12.8.24 (Luke 3:1-9) Advent: Repent, the Kingdom of God is at Hand (Ryan Ruffing)

Malachi 3:1-5 | Psalm 126 | Luke 3:1-9 | 1 Corinthians 4:14-21

There are some words that should not be sugar-coated. Some realities, some words that we do ourselves no favors by shaving off the rough edges, by making them easier to digest. Some words, some realities are like a surgeon's scalpel, more dangerous when blunted.

Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Turn around for the rain and rule of God has come close, is coming close, is on the step, is about to knock. Repent for the king is on the outskirts of town. How will you stand when he enters the city center tomorrow and makes judgment before his friends and his enemies? Repent.

Now in our second week of our Advent journey, John the Baptist enters the scene. John, this woolly and wild man cut from the cloth of the Old Testament prophets, comes and he wastes no time. He enters urgently upon our need to announce the kingdom that is coming and to prepare us for it. And he says, repent.

John had a message for those that he addressed in his first-century context, people who were waiting for the first coming of the Messiah, and he has a word for us, those who wait for the second coming of Jesus, to come and make all things new. He has a question to ask us. He says, you say this prayer, you call out, come, Lord Jesus. Do you know what you are asking? How can you talk the talk of Advent longing, John asks us if you do not walk the walk of full surrender to his coming kingdom? How can you long for his kingdom to come if you do not now live in the rhythm of surrender that is true of all those who are citizens of that kingdom?

Repent for the kingdom of God is near. This word that John the Baptist speaks to us this morning and it spoke to those his first hearers. He speaks with uncompromising urgency, but please do not mistake his tone for one of hate. John speaks to us out of an urgent love, out of a serious love for those who are in real serious danger. Sin is serious, John says. It is the abrupt word of the alarmed parent who watches as their child raises their foot to step off the curb into oncoming traffic and they yell toward their child, stop, turn around, go a different way.

Wake up, John tells us. He has plenty of cold ice water to throw on us to help us wake up. And this morning we are going to look at John, the person of John, the words of John, the path of surrender that John puts before us out of the Gospel of Luke in chapter three. I invite you to turn there with me. As we look at John's life, the beautiful life of surrender that John lived, and the words that he spoke, the beautiful words of surrender, the challenging words, we are going to notice just a few facets of that diamond of surrender. It is a beautiful thing. It is a challenging thing, but it is a beautiful thing.

We are going to notice a few things. First, we are going to notice today the gate. John is inviting us onto a path of surrender and there is a gate he wants us to enter through, a kind of surrender that is fundamental to all other kinds of surrender that we are going to engage, a gate that he wants us to enter through, and he wants to warn us against two places where we divert from that path, two ways that we hide from that gate, from entering on the path of surrender.

So first, what is this central gate, this way onto the path of surrender that John puts before us? He says first, surrender your false innocence. If you want to be someone who walks in the path of surrender with Jesus, who expects the coming kingdom of the Messiah and does so with a heart that has integrity, who cries out come, Lord Jesus, as one who has already surrendered to him, you must begin by first surrendering your false innocence.

You see, John was no fool. John was an incredibly popular figure, someone who drew out massive crowds, the scriptures tell us, to come and hear from him and be baptized by him. But John was not deceived by worldly popularity to shave off his message, to soften it, to make it easier to digest. Instead, he spoke to these crowds; he saw in them the reality that is true of all of us, that they believed that they were better than they were, that they were happy to live within the illusion of false innocence. And so he throws a bucket of cold ice water; he says, you brood of vipers, you brood of snakes.

Now John is not just name-calling here; this phrase has a lot of meaning. Brood, what does that mean? A brood is the offspring, right? The sons and daughters of something. And here they are being called the sons and daughters of snakes. Snake, of course, is a biblically loaded word, right? The serpent in the garden, the snake who is the deceiver. What is he saying? You, crowd, are being deceived and walking in the way of deception, you are showing yourselves to be the children of the evil one.

Not to the point, John. John says wake up, what was core to the deception in the garden, right? A lessening of the consequences and the reality of sin, what does the snake say? You will not surely die. Don't take it so seriously; it's not that big a deal, you won't surely die. And this is what we do as well. We like to lessen our sin and our brokenness; we like to pretend that we are better than we are. We like to live in the illusion. We're doing okay, we're pretty good people.

I had a professor in seminary who, in highlighting this point, told us that when his church would sing the beloved song, I Surrender All, in order to keep himself honest, he would instead sing this under his breath: Some to Jesus I surrender, some to him I freely give. I surrender some to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender some. And isn't that the truth? Who among us can say that that is not the truth of our lives? We draw a line in the sand of our hearts, we draw a line in the sand of our lives, and we make our stand there. And against the oncoming tide of God's movement into our lives, we stand on that line and we say to God this far and no further.

We like to pretend that that's not true, but maybe you say things like this to yourself. You can have my Sunday attendance, God, but on Monday morning at work, I call the shots. I'll give my money to the church, some of it, but the rest of my finances—that's my domain. I'm a very faithful spouse. It was just a little flirtation with my co-worker. I just needed to unwind; it was only a few drinks, a little porn, some TV binging. I'm a super nice person, but that guy had it coming. All my life is yours, God, as long as it looks like this.

We stand on that line that we've drawn in our hearts and our lives. We say to God, this far and no further, and there on that line, Jesus meets us. Gentle Jesus, loving Jesus, honest Jesus. And he says to us, as far as the curse is found. There are no half measures in me. As far as the curse is found, I will not let you fall asleep in your sin, cozy up to those parts of your life that need my renovation. There are no half measures in me. I love you far too much for that. I believe far too much in the person I have made you to be to allow that to be the truth of your life.

Now you might say to me, Ryan, this is way too heavy on sin. Isn't Jesus forgiving? Isn't that what Jesus was about? He loves me, and the main thing he wants to say to me is not look more at your sin, not realize that you're broken, but that I'm forgiven. Isn't that what Jesus was about? And I'd ask you to consider the question if that's you, if that's where you are right now. I'd just ask you to consider the question: Why is grace so amazing?

What does it mean to believe, as Christians, that the grace of God is so incredible if we have not been also people who are willing to look at the true depth of our own brokenness, who have been willing to brave with Jesus those places in our lives where we have not allowed him? We are only cheating ourselves of that deep, beautiful experience of the true, rich, powerful grace of God when we stand on that line and we say, God, you're not allowed here. I don't want to look at it. Because to realize your full brokenness is to make grace truly what it is: amazing. Beautiful. Rich.

Charles Spurgeon, the famous preacher, put it this way, saying basically the same point: They think they have only a little sin and believe in a little Savior. It is all little together. But when you get a great sense of sin, you want a great Savior. Thanks be to God, we do have a great Savior.

Grace—the grace that he shows us—is sizable, costly, won for us on the cross. And that costly grace, walking in that way, does have the effective power to renovate and change our lives. Not in a little piece of it, but in the whole of it—every area of our lives, every area of sin, every area of brokenness. But if we're going to enter into that path, we have to heed John's warning. We have to dismiss our false innocence. We have to accept the reality. Brood of vipers. Deceiving one. I am one who is prone to deceive myself, to believe that my sin is smaller than it is. Lord Jesus, show me. Help me. I want to know the full power of your grace. I want to know the full power of your transforming work in my life. I don't want to look at it, but I believe that if I walk into that reality with you, you have the power to hold me up. You have the power to walk with me in it.

So John invites us to lay down, to surrender our false innocence, and to walk into full surrender to Jesus, to know that he is the one who wants to raise up every valley, bring down every hill, straighten every path—the whole of creation, the whole of our lives, as far as the curse is found.

But the reality is, of course, that there are lots of other places we'd rather turn our attention. And there are two places, I think, John highlights in the way he addresses the crowd—two hiding places. So if the gate to this way of surrender is surrendering our false innocence, John wants to say, there are two little rooms on the side of that gate, that when you see that mirror coming at you, showing you the reality, these two places, you're more likely to hide.

The first one is in false allegiance. When faced with the mirror, I'm more likely to resort to false allegiance to protect myself, to hide from that. False allegiance says, I am the right kind of person because I belong to the right kind of group. I'm not a broken person in all those ways. I'm not one of the bad people. I'm one of the good people. I'm in the group that has allegiance to this person or this way. We can hear this in the background of the murmuring crowd as John says, You brood of vipers, because what does he say? Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Faced with that mirror—You brood of vipers—what do they say? They say, No, no, no. We're not Gentiles. We're not pagans. We're not tax collectors. We're children of Abraham. We have the right allegiances in our lives. We have the right way.

How familiar is this? This is what we all do. When faced with that reality that I need to grow, that I need to change, that I need to become someone who looks more like Jesus, what do we say? No, no, no, no. I'm the right kind of Christian. I have the right kind of political ideology. The right kind of academic. I read the right kind of books. I have the right kind of news that I take in. I'm one of the good ones. It's those people over there.

Maybe you don't say that explicitly, but implicitly, that's kind of the way you live. Well, I'm okay. I'm doing all right. It's really those people that need to have that hard look in the mirror. We have to lay down these false allegiances if we're going to look with Jesus into that mirror.

I want you to know, I'm not saying that we aren't to be discerning in our lives. We're not to—we need discernment. We need to choose what kinds of political parties to affiliate with, what kinds of vocations to pursue. These are good things. But be careful, because there is a fine line. There is a deceptive line there where those identities, those allegiances can become this cocoon of insulation that we use to avoid walking in full surrender, avoid laying down our innocence or false innocence.

The other hiding place that John highlights is a kind of abstracted obedience—a false abstracted obedience. So faced with that mirror, I'm also going to avoid by highlighting this kind of abstracted obedience. No, no, no. I'm not a brood of—I'm not one of the vipers. I'm the person who attends Torah observ—I attend religious observances. I study the Torah. I pray. I fast. I do the right kinds of things.

In response to this, John puts before his original hearers an imminently practical kind of obedience. What does he say when they ask, What are we supposed to do? He says this: Listen to how not abstract this is. Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. John is cutting through abstracted obedience that would keep us in the place of illusion about ourselves and is saying, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yes, of course, study the Torah. Pray. Fast. Do all of those things. John's life certainly was steeped in those realities. But if those things aren't issuing out of your life into practical, lived, loving obedience, you have reason to look in the mirror.

So we lay down our false allegiances. We lay down our abstracted obedience. And we enter by the way of recognizing our own brokenness, of surrendering our false innocence.

I know that John's words are uncompromising. They are hard. They are difficult words. They're not easy words to hear. We should never read from the gospels about John the Baptist and walk away just being like, All right, sounds good. He's a challenging guy. He had a message that was important and hard to hear.

But what I want to emphasize in concluding here is just to focus us on the point. John is not saying these things—not to his original hearers and not to us now through the scriptures—these things are not said so that we would walk around in this kind of shame and condemnation. John, I believe, is actually telling us what he believes is the secret of his obedience. He's letting us in on this invitation to live as truly free, radically free people.

You read about John's life. He was a radically free person, free in obedience. He was undaunted by public shame, by people's anger with him, by the threat of violence done to him by powerful people. He was also undaunted by the kinds of things that we find ourselves just so wrapped up in—status, power. When you remember the story, when John's disciples come to him and they're starting to leave and they want to go with Jesus, what does he say? He must increase, and I must decrease.

He lived a joyful life because he was the friend of the bridegroom and rejoiced that the bridegroom is coming. It was about Jesus and not about him. I think that this is what John is inviting us into—the way of surrendered, whole, radical obedience. And in that obedience, we can cry out for the coming kingdom of Jesus, not with half a heart but with a whole heart. We can live as people who are surrendered to that kingdom, surrendered to Jesus, the king.

And we can say with the whole church throughout time, with a full heart, Come, Lord Jesus.

May it be so.

