Think On These Things

This is the transcript of my podcast for this week, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

This is the link to podcast itself:

Think On These Things

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 4:1-9

This week at Christ Church, it is our Harvest Festival service. The format of this service does not easily allow for a recorded version of the sermon. I have, therefore, recorded the following version of the sermon for this week’s podcast. This explains why it may sound different to usual!

The reading from St Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi is the last of the readings the lectionary gives us from St Paul's letter to the Philippian believers. Next week, our second reading will be from the (first) letter to the Church at Thessalonica. Thessalonica was the place that Saints Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy visited after they left Philippi on their first visit there to preach the Gospel (Acts 17:1-8). When St Paul refers in his letters to the Macedonian churches, the churches at Philippi and Thessalonica are two of the churches he is referring to.

Of all of his churches, the Macedonian churches seem to have given St Paul the maximum of support and the minimum of trouble. We have seen how at Philippi the main issue seems to have been the all-too-common problem of people not getting on with each other. St Paul refers to a specific example of this in the first few verses of chapter 4.

St Paul directly asks two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to agree in the Lord. He also appeals to another unnamed person to help them to do this. St Paul describes Euodia and Syntyche as having struggled beside him in the work of the Gospel together with someone called Clement and the rest of his co-workers. We know nothing more of Euodia, Syntyche, the unnamed companion, and Clement. This is a good reminder to us that there is so much about St Paul and his ministry that we do not know. What we do know is that, contrary to the way some people think of him, St Paul did not work alone but had many co-workers who worked with him.

Having made this personal appeal, St Paul tells the Philippian believers to rejoice in the Lord always, and to emphasize the importance of what he is telling them to do, he repeats it.

St Paul then tells them that they are not to worry about anything, but instead to pray and make their requests known to God. If they do this, St. Paul writes, the peace of God will guard their hearts and minds. It is the words from this verse that we quote in the blessing at the end of our services.

Finally, St Paul tells them, they are to think good thoughts. They are to think about whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable; anything in which there is excellence and which is worthy of praise. St Paul closes by telling them to take him as their role model and to copy his example.

St Paul packs a lot into just a few verses and unpacking it would take longer than I have. So just a few thoughts about what St Paul writes.

1. Rejoice

Firstly, we too are to rejoice in the Lord, that is, we are to have joy in the Lord. Joy isn't the same as happiness. I do not imagine that St Paul was particularly happy at being in prison. Joy is more than a passive emotion that we experience as a reaction to our situation in life or to something that gives us pleasure in it. It is about the certainty and confidence that comes from actively and consciously putting our trust in the Lord. ‘Joy in the Lord’ enables us to rise above our circumstances and our emotions.

As believers, we do not, or at least we should not, rejoice in ourselves and in our own abilities. We should not put our trust in what we own or any of the outward things that we are told will give us security, purpose, and fulfilment in life. As believers, we rejoice in the Lord, knowing that the Lord is the one who cares for us and who will look after us, whatever our circumstances.

This is why St Paul can write, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ It is why he personally can rejoice, even though he is in prison not knowing whether he will live or die. It is why he can rejoice despite all the suffering and hardship he has been through and knows he will still have to go through, even if he is released.

Rejoicing in the Lord is not about a superficial sense of well-being. It is not a feeling that can be induced or comes from anything we might do. It is rather a deliberate expression of the assurance we have as believers that whatever may happen to us, good or bad, God is in control and is on our side.

So, even though we may weep, either because of our own pain or in seeing the suffering of others, we can still rejoice in the Lord, knowing that God is with us and, as St Paul writes, that the Lord is near.

2. Pray

Secondly, we are to pray and not worry. It is because we rejoice in the Lord and put our trust in him that we do not need to worry. That does not stop us worrying, of course. We are human after all, and we find ourselves worrying about all sorts of things: about our family, our career, our money, our health; but we also worry about the everyday things in life whether it as mundane as shopping for our families or simply where we should go on holiday.

St Paul, however, does not say that we are not to worry selectively. It is not that it is alright to worry about some things and not about others; St Paul says we are not to worry about anything. This would be unrealistic advice and impossible to follow unless we were able to rejoice in the Lord first and foremost. It is, however, because we can rejoice in the Lord that we can be freed from worry.

Imagine, for example, that you are out on your own somewhere one night and you suspect that someone is following you intent on causing you harm. Then you see someone you know and trust. You rejoice at seeing them. You tell them your worry and fear, and you feel safe as a result.

If we rejoice in the Lord, we will tell him our worries and fears. If we do, St Paul writes, then the peace of God, which is greater than our minds can understand, will protect both our hearts and minds.

This will not, however, just happen. We have in everything, St Paul writes, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to make our requests known to God. We all know it is good manners to say thank you for something we are given. Normally, however, we say thank you after we have been given it. When we make our requests to God, we are to say thank you even as we ask him for something. We do that because we are sure that the Lord hears us and wants to answer our prayers.

Rejoicing always, not worrying about anything, but praying in everything calls, however, for a different way of thinking to what we are used to and to the way we are taught by the world in which we live.

3. Think

So, thirdly, we are to take care of how we think. Our minds matter. St Paul tells the Philippians in chapter 2 that we are to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. We are to think the way Jesus thought and to think about things the way he thought of them. We can’t serve God if our minds are always on ourselves. Nor can we serve him if we don't trust him or if our minds are on other things.

We are often distracted or diverted by our thoughts. Distracted, as we have mentioned, by worry and the cares of this life. We are also diverted by thoughts that lead us astray or even which lead us to do things that are wrong. Jesus said:

‘For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.’ (Matthew 15:19)

Thoughts come from within and often they come to us without warning. We might respond to this by saying, ‘I can't help what I think!’ But that is only partly true. We can cultivate damaging thoughts by dwelling on them or by dwelling on what encourages them.

The internet, for example, is a breeding ground for bad thoughts. I'm not suggesting avoiding the internet altogether, that simply is not possible nowadays. We do, however, need to give more thought to what we expose our ourselves to online and what thoughts are stimulated in us as a result.

Young people, for example, are being exposed to some very extreme material online from a very early age. Those who work with young people are reporting how this is affecting young people’s relationships and behaviour towards each other in destructive and at times alarming ways. What is particularly disturbing is how young men are expecting their girlfriends to do things they have seen being performed in hardcore pornography. And it is not just young people who are being negatively affected in this way. We are all affected by it to a significant extent, often more than we realize.

‘Whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable; anything in which there is excellence and which is worthy of praise.’ These are things that St Paul tells us we are to think about. We need to keep this in mind as we browse online and on social media. We need not just to censor ourselves and shut out evil; we need positively to seek out good things to see and to hear, to read and to watch, to concentrate and to dwell on. If evil comes from within us, we need to take care what we allow into us.

Rejoice in the Lord; don’t worry, pray; think good thoughts. It is hard for us to do this; we are novices in the spiritual life. This is why we need role models, people to teach and to guide us. We are, though, very proud, and we don't like to admit our ignorance. We don't like people telling us what to do, even less how to think. We wonder, then, why it is we make so little progress and get into so much trouble. The spiritual life doesn't just happen. We need both to make an effort and to get help from those who are skilled and experienced in it. Pride has no place in spiritual growth.

St Paul urged the Philippian believers to learn from him. We too can learn from mature believers in the Church today. But we also have the example of the saints who gone before us. Some believers reject looking to the saints as guides. It is our loss if we do. We need all the help we can get. It will soon be All Saints’ Sunday. The lives of the saints are a great gift from God to us. We need to look to the saints and learn from them, as we join our prayers with theirs.

May we rejoice in the Lord always, pray in everything, and think about those things worth thinking about!

Amen.

That I May Know Him

This is the written version of my sermon for this week!

The audio version of the sermon can be listened to at this link:

That I May Know Him

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 3:4-14

Our second reading today is one of my favourite passages, although that description doesn't really do it justice. I don't know about you, but when I hear the word ‘favourite’, I can't help but think of Julie Andrews and the Sound of Music. ‘Favourite’ in the sense of the sort of things that Julie Andrews sings about are not what I mean in talking about this passage! Favourite simply doesn’t do it justice. This passage gets to the heart of what being a believer in Christ is, or should be, all about. It is a life changing passage - at least it changed mine.

St Paul writes:

‘that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.’ (Philippians 3:10–11, LSB)

Last week, we saw how St Paul dealt with personal differences and disagreements in the church at Philippi by urging the Philippian believers to have the ‘same mind’ in themselves that was in Christ Jesus. While there were some personal conflicts in the church, we said that church in Philippi does not appear to have had any serious theological issues in the way, for example, that the churches in Galatia had.

