Rethinking Church: Christian Learning                                                                     BFUMC Oct. 30, 2005

“The Power of Positive Linking”                                                                                      Philippians 2:1-18

POSITIVE LINKING

            I’m starting a sermon series today called Rethinking Church: Our Basic Values.  Today I want to talk to you about the centrality of Christian Fellowship.  In traditional Methodist circles, the term Christian Conferencing has often been used, which is a bit deceiving since it sounds like it refers to going to annual conference or something.  Christian Conferencing was understood by John Wesley as a primary means of grace.  That means that when we come together in unity of spirit, the way Christ intended his church to operate, we actually are graced together.  That is, we find spiritual grace that enables us to live this high calling of Christian discipleship together.  Grace happens here esp. when we have the spiritual components inserted in the mix properly.  There is tremendous spiritual power in positive linking.

            Some time ago, I did short-term missionary work in Mexico.  I encountered a phenomenon there that is repeated world over.  We stayed in the home of a Mexican family and had a great time getting to know them.  But this church was filled with an entrepreneurial spirit of people starting small businesses and making their way in the world.  We learned there that this is a phenomenon repeated all over.  People are converted to Christ and enter the church.  There they learn more constructive human behaviors.  Often they give up drink (tremendous alcoholism problem) and their machismo attitudes toward women.  They get married, and in that positive church environment, they join forces to start businesses or get an education they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.  There is power in the positive Christian linkage – or Christian conferencing.

            We sometimes cannot see this powerful influence the church can have in this country because opportunities flourish more here than there.  But positive Christian conferencing has a tremendous beneficial impact on our lives – not primarily in helping us produce wealth but in bringing a spiritual wellbeing into our lives that has benefits far beyond the financial.  I want to preach this sermon to help breath life into this beneficial conferencing – this means of grace, so that we take this seriously and take what is perhaps impulsively true for us as an intentional value of the community of faith.  My thesis: Fellowship is a basic value for us because we believe that in this gathered community of worshipping believers, we increasingly encounter divine grace that orders and directs our lives.

OUR AUTHOR AND BACKGROUND TO OUR TEXT

            Twenty centuries ago an itinerant tentmaker was tossed into a Roman prison for creating a public disturbance.  There he spend considerable time composing a letter which might have taken up a dozen sheets of stiff, white scratchy paper.  He was writing his letter to a church he had helped to plant on his second missionary journey – after his famous Macedonian call.  When he went to Macedonia, he ended up in Phillipi, and preached the gospel to a group of people gathered by the river.  God opened up Lydia’s heart, and the church was planted.  Today, few people know the name of the emperor, and although Nero was a prolific writer, nothing of his literary output remains.  Paul’s name, however, is recognized by millions, and the letter he wrote has been copied into many languages and read by millions.  People today name their dogs Nero and their sons Paul.

            I wonder if Paul would be stunned at the success his letters have enjoyed.  Were Paul to visit our church this morning, he might wonder how a letter written to a specific persecuted community of Christians in the Roman colony of Phillipi in Macedonia could be still understood as relevant.  How can people who worship in cathedrals named after St. Paul understand his message that God advances the gospel through our weakness, his imprisonment, his hunger, through persecution? 

            Although Paul cannot visit us today and address us with his question, we can go back to him in that dirty prison cell, surrounded by the Praetorian Guard.  Let’s visit him and bring his perspective back with us.  That is the purpose of this sermon – to take a journey back into Paul’s cramped prison cell and see how he can address us today.  What Paul has to say about the power of the gospel and of the importance of Christian fellowship still resonates in this sacred place and hour.

            What are the circumstances behind Paul’s writing this letter.  Paul is writing to a church which had given sacrificially to his missionary journey, which was doing well since he left them (the overall tone of the letter is positive) but which had the beginnings of some problems.  They had tensions from without and within.  Firstly, the church had begun to be noticed by their pagan counterparts and anti-Christian slanders were beginning to be hurled around.  The Philippians were not being persecuted but being slandered by the non-Christian surrounding.  They had to contend for the gospel by saying, “No, we don’t actually cannibalize anyone during our love feasts, we eat bread and drink wine, not real human flesh and human blood as you’ve heard.”

            But they have interior tensions as well.  Paul refers in ch. 4 to a quarrel between Euodia and Syntyche which was infecting the entire church.  We’re not even told what they were quarrelling about.  It doesn’t matter.  It is affecting their unity of spirit, and with these outside tensions, Paul is very deeply concerned.  Their interior quarrelling was tarnishing their witness before the broader unbelieving society.

            Unity is one of Paul’s primary concerns here – a unity that is not to be purchased at the price of changing the gospel’s essence.  Paul heaps scorn on those who claim to be believers but who take offense at the cross of Christ.  Unity is not mushy theology.  But unity is critical to being a Christian and that unity is only Christian if it is founded on the apostolic gospel: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself!  Paul does more than demand unity; he lays out the pathway to achieve it.  He offers examples of unifying behavior and conduct for the church to follow.  “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit” (2:3a) and later “Do everything without complaining and arguing” (2:14).  He provides Jesus Christ as the highest example of someone who empties himself of glory and pride, and places the needs of others as more important than his own.  Like Jesus, we are to subordinate our interests to the interests of others and primarily to the higher good of the kingdom of God.