12.1.24 (Luke 21:25-36) Advent: Stand Up, Your Redemption is Near (Dave Friedrich)

Zechariah 4:1a; 4-9 | Psalm 50:1-6 | Luke 21:25-36 | 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 (ESV)

Eighteen years. Imagine spending eighteen years bent over, unable to straighten up. Your eyes, always on the ground. Your view of the world just limited to your own shadow. You're able to lift up your head to look at faces or the beauty of the sky. And it's not just your body, that's way down, it's your spirit. Dark oppressive forces have been burning you, bounding you, stealing your dignity.

People whisper about you, they avoid you, they maybe think that you've been cursed or being punished by God. Yet, you continue to go where God's people gather. You go, maybe you've been hoping and waiting for a miracle, maybe you've given up hope, but yet still you come to hear God's word, to draw near to the one who draws near to us.

And then on this day everything changes, the one who is teaching teaches with authority is known for his power to heal and he sees you. And he calls you forward and he says you are free from all that's crippled you. And he lays his hand on you and for the first time in eighteen years you stand up tall and straight and free, eyes lifted up in your praising God.

It's a true story. Recorded in Luke chapter thirteen. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath and there was a crippled woman there crippled by an oppressive spirit. And Jesus heals her, completely restores her so that she can stand up tall, her dignity restored. Surely she had a new hope in her heart, a new longing for that day when God through his messiah would straighten all that is bent in the world.

The reason I share this story is that Luke uses a word here for stand up that is unique to Luke in the Gospels. And he uses only twice in this story and in the Gospel reading we just heard when Jesus calls us to stand up and lift up our heads for our redemption is drawing near.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and marks the beginning of the church calendar and we begin by looking forward to our coming king who's bringing that redemption. Who's going to bring his light that dispels all darkness and when his blessings are going to flow as far as the curse is found. Advent is a time to long for that redemption that's coming. A redemption that is drawing near like the dawn like we heard in Anna's poem.

And therefore like the woman in the synagogue, Jesus calls us and enables us to stand up and lift up our heads in hope. But like the woman in the synagogue, we might need Jesus to first come to us in a preliminary way to help us stand through his word and through his sacrifice. And through his sacraments and prayer to give us that strength to actually stand up in hope.

We need that to stand. It's to strengthen us there so that we can shake off whatever sin or impression has been crippling us and keeping us bent over so that we have stand actually to stand up and lift up our heads in newness, in hope and anticipation. To look for that light, that light that restores and renews and fulfills all our longings and all things.

As Tish Harrison Warren writes in her excellent book on Advent, we often think of Advent as a preparation for an anticipation of Christmas, which it is. But it's also more. Historically, the church has seen this as a season to prepare for not just his first coming, but also Christ's second coming. As Malcolm Guite aptly puts it, these are the two great events that framed the events of our lives, that framed the alpha in the omega of our lives. We live in between these two comings, his first coming and his second coming.

It's also a season for Christ to make us holy in that preparation through his word in sacrament. As we turn to the Gospel reading and we anticipate meeting Christ in the word and in the sacrament, let's do that. Let's anticipate that third kind of coming where he comes and he meets us actually here and now in between these times, through the word in sacrament, through the people of God, through strangers.

As we move through this message, we're going to follow the image, this image of standing up. And in the first movement, we're going to look at how Jesus calls us to stand up in hope when all seems hopeless. And then the second movement, we're going to look at his call to pray for grace to stand in that way. And then the third movement, we're going to come back to this story of the woman in the synagogue to wrap it all up and consider how Jesus might be calling us through these scriptures in the season.

So first movement, standing in hope when all seems hopeless. In today's Gospel reading from Luke chapter 21, Jesus describes a world that's filled with turmoil and fear, cosmic signs and earthly chaos. And he calls us to respond though not with despair, but rather instead with hope when all this is going on.

The strange thing to call people to do. He says, when you see these things begin to happen, this craziness actually stand up and lift up your heads. It's a Hebrew term for hope. Because actually what's happening is your redemption is drawing near. This is a command. So again, I get up my pencil, I circle this command, I write a little C, and I commit to memorizing and living this command.

To understand this command though, we need the larger context of the chapter. Jesus here is speaking about the last things, describing a distant future event, the coming of the Son of Man in glory. One of his favorite ways of talking about himself, the Son of Man. He's describing this future event when he's coming back, symbolized though, and anticipated by a near event. The destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

What's going on in the chapter? So this dual perspective, the near event, prefiguring the distant final redemption. These are the two events between which Jesus is inviting us to live, this tension, which very much resembles Advent. We live in between these two events of his first coming and his second coming, the already and the not yet.

Prior to verse 25, Jesus is focusing mostly on the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. That's coming to his original years, but for those who were reading, they're looking back at this as a vivid memory. In verse 25 where our gospel begins, Jesus shifts the focus to the cosmic happenings, chaos, that's coming right before his return. The cosmic signs, the global distress that's happening. Nations are in anguish, people are so overcome by fear and dread that they faint. Or if you look at the Greek, the implication is that they lose their breath, that is they're dying from just the dread of what's coming. Literally scared to death.

In Mark's version of this, Jesus uses this really surprising imagery that really helps us reframe everything. He uses the imagery of birth pangs, contractions to reframe these terrible events. So that we're to see that every horrendous happening, whether it's the fall of Jerusalem or the cosmic catastrophes coming at the end of the day, or anything terrible and tragic in between, Jesus is inviting us to see all these as contractions that are giving birth to the new creation.

To help us to see that through these things, actually what's happening is the kingdom, the redemption of God is coming in the mirror. It should give us that hope to stand up and raise our heads. At the culmination of it all, Jesus says in verse 27, we will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. He's helping us to see this should not be a moment of fear but of fulfillment. When he comes to judge evil and end suffering and gather his people to himself and make all things new, that's what we're to be imagining.

So that when Jesus says, when these things take place, these terrible contractions, and they are terrible, it's not making light of them, they're saying they're not really terrible, but when you see them, whatever and whenever they are, what you are seeing is the kingdom, the redemption, drawing near, coming closer, breaking in.

Jesus follows this with the parable of the fig tree, which is an apt tree, where its fruit are actually inverted flowers as we've named before. What's he doing with this? He's inverting our interpretation of these events. So he says, just as budding leaves signal summer's nearness, these events signal that God's kingdom is near, and then assures us his words are more enduring than heaven and earth itself, anchoring us, reminding us these promises of his are sure and certain, no matter how crazy things get.

In verses 34 to 36, we come to the second movement, praying for strength to stand. It's another command, so again, I get up my pencil, I circle, I write a little C, I commit to memorize and do this, where Jesus says, pray. He starts by warning us though to stay alert and not let life's distractions, dissipations and drunkenness. He says, or fears drag our hearts down.

These are the common responses, right, to hardship. We either numb ourselves through distraction or substances or we panic in fear. And notice this contrast here in his language, a heart burdened and weighed down versus standing up in anticipation and hope. Expectancy for good things. Jesus says, don't let your heart be weighed down in this way, rather stay awake, vigilant, praying, praying for strength to stand when he returns.

And we're going to need that strength because when he comes, he's going to come in such power and glory. It will overwhelm anyone. No matter what human strength you may think you have. Just like when John in Revelation saw the risen, resurrected, glorious Christ, he fell down as though dead. And Jesus had to come and touch him to bring him back up. Just like that woman.

We need a touch from Jesus to help us stand upright so that we have strength to stand no matter how hard things are getting and to stand in his glorious presence. Not afraid, but confident, joyful, anticipating what's coming.

Before we move into the third and final movement, did you notice how closely Jesus' words here in this chapter align with Paul's prayer that we heard in our Thessalonians passage? In Paul's letter, he is writing to this young church that's facing persecution, reminding them of their hope in Christ's return. He is praying also for their heart. He is praying for strength to stand in essence before God at Christ's return.

But then he emphasizes one of the things that strengthens us, to stand. Namely, love from God for each other. He prays that the Lord would make their love to increase and overflow for one another in the community and for all beyond the community. In times of affliction, when suffering tempts us to turn inward and put up walls and lash out that fight-flight response, Paul prays for the opposite, that they would love.

Move outward towards one another in love, or one another and for all. And he prays that for this so that their hearts would be strengthened. He prays that this love would overflow among them so that their hearts would be strengthened or established, blameless and holiness, that Jesus is coming. That word for strengthen or for establish, it's an architectural term, meaning to make strong, secure, unshakeable, firm.

That's what Paul's praying for. That's what the love of God in us through us happens. Don't you feel that? Don't you feel stronger when the love of God is being poured into your heart and then poured out into others? Don't you have more strength to stand in hopeless situations? Don't you have more strength to stand before the Son of God and long for him and his redemption to behold him? Not be afraid of him, the one from whom all this love comes.

This brings us to a third and final movement, returning to the story of the woman in the synagogue, and to reflect on what might Jesus be inviting us to think about, to reflect on, to do, to consider through these passages during Advent.

Like the woman who endured 18 years of dark forces weighing her down, crippling her, what might be crippling us in our lives? What fears or burdens keep us as Anna's poem describe like cowering cave dwellers bent over in the darkness? Do stressful, busy, chaotic times like we seem to be in mean we're no longer looking at each other in the face, friend or stranger?

Does it mean we're no longer looking up to our Father in prayer? Advent is a time to ask these questions, to step back from the noise, to step back from the artificial light that is increasing that blinds us to the true coming light, to step out and ask God, what might be crippling me in this season?

What distractions or fears are weighing me down, weakening my heart? What unseen oppression? What God-given longings have become distorted, turned into mere cravings for comfort, control, recognition? Like the woman who went to the synagogue, how can I come to these weekly gatherings, longing for the one who came, who comes and who will come again?

Anticipating his light, his light that redeems and restores and fulfills all our longings and all things. Like the woman who heard his liberating words and received his healing strengthening touch, how too can we come and hear his words and receive his touch?

As we meet him in his word with ears to hear, he declares our freedom. He teaches us how to hope again. He reshapes how we view the world so that when we hear and see of wars and rumors of wars which we're hearing now, we don't just hear chaos, which it is. We hear contractions for the coming kingdom, for the new creation, for our redemption that's drawing near, that enables us to stand up, lift up our heads.

As we meet him at the table with faith and thanksgiving, we practice that prayer posture of open hands, receptive hands, asking for and praying for a touch from him in the spirit, for strength to stand, for hearts fortified by his holy love so that we can have the strength to stand up when all is hopeless.

So we can have strength to look up to our heavenly Father in prayer so that we can have strength to look one another in love in holy love and hope. Strengthened by his love, we can obey his call. When you see these things happening, stand up, lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near.

Amen.

11.24.24 (Matthew 28:16-20) Christ the King Sunday: The Mountain of your Baptism (Dave Friedrich)

Isaiah 2:1-5 | Psalm 2 | Matthew 28:16-20 | Hebrews 12:18-24

Remember the meaning of your baptism. If you've been here for a while, you may have heard me say that more than once. But this morning, I want to add a word to that. Remember the mountain meaning of your baptism.

I love mountains. I remember the first time I saw and ascended one in real life. And I was 22, I think 21 or 22. I was visiting Germany with my father, who was born and raised there. And we took a cable car up the zug-spitza. If you don't know German, you won't know how badly I mispronounced that. That is the largest, tallest mountain in Germany at about 10,000 feet. And we took this cable car up and it was nerve-wracking for someone like me, who's afraid of heights. My hands were definitely sweating as they are now as I just think about it. But you get there, you get to the top, and you come out on this platform. And then you have this 360 panoramic view of Germany and Austria and beyond these alpine forests and rugged peaks and glistening lakes. And it's stunning. And it's as if you're where heaven and earth meet. Time seems to stand still. And fear and joy and perspective all seem to come together. A mountaintop experience with my father. I'll never forget.