St Paul’s experience, however, was of people who were determined to cause theological problems in his churches by challenging his understanding of the Gospel. This challenge came principally from Jewish believers in the Church who felt that St Paul was wrong about God's Law and its role in the life of a believer. St Paul was concerned that these people might one day make their way to Philippi and cause trouble in the church. He wants to warn the Philippian believers in advance before they get there. He does not hold back. St Paul writes:

‘Beware of the dogs! Beware of the evil workers! Beware of the mutilation!’ (Philippians 3:2, LSB)

I said last week that it was amazing that St Paul, himself a devout Jew and a contemporary of Jesus, could write about Jesus in the exalted way he does in chapter 2. It is also amazing that he can talk of his opponents in this way. What St Paul's opponents were advocating was everything that St Paul himself had devoted his life to before he became an apostle. What they advocated was not in itself so revolutionary. They simply taught that if someone believed in God's Messiah, they should also keep God's Law.

One of the central commandments of that Law was that a male must be circumcised as a sign of God’s covenant and their commitment to God. God himself had said when he gave the commandment to Abraham that a person could not be a member of God's people, if they were male, unless they were circumcised (Genesis 17:14). Jesus himself was circumcised, as was St Paul. And yet here St Paul calls those who advocate circumcision ‘the mutilation’. Instead, St Paul tells the Philippian believers that it is they who are the ‘circumcision’. They are the ones who worship in the spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3).

The word ‘flesh’ in the New Testament can refer both to the physical stuff of which we are made and to our nature as humans, that is, our ‘self’ and our identity. St Paul sees circumcision as a mark in a person’s physical flesh that symbolizes a person's confidence in themselves. Certainly, St Paul’s opponents were proud of their Jewish heritage and all that went with it.

The obvious response to what St Paul writes here was to suggest that perhaps St. Paul said this because he himself had nothing to be pleased about and little to boast of. In fact, this was something St Paul's opponents did say to Corinthian believers when they turned up at the church in Corinth to cause trouble there. They accused St Paul of being unimpressive physically and inferior to other leaders in the Church (2 Corinthians 10:10). In our passage today, St Paul responds directly to this accusation.

He writes that he was circumcised on the eighth day. In other words, as a Jew he was the genuine thing: he was of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Hebrew of Hebrews. When it came to the Law itself, he writes, he was a Pharisee, that is, he was a member of one of the groups within Judaism that was most committed to the Law. As for zeal, he was a persecutor of the Church; in other words, he had actively opposed those whom he saw as the enemies of God's Law. As to righteousness which came by obedience to the Law, he was blameless. He had had and had done everything that his opponents valued and advocated.

But here's the thing, says St Paul, whatever had been to his own personal gain, he now counted loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, he claims, he counts all things as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. This could all sound like mere rhetoric or just well-meaning words, except that St Paul continues by writing that he actually has suffered the loss of all things for Christ. Rather than missing them, he counts them as rubbish that he may gain Christ and have a righteousness that is not his own, gained by his own effort keeping the Law, but a righteousness that comes through the Gospel and which is from God by faith.

It is, then, after explaining all this, that St Paul makes this powerful statement. St Paul writes:

‘… that I may know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.’ (Philippians 3:10–11, LSB)

St Paul has had and has done all that his opponents advocate and boast about, but he has given it all up, not reluctantly but gladly. Nothing compares to knowing Christ. Even so, St Paul writes that he has not yet obtained all that he wants but he presses on looking forward to what God has promised to give him.

He tells the Philippian believers that he wants them to see him as a role model and to do the same. Knowing Christ now, they too are to press on to what God has for them in Christ in the future.

There is so much I wish I had the time to say about this passage, but perhaps I can highlight the following three points.

1. Losing all things for Christ

St Paul had literally lost all things for Christ, including his freedom. St Paul you will remember is in prison for Christ when he writes this letter to the church at Philippi. It is important, however, to make a distinction here. There are some things it is necessary to lose either because they are bad in themselves or are bad for us. Killing, stealing, and lying are examples of things that are bad in themselves. Alcohol, while not bad in itself, may for example, be bad for someone who finds it hard to stop drinking. There are other things, however, that while not necessarily bad either in themselves or for us that we still have to be prepared to lose if God wants us to.

St Paul judges all things in relation to the value that Christ has for him. We too need to see the value of things in the light of Christ. Seen in this light, things that previously we saw as not only good but of great value become of much less value. St Paul writes he regards them as rubbish. Most of us do not find ourselves called to lose all things, but we are all called to value things differently to how society around us values them, and this can be hard.

The other day, I was watching a documentary about women who wanted to become nuns. In it, some nuns were filmed going into a school to talk to young teenagers about what being a nun involved for them. They describe how they took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These young women had literally given up all things. What do you think the teenagers found hardest to believe the nuns had given up? The first thing on their list was their phones!

Now we may not value phones as much as the teenagers did (although I expect we may!), but there are things that each of us do value. These are things which are really important to us and which we cannot imagine doing without. They may not be materially valuable. They may be more the sort of favourite things that Julie Andrews sings about. But they are things that we find the thought of losing difficult even distressing. We need to ask ourselves what it is that we would find most difficult to give up for Christ.

2. Gaining Christ

Secondly, we need to see that we are not called to give up things for the sake of it. Indeed, most of the time, apart from things that are intrinsically wrong, most of us are not called actually to give things up at all. What St Paul is concerned about, however, is the value we place on things compared to the value we place on our relationship with Christ. St Paul is happy to lose all things because in losing them he gains Christ.

People will often make sacrifices for something they believe in, even being willing to die for a cause. This is not what St Paul is talking about here. St Paul is concerned here not so much with what we believe, although that comes into it, but with how important our relationship with Christ is to us and what we would be prepared to give up in order to know him, irrespective of whether we are in reality called to give them up or not.

Often, we are emotionally attached to things whether they are intrinsically valuable or not. They can dominate our lives and occupy a central place in them. It is Christ and knowing him who is to be the centre of our lives and, for St Paul, it is the surpassing value of knowing Christ that makes it possible for us to give up things that we value.

We are always going to be attached to things and find them hard to give up if we don't have a relationship with Christ. It is not easy believing in God and living a life of faith, and if we remain at the level of seeing our faith as a philosophy of life or a code of ethics, we will never quite understand what St Paul is talking about here. When, however, we see our faith as being about a relationship with Christ who is himself the source of all things, including life itself, that we will gain a different perspective on life.

3. Forgetting what is behind

Thirdly, St Paul knows that although we can truly and personally know Christ now, we know him as people who are mortal and who will one day die. St Paul’s own hope is that that he will attain the resurrection of the dead, that is, that after his death he will be raised from the dead to live with Christ eternally, and so his relationship with Christ will last forever. This is the goal he is pressing towards and what he is looking forward to, and he wants the Philippian believers and us to do the same.

It is hard to look forward, however, if you are always looking back. This is why St Paul writes that in reaching forward to what lies ahead, he also forgets what lies behind.

Some people have problems remembering, either because they have a bad memory or, more seriously, because of a terrible illness such as Alzheimer's. Others of us, though, have a problem forgetting. We have difficulty forgetting, for example, the wrong we ourselves have done and because of the guilt we now feel; or in forgetting harm or injury that has been done to us in the past; or in forgetting opportunities that we missed or were denied to us. Life is full of ‘if onlys’: if only I had not done that; if only that had not happened to me; if only I had been given the opportunity or taken my chance when I had it. If only …

At one level, of course, it is impossible to forget, if by forget we mean ‘erase all memory of the past’. St Paul does not forget that he was a persecutor of the Church. He even mentions it here in this chapter. But we can let go of the memory; we can let go of the guilt, the regret, and the resentment; let go of all that might have been and focus instead on all that we now have in Christ and what we have gained in knowing Him. We all have things holding us back that we need to break free from, so we too can press on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

When it comes to what we have given up for our faith, little is achieved if we continue to look back and to long for what we have lost. We are to forget both the good and the bad in our past and hold on to what we have attained in Christ and look forward with hope to all that God promises to those who are faithful to him.

May God grant us the will and the strength to do so.

Amen.

With Fear and Trembling

I am pleased to say that I have again managed a written version of the sermon for this week! The link below is to the recording of the sermon itself.

With Fear and Trembling

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 2:1-13

Our second reading this week is from St Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. It contains a very well-known passage that some people describe as a hymn because of the way it is structured. Nowadays, it is normally laid out in a poetic form in our Bibles. It describes how Jesus left his rightful place with God, died a humiliating death for us, and was exalted by God, so that everyone will one day acknowledge his authority to the glory of God.

It is very well-known, but we tend to miss a lot of its significance. St Paul, a Jew, is writing about someone who was his contemporary and who was executed as a rebel against Rome and yet St Paul can say that everyone, including those Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus and who hammered the nails into his hands, will one day kneel before him and confess Jesus and not Caesar as Lord.

