love for others, and this being the way that all followers of Jesus see as the only and only way to really build a good world.  Obviously, they needed reminding.

So why the gentler tone and calmer approach Paul takes with them, compared to earlier letters he wrote to other churches?  Maybe a sign of his aging and mellowing?  Maybe too, his own life experience, his struggles along the way and now his imprisonment and the possibility of his being executed there, have opened him up in an even greater way than before to God’s grace and to human graciousness because of it.

Whatever the reason, let’s enjoy this more gratefully encouraging side of the apostle Paul: 

I thank my God for you every time I think of you; and every time I pray for you all, I pray with joy because of the way in which you have helped me in the work of the gospel from the very first day until now. And so I am sure that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it on until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus.

You are always in my heart! And so it is only right for me to feel as I do about you. For you have all shared with me in this privilege that God has given me, both now that I am in prison and also while I was free to defend the gospel and establish it firmly. God is my witness that I tell the truth when I say that my deep feeling for you all comes from the heart of Christ Jesus himself.

I pray that your love will keep on growing more and more, together with true knowledge and perfect judgment, so that you will be able to choose what is best. Then you will be free from all impurity and blame on the Day of Christ. Your lives will be filled with the truly good qualities which only Jesus Christ can produce, for the glory and praise of God. 

Meditation

 

If there’s one word, one spirit that stands out for me in these opening lines of Paul’s letter, it’s gratitude.

 

I was in a meeting recently with a group of ministers in our region, and one of them shared what she calls her “gratitude practice” as a temporary minister to a troubled and struggling congregation.  She sends out cards, she says, on a regular basis – little notes of thanks to different church leaders for little things they do as leaders of the church, and for little ways they help the church and other members of the church carry out their calling and their mission.  And it makes all the difference in the world, she says.

 

A number of years I decided to do something similar.  We seemed to going through a bit of a rough patch at the church – were in a kind of low point, and I bought a box of cards to send to members who might appreciate an encouraging word of thanks for what they have done.  They were nice little art cards, with blank insides where a short personal message could be written.  I still have the box – still neatly and tightly wrapped, too.  I’m sure the members would have appreciated getting little notes like that.

 

 

Have you ever done that?  Failed to turn your good intentions into action?

 

I’m currently enrolled in an online course in the spirituality of Teresa of Avila, and the course is built around video teaching, personal reflection questions, and online discussion that all the people in the course – divided into groups or 20 or 25, can share in over the length of the course.  The discussion question the first week was to share what attracted us to the course, what we hoped to get from it, and what might be good for others to know about us.

 

We all wrote in, were free to reply to one another as we saw fit, and a woman named Susan Cooper who’s the facilitator for our group took the time to reply to each and every self-introduction that was offered.   And in fer reply she welcomed the new member and then took the time to highlight and celebrate one or two specific things they said about themselves that she saw as especially positive, that she got something from for herself, and that she encouraged them to build on, and feel good about themselves.

I wonder how often my approach to people – family, friends, people and committees here at the church, people I get to know wherever – I wonder how often my approach is focused more along the lines of what might be wrong with them, what they might be wrong about and need to learn from me, how they might need to change, and how I know exactly how they should be, or be doing things differently?

Quite different from how Paul addresses the Philippians, who also were wrong about things, would do well to learn a few things from him, and who needed to start acting differently than they were acting, but to whom nonetheless Paul starts his letter by saying: 

 “I thank my God for you every time I think of you; and every time I pray for you all, I pray with joy because of the way in which you have helped me in the work of the gospel from the very first day until now. And I am sure that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it on until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus.”

 

What high praise this is.  And what high encouragement this is of the people he is writing to.

 

I am grateful for you, he says, because of the way you and I have worked together and helped each other out in “the work of the gospel” – or as he says later, in together defending the gospel and establishing it in a world that is often opposed to it.

 

What does Paul mean by defending and establishing the gospel?

 

What he means is living out together among ourselves the way the world is meant by God to be for all.   

 

Not only giving thanks to Jesus for showing us God’s love to us, but also sharing that love with all we meet.   

 

Not only praying “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” but being a little outpost of the kingdom of God in the way we are church, and the way we are families, and the way we are in all our relations, letting the good will of God be done in everything we do separately and as a church.   

 

Not only letting Jesus save and heal us, but now living as Jesus lived for the sake of saving and healing whoever is near us, and whoever crosses our path.

 

And that’s not easy.  It’s not something we can do all by ourselves.  It’s often at odds with the way the world works and with what the world counts as sensible.  We really need the encouragement of one another to know what the way is, and how we can live it out – each of us in our own way, offering the kinds of gifts God has given us, bending our unique and often different – even clashing – personalities, to the one joy we share of being a body of Christ in all our different parts, for the good of the world.

 

And in the new normal this isn’t always easy.  It takes some thought, some intentionality and maybe some ingenuity – just as it did for Paul and the Philippians when the old normal of them getting together every now and then for a spiritual tune-up just isn’t there anymore.

 

In the old normal, we used to encourage one another in our mission and ministry together just by being together – in worship on a Sunday morning, in a meeting or a study group in the Lower Hall or the Upper Room, by working together at a whole host of church projects, sales, dinners and what-not.  Even just over coffee in the Lower Hall or at the Tim’s down the road after worship on a Sunday.

 

But without all that, with those things taken away and gone, how do we encourage one another, let one another know how grateful we are to be church and followers of Jesus together, strength the bonds we have and the effect we have on the world around us?

 

I don’t have the answers.  The answers are ours – are mine and are yours to discern and develop and put into practice, in our own lives and according to what makes sense to us.

 

But the question is one we share:  with the old normal gone, and the new normal still taking shape and changing around us, what ways can we find to keep one another going in a good direction?  What ways will we practice to let others know how grateful we are that we are church and followers of Jesus together?  How will we encourage one another in Jesus’ way of life, in a world that now as much as ever needs to see what it looks like and how it works?