Ever since then I have loved mountains. To see them, live near them, even on them. I've hiked them, I've cycled them, I've skied them. But what I love most of all is to climb them. To get to that summit and see that mountaintop view, have that mountaintop experience. One such climb stands out. Switzerland's Don de Medi. This is a seven-peaked mountain. It has another stunning view, you get to the top and you have this view spanning Lake Geneva, the Rhone Valley and beyond. But it was really treacherous to get there for me.

Unknowing to me I picked a terrible guide who told me we left at 3 a.m. in the morning. He said we would be back for sure by 11 a.m. We weren't back until nearly 9 p.m. that night. And it was close to sending at a search party for me, which was close to being needed. Because we got lost and we were misled by these French climbers. And we ended up on all this shale slipping and sliding everywhere. And there were a few moments I thought for sure we were going to slip and slide right off the mountain to our death. We didn't. I'm here. Somehow we made it to the summit to the peak and we got there and back again. Breathtaking as if time stood still. See your joy perspective again coming together. Even the French climbers were there smoking their cigarettes. And I wasn't even mad. Because it seemed we were all in a different time and place and presence. And we were just soaking it all in.

Did you know Anna? I did know Anna. We were married. Did you notice all the mountain references in our scriptures? In Psalm 2 we see God installing his king, his promised Messiah on a mountain. It says, I myself have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. That's Mount Zion. From that mountain this Messiah, this king was to rule and to overcome every enemy. And to extend God's kingdom to every nation, to the ends of the earth. You hear a lot of that language in the New Testament. Because the New Testament reveals Jesus as that king. Which our gospel example is just one example. It's like it has a hyperlink here to Psalm 2.

But his rod is the word of his mouth we find out in the New Testament. His sword is the word of his mouth. His teaching. His promises. His commandments. That can cut and hurt. Like a surgeon's knife, that cuts out and takes out what destroys us. And then in turn in part of life. Eternal life. The triune life of God. That's what his words do.

Today as we heard is the Feast of Christ the King. A celebration as Malcolm Guite puts it of ends and beginnings. We end the Christian year today and we begin again next Sunday with Advent. As we journey through time towards eternity and our triune God.

Advent. Advent is something we love to lean into here at Church of the Cross. And I'm going to be sending out an email later this week to offer you resources that you can use during this season that's coming up. Practice is the theme that we're going to be looking at. But Advent starts with anticipating practicing hope as we're waiting in the growing darkness. For the light of our coming Messiah. And then the year ends and arrives today when we proclaim his universal and eternal reign.

Christ the King. And he rules from a cosmic mountain. The Bible Project recently launched a new meta podcast series on a theme, a new theme on mountains. In the middle of it right now these are really great series if you ever listen to them. And this one explores how in scripture mountains are one of those places where heaven and earth intersect. Where God meets with humans in unique and profound ways. Where there are mountains like Sinai, one of the biggest examples in the Old Testament. Where Moses ascends the mountain and is transformed and is commissioned with the presence and the word of God. Again another similarity to our gospel passage this morning. But again this places these ascensions where Godly fear and joy and perspective come together. Where in the words of Psalm 2 we rejoice with trembling. As we learn from God how to be saturated with his way and his life.

The Bible Project also highlights how these mountain stories collectively all point towards and represent the one cosmic mountain. That started and that we saw in the Garden of Eden. If you pay attention to the clues. If you notice the clues Eden has a peak from which the waters flow. They all flow from. It's the center and the summit of paradise. Where you find the tree of life. The tree of eternal life. Where you go to be saturated and learn how to be saturated with the life of God. But as we know from the story Adam and Eve they lost access to this mountain. And the rest of scripture is really about humanity's journey back to this mountain.

And again the New Testament declares that Jesus is both the king reigning from this cosmic mountain. And he is the way back to and up this mountain. To be with him is to be back. As our gospel or our New Testament reading in Hebrews put it. Those of us who follow Jesus already now in the unseen realm have come to Mount Zion. To the city where the living God reigns. To the great assembly around Jesus. To God. To Jesus. The mediator of the new covenant whose blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. His blood that opens up and paves the way back to the mountain.

Did you notice the mountain in our gospel reading? Jesus directs the disciples to meet him in Galilee. Where? At a mountain. Tradition identifies it as Mount Tabore. The site of the transfiguration where we got a glimpse of the now permanent resurrected glory of Jesus. Some scholars notice even seven different mountain scenes throughout the gospel of Matthew. This being the seventh. Similar to the Dondumidii that had these seven jagged peaks that represented one that were part of one mountain. These seven stories all together represent the one cosmic mountain. From which Jesus rules and gathers his people and leads them up to the summit. And then tells us to go and help others do the same.

The passage is often called the Great Commission. But Dallas Willard dubbed it the Great Omission. Because so few Christians and churches actually made it have made it their mission. I don't want to be guilty of the Great Omission for myself or for this church. So this sermon is a little different for me. It's a call for us to return to the charge that Jesus gave the church. To make that the mission of our lives and our church. Where it has been here amongst this church. Sometimes more in the front foreground, sometimes more in the background. But I have felt from God, from the Holy Spirit, to make this more explicit for myself and for us.

We've heard these words so many times that we run the risk of tuning them out when we hear them. I think that's true for me. Today I want to freshen them for you though. I want to remove some of that film of familiarity. As I point out the artistic even mountain structure of this passage.

So if we could go to the next slide. This is a chiastic structure. It's very common in Hebrew thinking and poetry. But also in narratives. All kinds of places it comes up. It's a mirror-like pattern where ideas are presented in a certain order. And then you get to the point and then they're reversed. In the mirror-like pattern. And the crux, the tip, the summit is not at the beginning or the end, but it's in the middle. And it's here, the summit, the point, the crux is actually the center. Saturating them in the triune name slash life of God.

Notice the all statements. There's four all statements surrounding the middle statement. There's no all in the middle. And these mirror each other. So the outer ‘all’s. You have all authority has been given to me at the top. And at the bottom I will be with you all the days. Until the end. That's the Greek: all the days. Then you have the commandments. You move inwards and you go more towards the tip. Again these are all kind of pointing like an arrow to the right. Go and make apprentices. Students, disciples, followers of all peoples. Teaching them to keep all my commandments. Not just the ones that fit our personalities or the demographics of our church. All of them.

Some people count. If you don't repeat them all the time, you cluster them in similar commands. There's about 50. That's not a lot to learn. To mark, to memorize, to do. At the center is the summit. Saturating them in the triune name or as we are more used to hearing. Baptizing them. Just an immersing word. Baptizing them, soaking them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The name of God represents God. His character, his way, his life, his essence. Baptism is this inward sign of an inward grace and it represents the goal. The destination. The gift. The outworking of following Jesus and his commandments.

To the tip, to the peak, to the summit of the cosmic mountain. To be saturated with that triune life that he was saturated with when he walked the earth. In fact, if we turn this one quarter turn 90 degrees to the left, it turns from an arrow. If we go to the next slide. Into a mountain. So you have all authority abiding presence and triune life.

Thus the mountain meaning of our baptism. The foundation we have here is the authority and the abiding presence of Jesus. The authority of Jesus which tells us to go. The abiding presence of Jesus which empowers us and encourages us for the climb. I am with you always. That's his part.

And then we come to our part. Becoming his apprentices. Obeying his commandments, keeping his commandments. We are going to need his authority. We are going to need his abiding presence because this journey is at times really treacherous. We have more than slippery shale and misguided French climbers. We have the evil one coming after us. And it's hard. We need the one with all authority. We need his abiding presence as we give ourselves to becoming his apprentices. Doing everything he told us to do and helping others do the same.

You can think of an apprentice under a master carpenter with Jesus as the carpenter, master carpenter. Which is how you've been marked in your baptism. You are an apprentice of Jesus. If you've been baptized, you're following him. To learn the craft though, the apprentice must watch every move of the master carpenter. How he measures cuts, joins and finishes things. And then the master carpenter must watch and tell the apprentice what to do and to correct that apprentice. When they get it wrong until they get it right and encourage them when they do.

Well, as apprentices of Jesus, we need to immerse ourselves in the Gospels. Watching Jesus' every move, learning from him. Doing everything he tells us to do. Letting the Holy Spirit correct us when we get it wrong and encourage us when we get it right. And the more we do this, the more we're going to help others and be able to help others do the same. To come and go up that mountain. And the more we do this, the more we learn from Jesus how to be like Jesus, the more we're going to be saturated. Like him with the life of the triune God. That's the way.

This doesn't just happen. So moving towards this summit doesn't just happen. There's no cable car for this mountain. Instead of a lift, what we have is the teaching, the promises and the commandments of Jesus. And every word of his that we hear and trust and obey takes us to another level. This climb, it also requires intentionality because of this. It requires a plan with disciplines that actually help us to absorb Jesus' teaching and practice his way.

We need that. Just like any sport, profession or trade, it demands a plan. It demands consistent skills that we take on and we practice and we refine. Same with following Jesus. I've never met anybody who's grown in their profession or in their walk with Jesus without such an intentional plan and effort. I've never seen it. And the more we have such a plan that works for us and we stick with, the more we're going to experience that summit. And the more others are going to see the life of God in us and want to come with us. That's how it works. They're going to see the life of God in us and say like what they said in Zechariah 8. Please let us go with you for we have heard that God is with you.

And they're going to add what we heard in our Old Testament reading. They're going to want to say yes, all the peoples are going to come and say let's go up the mountain of the Lord together with you to the temple of the God. And he will teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths because it's a beautiful thing when you see the life of God lived out in somebody. It's attractive. You want it.

The most effective way to bring people to this mountain and up it is to first go up it ourselves.

Some time ago, Pete had a memorable objections and response section in his sermon where he anticipated some objections in the minds of people listening and then offered one of his thoughtful witty responses. I don't have Pete's humor. But I anticipated as I was preparing this some objections going on in maybe some of your minds that I'd like to address.

But Dave, what about this?

But Dave, this sounds like a lot of work. You're absolutely right. It is. It's a lot of work to become a student of Jesus, learn his ways as it is with anything worthwhile. I mean, we dedicate countless hours to our professions to prepare for them and to improve them, to grow in them. How do we think it would be any different in our walk with Jesus? And yet with Jesus, whatever we put in, it's far outweighed by the reward. Eternally more than any other endeavor we could give ourselves to.

But Dave, isn't this salvation by works? Kind of sounds like that. No, not at all. This is all about just growing in the grace of God, the same grace that leads us to the mountain, to save us, and the same grace that leads us up the mountain to sanctify us. It's all grace.

But Dave, being a lifelong student of Jesus, learning to keep all his commandments sounds like a lot of human effort. Isn't that against grace, opposed to grace? No, not at all. Grace is not opposed to effort, it's opposed to merit. But somehow we deserve all this, as Dallas Willard used to say. Second Peter reminds us, we are called to make every effort to add goodness to our faith.

But Dave, didn't Jesus say his yoke is easy? He says teaching, his burden light, this feeling kind of heavy. Yes, he did, actually. And it is. Because he is yoked to us. Because the one who has all authority and power is with us, who carries the greater load, and who empowers us and encourages us to do all that he says. He's a different kind of teacher, the different kind of teaching. And he promises in that same section where he says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, he says, come to me and learn from me. That is an important phrase in my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

That first step to Jesus, trusting him, is often the hardest and the most difficult, but the more we come to Jesus, the more we learn from him in all of scripture, and especially the gospels, the lighter that burden becomes. We're learning that from him. If his teaching is getting heavier and heavier, it may be a sign that we've wandered from him, or his teaching, or both.

But Dave, all this, especially keeping the commands of Jesus, it sounds like we're prioritizing the gospels over the rest of scripture. Yeah, it does. As we do in our liturgy, we prioritize the gospel when we come down the center aisle here, and we hold it up. The gospels hold a special place because they reveal the life and the teaching of Jesus most directly in all of scripture. The Old Testament is pointing to and is fulfilled in the life and the teaching and the commandments of Jesus. That's where they land. That's the destination. And the letters are more like a commentary in a sense of that and how that works out in community. But the center of this story, that's from beginning from Genesis to Revelation, the center of it is in the gospels, and that's why we prioritize that. That's where we see the heart of the good news, the life of Jesus, his words, his life. They should be a priority for us.