It is indeed a remarkable passage. When St Paul describes how everyone will kneel before Jesus, St Paul has taken a passage in the Old Testament from the prophet Isaiah that refers to God himself and has applied it to Jesus (Isaiah 45:3). It is, however, remarkable not only because of its theological content, although that is remarkable enough. It is remarkable because St Paul has included this hymn not to tell his readers something they didn't already know about Jesus but to encourage them to be like Jesus and not only to worry about themselves and their own interests. They are, St Paul tells them, to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus. Jesus was of exalted status and yet he humbled himself. St Paul wants his readers to do the same.

The church at Philippi was especially loved by St Paul, and the feeling was mutual. The Philippian believers had been on board with St Paul's mission from the very beginning, and St Paul acknowledges in the letter the practical support they had given him on more than one occasion. The reason he is writing to them now is in part to say thank you for a gift they have sent to him while he is in prison. While the Philippian believers don't seem to have had any serious theological issues that were troubling them, there is, nevertheless, some evidence of personality clashes within the congregation and that they were finding it difficult always to get on with one another. So, for example, in chapter 4, St Paul writes:

‘I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.’ (Philippians 4:2)

St Paul continues by describing these two women as ‘co-workers’ who have struggled beside him in the work of the Gospel and yet, despite their commitment to the Gospel, they seem to have fallen out with one another.

Many of the divisions and conflicts in congregations are of a personal nature. As a clergyman, I am aware that people are more likely to fall out with me because they don't like me than because they don't agree with me theologically.

St Paul, however, believes strongly in the need for unity and harmony in the Church, and he knows how destructive these personal disagreements and differences can be. St Paul urges the Philippian believers to put aside such feelings by regarding others as better than themselves and by having the same attitude as Jesus. Jesus put our interests before his own, and they, he tells them should follow him by putting each other’s interests before their own.

In this way, the passage follows on very well from what St Paul writes in his letter to the Roman believers on the subject of food, which we looked at last week and the week before. St Paul told the Roman believers that what mattered was not that they got to eat or not eat whatever they wanted, but the good of the church and of each other.

In our passage today, St Paul concludes the so-called hymn by describing how Jesus will be the One before whom all will one day appear. He then draws an important conclusion from this. In his letter to the Roman believers, he says something similar. St Paul writes to the Roman believers:

‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”’ (Romans 14:10-11)

The conclusion St Paul drew from this in his letter to the Roman church was that each one of us will be held accountable to God (Romans 14:12). He draws the same conclusion in Philippians. The Roman and Philippian believers would have got the significance of the imagery St Paul uses more than most of us do today. The ‘judgement seat’ was an actual seat in the public square where the Roman governor or official sat to hear accusations brought against people. The Roman governor was Caesar’s representative and had the power of life and death. To be brought physically before the ‘judgment seat’ in public to give an account of oneself and one’s actions was a frightening thing to happen. How much more so when the person sitting on the judgement seat is Christ himself acting as God’s representative?

Three things, then, from this passage this morning.

1. Jesus not Caesar is Lord

Firstly, Jesus not Caesar is Lord. St Paul is clear that the governing authorities are appointed by God to keep law and order and that the believer is to be subject to them (Romans 13:1-7). We are to respect those in authority, obey them, and pay the taxes due to them.

This doesn't mean there are no limits to their authority or that there aren't times when we have no choice but to obey God rather than them (Acts 4:19; 5:29), but it does mean that submission to them is something God wants from us. Our duty is to pray for those in authority, not oppose them, much as we might prefer to do otherwise. However, St Paul is also very clear that the governing authorities having been appointed by God are themselves subject to him whether they realize it or not. Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord!

This means that we can have confidence that the course of history and all that take places within it are not under the control of earthly powers, much as they might think they are in charge, but under the control of God. Presidents Biden, Putin, and Xi; Prime Minister Sunak and Chief Executive John Lee are not Lord and in control, Jesus is. Jesus is because God has exalted him to that position. We honour earthly presidents and rulers as appointees, but we do not fear them. Jesus said:

‘I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing more. But I will show you whom to fear: fear the one who, after killing, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear that one! (Luke 12:4-5)

2. With Fear and Trembling

Secondly, following on from this, then, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

We do not fear earthly rulers and authorities, what we are to fear is having to stand before Christ and give an account of ourselves. I've never understood why people don't find this more scary. I think one of the reasons is that we have convinced ourselves, or allowed ourselves to be convinced, that there is nothing to fear: God is just too nice. And so, when we die, we believe, God will be so pleased to see us that he will just wave us into heaven, no questions asked. Believe this if you want to, and many do believe it, but there is nothing in the Bible that supports such a belief. So rather than the idea of appearing before God leading us to amend our behaviour, we think there is nothing to worry about. Convinced God will save us whatever we do, we just do what we want to do. If it is not going to matter what we do, why bother?

At one level it is a reasonable response. If there is not going to be any need for us to give an account of ourselves and there are no consequences for us regardless of how we live, then not only does it not matter how we live, we are naturally not going to be bothered about what may happen in the future. Whatever happens it will all be OK, or so we tell ourselves.

Imagine, however, if you were to find yourself standing in front of Jesus, and he was to question you about your life and behaviour. How would you feel then? Imagine being asked, for example, why we didn't go to church more regularly. How would that make us feel, I wonder? And that's a fairly innocuous example. What would it feel like when the questions got on to other aspects of our life? How would we feel when the questions became more personal and challenging?

There is a reason why we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling and that's because it is our salvation we are talking about, and that is a serious business that we all too frequently take far too lightly. But where then, you may ask, does this leave, the love of God. If we are all going to be required to give an account of ourselves to God, does this mean, we are to see God primarily as a judge whose main concern is that we should behave correctly and who will pass judgement on us if we don’t? All this talk of fear and trembling doesn’t sound very loving!

3. For God is at work in us both to will and to do

Frankly, if what St Paul were saying is that we are to work at our own salvation on our own, knowing that at the end of our life God will assess us to decide how well or otherwise we have done, we are all doomed. None of us left to ourselves would do very well at all. We would definitely need to be frightened, as we would certainly fail.

That, thankfully, is not what St Paul is saying. St Paul certainly is saying that we are to take our salvation seriously and work at it, but we are to do that because it is God himself who at work in us to motivate us both to want to do it and to do it. God knows that we can’t ‘just do it’. It is God who gives us the desire to work out our salvation and God who gives us the ability to do it. God is already at work in us if we have faith in Christ, now he wants us to work with him. The process of our salvation doesn’t end when we come to Christ; it begins. Or at least, it should.

There are some branches of the Church that talk about salvation as if it is only something that God works in us; we are simply passive recipients. Other branches talk about salvation as if it is entirely down to our own works and effort.

St Paul, however, sees salvation as a work that God does in us that God enables us to work with him to achieve. St Catherine of Siena said that God created us without our help, but he won't save us without our help.  We are not merely passive recipients, but active participants. Salvation is a work of God, but we have not only to receive it but to work at it.

If you take the example of physical health. We can be given the gift of a gym membership and a personal trainer to go with it, but we still have to turn up and do the work out. What is more our fitness will be assessed at the end of it!

We are not saved by our works, but we are not saved without them. So knowing that we all will appear before the judgment seat of God, that we will bend the knee before Jesus as his appointed representative, and that we will confess Jesus as Lord. Let us take seriously the need to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who is at work in us both to want to will and to do. And let us do that, as St Paul writes, so that we will give glory to God the Father.

Amen.

All Saints' Day

Here is the transcript of my podcast for this week, All Saints'.

All Saints' Day

Reading: Philippians 4:10-23

With our second reading this week, we have come to the end of St Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Two of the main themes of Philippians are clearly in view in the final chapter of the letter. The first is the theme of ‘joy’. As we have seen, St Paul uses the ‘joy’ word group sixteen times in the letter.

Here, in chapter 4, St Paul writes emphatically:

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice.’ (Philippians 4:4)

Again, as we have noted previously in this series of sermons on the letter, St Paul’s primary meaning when he speaks of joy and rejoicing isn’t that we should be happy. There will be times when we will be happy as believers. Very often, however, we will be anything but. Happiness by its very nature is an emotion that depends on how we are feeling and on what is happening in our life. Joy is more than a feeling, and rejoicing is something we can do regardless of how we feel. Instead of using the word ‘rejoice’, we could translate what St Paul writes as: ‘celebrate in the Lord’.

This week I got a promotional email from Marks and Spencer, which said ‘celebrate with us’. This is St Paul’s message, only he tells the recipients of his letter to celebrate in the Lord!

To ‘rejoice in the Lord’, then, is to celebrate who we belong to and what he means to us. This is something far more significant than feelings of happiness, which, by their very nature, are transient and circumstantial.

It is because we ‘rejoice in the Lord’, St Paul tells the Philippian believers in chapter four, that we who have faith in Christ do not need to worry. Instead, we are to bring what is troubling us to God and ask him for his help and to give us what we need (Philippians 4:6). It is because we have this confidence in the Lord and know that he will look after us that St Paul can write:

‘And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 4:7)

The peace of God guards our hearts and minds whatever happens to us. This, then, brings us to a second theme of the letter. It relates to the ‘mind’ and how believers think. St Paul uses the ‘mind’ word group ten times in the letter.