THE TEXT FOR TODAY

            Let’s unpackage just the first four verses of ch. 2.  Paul starts out by rhetorically laying out several conditional clauses (2:1).  Each of these is meant to be read with this logic: if this is true (and I know that it is) then these are the potential outcomes.  It is as if Paul is saying, “These are spiritual potentials of your Christian community – you have all the ingredients but something in hindering the proper outcome.  Let’s address the situation so we get the outcome.  I know there is spiritual encouragement from being united with Christ.  You believers are in Christ – that is, your life has been spiritually yoked to the historical and eternal person of Messiah Jesus.  The victory Jesus won over sin and darkness is yours because you are his.  How spiritually encouraging is this?  It is huge.  When you know this and believe it with all your heart, you cannot help but be encouraged.”

            “If there is comfort in knowing that God’s love for you is displayed in Christ and will never be stopped, you cannot help but be encouraged.  This belief binds you together as a community.  If you have fellowship with the Holy Spirit – and I know you do – then there is spiritual encouragement that flows from this.  If you have any human tenderness and compassion – and I know you do – then spiritual encouragement flows from this.  Take these spiritual resources and go make me very happy.  Become, with these spiritual realities which presently exist – increasingly like-minded and spiritually unified.”

            I’m intrigued by the statement, “Make my joy complete by . . .”   It assumes upon a depth of friendship and a bond of affection between apostle and church.  Your enemy cannot plead with you and say, “Do this because you love me.”  You will do the opposite.  But Paul loves these people and they love him.  He knows that they know that he wants the church there to succeed and prosper in the spirit.  Their outcomes are all bound together and they all are on the same team.  I can identify with this in terms of our bishop.  If you heard our bishop speak the other day at the Bishop’s Hour, you know what I mean.  He loves the Kentucky UM churches, and desperately wants us to prosper.  He is so filled with the Holy Spirit, so loving, so dynamic, so much on my team, that I want this church to succeed just to make his joy complete.  Paul presumes upon their love and affection here in a healthy way.  They were motivated because they knew what joy would fill Paul’s heart when they actually attained deeper mystical unity.

            Paul describes this mystical unity in several ways.  The Greek is very visceral and doesn’t translate well.  Literally it says, “Fulfill my joy with the result that you:

·         think the same thing,

·         have the same love,

·         become soulmates,

·         having thoughts focused on one thing.”

·          

John Chrysostom, an early Christian preacher, said, “See how earnestly, how intensely, with how much sympathy he speaks!”  Those who knew Greek best noted a depth of compassion and passion in the wording.  He goes on to list things that destroy unity.  “Make my joy complete also by:

·         doing nothing from selfish ambition

·         doing nothing from conceit

                        But

·         considering others better than yourselves

·         each one not looking out for their own interests

                        But

·         for the interests of others”

Two major themes emerge.  First, the Philippians must be united and settle their differences.  Second, they promote this condition by promoting the interests of others rather than their own.  Jesus is the ultimate model of one who looked to the interests of others.

Paul is commanding the church to become spiritual soulmates.  The word he uses sumpsuchoi has been found on a tomb in the ancient world, “We had the same thought, the same desires, the same dreams, we had become soulmates.”  Paul is calling for a mystical unity of mind that flows from shared beliefs and shared experience.  To achieve this, you have to learn the spiritual discipline of humility, or putting the interests of others first, etc.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian during the second world war, in his book on Christian fellowship called Life Together, puts forward several principles which eradicate selfish ambition and promote soulmatedness. 

·         Hold your tongue and refuse to speak uncharitably about a Christian brother

·         Cultivate the humility which comes from understanding that you, like Paul, are the greatest of sinners and can only life in God’s sight by his grace

·         Understand that Christian authority is characterized by service and does not call attention to the person who performs the service but to Christ the Lord.

THE EXHORTATION FOR TODAY

            While we in no way face the same kinds of persecutions as Paul, while we have all kinds of advantages in terms of financial resources, church property, cultural tolerance, etc. etc., we are in a similar predicament as Paul’s church in Philippi.  We also need to recapture the power of Christian fellowship.  We have resources that lay fallow and unused.  We have a tendency to allow our Christian fellowship to become casual and professional rather than an actual means of divine grace.  Look – something miraculous is desperately trying to break out at this moment.  It will if we find the way to nurture this divine moment.  God is here in our presence.  God has future dreams for us that we are now called upon to unpackage and set free.  Life is just beginning in the Spirit.  This moment brims full with divine potential.

            The God of the universe cares about us, celebrates the goodness and grace of the moment.  But we can destroy it all by letting our pride, our selfish ambition, our petty concerns gain the day.  God is calling each one of us in this scripture.  This is God’s word for you and I today.  God calls us to lives of humility and spiritual depth that transforms this congregation into a gathering of spiritual soulmates.  This is my prayer.  This is spiritual renewal.  None of us can in any way demand this or affect this into reality.  You don’t fake it until you make it.  This is spiritual authenticity through and through.

            I want every time we worship together to be a deepening of spiritual fellowship that actually graces you for your discipleship to Jesus Christ.  I want you to walk from this place saying, “If I hadn’t already become a believer, I would have gotten saved all over again today.  I love God more than I did when I arrived this morning.  I love these people and this divine place.  Today was the Lord’s Day, not because of some ancient tradition, but because I have just walked from the Lord’s Presence this morning.”  Friends, this is spiritual reality and it is spiritual potentiality.  Let us seek this renewal together, by humbly following Paul’s admonition here and making it be for us the word of the Lord.