But Dave, I'm not a Christian. Why would I want Jesus to be my teacher? Why would I want to do what he says? Who could be a better teacher than Jesus? That's how I respond. Who has greater power and authority? Who can be with us more than how Jesus promised to be with us? Who has offered us a better destination than Jesus? Is Jesus not the brightest spot in human history? Who would be a better teacher than Jesus?

But Dave, this still feels a little overwhelming. Where can I start? I'm glad you asked. First, make a plan. For example, a plan to read Scripture that prioritizes the gospels. This is how you could follow the daily office lecture. This is why it's here. It offers you a two-year plan. You go through the whole of scriptures, the whole of the scriptures in two years, and the gospels in about every year. Or just use that as a model to engage the scriptures. And as you read the gospels, this is my encouragement. When you come to the commands of Jesus, circle those. Memorize those. Make it your goal to do those, most of all. That's what I've been doing. And if it's been a while since you read the gospels, maybe just start there. And then you can take one of the gospels, maybe pick the Gospel of Mark. It's the shortest one. And set the goal for, say, the next month to go through the gospel and just circle and memorize and commit to do all the things Jesus told us to do. That's what I'm doing right now with our youngest son.

You're going to have to figure out those spiritual disciplines that work for you, though. You have to experiment. You have to try to see what enables you to actually absorb and keep the teaching of Jesus. If the ones you've been working, if you've been trying, don't work, then there's plenty out there to practice and try.

I want to finish with something Gandhi once said, followed by a couple of my own questions. Gandhi once said, if Christians would just live by everything Jesus taught that's found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today. What would happen if all the Christians in Greater Boston committed to do everything Jesus told us to do? What if just one church committed to do everything Jesus told us to do? How many others would be compelled to join us? How about we find out?

Amen.

11.17.24 (Philippians 4:10-23) Philippians: Giving and Receiving in Christ (Ryan Ruffing)

1 Chronicles 29:6-9 | Psalm 23 | Philippians 4:10-23 | Matthew 6:25-34

A number of years ago, now when Libby and I were young parents, when our oldest, who's now about six, almost six, was under a year old, we went through a few months where life just seemed very, very busy. Life was so full. We had an under one year old. I was starting a new ministry to college students at that time. And in the period of about a couple months, just a number of different demands of my time had cropped up. And it made things just feel so hectic and busy and difficult. And during that season, we got an unexpected call from two friends of ours, two new friends of ours, a young couple who had just come into the church community. And they said, hey, we see that you're busy. Can we come over to your house and clean your kitchen and make you dinner?

Libby and I immediately, we felt so blessed by them seeing us. We felt blessed by God. I felt blessed by God that God had inspired these friends to this kind of act of kindness. But I also felt something else. And that feeling was inspired by the reality that I knew, which was that our house was a mess. And our kitchen, especially the proposed site of this benevolent, gracious act, was a hot mess. I'm glad to report now six years into the parenting journey that things have just gone from bad to worse. The kitchen is still a huge mess. It's hard as we try. We got over it, though. I got over it. We got over our discomfort of welcoming these new friends into our mess. And we said, yes, we said, please come over and help us in this way. We welcomed them into our messy environs, and they bore up under the amazing load. And they cleaned our kitchen spotless and made us an amazing dinner. We went for a restful walk, came back a couple hours later, feeling rejuvenated and rested.

It's core to gospel living in the body of Christ. It's core to this life that we share in Jesus. The work of giving and receiving. Whether what we give our resources of time or of our talents or of our treasure, our money, our resources, we need things from others in the body of Christ. And we have things that others need. It's core to who we are in Jesus, this work of giving and receiving. And it's striking, I think, it's pretty amazing when we think about just how fundamental that is to living a finite human life, needing others and having things that others need, that we live in a culture that largely tries to avoid the work of giving and receiving. Consider just how much of modern life is built to avoid this kind of gracious giving and receiving. I'm fine with it if what I get is what I've earned or what I've paid for. And I'm fine if what I give is compensated or it's recognized publicly. But when it comes down to real gracious giving and receiving, giving and not getting something in return or receiving something and not being able to pay back, we start to squirm in our seats, we're uncomfortable with it.

I think that's because real giving and receiving, real gracious giving and receiving is an intimate matter, right? It is getting into the mess, getting close enough to see it's vulnerable, it's uncomfortable, it's risky, it's messy. When we truly receive, it means welcoming people close enough to see our mess. And when we truly give, we never know what kind of kitchen we're going to walk into. It's risky.

We’re now in our final week of this series that we’ve been doing throughout the fall in Paul’s letter to the Philippian church. We’re in the fourth chapter verses 10 through 23 that we just heard read a moment ago. Paul picks up in this final text, he picks up just this topic of giving and receiving. What does it mean to give and receive in the body of Christ? How do we do this truly in Jesus? In some ways, this question of giving and receiving has actually been hanging over the whole letter. It’s sort of an elephant that’s been in the room. We don’t notice that elephant as modern readers because we can miss the fact or forget the fact that the chief impetus of this letter, the real reason why Paul has written, is that he has just received a sizable gift of money from the Philippian church.

We assume that it was sizable because we know that the journey that Epaphroditus, Dave talked about this a number of weeks ago, the journey that he made was long and it was dangerous. The journey was costly and it was dangerous and we can’t imagine that the gift was anything less than sizable to warrant that kind of journey. This was a big gift that they had given to Paul, a monetary gift that they had given. Just more in the culture of the Roman milieu that they existed in, this elephant in the room would have been felt even more substantially because like our culture, Roman culture had also avoided the real work of giving and receiving. They had done this by structuring giving and receiving within the patronage system.

In Roman culture, every person was put within a highly stratified succession of social superiors and inferiors. You were a social superior to some, you were social inferior to others. And patrons, those on top of that ladder, would give to their inferiors money or political influence and those clients, those people under them, would give back to them public recognition loyalty. Giving and receiving was highly regulated, much as it is in our day, though in a different way. And so over this whole letter is hanging this question of Paul’s response to this sizable gift that they have given. And so he comes to it and as he addresses this question, he is aimed at the reality that in their culture, just as in ours, giving and receiving had been turned into exchange.

So from giving and receiving to exchange. And Paul wants to speak to that. He wants to explode that system of the Philippians for the Philippians so that they can live out the true way of giving and receiving that is at the heart of the gospel. This is not an afterthought. It’s at the heart of the gospel. He wants to renew them. He wants to place the secret of Jesus at the center of their giving and receiving so that the Philippians can have this renewed understanding of their giving and receiving that they can know that whenever they give, they give out of Christ’s abundance and whenever they receive, they receive from Christ’s generosity. Paul wants them to see and tells them, give and receive within the mystery, the secret of Christ and know that as you do that, you receive from his bounty and you give from his bounty and in that discover true joy in abundance and in need.

All right. So we’re considering this final section. I invite you to turn there with me, chapter 4, verses 10 through 23. We’re going to consider in turn these three dynamics: giving, receiving, and then the reality of knowing Jesus in giving and receiving—giving, receiving, and knowing Christ.

So first, giving. At the heart of the Roman patron system, and indeed our own economic system, is the belief that when someone gives, they give out of their generosity and they give from what is rightfully and truly theirs. When I give, I do so out of my generosity and I do so out of what is rightfully and only mine. I am the king of that—of what I own—and I can give as I feel led, and I cannot as I also feel led. Within this belief, we can imagine that you could either feel proud and puffed up when you do choose to give, or you can feel quite entitled and justified in just being stingy, of not giving anything at all of your time, talent, or treasure. It’s rightfully yours. So we can be proud, or we can be stingy.

And Paul, of course, wants to flip this upside down. He does this by reorienting the nature of their gift. He puts their gift into the context of the old temple—the old covenant temple sacrificial system. Look at verse 18, referring to the sizable gift that the Philippians have given. He calls it a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. Their gift is only secondarily a gift to Paul to sustain his needs, but is primarily an act of worship, an act of sacrifice and giving to God.

He draws one other linguistic link to the Old Testament temple system in verse 10. Paul says that upon receiving the gift—see in verse 10—he rejoiced greatly. These two words: rejoiced greatly. Notably, these two words are used as well in 1 Chronicles 29. Did you notice this in our Old Testament reading that we just heard? This chapter in 1 Chronicles 29 records the massive gift that Israel gave for the building and for the sustaining of the temple work. This humongous gift that Israel gives is then rejoiced at. The chapter says that the people of God, in seeing this extensive gift, they rejoiced, and that David rejoiced greatly—these two words again.

So what is the point? Why is he transposing the Philippians’ gift into this sacrificial temple language? David later in 1 Chronicles 29, in this chapter we’ve read, he puts the point on it very directly, and I think he says exactly what Paul is driving at. Here are the words of this prayer. David is praying this to God. He says this: But who am I? Who am I? And what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you. For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own.

I wonder if you consider that when you have the opportunity to give of your time and you have the opportunity to give of your talents, when you have the opportunity to give of your treasure, of your money. Do you consider that you are returning to the Lord as you give that to your brothers and sisters, as you give that to the church, as you give that to missionary efforts or to justice and mercy efforts? Do you consider that you are giving back to the Lord what is already his? Of your own have we given you. Do you consider that the money in your bank account, the talents that you are known for, the very time and breath of your existence are his in the most profound and real way? You are not the king of your resources. You are not the queen of your time. What you have is his already.

And do you consider that you are not some gracious benefactor bestowing your blessings on the world of your time and talent and treasure? Hear what David says: Who am I? Who am I that I should be able to offer willingly? You see, this world of exchange, this world of giving and receiving what is due to us, convinces us that as we own what is rightfully ours, we are so generous, we are benefactors who give and bless the world and shower it. But the biblical picture is a lot more like this.

Venture capitalists sat down with a potential investment opportunity—an entrepreneur—and as that venture capitalist sat with that entrepreneur, as the pitch was being made, they realized that this is the best pitch they have ever heard. This is a rocket ship company; this is a unicorn. This company is going places, and it is a sure thing. But even as they hear that, they realize also that there are a hundred investors ahead of them in line who are more suited, more desirable to make that investment. And a deep sense and feeling of FOMO settles in—fear of missing out. But then that entrepreneur turns to them and says, And I want you to invest. That investor wants to throw their money at that business as fast as they can. They want to get on that train because they know absolutely that that return on investment is 10, 15, 20 times.

You see the picture that Paul is painting, what David is suggesting. You Philippians, you’ve heard in Jesus the best pitch of your life. You have been brought into a relationship with the living God that is not by nature yours as a fallen, broken rebel of him. You have been brought into that relationship, and he has placed you in his grace into the ecosystem of his kingdom where there are investment opportunities at every turn—opportunities to invest your time, to invest your treasure, to invest your talents in the people sitting around you in the pews, in mission efforts, in the church, in justice and mercy efforts around the world. And every one of them is a rocket ship, every one of them is a unicorn. Don’t you want to get your investment into that? Not because those people or those ministries are especially wonderful or they are going places or they are elite or incredible, but because I am sure of this: that the one who began a good work in you will see it to completion. Amen.

Do you feel that feeling of FOMO? I don’t want to miss out on that investment. The kingdom is here sitting among you, the kingdom is happening now, and the offer to invest is there. Give of your time, give of your talent, give of your treasure. Do so with that deep, joyful belly laugh, and know that you are getting in on the ground floor of the kingdom of God that will come in the next age, but there is a return as you lay up your treasure in heaven. Paul says it directly: Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. You invest in me, and I am doing the work of the kingdom. We all have this opportunity. So let’s be generous. Let’s be generous with all we have, believing firmly that we can invest in that kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Paul is transforming. He is transforming our attitudes of the way we give. He is taking us from pride and from stinginess into generosity and humility. But he also wants to transform the way that we receive. In the body of Christ, giving well only functions when receiving well is also happening. And vice versa, receiving well can only happen when giving well is, in this way, humble and joyful and generous. If, in that dominant culture of exchange, giving is made proud and/or stingy, then receiving is often fearful and/or shameful. Being the person who has needs, being the person who has the need for someone else’s resources is often in our world a cause for being afraid or feeling shame.