St Paul has urged to Philippian believers to strive with ‘one mind for the faith of the Gospel’ (Philippians 1:27); he has asked them to make his joy complete by being of ‘the same mind’ (Philippians 2:2). In chapter 4, he specifically asks two of his co-workers who have fallen out with each other to put their differences aside and to be of the same ‘mind’ (Philippians 4:2). In chapter 2, he has already told them and the other Philippian believers that they should have the ‘same mind as that which was in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 2:5). He tells them all that those ‘who are mature should be of the same mind’ as him in ‘forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward’ to what God has ahead for them (Philippians 3:13).

St Paul has told the Philippian believers that they should have the same mind, the same outlook, and the same way of seeing the world as Christ. Now, in chapter four, he tells them actively to replace negative and wrong thoughts with positive and right ones. St Paul encourages the Philippian believers to drive out evil thoughts by thinking good thoughts and filling their minds with what is holy. He writes:

‘Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ (Philippians 4:8)

To rejoice in the Lord is to rejoice in what glorifies the Lord and to reject everything that is contrary to our faith in him.

Finally, in these last verses of chapter four, we come to one of the main reasons for that St Paul has for writing the letter in the first place. The Church at Philippi had sent St Paul a gift of money to support him as part of their partnership with him in the Gospel. The Philippian believers were amongst St Paul’s most faithful supporters. He writes that they have supported him from the very beginning, even when he was in Thessalonica when he first came to Macedonia (Philippians 4:16).

This gift of money has been brought to St Paul by Epaphroditus who nearly lost his life in the process (Philippians 2:27). These last verses of chapter four, then, are St Paul’s ‘thank you’ for the gift they have sent him and his official receipt. To our eyes, it seems a rather complicated way of saying ‘thank you’. Why doesn’t he just come out with it and say, ‘thank you’?

Part of the reason is that he is following the conventions of the day for how to express thanks for a gift. Even today, for example, we have established formats for different types of letters. Another part of the reason is also that he has told the Philippian believers that they should not worry, but make their requests known to God. He has also just told them, in the passage immediately before our reading for this week, that they should follow his example (Philippians 4:9). St Paul needs to be seen to be following his own advice! He doesn’t want the Philippian believers to think that God has failed to provide for him now he is in prison.

Instead, he writes that he sees the Philippian believers’ gift as, above all, an offering that they have made to God and which God has shared with him. (Just as priests shared in the offerings sacrificed to God in the Temple!) St Paul himself has learnt to be content whether he has a lot or a little. He can do all things through God who strengthens him, regardless of his material circumstances. Nevertheless, he is genuinely grateful to the Philippian believers for their concern for him. God will provide for their needs too (Philippians 4:19).

As the Philippian believers show with their gift, however, and as St Paul acknowledges, God does indeed provide, but he provides through his people as they share what they have. We refer in the Apostles’ Creed to the ‘communion of saints’. The ‘communion of saints’ is a real communion of all those who have faith in Christ, both past and present. For those of us in the present, it is not simply a spiritual communion but a practical one as we share what we have with each other in partnership for the Gospel. The Philippian Church’s gift to St Paul showed how they thought and what their outlook and priorities were.

So what can we learn from this?

St Paul makes it very clear in the letter to the Philippian believers that how and what they think is important. What goes on in our mind, matters. We have seen, when we looked at St Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, how St Paul tells the Romans believers that they are not to be ‘conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds’ (Romans 12:2). Our minds as believers need to be constantly renewed. The way we think will determine what we do and how we live.

Firstly, we need to reject a worldview that leads us to think and have attitudes and values that conflict with the Gospel.

Not only do sinful thoughts and attitudes come from within us, the world around us tries to shape the way we think and see things. We are constantly being encouraged to adopt a mindset and outlook that is opposed to God and what it means to be a follower of Christ. We are bombarded with images and ideas designed to lead us away from how God wants us to think and from having the mind of Christ.

The internet, and what it has given rise to, has taken this to a whole new level. The writer, Yuval Noah Harari, who is certainly not sympathetic to those who believe in God, believes the time is coming soon when companies such as Google will know us better than we know ourselves. They will be able to use this knowledge to control us. They are already doing so to a significant extent. For us as believers, this poses a far bigger threat than that posed in the past by hostile governments.

Every moment of every day we are being subjected to ideas and images at a conscious and unconscious level designed to control our minds and thoughts and so to influence our behaviour and actions. It often amuses me that people in the west have so much to say about state control and about regimes which seek to influence how their citizens think, when they themselves are the most thought controlled generation that has ever existed. Influencing how people think and behave is, after all, what capitalism is all about.

The consumer society is built on persuading people to buy things that they don’t need, didn’t know they wanted and, very often, that they will never even use. If you want to see what mind-control looks like, sit on the MTR and count how many people are NOT staring at their phones. It won’t take you very long!

The sheer brilliance of capitalism has been in controlling people’s thoughts and actions, while all the time leaving them thinking that they are free and responsible for their lives and how they live them.

The great achievement of the religion of Self has been convincing people to believe they have the freedom and power to live as they choose and to do what they want. The reality being that they choose what they are told to choose. Left to ourselves, we are powerless to resist and subject to forces beyond our control.

A simple example makes the point. Have you ever had the experience of seeing a picture of yourself taken some years ago and being thoroughly embarrassed by what you were wearing and what you looked like? Many of us have. But, at the time, we thought we were dressing perfectly normally. We were, in fact, just following the fashion. We don’t just follow fashion in what clothes we put on, but also in how we think and behave as a consequence.

In every area of our lives we are subject to unseen forces which exercise a powerful influence over us. But these aren’t just the social, cultural, and economic forces that I have been describing. These are themselves powerful enough. The Bible, however, describes how we are subject to spiritual powers, whether we believe in them or not. These powers exercise their control over us, not least by controlling how we think and by shaping our worldview, ensuring that we conform to this world and, worse still, are obedient to the ruler of this world.

Today, we celebrate All Saints’ Day. The saints are those who having found freedom in Christ went on to have victory over the world through their faith in Him. This is why the world hated them as it hated Christ before them. It is why it hates those today who, like the saints, put their faith in Christ and discover the peace and freedom he brings.

It is surely no coincidence that the world, at the time of year when we are celebrating the victory of the saints, prefers instead to celebrate, not that victory, but images that represent the very forces of darkness that the saints fought against and triumphed over. Of course, I realize that most people do this thinking it all to be harmless fun. What they don’t realize is, that without knowing it, they are celebrating images of the forces that control them. The Devil doesn’t much care whether we believe in him as long as we think and do what he wants.

Secondly, not only are we to reject the worldview of the world, we are to have the ‘mind of Christ’.

This isn’t something that happens automatically but is something that we have to work at. It is something that we consciously have to make an effort to do. It means in the first place having the same attitude and outlook as our Lord. It also means replacing evil thoughts with good ones. It is perhaps worth saying at this point that many believers describe how they have thoughts they cannot help and of which they are ashamed of thinking. This will always be true until these bodies, of which our minds are a part, are themselves redeemed.

Nor are we in this life, able to escape the evil images and words with which we are constantly bombarded. Even more so in the age in which we live than in previous ones. We do, however, need to resist them and their influence upon us. This means not simply avoiding that which is obviously evil, but also, as St Paul tells the Philippian believers, thinking on that which is positive, good, and true. St Paul would urge us to take control of what goes into our minds.

The reason that St Paul is so concerned in chapter 3 about the false teaching of those he calls the ‘dogs’ is that he knows that what we think and believe inevitably affects how we live. He wants the Philippian believers not only to reject false teaching, but to make knowing Christ and having a relationship with him the goal of their lives.

All this can sound all very theoretical, but as St Paul shows it affects every aspect of how we live our lives, not least in our attitude to material goods and money. We are be thankful for what we have, rather than constantly wanting more. Rather than worrying, we are to make our requests known to God, knowing that God will provide for our needs; not necessarily our wants, but certainly our needs. We are to stop competing with others and promoting ourselves, and, instead, we are to seek to work in partnership with each other in proclaiming the Gospel.

All this is hard, but we have the assurance that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And when we are tempted to give up and despair, we know that God promises that his peace will guard our hearts and minds.

St Paul explains to the Philippian believers that he wants them to be ‘blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation’, in which they ‘shine like stars in the world’ (Philippians 3:15).

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Today is their day, and we thank God for the witness of those in Christ who went before us. They too faced great opposition, but they conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’ (Revelation 12:11). St John tells us that greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world’ (1 John 4:4). The challenge we face as we seek to live for Christ may seem a daunting one, but the saints show us what can be achieved by those who trust, as they did, in the One who promises, not only to be with us, but in us.