If you’re in a season of substantial need—and we can all relate to this in the various kinds of substantial need that we’ve experienced, be it all sorts of different kinds of needs, right? Financial needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs, psychological needs—and we’re in that season, we can often feel a sense of fear. Are my needs going to be met? It’s often in these seasons that we are tested the most in our trust of God. Can I trust that God will supply what I need? Paul shows us the way to walk with Jesus in this need. Look again at the text, starting with verse 11: Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

This phrase that concludes that little section—I can do all things through him who strengthens me—is perhaps one of the most often incorrectly applied and taken out of context verses. We can make that verse really, you know, “God will strengthen me in whatever I’m happening to do and want to find success in,” right? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It’s especially sad because Paul actually means something very specific about when he’s talking about this. He means something very particular.

What Paul means here is that as we are walking down the road of obedience with Jesus, as we are walking with Jesus in repentance and faith, and in that road of obedience we find ourselves shipwrecked on the rocks of want—of need—in any kind of way. We have a promise that we can rely on because we are walking in that road with the one who is able to sustain us, the one who is able to supply our need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me is about our continuing in the way of obedience because when we hit those rocks, when we are in that place of need, we inevitably hear that little voice that just says, “Just give up. Just turn off the road. Obedience is too hard. Walking with God, walking with Jesus. That’s just too hard.” We need to be sustained. We need to be kept in that way of obedience. And what Paul is saying is that you can do all things. You can make it through the darkest nights of need because Jesus is with you. Jesus is there with you in that place.

We need to speak this message over and over to ourselves when we are in that dark night. Whether I am walking through the green pasture or I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the good shepherd is with me and I shall not want. Whether we are walking through the green pasture or we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the good shepherd is with us and we shall not want. That’s the promise. We shall not want. Paul puts an even finer point on this. He says it directly in verse 19, speaking to the Philippians: My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Not might supply, but will supply.

This of course doesn’t mean that God is going to give us absolutely everything that we want or that he will supply our needs in a precisely the way that we think that he should. Walking with Jesus is sometimes a matter of discovering that the things we thought we needed are not the things that we need. But we shouldn’t allow that caveat to blunt this promise of Scripture. Whether you are walking through the green pasture or you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the good shepherd is with you and you shall not want. Do you believe that? Do you know that? Can you say that to your fearful heart?

I know for me it happens in the middle of the night. I wake up and there is that nagging voice. There are those things that bother me, the things that I feel in need of, the things that I feel God is not providing. Can you say that in the night? I walk with the shepherd. I walk with the good shepherd. He has promised to not let me want. He has said to me, I will not leave you; I will not forsake you. Consider the lilies, consider the sparrows. How much more does your father care for you? He clothes them. He cares for them. How much more does he care for you? The end of your story is not dissipating into more and more want, is not being brought lower and lower by diminishment in that want. You shall not want. You have a good father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.

And because we trust, because we know this provision as we walk with Jesus, we also experience, along with fear being banished, we also experience shame being banished. If I receive from his hand, I have no reason to have shame. I have no reason to feel shame for the fact that I have deep need. When I’m in that valley season, and I need my hand and my heart to be filled by others in the body of Christ, I can keep my head up, because what I receive from their hand is from him.

In a few minutes, we’re going to come to this table. We’re going to come to this table and we will give and receive bread and wine. I imagine that if someone looked in through these windows from the outside, not having any context for what we were doing, they would describe what we are doing pretty simply: some people gave and some people received. But what we know is far more beautiful, isn’t it? It’s far more profound. This is not my table. This is not my table and this is not your table. This is the table of the Lord Jesus. And when we come, every one of us, we come in the same way to this table. We come needy and empty of what he has to give us, and we receive from the only one who is the giver. At this table, there is one giver, and we are all needy, beloved beggars who are not worthy to gather up the crumbs from under this table but are welcomed to it as sons and daughters.

If you feel shame in this season for being in a place of need that is substantial and persistent, I invite you to remember that we all come to this table as needy people. You are welcome. Paul in this text, he wants to renew our giving. He wants to renew our stingy, proud giving hearts and he wants to make them generous and joyful. He wants to renew our shameful, fearful, needy hearts and make them trusting and confident. He says simply, I have discovered the secret. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to be raised up. I know what it means to abound and be generous and joyful in my giving. I know how to be brought low and be trusting and confident in my neediness.

You see, in Paul’s instructions, in his leading us in giving and receiving, he is not primarily emphasizing something that is horizontal. He’s not trying to build in the Philippian church a well-functioning social entity. His point in this giving and receiving, his invitation to give and receive in Christ, is a vertical reality. He wants the Philippians to walk in this way because he believes and knows that as they do, they will know Jesus. He wants them to walk in this way because he believes that as they are transformed into a people who give and receive freely and fully, that they will encounter more and more the knowledge of the risen Christ.

He did not count equality with God, abundance, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, gave himself by taking the form of a servant. Jesus is the model of giving and receiving, and so we, as we do this work, encounter him more deeply. Paul wanted to know this Jesus. Indeed, he says, I counted everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

This is a testimony that Paul was giving to the Philippian church. He was saying, I’ve been walking in this way a little longer than you. You’re in the same path, but I’ve been there. And I know that as you give everything, as you count it all rubbish and are willing to give and give and give, and receive and receive and receive, that you will understand. You will know—not just here, but here. You will know him in the power of his resurrection. You will become like him in his death, share in his sufferings. You will attain more and more what is of surpassing worth—to know Christ Jesus, your Lord.

That’s what’s on offer. That’s why I think he leaves it to the very end. He wants to emphasize it. He wants to say, all this that I’ve been saying about Jesus, his humility, and the call to humility, is bound up in this reality. Become a people who give generously, who receive in need, and do that dance. And understand, encounter the risen Jesus as you do it.

Church of the Cross, I want us to become and to be—we are, in so many ways—but to deepen in this reality. To know what it means to give and receive and encounter the reality of the risen Jesus as we do.

As we close, I want to share an often-repeated story that I think highlights this reality. It’s a story about Mother Teresa. Maybe you’ve heard this—it’s pretty well known. But Mother Teresa, the story goes, was on the streets of Calcutta one day where she ministered among the poorest of the poor. And she was, as she did, living out a life of radical giving, right? Radical giving and radical receiving. She was accompanied that day by a reporter ostensibly doing a story about her and her order’s work. And she happened upon a very poor and sick man.

Happening upon him, she bent down to tend to him. She began by picking maggots out of a festering wound on his body. And seeing this challenging act of love, of gracious giving, the reporter commented—presumably with a kind of disgusted befuddlement—“I wouldn’t do what you do for a million dollars.” Supposedly, Mother Teresa didn’t miss a beat and responded immediately with a wry smile, “Neither would I.”

There’s a great treasure, a pearl of great price, that we’re invited to in living as Jesus lived and giving our lives for the sake of his kingdom, for the sake of one another. There is a pearl of great price to be gained. Let us be a people of radical giving and receiving. Let us seek first the kingdom of God. Let us find that pearl of great price, the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, our Lord.

May it be so. Amen.

11.10.24 (Philippians 3:17-4:9) Philippians: Do not be Anxious (Dave Currie)

Isaiah 26:1-6

Psalm 122

Philippians 3:17-4:9

John 14:25-28

Well, last weekend, Sue and I had the joy of being able to visit our eldest daughter and son-in-law and our youngest granddaughter, Sophia. Sophia is four and a half years, four and a half months old, and is in this stage which I had sort of forgotten, but when everyone wants to hold her, she wants to try and stand up. You know, so she can. It's going to be another four and a half months before she'll be able to do it, but she keeps trying and her feet keep going down.

And we don't usually think about learning to stand. I mean, it's exciting when your child first stands and it's usually about nine or ten, eleven, twelve months, but then you forget about it. The child forgets about it. Standing, it's just something we do. But how we stand really sets us up for everything else. It's true for speaking, like if you try and speak like that, or liz with the choir today. You like, you know, stand up, shoulders back, feet apart because you can't sing without that. By the way, if you haven't signed up for the choir, I would strongly recommend that. We're going to sing some beautiful music for Christmas Eve.

But it applies in dance. You know, what's the first position, I think? It's how you stand. Or in sports. I mean, how many times do I look and say, why did I hit it there? And I look, because that's where your feet was going when you were hitting that golf shot or tennis stroke. Even sports like football, they work with the professionals on their stance. I mean, baseball maybe is the worst. I mean, like Ted Williams, you know, the great hitter for the Red Sox. Like he could spend like three hours talking about the nuances of the stance. Because how we stand determines how everything goes from there.

That's true in all these disciplines, but it's also true in our spiritual lives according to Paul. In Philippians chapter 1, or chapter 4 verse 1, he says, stand firm in this way. Stand firm in this way. And what way was it? He said that if we take the right stance, we'll experience God's peace individually. He said, as a congregation. As we come here to the fourth chapter of Philippians, Paul is wanting to give some final instructions. It's almost like the hitting coach, the basses are loaded, they're two outs. It's the bottom of the ninth. He's like, hey, remember this. Make sure you get your feet apart and dig in that back foot and put your weight on that.

Paul makes it actually even simpler when he tells us how we just stand in ways that we can then best follow Christ. He says, it's not toe to toe, but eye to eye and need to knee that leads to God-given peace. It's not toe to toe, but eye to eye, knee to knee to experience God-given peace.

If you haven't already turned to chapter four in the book of Philippians, we've been working through that as a congregation. I invite you to do that now. First we see that the stance that we need to take as believers is not toe to toe. That's good for boxers. It's terrible for followers of Jesus. Paul's addressing that there in verses two and three, where he's addressing some conflict that had emerged in the Philippian congregation, which in many ways was an exemplary congregation. It's less conflict than we see in almost any other of the letters that Paul has, but they do have some conflict here.

That's our natural response when we're in challenging tense situations. The first thing is fight, and that's the stance that we take. That's the stance that we've been experiencing now for months and with some special intensity this last week as we, things have come to a head in the election. Whether we've been excited or disappointed or conflicted in the response, there's been a lot of going at it toe to toe.

That's something that also happens in young growing churches that face challenges and struggles like the Philippian church here. That's a problem that, again, as we face as a congregation, as we're dealing with growth and looking ahead at going to two services, maybe there's some conflict and things bubbling up there.

Probably used this in a previous sermon, but it reminds me of some very good wisdom that a South African Pentecostal leader shared with me when I was doing some research there. He said to me, problems of growth are preferable to problems of decline, but they're no less problems.

And as we face those problems, again, our natural response is to want to duke it out. That's especially true among leaders. That seems to be the situation that we have here in Philippians, and it's a situation that we're blessed here with Church of the Cross. We have many of you embody the things that you want to see in leaders. That leaders are often ready to take a stand, take that hill, make decisions, go at it, and we are full of convictions. That seems to have been the case here with two leaders in the Philippian church, Euodia and Syntyche. It's described there in verse 2.

I urge you, Euodia, I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Now, they're fellow workers with Paul in the gospel. They struggled with him for the work of the gospel, and anybody who's going to struggle in the work of the gospel is a strong leader, and so strong leaders can go at it. Paul knew a little bit about that. He had his own conflict with his co-worker Barnabas that almost undermined the mission of God. God redeemed it, but maybe he was thinking back to that and why he urges his loyal companion to mediate in that situation.

See, when we're tempted to go toe to toe and insist on my rights and that I'm right, Paul gives some other counsel there in verse 5. Look at that with me. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Now, gentleness doesn't bring out some of the full effect of that word there. When we think of gentleness, we think of sort of weakness, but this is a gentleness that flows out of strength, that works out of justice, the idea of equity, that you're working for what is right, and then working for what is right in not insisting on the rights of the letter of the law.

Think equity embodies what was in the email that Pastor Dave sent out after the election. Let me remind you of five things that were recommended in how we respond to the election. This is what equity is like. It's okay to feel crummy if your candidate lost. It's to be mindful of others' emotions. You might need a break from the Internet. We need to love those who voted differently from you and look for shared visions of justice.

That's that sense of gentleness with equity. Of course, we see that kind of gentle equity embodied most fully in Jesus in the way he dealt with a woman who was caught in adultery and he said, I don't condemn you. And he was willing to go on the cross for the offenses that we caused. That's why Paul, in verse two, in trying to work through this, he says, be of the same mind in the Lord and it's echoing back, if we remember back to chapter two, to have the same mind in you that it was in Christ Jesus who did not consider equality with God his rights to be something to be grasped but who emptied himself.

Paul is saying that instead of fighting it out toe to toe on the basis of our rights, believers are to take a stance that enables us to see things eye to eye, to focus on what Christ has done for us, not what other people have done to us. That's the implication of verse four. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say rejoice.

See worship repositions our feet to follow Christ. If we're looking eye to eye at the Lord, we can't be facing off toe to toe in fighting. That's true for us as we gather corporately to worship at the Lord's day, to come here to the Lord's table and receive the Eucharist. That orients us for the rest of the week to have a posture of Eucharist thanksgiving instead of looking for a fight.

Individually that comes through if you use this book at home, the Book of Common Prayer is not just for Sundays. There's daily prayer. There's family prayer. And in this book it provides prayers that again reorient us so that we are looking eye to eye together toward the Lord. They have wonderful prayers. Dave stole my illustration. But thankfully let me share it again because as I was dealing with my own anxiety and concern about this last week, I was so blessed by the colic that we had last week.

Grant us Lord not to be anxious and you hear the echoes here in Philippians 4. Grant us Lord not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavily. And even now as we live among things that are passing away to hold fast to those that endure. Or there's another colic for times of social conflict or distress. This O God the spirit of neighborliness among us, that in peril we may uphold one another, in suffering tend to one another, and in homelessness, loneliness, or exile befriend one another. Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another until the disciplines and testings of these days are ended. And you again give peace in our time through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

See worship, prayer, re-oriented our view of things to try and get the perspective of the Lord in whom we rejoice. In a similar vein in verse 8 Paul says, think about these things. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, and if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Paul is kind of riffing off what was a commonplace understanding of what virtues were in the ancient world. He actually gives us a model here that we can look at things around in our culture if we see them reflected in the image of Christ that we can affirm those. And it's a counterbalance to the overwhelming focus on whatever is false, whatever is dishonorable, whatever is unjust, whatever is unpleasing. If there's any unworthy of praise, post, publish, podcast, broadcast these things.

As that third counsel in the email Dave sent us, you may need a break from the internet. And then Paul goes on in verse 9 to say, keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me. And that's helpful to remember as we look at one of his other instructions here in verse 6. Do not worry about anything. Really after this week, do not worry about anything.

And then you remember where Paul was when he was writing this. He was in prison. He faced a very unjust system that was very likely going to keep him in prison or even execute him. And so when he says, do not worry about anything, I think we can take his advice and realize that we don't go at it toe to toe. We rejoice eye to eye and we pray need and need. That's his reminding when we go knee to knee that we can be anxious about nothing.

Now when Paul says to be anxious about nothing, it doesn't mean we're unconcerned about the world. We're not to hypnotize or tranquilize ourselves so that we don't recognize things that are anxious. But he is saying that focusing on those things actually makes things worse.

I found it ironic that I had to preach about this because I had a couple weeks where I've had a lot of things to be anxious about. It feels like as soon as I get one thing done, I get three more things that emerge out that are overwhelming me and causing me to think about, Lord, how can I get these things done? And of course, the more you worry about worry, the worse your worry gets. Because it's like not only do I have to worry about these things that I'm anxious about, but I'm now I'm anxious about that I'm anxious about things because God says don't be anxious about these things.

You see, the direct approach doesn't work. It's also not like don't worry, be happy. Instead, no, we have to find something to displace the worry and the anxiety that may rightfully be there. That there are things to be concerned about individually, congregationally, as a nation. And those things are prayer. Prayer is like water with fire instead of throwing more kindling on the fire.

Robert Rainey, one of my 19th century Scottish evangelicals, which is the area of my research, says the way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything. Or as Eugene Peterson translates verse six, let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayer.

There's nothing in our lives that is too great for God's power. Not the election, not the potential problems that could come in an ex-administration, not evidences wherever we might find them of cultural or national decline. Not the things that we may individually worry about, whether it's not getting everything done or failure or losing our jobs, not getting into the school that we wanted to get into. Of illness, of even death. Nothing. Nothing is too great for us to pray about and to remain in anxiety about.

But there's also the reality that there's nothing too small for God's fatherly care. If we're anxious about something, pray about it. God wants to hear it. I mean, when I think about when my children were little, I would listen, even though I knew there was nothing under the bed that was going to get them in the middle of the night that they were anxious about.

In the same way, how much more will our Heavenly Father willingly listen to the things that may keep us up at night? Peace is the fruit that grows out of this kind of believing prayer about things great and small, verse 7. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. God will not always change the circumstances that may be causing our anxiety. But God will change the inner attitude of our hearts and minds so that we won't be anxious about those circumstances.

Paul paints a word picture here that would have been very familiar to the Philippians. Philippi was largely a place where soldiers were retired. And watching over Philippi as most of the people that had been part of this guard that were deployed at different cities to watch over attacks. So this detachment would stand guard over it and protect it from intruders.

And how did the Roman garrison repel these attacks? Well, it wasn't like each soldier say, okay, I'm going to go do it. Okay, I'm back. Now you go. No, when they talked about standing firm that they would march side by side, shoulder to shoulder, that was the power of the Roman army was that they were united.

And it's the same way for us as we face the things we're most anxious about. All the pronouns and verbs here in this passage are plural. This promise of God's peace that will guard us is often appropriated individually, but it's only fully realized corporately. It's only when each of us takes the right stance together as a congregation, not fighting toe to toe, but standing, and rejoicing eye to eye, praying knee to knee, that we will experience that God-given peace, that guard of our hearts and our minds, so that we fully experience God's peace in its fullest sense of God's shalom.

Now it's easy to lose that sense of peace, to worry about the challenges that we face individually as a congregation, as a country. How fast will we be able to overcome those worries? Only as fast as we go on our knees, because it's not fighting toe to toe, but rejoicing eye to eye, praying knee to knee, that we will experience God-given peace. So we say with Paul, 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. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

11.3.24 (John 14:1-11) First Things First Sundays: the Father Almighty (Dave Friedrich)

Exodus 33:18-23

Psalm 27:1-5; 8; 13-14

Ephesians 1:3-6

John 14:1-11

We heard, don't let your hearts be troubled. If you see Jesus, you see the Father. This weekend we've been trying to untrouble our hearts, so to speak, by fixing our eyes on the risen Jesus. So we're going to continue to do that this morning, but from a different angle. And I just want to say, yeah, this has been an awesome weekend. Unlike Ryan, I'm an extrovert, so I'm just getting ready to go.

But I love being in God's creation with God's people gathering around the table, especially fixing our eyes on the Lord. And it's a beautiful time. I actually got a sweet spot, Kate. I don't know if she's here, but she told me about the lifeguard tower down there by the water. I was just walking through there this morning, and I got up there and just saw the sun breaking and over the trees, onto the water glistening. I could be here all week, easy. But we've got to go home, and we've got to get back to the sermon.

So, where are we? Don't let your hearts be troubled. If you see me, you see the Father. This is from our Gospel of John reading, and these words are meant to assure us that when we see Jesus healing, forgiving, raising people from the dead, telling them good news, how to live the good life, we are in fact seeing and hearing the invisible God.

Today, we're going to explore this truth through three essential items that are going to guide our journey, not just for the sermon, but for our lives. I don't know if any of you have ever seen the reality TV show Alone. Does anybody seen that in here? It's a good show. Our family loves this show. In this show, there's ten people who have to choose amongst a number of items, ten essential items they think is going to help them as they go out to endure isolation, each of them is alone, in some very difficult wilderness situation. And the goal is to be the last one remaining, standing, living out there.

Well, this morning, we're just going to get three essential items. But as we see, I think they're going to be more than enough.

The first one, the first item is light. Light for the journey. And this is a unique light. It's Jesus Himself. As the creed puts it, He is light from light, who reveals the Father, who makes...who much like visible light helps us see the invisible light of the Son that comes from the Son.

The second essential item is our ultimate destination, the house of the Father. So we're going to see how Jesus offers us a glimpse of our future home with Him and the Father, showing us our ultimate destination is the Father He reveals.

Our third essential item is the way to this ultimate destination. So we're going to see how Jesus responds to Thomas and to Philip and invites us to know Him and trust Him as the way to the Father, as in fact the truth and the life of the Father in our flesh and blood.

That's where we're going. First light.

So I'm about to use some physics to illustrate some...Pete got his arms up back there...some physics to illustrate some dense theology. And I checked actually with John Zuhone, our own John Zuhone who's an astrophysicist, and asked him, hey, is anything off in this illustration physics-wise? And he said, nope, not at all. So I feel pretty pleased. I got my physics down.

So think of it like this. If you see light, you're seeing the sun. That's simple enough. So light shining through a window like we have around here, especially in the back, and it's casting itself in on the floor, or we see light coming in over the trees and hitting the water and glistening. We are seeing the sun. And that's simple enough. But did you know that there are parts of the light of the sun that we can't see that are invisible to humans?

So deep at the core in the sun of the sun, light begins with these incredibly powerful gamma rays. And you know this. And these rays carry immense energy, but they're invisible to us. And they're so powerful, they're so intense that we can't withstand them. They're actually...they would destroy us. So we can't see them and live. Someone to our Old Testament reading.

So these rays, they take a long journey. This is really fascinating. Sometimes thousands of years for these rays to get out, they start bouncing around inside the sun, being absorbed and re-emitted, countless times being transformed until they eventually escape the surface of the sun, being transformed. And when they do that and they finally get here, they come to us in a visible form, invisible light, that we can see.

So here's the key. Whether it's visible or invisible light, light is of the same essence in its core. And justingly enough. And in the Bible, God is called light. God is light. And the Nicene Creed, as we heard, calls Jesus, God from God, light from light. So maybe you're seeing the connections here.

So just as visible light reveals the same essence as the powerful light that began at the sun's core, Jesus reveals the same essence as the Father. They share the same essence. And the Father is always like those immense, intense, powerful gamma rays of the sun's core that we can't see. And Jesus is like the light that has journeyed to us, right? After thousands of years of promises and has transformed into our own flesh and the rest to see and behold.

Now, of course, like all analogies, this one's eventually going to break down somewhere. And I haven't really figured that out yet, but maybe some of you can, but it does help us to understand that when we're looking at Jesus, we're not looking at a different God. Same God. We're seeing the same divine light that originates with the Father, but in a way that we can grasp and live by and receive.

In the words of John, the beginning of the gospel of his gospel, he says, no one has ever seen God. It's the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father's heart who has made him known. And our own flesh and blood, God from God, light from light. So don't let your hearts be troubled. If you see the light of the Son, you see the Father.

So this is part of what we're exploring today in our first things, first Sunday's series that Ryan mentioned earlier. We're looking at these Bible passages that underpin, relate to these different phrases of the Nicene Creed, this declaration of Christian faith that summarizes the good news of who God is, what he's done, what he's doing, and what he will do. It's all good news. Today we're focusing on that phrase, we believe in the Father Almighty. That's today's focus. And to do that, we're going to be diving into John 14, what we heard this morning that shows, or that we see Jesus revealing the very heart of the Father in himself.