Today, we honour the saints. We give thanks to God for them for their faith and courage. We ask them to pray for us that we too may shine like them and like them overcome through faith in Him who died for us, but whom God has so exalted that, as St Paul tells the Philippian believers, at his name, the name of Jesus:

‘… every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ (Philippians 2:10-11)

Amen.

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Here is the transcript of my sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Reading: Philippians 3:4-14

In his letter to the Church at Philippi, St Paul has referred so far to both the joy the Philippians bring him and to the joy he personally experiences in the Lord, despite his imprisonment and suffering for the Gospel. As we have seen previously, joy is one of the key themes in Philippians. Now having urged them to stop thinking too highly of themselves, St Paul begins chapter three by telling them to ‘rejoice in the Lord’. Or, to put it another way, to have ‘joy in the Lord’. The obvious question, then, is, ‘What is joy?’

The problem is that ‘joy’, in English, is often seen as synonymous with happiness. And the dictionaries often define it this way. Oxford, for example, offers: ‘A feeling of great pleasure and happiness’. The Oxford definition identifies another issue, that is, thinking of ‘joy’ as an emotion. Happiness and feelings are highly subjective and circumstantial. They are emotions that can be induced or suppressed by a whole variety of stimulants.

When St Paul speaks of his joy and tells believers to have it, he is not thinking primarily in these terms. Rather ‘joy in the Lord’ is something that transcends feelings and circumstances. This is why St Paul can still have joy and rejoice even when he is suffering and things are not going well. Joy, for St Paul, is an inner peace, confidence, and security that comes from a relationship with God in Christ. A relationship so important and central to his life that nothing else matters in comparison.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when St Paul feels happy being a believer. Of course, there are. But he can have joy even when he doesn’t feel happy and, indeed, when he feels anything but. Joy is about a sense of well-being that comes from knowing who we belong to, and that nothing and no-one can take it away. It is based not on our ability to feel, but on the love of God for us. As St Paul explains to the Roman believers, nothing in all creation can separate us from this love of God for us ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord’(Romans 8:38-39).

St Paul begins this part of the letter by telling the Philippian believers to ‘rejoice in the Lord’. He concludes it by telling them:

‘Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.’ (Philippian 4:1)

Nehemiah in the Old Testament said: the ‘joy of the Lord is your strength’ (Nehemiah 8:10). Joy is the sense of security that comes from the knowledge that God loves us unconditionally. It gives us the strength us to face what happens to us in this world with confidence and without fear. It enables us to tackle the difficult problems that inevitably come our way and the pain that we frequently experience because of them. Our Lord said:

‘In the world you will have trouble; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33)

It is as we look to the Lord for meaning and purpose in life that we discover the resources we need to stand firm and live lives of obedience in this world.

In between telling them to ‘rejoice in the Lord’ and to ‘stand firm’ in the Lord, St Paul has some important things to say to help them to do just this. What he writes immediately after telling them to rejoice in the Lord, however, comes as a bit of a surprise. He writes:

‘Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!’ (Philippians 3:2)

St Paul is referring here to people in the Church who profoundly disagreed with St Paul’s understanding and explanation of the Gospel. There was much in which they were in agreement with St Paul. Like St Paul, they too believed in Jesus. They would have agreed enthusiastically with the famous passage in Philippians chapter two about our Lord taking the ‘form of a slave’ and becoming ‘obedient unto death’. They too would have preached that Christ had been raised from the dead and exalted by God. This amazing passage about our Lord is often described as a hymn that St Paul is quoting. Those St Paul is warning the Philippian believers to beware of may originally even have been from among those who wrote it!

So, what was the problem? The problem was that those St Paul warns against thought that having faith in Christ and being obedient to him also meant keeping God’s Law. That, you might think, is not an unreasonable argument. Many Gentiles who had become believers through St Paul’s ministry certainly thought it was a reasonable argument, and were willing to accept it, often enthusiastically. These ‘dogs’ as St Paul describes them felt that St Paul was leaving stuff out of his presentation of the Gospel that should be in it. And they followed him around like dogs telling people in his Churches that they should not only have faith in Christ, but keep God’s Law as well. They worked hard to persuade the believers of the truth of their understanding of the Gospel.

St Paul doesn’t dispute their conscientiousness; they do indeed work hard, but, in his mind, they are ‘evil workers’. And what they say is dangerous, so dangerous that St Paul gives this strong warning: ‘Beware!’ He writes this, he tells them, as a ‘safeguard’, like a warning sign erected when there is danger of some sort.

‘Evil workers’ for telling people to keep God’s Law? How can obeying God’s Law threaten the Philippian believers in any way? St Paul explains the answer to this question more fully in his letter to the Roman believers. [It just so happens that I have been going through Romans in the past few weeks and, if you are interested, the sermons are still all available on YouTube!] In his letter to the Roman believers, St Paul gives a detailed explanation and answer. Here, he answers the question by describing his own experience.

This is a very important passage as it is one of the few where St Paul gives us some autobiographical details. What St Paul tells us about himself fits well with what we know of him from the Book of Acts. He was born a Jew and circumcised as a baby, as all male Jews are. He could trace his ancestry back to an exclusive tribe of Israel, and he spoke Hebrew, the original language of the Jewish people. All this was decided for him by his parents, but he had, personally, fully and consciously embraced it. He was a Pharisee, a sect within Judaism committed to keeping God’s Law just as the ‘dogs’ were. In fact, he was blameless in keeping it. As to zeal, he was a persecutor of the Church. What he means by this is that his commitment to God’s Law was such that he was prepared to use violence against anyone whom he saw as threatening it.

While we may agree that St Paul got it wrong in persecuting the Church, what was wrong, we may ask, with being circumcised as all God’s people, if they were men, including our Lord, had been in the past? What was wrong with speaking the language of the Scriptures and keeping God’s Law? Put like this, it is hard to see what was wrong. And that is how the ‘dogs’ did put it to believers in St Paul’s Churches. And many of believers didn’t see what was wrong with it, which is why St Paul is so worried.

What is so wrong with it, St Paul explains from his own experience, is that it is all about putting ‘confidence in the flesh’. St Paul knew that what the ‘dogs’ were asking was for believers to believe in themselves. St Paul recites his autobiography not because he wants to tell the Philippian believers about himself, but to show that his opposition to the ‘dogs’ isn’t out jealousy because he didn’t have what they had. He had everything they had and more.

Sometimes, we dismiss people and their achievements because secretly we are jealous that they have had more privileges and have achieved more than we have. St Paul wants to make plain that this is not the case with him and his opponents. When it came to the things that his opponents valued, he had more of them than they did.

If anyone could be proud of themselves and their achievements, it was St Paul. Instead, he writes, not only has he lost all he had, he has lost it willingly, and he has come to regard everything he has lost as rubbish. He describes what has led to such a dramatic re-evaluation of his life as the ‘surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’ (Philippians 3:8). His goal in life now is all about Christ and not about himself. He writes:

‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’ (Philippians 3:10-11)

This sort of language is alien to us. The sentiment it expresses sounds extreme. Perhaps it is appropriate for those few who are particularly holy or those who have nothing else to worry about in life, but for the rest of us, it all sounds very remote and unrealistic. And yet, St Paul tells the Philippian believers:

‘Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.’ (Philippians 3:17)

It may seem remote and unrealistic, but St Paul writes not for few, but for all believers to encourage us to have the same goals and aims in life as he does. For St Paul, ‘rejoicing in the Lord’, as he urges us to do, means prioritizing our relationship with the Lord; and prioritizing our relationship with the Lord means letting go of anything that jeopardizes it or is incompatible with it. It also means being aware of anyone who threatens it.

When it comes to what the ‘dogs’ were advocating, we have, today, rejected their demands and followed St Paul. We don’t think men should be circumcised; we don’t only eat food that is kosher; we don’t follow many of the rules and regulations of God’s Law in the Scriptures. We don’t even keep the ten commandments; I, for one, was certainly working yesterday on the sabbath.

So, because of this, we might be tempted to think that how St Paul tells us to live is not only unrealistic, but that what he warns against is of little relevance to us as we are no longer in danger of doing what the dogs demanded. His warning is, however, highly relevant.

The problem with what the dogs were advocating then and with what their present day successors are advocating now is that they put their ‘confidence in the flesh’, that is in themselves, and they want us to do so too.

For those in the Church in St Paul’s day, ‘confidence in the flesh’ took the form of pride in their possession of God’s law and in their own ability to keep it. They were proud of the identity that being Jews and keeping God’s Law gave them. They believed in God; they believed also in themselves.

So too in the Church today. We believe in God - most of the time; we believe also in ourselves. We want to see ourselves as fundamentally good people. We are proud of our background; of our education and achievements; of our status in society. Increasingly, we are proud of our various individual and social identities. We are increasingly encouraged to take pride in who we are and celebrate the person we are, whoever and whatever that may be. Going to Church, in many cases, has become as much about celebrating our individual identities as it has about worshipping God.