We can go to the next screen. There we go. Last time Ryan showed us this helpful format of the Nicene Creed. So you can see there at the top, we believe in one God in three persons. So on the left column you have the Father, in the middle column you have things about Jesus, in the far right column you have the Holy Spirit, one God, three persons. What you also notice here is the Father only gets a few lines. And that's because what we see in the middle column of Jesus, what's revealed there of Jesus is in fact a revelation of the Father on the left column. Jesus is God from God, light from light. Everything we're seeing there in the middle is describing also the Father.

We can go to the next screen. We can stay there for the rest for a time. So let's just address something right off the bat with this word, Father. It's a loaded term for many of us, right? As thinkers like Froerbach and people like Freud have helped us to see what we do is we tend to project the deficiencies of our earthly fathers onto that name. Also, it's true that the name Father doesn't mean God the Father is a male. And so some people have suggested or are calling us to replace the word Father with a more neutral term like Creator or Source.

I would say before we do that, why don't we look at what did Jesus mean by that word? I think this is difficult for those of us who have had really painfully deficient, defective fathers, but I think just because of that, this part, this thing that Jesus can do for us can make the gospel so much special, so much more meaningful in this area. Holy Spirit can heal us here. Holy Spirit can take us from what we mean and feel and think about that word to what Jesus means and thinks and feels about that word.

And I think when we do that with not just this passage in the gospels, but when we do that throughout the gospels, we're going to understand why the hymn writer Faber said this, Father, the sweetest dearest name that men or angels know. And when we do that, we're going to want to affirm the creed even more when we come to, I believe, in the Father Almighty.

So let's look at the passage a little more closely. And it starts with a command. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Recently I've been focusing on the commandments in the gospels. I've been trying to circle them all, memorize them, give myself to following each of them, based on what Jesus says in the Great Commission. What we were looking at yesterday, go and make people, disciples, my apprentices, teaching them to obey all my commandments. So I come to this passage and I circle, where's the commandment? There's really only one. It's right at the beginning. Don't let your hearts be troubled.

That's a hard one. Our hearts are so easily troubled by so many things Jesus himself said, in this world you will have trouble. Of course he has a lot to say after that too. But he says, don't worry about your life. It's a hard one. He says, do not fear. We heard yesterday, we looked at yesterday. These are hard ones to follow. We need a lot of grace, a lot of revelation to help us do that.

Now in the context of this passage, Jesus had just started talking about his departure in the previous passage, which confused the disciples and also understand, got them anxious and nervous. And so he is of course addressing that anxiety about his departure. But I think he's addressing more than that particular anxiety, which becomes clear as we look at the rest of the passage.

The fuller commandment is this, don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe God. Believe also in me. This is the crux of the passage. The way to an untroubled heart is to trust God by trusting Jesus. More specifically by trusting what Jesus said, if you see me, you're seeing the Father.

So we're coming now to the second essential item, our ultimate destination, the Father's house. As we continue in the passage, Jesus offers his disciples a glimpse of what this truth, if you see me, you see the Father, looks like for their future.

So yesterday we talked about how anxiety is looking into the future and anticipating something terrible. Hope is looking into the future and anticipating something joyful. Even anticipating something joyful out of the terrible things that are still going to come.

In what Jesus says here is definitely on the hope end of things. He says in his Father's house that very place that saturated with the Father's presence, that he says there there are many dwellings. And he's going there to prepare a place for his disciples, for you and me. So that when we look into the future, we again see Jesus. And what is he doing? He's preparing a place. He's preparing our eternal home in the home of his Father, in his home too, so that what we would be with him. And he would be with us.

And he doesn't leave us, leave it up to us to try and figure it out how to get there. He promises to come and get us and bring him there himself. So he's got the place, he's got the journey and the way to get there all worked out. Nothing to worry about for us. But the thing that should come and assure our hearts most of all is that our ultimate destination is the place, is the house of the one Jesus so beautifully reveals. That should come as assure us. Settle our hearts. If you see the light of Jesus, you see your ultimate destination.

Now we come to the third and final essential item, the way, to our ultimate destination. Jesus says to them, he says, you know the way. And Thomas is like, we don't even know where you're going. How do we know the way?

And Jesus responds with one of the most evocative statements in Scripture. I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Implicitly, Jesus is saying that in knowing Jesus, we are already being drawn into the Father's very heart and presence. That everything we're searching for in the Father is already found in Him. It's not somewhere far away. It's not some long journey right there in Him.

When Jesus adds, if you know me, you will know my Father also. And from now on, you do know Him and have seen Him. He's showing that He's not just pointing the way, right? He is the living, breathing way into the Father's presence. If you see Jesus, you see the way to the Father. You see the truth and the life of the Father in Him, in our flesh and blood.

But Philip isn't quite getting it. So he says, Lord, how about you just show us the Father and that will be enough. We'll be satisfied and then we can go home and call it a day.

And in some ways, on the one hand, Philip was right. If we see the Father, that will be enough. We will be satisfied. He just didn't get, he just didn't know that that was what Jesus was doing the whole time with them. From the first day until this day, every word of forgiveness, every healing, every look, every touch was a revelation of the one He called the Father.

That needs to sink down deep inside of us and calm our hearts, assure our hearts, our trembling hearts. So Jesus responds with a gentle rebuke to Philip. He says, Philip, have I been with you all this time? Still you don't know me. You know me. And here it is. If you see me, you see the Father.

Philip hasn't realized everything he's been searching for in the Father isn't again somewhere way out there. It's standing there right before Him. There's no unknown God way behind the back of Jesus. Everything about the Father is revealed through Him.

Well then Jesus goes further and He says, I am in the Father and the Father is in me, which is more than some close connection. This is mutual indwelling, the Father and the Son. So every word that Jesus speaks, every act of healing, every sign and miracle, it's the Father's love and compassion and power flowing in and through Him.

Jesus says the words that I say to you, I don't speak on my own. But what the Father who dwells in me, it's Him who's doing the work, this work. So it's here that phrase, like Father like Son, comes to life in the fullest way.

This whole passage, Jesus, He's just drawing His disciples into deeper and deeper trust to Him. Answering their hearts, urging to show them everything they need to know about the Father is right there in Him. The Father's hearts, His heart, His words, His works are all alive and visible in Jesus.

So Philip's longing to see the Father is met with the answer. Look at me, Philip, and see the Father and be satisfied.

I'm going to illustrate or finish with one story from Thomas Torrance, one of the greatest theologians of the last century. Johnson Rutledge studied under one of the torrents. There's a whole torrents family and dynasty of theologians. It's amazing.

Back in the day when he was younger, he was a chaplain during World War II. And he shares this story in this book, Preaching Christ. It's one of his more accessible books. This book has really shaped me and formed me in many ways. And there's a story in here that has stayed with me for a long time.

And in this story, he shares about when he was this chaplain. And in certain contexts and geographies, chaplains are called Padres, which is important for this story.

So this is what he writes. During those years, what imprinted itself upon my mind above all was the discovery of the deepest cry of the human heart. Is God really like Jesus? Maybe that's our question. Good morning.

He goes on, he says, this came home to me very sharply one day. On a battlefield in Italy. When a fearfully wounded young... Sorry, I didn't know it was going to move me so much. When a young man, he was only 19, he had about half an hour to live. So I'm just thinking of all the people in war right now. And he said to me, Padre, is God really like Jesus?

And I assured him, as he lay there on the ground with his life, ebbing away, that God is indeed really like Jesus. And that there's no unknown God behind the back of Jesus for us to fear, to see the Lord Jesus is to see the face of God himself.

So don't let your hearts be troubled. If you see Jesus, you see the Father, and you will be satisfied. May it be so.

11.2.24 - Parish Retreat (Matthew 28:1-20) Seeing Jesus: Relieving our Fears, Renewing our Lives (Dave Friedrich)

So what this was, for those of you who know different practices of prayer, this was an Ignatian, a modified version of Ignatian prayer, imaginative prayer, these first two guided readings.

So one of the things we want to do on a retreat like this is to help us learn how to pray in different ways, maybe then we're used to in ways that can be helpful to bring in the scripture to let scripture fill us and form us because that doesn't just happen. That doesn't just happen. That has to, we have to practice that. We have to have some kind of practice of taking in scripture and letting it fill us in our imaginations and form us and change us and help us to see Jesus. This is how we do it. This is how we see with the eyes of faith.

So that's what this was about. Now we did this actually at Synod. Last year Synod is our diocese yearly gathering, which is coming up next week. A bunch of us are going back. So we did this together. So that is actually what we're going to do next. What we're going to do is we're going to imagine this scene together with, again, the eyes of faith. So it may help you to close your physical eyes.

So what we're going to do is we're going to enter into silence again. And then I'm going to walk us through this scene. It's going to take about 10 minutes. We're going to take our time. And then we're going to enter into silence again into prayerful reflection and contemplation as to what comes up. And then I'm going to share some things after that, especially focusing in on this last thing that Jesus says.

So let's enter into silence. Consider closing your eyes. And Lord, as we do, enlighten the eyes of our hearts.

It's early morning. The first light is breaking over Jerusalem's rocky hills. The air is cool and carries a faint smelt of lingering spices. Two women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, are walking to the tomb to anoint the lifeless body of Jesus. They carry not only spices, but also a mixture of grief and love, holding memories of his voice, his words, his healing touch. And all they expect to find now is the cold, immovable stone sealing the tomb. And behind it, the body of their beloved friend, cold in death. He was gone and along with him all their hopes.

But suddenly, the ground begins to shake. An earthquake is shattering the silence, scattering dust and stones. A brilliant figure descends dazzling like lightning, his clothes blindingly white, like snow under the sun, the guards, paralyzed with terror, collapse, unable to withstand the sight.

For the women the scene is overwhelming, the stone has been rolled away, and this radiant figure now sits upon it. In an instant, their grief transforms into shock and fear. And the angel addresses that fear. With a message from heaven, his first words, do not be afraid. They are followed by a message that turns fear into joy, into unshakable hope. He acknowledges what has brought them here, their devotion to the one they saw crucified, the one they mourn. But now he invites them into entirely new reality.

He is not here. He has risen, just as he said. In that moment, their worst fears have been overturned. The empty tomb isn't an absence. It's a declaration of life. Their resurrection life. Their friend has risen from the dead.

The angel then urges them to see for themselves, to step closer and behold the proof that death has not held him. And just as quickly he sends them on a mission, go quickly and tell his disciples. The angel's words and the empty tomb have given them new, unimaginable hope, joy, purpose. They must tell the disciples for they are the first witnesses of what will reshape their lives and the world.

So they run. Their hearts pounding with a new mixture of emotions, lingering fear and unexpected joy. They run, trying to catch their breath, the angel's words daring them to believe, moving them to hope to rejoice with great joy that Jesus is alive. Suddenly, they're stopped in their tracks. Jesus himself stands before them and greets them with a single familiar word, one that seems almost too simple for such a moment. Greetings. Yet with this word, their lingering fear and doubt begin to dissolve. They fall to the ground, clasping his feet. The very feet once wrapped in burial cloths, now warm and alive. And they worship him, filled with awe, trembling with joy.

When they hear his voice again, repeating the words they've already heard, do not be afraid. But now, with the authority, insurance of the risen Lord himself. The one who died for every sin, their sin. The one who overcame death, their death, do not be afraid. Words from the risen Lord, words to receive, to fill and calm our trembling hearts.

Jesus confirms the message of the angel and expands their mission, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me. They are now responsible not only to tell the disciples about the empty tomb and resurrection, but where to encounter the risen Lord themselves. The mountain where he will relieve their fears and renew their lives. And meeting that will become the great and glorious commission of the church, the women go. And then the disciples go. Like Moses who went to the mountain to meet God, shrouded in the cloud to receive his commandments, the eleven go to Galilee, to the mountain, to meet the risen Jesus, to receive his new commandments, yet not in the cloud, but in the clear light of day, face to face with a manual. God with us, God is one of us, risen from the dead.