St Paul tells us to ‘rejoice in the Lord’. This is the precise opposite to rejoicing in ourselves. We rejoice in who the Lord is and what he has done for us despite who we are and what we have done. Having become his followers, we rejoice in him not in our ethnic, racial, or sexual identity. Instead, we count these as loss.

We rejoice in the Lord and seek to know him and his power in our life conforming us to his death as we learn to place no confidence in ourselves and our abilities. We don’t follow our dreams; we follow Christ, and it is him and our relationship with him that gives our life meaning.

St Paul writes in Galatians:

‘For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians 3:27-28)

When we hear this today, we hear it as telling us that we are all equal and that we are not to allow racial, social, and gender and sexuality barriers to divide people. What St Paul is saying is far more radical and fundamental than that. He is talking about what it means to ‘have put on Christ’. It means that our identity now lies in Christ and not in our racial background, social status, gender or sexual orientation. It is being ‘in Christ’, and being sons and daughters of God as a consequence, that defines us and who we are. Our union with Christ unites us with those who share an identity in Christ. It is an identity that depends solely on Christ and who he is and what he has done, not on who we are and what we have done.

We have just had National Day. A day that, for obvious reasons has become controversial. Church members are urged to take sides: to support the motherland as good patriots or to fight for democracy as if our life depended on it. Ultimately, as followers of Christ we are to do neither. We obey the authorities for that is what the Bible tells us to do, but we do so because we know there is a higher authority to which all in authority must bend the knee. We don’t seek freedom in political systems; our freedom is in Christ.

St Paul writes of his opponents:

‘… their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Philippians 3:19-20)

St Paul’s opponents were too focused on themselves. This is why St Paul describes them as ‘enemies of the Cross of Christ’. The Cross of Christ means death to self not confidence in our-self. Not only that, in their self-centredness, those St Paul warns against, were also too concerned with this world. Their worldview was limited. Our citizenship, the City we belong to as believers, is in heaven. This is why St Paul urges the Colossian believers:

‘Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.’ (Colossians 3:2)

Even though we are ‘expecting a Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ’ from heaven in the future, even now in the present we can have a relationship with him here on earth. Our relationship with him puts everything into perspective, it defines who we are, and it gives meaning to our lives.

Central to being a follower of Christ is this relationship with Christ: not what we believe, not what we do, not where we worship. It’s not believing, behaving, or belonging that matters, but knowing, not knowing as in what we know, but knowing in the sense of whom we know: I want to know him and knowing him I rejoice in him and in him alone.

Let us pray:

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Here is the transcript of the second sermon in my series of sermon on St Paul's letter to the Church at Philippi.

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Reading: Philippians 2:1-13

In the sermon last week, we saw that St Paul’s dominant emotion in thinking about and praying for the Philippian believers was ‘joy’. He uses the word joy in its various forms sixteen times in the letter. In our reading this week, however, he asks the Philippian believers to ‘complete his joy’. His joy over them is real, but it is not unalloyed. 

While the Philippian Church does not seem to have had the problems that some of his other Churches had, there do, nevertheless, seem to be one or two clouds hanging over it. We get some idea of the nature of these clouds from what St Paul writes in chapter four. He writes:

‘I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel …’ (Philippian 4:2-3)

The phrase St Paul uses here, ‘be of the same mind’, emphasizes something he says throughout the letter. In chapter one, for example, he tells the Philippian believers to strive ‘side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel’ (Philippians 1:27). He begins chapter two by asking them to complete his joy by being of ‘the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Philippians 2:2).

What all this suggests is that there was some conflict in the Church at Philippi over personalities. The disagreements between Euodia and Syntyche, and between others in the Church, are not serious enough for St Paul to have to write at length about them in the way he writes, for example, about disagreements in the letter to the Church at Rome. The quarrelling he writes about in the letter to the Church at Rome is ‘quarrelling over opinions’ (Romans 14:1). Here in the Church at Philippi, the quarrelling seems to be more about ‘quarrelling over personalities’.

Speaking as a pastor, I would say that most of the conflict in churches is caused by conflicts that are more to do with personalities than opinions. The conflicts that occur are often presented as arguments over matters of principle, but, at their heart, there is often something else far more fundamental that has to do more with the inability of people simply to get on with one another.

In Church, we talk a lot about doctrinal and ethical issues, far less about relational ones. Our Lord, on his last night with his disciples before his death, gave them an example and teaching about what he wanted their relationship with each other to be like. In order to do this, as they arrived for their last meal together, he famously took on the role of a slave and washed their feet. He then said to them:


‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord - and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.’ (John 12:13-15)

In a Church, as in any human group, there are people who like to be looked up to and admired. They want to be leaders. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having leaders; the Church needs them. The issue is what type of leadership the Church should have. It is interesting that it is only in the letter to the Philippians that St Paul refers to leaders in a formal sense. He addresses the letter not only to the ‘saints’ in general, but also to the ‘overseers and deacons’ (Philippians 1:1). There seems to be some competition between the various leading personalities in the Church at Philippi. St Paul is anxious that it should end.

In this, he is echoing the words of Jesus. On one occasion, our Lord tells his disciples when they argue over who should have the best positions in the Kingdom:

‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ (Matthew 20:25-28)

These passages and others like them are often read at ordination services of the clergy. Far easier to read them then and get them out of the way! Despite our Lord being so clear about the nature of leadership in the Church, we still persist with forms of leadership and church organization that are modelled on those in the world around us. We cannot be surprised then when they result in the same problems that we see in the world around us and when church leaders behave as the Gentiles do.

Leaders are, however, expected to set an example in what it means to be a leader in the body of Christ. St Paul, in chapter two, points to the example set by two leaders known to the Church at Philippi that showed what true spiritual leadership should be like. First, in chapter 2:19-24, St Paul describes how he has no-one working with him like Timothy. The others, he writes, all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. Then, secondly, St Paul describes how Epaphroditus, himself a member of the Philippian Church, came close to dying in the work of Christ. Epaphroditus was, St Paul tells them, prepared to ‘risk his life’.

But it is not just leaders that are expected to live sacrificially. Leaders are expected to set an example in the way St Timothy and St Epaphroditus did, but we, as members of the Church, are expected to copy it. And this is what St Paul urges the Philippian believers to do in our reading this week. Using words that St Paul will take up in the letter to the Roman believers, he tells them to ‘do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit’, instead, ‘in humility’, they are to ‘regard others as better’ than themselves (Philippians 2:3). They are to think of others and not just themselves.

In this letter to the Philippian believers, St Paul uses the Greek word for ‘mind’ in its various forms ten times in four chapters. In the letter to the Romans, he uses it thirteen times in sixteen chapters. In Romans, we saw how, after explaining various aspects of his understanding of the Gospel, he urges the Roman believers not to be ‘conformed to this world’, but to be ‘transformed’ by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2).

Having a renewed mind means thinking in a new way. One of those new ways St Paul describes in both letters. It is that believers are not to think of themselves ‘more highly than they ought to think’ (Romans 12:3). In chapter 8 of the letter to the Roman believers, St Paul writes that the ‘mindset of the flesh is death’, but that the ‘mindset of the Spirit is life and peace’ (Romans 8:6).

How we think as believers matters. This is a major theme in the letter to the Philippians, and we will see more of what St Paul has to say about it as we progress through the letter.

You may have heard the phrase, ‘What would Jesus do?’. Some people wear this phrase, or the letters ‘WWJD’, on bracelets and necklaces. It is seen as a way of approaching difficult decisions and problems. Here, however, St Paul urges the Philippian believers to consider how Jesus would think. This is not simply about what Jesus would think about individual issues, which is also important, but about what Jesus’ outlook and attitude would be. We are to ask ourselves, ‘HWJT’, how would Jesus think? It is to do with our mindset and our worldview in general.

This is so important today when the Church and its members are increasingly adopting a worldview and mindset which owes more to the world around it than it does to Jesus and the Spirit.

I am stressing this particularly because there is the temptation with this week’s reading to focus on the amazing words St Paul writes in our reading about our Lord and who he is. And they do tell us a lot about who he is, but these words about our Lord follow St Paul’s command to the Philippians to make his joy complete by being of the same mind. The mind they are to have is the mind of Christ. These words about our Lord focus not so much on who he was, they rather take that for granted, but on what he did and what happened as a consequence. We are to think like Jesus and act accordingly.

Our Lord was in the ‘form of God’. His position could not have been more exalted, but he ‘emptied himself’ and took the ‘form of a slave’. He became ‘obedient unto death, even death on the Cross’, and, for people at the time, there was no more shameful death than crucifixion.

That his followers should themselves be prepared to empty themselves and become servants was a constant theme in the teaching of our Lord. He said explicitly:

‘The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’ (Matthew 23:11-12)

Jesus taught that those who humbled themselves would be exalted as he himself was to be and as St Paul goes on to describe. St Paul has written about his own suffering, suffering which the Philippian believers themselves experience and share in. This suffering is not to be avoided, but to be embraced. St Paul tells them that God has ‘graciously granted them the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well’ (Philippians 1:29).

The reason that we can embrace suffering and service is because our Lord embraced it. He promises, that if we follow his example, then we too, like him, will be exalted and experience the glory of God.

Until that Day, Jesus tells us that in following him we are to ‘deny ourselves and take up our Cross’ (Matthew 16:24). Our experience of suffering and opposition is a part of what is involved in taking up our Cross and following Jesus. This is what it means to ‘work out our salvation with fear and trembling’, as St Paul commands later in chapter two (Philippians 2:12). As we do so, it is God who is at work in us to enable us both to ‘will and to work’ the way he wants us to (Philippians 2:13).

As followers of Christ, we are to live lives that are radically different to that of the society in which we live. We are not only to be different, we are to stand out as different. St Paul tells the Philippian believers that they are to do this:

‘ … so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.’ (Philippians 2:15)

Light both attracts and repels. Our hope is that our lives will so reflect the character of Christ that people will be drawn to them and come to know Christ for themselves.

Some will, but others will be repelled and try to black out the light as they did with Christ and as they are trying to do with St Paul at the time he is writing this letter. This St Paul describes is ‘evidence of their destruction’, but of the believers’ ‘salvation’ (Philippians 1:28). All this will come to completion on the ‘day of Christ’ when, if we are faithful, then like St Paul, we will be able to boast that we did not ‘run or labour in vain’ (Philippians 2:16).

One of my biggest frustrations is how we as a Church are often little more than a religious charity. Even the causes we espouse and those we promote are those which are the political and social fashions of our day. To read the church press is just to read the secular press with some religious words thrown in. We are not radically different; we are boringly the same.

This wouldn’t be so bad if, alongside our desire to appear relevant, we were also prepared to challenge society’s values when they contradicted those of the Gospel. We are, however, frightened that if we were to speak out, then not only would we not be listened to, we might find that our seat at the table of power is taken away. Or, worse still, that those with power might turn on us and oppose us. Our obedience to the Gospel might even lead to death!

St Paul describes the world much in the same way that our Lord does: as ‘crooked and perverse’; its opposition to the Gospel as a sign of its destruction. What are we doing to counter the crooked ways of the society we live in? In what ways are we resisting the perversity of the ideologies of our age that are so ruthlessly promoted in our culture? How are we, as St Paul puts it, ‘striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel’ (Philippians 1:27)?

The message of St Paul in our reading this morning is one that people today particularly need to hear. The Gospel challenges our obsession with ourselves and with our desire to promote ourselves. Jesus showed that the path to glory lies not in self-fulfilment, but in obedience, suffering, and sacrifice.

We like to think that we are accountable to no-one but ourselves: ‘I am enough’. But here’s the thing: ‘You’re not’. I would really recommend a new book by Allie Beth Stuckey, ‘You’re not enough (and that’s okay). Escaping the toxic culture of self-love’.

Because that’s what the culture we are living in is: a toxic culture that promotes the lie that we are enough. The lie that we don’t need anyone, least of all God, only for us to discover that we are not enough. Tragically, when we discover our inadequacy, and we will, all too often we find ourselves alone with no-one there to help us pick up the pieces of our own self-destructive behavior.

The good news of the Gospel is that when we run out of faith in ourselves, Christ is there inviting us to put our faith in him instead. It is only when we are free from ourselves that we become free to be ourselves. To be, that is, the person we can become in Christ. For it is when we humble ourselves that we find ourselves exalted and when we become obedient unto death that we find the life that only God in Christ can give.

Amen.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Here is the transcript of my sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.  This week, I begin a new sermon series on Philippians.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Reading: Philippians 1:21-30

Having finished our series on St Paul’s letter to the Romans last week, we are beginning this week a new series on St Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Philippi was a city in Macedonia that had the status of a Roman colony. Philippi had been at the turning point in Roman history. It was here in 42BC that Octavian and Mark Anthony fought Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, at the battle of Philippi. Octavian and Mark Anthony won. Octavian went on to defeat Mark Anthony, and to establish himself as the Emperor Augustus. The Republic, which existed before, was now dead. In 27BC, the Emperor Augustus renamed the city, Colonia Iulia Augusta Philippensis.

But Philippi was important for a far more important reason than one to do with who ruled human empires. Philippi was the first city in Europe where the Gospel was preached by Sts Paul, Silvanus, Timothy and their companions on what is misleadingly known as St Paul’s second missionary journey. St Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, was it seems, one of these companions.

The story is an interesting one. St Paul and those accompanying him had reached Troas, a city on the Aegean Sea, having been prevented from preaching the Gospel up until this point. At Troas, St Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia who pleaded with him saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia, and help us. (Acts 16:9).’ They immediately, St Luke tells us, set sail and arrived at Neapolis, the port of Philippi. They then travelled some nine miles inland to Philippi itself.

In the letter to the Church in Rome, St Paul wrote that the Gospel is the ‘power of God for salvation to the Jew first, but also to the Greek (Romans 1:16)’. This was not only a theological statement; it was a missionary strategy. When he could, St Paul always began his preaching of the Gospel with the Jews. There was, however, apparently no synagogue in Philippi. On the sabbath, then, they went looking for a ‘place of prayer’. In other words, somewhere that Jews might gather to pray when there weren’t enough people to form a synagogue. They came across a group of women gathered by the river outside the city. They sat down and spoke to them. In other words, this was a deliberate decision to share the Gospel with them. I’ll let St Luke take up the story:

‘A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.’ (Acts 16:14-15)

I think it is interesting that it was a man in St Paul’s vision who asked for his help, but it is a woman who first responds to his preaching. This is significant because, as we shall see, women play a major role in the Church at Philippi, as indeed they did generally in the Churches that St Paul established. This challenges the popular picture of St Paul as being something of a woman-hater. The truth is rather that women played an important part in his work. Lydia became a patron of his work at Philippi as Phoebe did at Corinth.

Not everyone in Philippi was as receptive. The full story is told in Acts chapter 16. Suffice it to say that after a night in prison, St Paul and the others have to leave Philippi. It was, however, the beginning of a significant partnership. The Philippian believers and the Churches of Macedonia seem to have supported St Paul without causing him the sort of problems he had with many of his other Churches. Philippi supported him practically sending him money for his work. This is something that St Paul acknowledges and is thankful for in the letter. He writes

‘You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once.’ (Philippians 4:15-16)

Indeed, it is because of he has received a gift of money that the Philippians have sent to him with Epaphroditus, a member of the church at Philippi, that St Paul writes this letter. If the letter to the Church in Rome is St Paul’s pitch to the Roman believers for support for his planned mission to Spain, the letter to the Philippians is St Paul’s ‘thank you’ to the Philippian believers for their support for the work he is doing in the Aegean region.

St Paul, when he writes the letter, is in prison for preaching the Gospel. Despite being in captivity, however, he tells the Philippian Church that his imprisonment has actually helped to spread the Gospel (Philippians 1:16). The reason why he has been imprisoned has spread throughout the place where he is imprisoned. But where is that exactly? Traditionally, it has been thought that St Paul is in prison in Rome, and so this letter would have been written after the letter to the Roman Church. This is still the view of the majority of commentators. It is not mine!

St Paul is described in Acts as having been imprisoned on three separate occasions: overnight in Philippi, for two years in Caesarea, and then again for another two years in Rome. There were, we know, many other imprisonments. St Paul alludes to one of them in the letter to the Church in Rome (Romans 16:7). As his imprisonments in Caesarea and Rome both occur after he wrote the letter to the Church in Rome, he must be referring to a different imprisonment not described by St Luke in Acts.

There were others also as we know from what he writes in 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 6:5; 11:23). Again, as the letters to the Corinthians were also before his imprisonments in Caesarea and Rome these too must be imprisonments that we don’t the details of.

St Luke doesn’t tell us everything that happened to St Paul, and he doesn’t try to. He is just giving us an outline of St Paul’s ministry and some episodes from it. Much else happened in St Paul’s life and ministry that we do not know about, including various times spent in prison.

So where were these other imprisonments? We don’t know for certain, but a good candidate for one of them is Ephesus. We know from what St Luke does tell us how St Paul had big problems there with those who wanted to get rid of him. In 1 Corinthians chapter 16, St Paul writes from Ephesus:

‘ … for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.’ (1 Corinthians 16:9)

Having left Ephesus, he later describes his time there:

‘We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.’ (2 Corinthians 1:8)

This had led some scholars to suggest not only that St Paul was imprisoned in Ephesus for a time, but that it was from there that he wrote the letter to the Philippians. I think they are right. Philippians ‘fits’ really well into this time in St Paul’s life and work. In 1 Corinthians he writes about having fought ‘wild beasts in Ephesus’ (1 Corinthians 15:32). This is probably not meant to be taken literally, but it does at least indicate serious opposition. Wherever St Paul was, however, we know from what he writes that his life was threatened.

If, then, Philippians was written from Ephesus, when was it written? If it is from an imprisonment in Ephesus, it would mean it was written before the letters to the Corinthians and the subsequent letter from Corinth to the Romans. The letter to the Romans was written about AD57-58. This would mean the most likely date for the letter to the Church at Philippi, if the imprisonment is in Ephesus, would be in the mid AD50s.

The letter itself begins, ‘Paul and Timothy …’ (Philippians 1:1). It was customary for a letter to begin with the names of those whom the letter was from. St Timothy, we know, had been with St Paul when the Philippian Church was established, and he was well-known personally to the Philippian Church.

I feel a little sorry for St Timothy. He is completely over-shadowed by his more famous mentor. He was, however, a significant figure in his own right in the early Church and in the Pauline mission as St Paul himself tells us. He was frequently entrusted with work to do on St Paul’s behalf and accompanied him on his travels. St Paul tells the Philippians that he is planning to send Timothy to them soon (Philippians 2:19).

As well as accompanying St Paul, St Timothy is named as the co-sender of six of the thirteen letters that are attributed to St Paul in the New Testament (1 and 2 Thessalonians; 2 Corinthians; Philippians; Colossians; and Philemon). He is mentioned by name in two others (Romans and 1 Corinthians), and two are sent to him personally (1 and 2 Timothy). That leaves only Ephesians, Galatians, and Titus where he is not named in some way. St Timothy is even named in the letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:23). We don’t know who the author of Hebrews was, but whoever it was, the author expected his readers to know St Timothy!

St Paul pays tribute to St Timothy in this letter to the Philippians:

‘I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. All of them are seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But Timothy’s worth you know, how like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.’ (Philippians 2:20-22)

Apart from reminding us of the importance of people like St Timothy in the history of the Church, this also should help rid us of another misconception about St Paul’s ministry. St Paul is often pictured as something of a lone ranger, working as a pioneer on his own, preaching the Gospel and single-handedly establishing churches. Based on this image, St Paul is also frequently described as someone it was hard to get on with and who didn’t have many friends as a result. St Paul has to work on his own, it is suggested because he was hard to work with.

It may suit his detractors to describe him like this in order to undermine the force of some of what he writes. But like the picture of him as a woman-hater, it couldn’t be more wrong. St Paul had many who worked with him and who were willing to risk their lives for him. Prisca and Aquila, for example, whom, as we saw, he greets in Romans chapter 16, were two of them. He also names many more who worked with him. Here in Philippians, he names four of his ‘fellow workers’. As well as St Timothy, there are: Epaphroditus; Syntyche and Euodia, both women; Clement; and unnamed others he pays tribute to. The Philippians themselves he describes as partners in the Gospel (Philippians 1:5).

St Paul was the leader of the mission and an outstanding servant of Christ, but he was not alone, and he didn’t work alone.

This ought to make us think about whether we have as inclusive a model of ministry today. One that allows for the ministry of outstanding individuals, but one which does not leave God-gifted individuals to labour alone, and which recognizes different people and different gifts in ministry.

In writing to thank the Philippian believers for their financial support brought to him by Epaphroditus, St Paul tells them of his circumstances. He also, however, has heard of some conflict in the Church at Philippi between two of his fellow-workers. He has probably heard this from Epaphroditus, and he wants in his letter to the Church to deal with this conflict and bring it to an end.

Last week, we read in Romans how St Paul tells the Roman believers that they are to ‘welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions’ (Romans 14:1). Quarrelling and conflict over opinions does, of course, happen in churches. Far more common and just as divisive, however, is quarrelling over personalities. St Paul, as we shall see as we go through the letter, in seeking to end the conflict between different individuals at Philippi writes about this issue as well.

There are in fact some interesting links between Romans and Philippians, which is, of course, what you would expect given they are by the same author. However, if Philippians was, as I believe, written before Romans, we see some of the ideas that are present in Philippians being developed in Romans.

Here in chapter one of Philippians, St Paul is explaining how he feels about the prospect of being sentenced to death. He writes what is a famous sentence:

‘For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.’ (Philippians 1:21)

He goes on to say that he is hard pressed to know which is best for him, living or dying, but as it is better for the Philippian believers that he remains alive, this is what he expects to happen. His point, though, is that whether living or dying, he finds meaning and purpose in Christ.

Our reaction to this is to think that while this may be how people like St Paul feel and think, it is not how ordinary believers like us see things. St Paul, however, believes that this way of thinking should be central to every believer’s life and conduct. He tells the Philippians:

‘Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ …’ (Philippians 1:27)

As we go through the letter in the coming weeks, we will explore in more detail what St Paul means by this. For now, it is important to note that St Paul takes his desire to live or die for Christ as the starting point for his advice to the Philippian believers on what should be their own motivation for how they live.

We may think that St Paul is primarily thinking of how we would behave if we were to find ourselves in a situation where, like him, we were on trial for our faith. Would we be willing to die rather than deny it? He is, in fact, thinking primarily of everyday life and ordinary situations, and this is how he develops the idea in the letter to the Church in Rome.

Last week, we saw how St Paul tells the ‘strong’ that they should be prepared not to eat meat and eat only vegetables, if that helps the ‘weak’. He explains how every believer should approach life as a follower of Christ. He writes:

‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.’ (Romans 14:7-8)

In reality, it is often easier to be faithful when we are up against it and facing extreme danger. It concentrates the mind. It is much harder to live out our faith in the trivia of everyday life. So, if told by those in authority not to go to Church, we are confronted with a stark choice, and we at least know what we should do. But how do we behave when we are involved in quarrelling over opinions in the way St Paul describes in the letter to the Church in Rome or over personalities in the way, as we will see, was happening in the Church at Philippi?

It is one thing to stand for our faith when openly challenged; another altogether to live it out in the day to day challenges at home, at school, or at work. In these situations, we find ourselves focusing on what we want, rather than on what Christ wants. Sometimes, it can be easier to die for Christ than it is to live for him.

But for the believer, St Paul tells us, living for Christ means living Christ. There are no breaks, rest days, or holidays. It is a 24/7 affair.

This makes being a follower of Christ sound difficult. That’s because it is, and because being a follower of Christ is not at all like how it is presented in most Churches. Following Christ is all too often presented today as being about having a special friend who is always there for you, so that you don’t have to worry about how you live; someone whom you can call upon whenever you need him and whom you know will always come running.

Instead, St Paul describes a very different life: one of suffering, striving, and struggling. In Romans, St Paul makes it plain that suffering is not an optional extra in following Christ (Romans 8:17). Here he says the same thing. He tells the Philippians:

‘For he (God) has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well …’ (Philippians 1:27)

Most of us do not see suffering as a gift, but St Paul is only repeating what our Lord himself told us when he said we must deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him (Matthew 16:24). All this makes being a follower of Christ hard and demanding. It sounds like a miserable existence.

But here’s the thing: it is hard and demanding, but it is not miserable.

St Paul is in prison, he is in real danger for his life, even fellow believers are deliberately acting in such away as to add to his suffering in his imprisonment, and yet what word does he continually use in Philippians to describe how he feels? It is the word ‘joy’. He uses the word ‘joy’ in its various forms sixteen times in Philippians.

St Paul begins the letter by saying how he prays ‘in joy for everyone of them’ (Philippians 1:4). Even though some believers are seeking to add to his suffering, he still ‘will continue to rejoice’ (Philippians 1:18). And although he personally desires to die to be with Christ, he feels sure that he will stay to help them in their ‘progress and joy in the faith’ (Philippians 1:25). He will have more to say to us about joy as we progress through the letter.

How to define joy? It is not the same as happiness; that feeling we get when everything goes our way, or when we do or get what we want. Joy is the certainty of knowing that whatever happens, however good or bad it may be, nothing and no-one can take away from us the most amazing gift of all, the gift of Christ himself. A gift so amazing and overwhelming that what then matters most to us is no longer the passing pleasures of this world, but that we may, as St Paul expresses it, be ‘pure and blameless for the day of Christ’ (Philippians 1:10).

We will, of course, fail at times. We will struggle, and we will meet opposition, not necessarily the sort of opposition that St Paul faced, but opposition, nevertheless, from those whose values and worldview are radically different to those of Christ. However, rather than being discouraged when such opposition comes, we will instead see it, as St Paul encourages the Philippians to see it, as confirmation of our ‘salvation and that from God’ (Philippians 1:28).

So how are we doing? Has Christ become such a part of our lives that St Paul would pray in joy for us? Is it really that what living means for us is Christ? St Paul challenges us to ask ourselves how real and how personal our faith is and how committed to it we are.

May our hymn this week then also be our prayer:

‘Take my life, and let it be
consecrated, Lord, to thee;
take my moments and my days,
let them flow in ceaseless praise.’

Amen.