They go and they see him alive. And like the women, they worship him, and yet doubt lingers among them. Jesus draws near and declares, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. In this moment, he reveals a truth that should reveal, relieve many fears. The one who has been put in charge of everything, the one who determines how it will all turn out in the end, the one who can change anything in the present, is the one who is the brightest spot in human history. The one who heals the sick, justifies the ungodly and raises the dead, the one who humbled himself to the point of death, death on a cross, just to forgive us, to save us, renew us. He is in charge.

He tells the disciples not to step aside, but like the women, to go, to every kind of people with great purpose, to help them become his apprentices, to immerse them in the name, to try you name, to train them to do everything he told them to do, the way every life is renewed. And as he sends him, sends them, he promises to be with them, every day, every step, until the end. So the end they're going, he will be with them, and they will be following him. To be with him is to be relieved of every fear. To follow him is to be renewed in all things.

Center into silence, and prayerfully consider these things. If you have your eyes closed, you can open them down.

So a passage where we see the risen Jesus, relieving fears, renewing lives with new hope, new joy, new purpose. And hopefully that reminds us of times the Lord has done that for us. And the way that reminds us to come to Jesus again with current fears, concerns we have, to be relieved again, to be renewed again.

And maybe those current fears relate with things about to happen, who's going to be elected, what's going to come next? Maybe their fears around change, going to two services. Other ordinary fears, fears about our health, fears about suffering, fears about death, fears of being alone. There's all kinds of fears we can be coming with that we need to come again and again to Jesus to address, to have him relieve, to reassure us.

I think as we do this, it's important to think about what is fear. What is anxiety? We feel it. How often do we think about what is it exactly? We're doing. It's happening when that happens. Here's a short and simple definition. Fear anxiety is anticipating something terrible. It's a forward-looking, future-oriented emotion. We're looking into the future and we're seeing something that's threatening something or someone we love. And we are afraid that we don't have what it takes to overcome that threat by ourselves. And we're either alone or we're with people who just aren't able to handle and overcome that threat with us and for us. That's at the heart of what's going on with fear and anxiety.

Hope on the other hand is the opposite. Unlike anxiety looking into the future, anticipating something terrible, hope is looking into the future and anticipating something joyful. And Christian hope is looking into the future and seeing the most hopeful thing of all, the risen face of Jesus Christ. And seeing Him there not just as a static statue, but doing stuff. Leading and renewing everything and everyone. We're looking into the future and we're seeing Him with us, eventually overcoming everything that troubles us. Seeing Him renew us in His joyful way. As He can. As He is the one who's been given all authority, all power in heaven and on earth. He's also the one who has already overcome the world. Hope is looking into the future and seeing that.

I think it's important to recognize and name. In this age, I don't think we will ever fully extinguish fear and doubt from our lives. We see it lingering there in the women. The fear is lingering there with them. The doubt is even lingering with the disciples when they see Him face to face. We may not fully extinguish that, but we can grow in joyful hope. That can be more and more the reality of our lives.

And while we don't see Him physically face to face like the disciples did on the mountain, we still do see Him in a very real way with the eyes of faith, with our imaginations and our lives filled with scripture, immersed in scripture, scripture that fills us in our imaginations. That's why this Ignatian practice is such a good one. It's a way to help us grow in our vision of Jesus, that hopeful vision of Jesus. Not just for the future of what's coming, but also in the present and how He meets us in times of prayer.

So again, that's something we wanted to offer you as you come in your solo time, but this is something to consider incorporating into your prayer. And what we did here was actually offer you two versions of praying. So the first version was Ignatian prayer, those are the two guided readings. The third guided prayer was another version of prayer. There's a modified version of what's been called the Immanuel approach to prayer.

This approach is taking Jesus at His word when He said, I will be with you. Every step, every day, actually, I will be with you all the days as the Greek. Taking Him at His word there, praying in light of that, that He is Immanuel, that He is in fact present right here, right now, and praying accordingly. So this prayer was, I don't know, invented. It's not really a new prayer, but it was really crystallized with this guy named Carl Lehman. He's a clinical psychologist. He's got like 35, over 35 years of experience as a clinical psychologist.

But what he wanted to do was integrate insights he learned from psychology and neuroscience, and most of all, his Christian faith and this basic truth that Jesus is with us. So originally it was for people who have traumatic debilitating memories that they are afraid to go to. But really it's something that can be adapted and used for less intense fears in our lives. So I was going to get Jeff Banks to come and share about it because he's the one who told me about this and was where I first heard about it and it's had a big influence in the university and well beyond the university.

It's something that's been really powerful in people's lives because it's very simple. Because you're just remembering that Jesus is present and you're praying along those lines and it's mostly just relying on the real presence and ministry of Jesus. It's a beautiful thing that makes everything easier and lighter and wonderful. So this is how it works.

It was basically what you did in your solo time. But you start with a good positive memory of Jesus being present to you and ministering to you. It could be a recent thing. It could be something away from a long time ago. And you just spend some time remembering that and thanking Jesus for that. And what that does is it awakens that relational part of us, that connecting part, both in our spirits but also cognitively in our minds.

And what it does therefore is it helps us become more aware of Jesus' current presence with us. Wakens us to that. What it also does is it creates a secure and safe place from which to tend to other scarier things in our lives. It's got some overlap with attachment theory. But what you're doing here is you're getting a stronger emotional attachment to Jesus in your relationship with Him so that therefore from that safe secure place you can go to scary things in your lives and you're going there more aware that Jesus is with you.

And you're praying, Jesus, help me tend to this. Help me see minister to me with this fear I have. It's not something you're meant to force Jesus to do or you're just their attentive to see how He may be present to you and minister to you. And for some people they have experienced dramatic emotional healings. Sometimes it's more subtle. You're just reminded of the truth of Scripture of who Jesus is, who you are in Him, why you don't need to fear so much, why you can trust, why you can hope.

I have found that in my care times as I practice this. This teaching though it reminds me of, or this approach reminds me of a teaching you find in the charismatic tradition. If you spend any time in that tradition they draw on Psalm 100. I will enter his gates with giving. And his courts with praise. Right and there's a sense not only that that's the appropriate thing to do when you come into God's presence.

That's how we start. That's what our morning liturgy is all about. It's the great thanksgiving. But also in thanking God it enables us to be more aware of his presence. We're awakened it to it more. So there's some overlap here in this approach with the charismatic tradition. There's also an overlap here, similarities with the contemplative tradition that I've spent some time in as well. Where you either in personal contemplation or in spiritual direction you're beholding how Jesus has been present to you in your life, how he is currently present to you in your life and how are you responding to that.

So there's a potential here for like a blend of contemplative and charismatic what people are now there's new descriptions of the contemplative charismatic which I'm drawn to. I mean I have had some discussions along these lines and I think this is an approach that fits our church I think that could really work in our church. But regardless of how we call it or what we understand it it's really just coming back to this Jesus is with us. That's a real thing. Taking him at his word.

So I've incorporated this into my prayers and sometimes just the first five minutes if I'm on a prayer walk in our neighborhood or if I'm riding my bike into the office or sometimes when I'm sitting down with someone in a pastoral meeting I'll just start with the first five ten minutes. Thank you Jesus for this promise. Thank you that you are faithful to this promise. Then I just spend a few minutes just thinking of a recent beautiful time with Jesus. And then from there I go to some fearful thing I'm dealing with and there's usually every week some fearful thing to deal with. And same with the other person who I'm with up I'm praying with them and they give them a chance to do that.

And it just makes everything so much easier and later and I find I am just more aware of Jesus throughout my day and in that meeting because Jesus really is present. Jesus really ministers to us. Jesus really relieves our fears and renews our lives when we come to him and take him seriously. So I offer that to you as something potentially to become part of your prayer life. I highly recommend it.

10.27.24 (Philippians 3:1-16) Philippians: No Confidence in the Flesh (Garrett Rice)

Isaiah 59:9-20
Psalm 13
Philippians 3:1-16
Mark 10:46-52

A few years ago, my wife, Shayna, and I and my parents stayed for a weekend in Palm Springs, California. And if you're unfamiliar with Palm Springs, it's a small resort city in the middle of the Southern California desert. And Palm Springs is by no means the hottest city in the world, but it holds its own. Much of the year, it's over 100 degrees. In fact, just this last October 1st, it broke a record for the hottest recorded day ever in October for the whole United States, a balmy 117 degrees Fahrenheit. So congratulations to them.

The town is your typical tourist town in the middle of a desert. It's full of hotels and Airbnbs with giant pools and nightclubs and resorts and water parks and a ton of high-quality restaurants all surrounded by the barren wasteland that is the Sonoran Desert. But my absolute favorite thing about Palm Springs is this thing called the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. It's a cable car gondola that takes you up the side of a mountain. Just above the desert, it starts just above the desert floor and heads over 8,000 feet above sea level up to near the top of the nearby San Jacinto peak. And it only takes about 12 minutes to get there.

Up at 8,000 feet, the entire world feels and looks different. The contrast is so drastic. You know, just 12 minutes ago, you were on the desert floor that is barren and dead. Now you find yourself in this vibrant alpine forest. You know, sitting in the valley below roasting in the sun, you would never know that there was this beautiful forest just 12 minutes away from you. With all the glitz and glam of Palm Springs, you might never even feel the need to travel to the tramway and head up to the mountain and see this beautiful forest that's hiding from you. You can have a perfectly great weekend eating at all the restaurants and laying by the pool and just taking in all the leisure. There's so much to do and see in the town. Why would you ever want to take the tram to the top of the mountain?

Desert cities are these interesting things to me. Through the pure willpower of the human spirit, we are able to turn a desert wasteland into a thriving metropolis. So much so that often when you are in these cities, it's easy to forget — if it wasn't for the scorching heat — that you were actually in a desert. Desert cities, they give me this kind of strange feeling though. Something's off, something's amiss. They're beautiful and they're often fun, but they always seem to be the thing that should not be. Their very existence seems to stand on a razor's edge. I think there's a bit of hubris involved in building a city in the middle of a desert, especially in a place like California, which is prone to droughts. Places like Palm Springs always seem to run the risk of flying a little too close to the sun.

We, as humans, we're often so confident in our abilities and in our standings and in our accomplishments that we become convinced that it's those abilities and those standings and those accomplishments that are the source of our salvation. It is through them we are spared from the harshness and the cruelty of the desert. Such is the situation to which Paul speaks in our passage today.

Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3 verse 2 through 7, "Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evil-doers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ."

A frequent obstacle that Paul faces throughout his ministry was a number of these rival groups that were traveling around, causing all sorts of division and confusion in the churches that Paul would plant. One of these groups, probably, was a group of Jewish Christians who were convinced that these Gentiles, these non-Jewish people, if they were to join the Christian faith, actually needed to do so as Jews. They needed to observe the Levitical law, they needed to eat the kosher diet, and most importantly, the males needed to be circumcised. In their understanding, righteousness comes through strict adherence to the Torah, to the Jewish law. This caused all sorts of confusion in Paul's churches because the gospel that he had presented to them was focused on a righteousness that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.

In Paul's mind, Christ was saving all the Gentiles as Gentiles. He wasn't calling them to take on the Jewish law, the Jewish customs. They were able to keep and maintain their ethnic and cultural identities, with some changes of course, but because they were justified before God through Jesus, and not by any adherence to the law. So often did this confusion arise that Paul feels it necessary here in Philippians to warn the Philippians of what he has been coming across, that there are these groups of false teachers going around and claiming to them that Jesus is not enough.

Paul's problem with these opponents is that they placed too much confidence in their own flesh. They put way too much stock in human standards. They believe their status and their accomplishments will lead to their salvation. On the contrary, Paul says, we put no confidence in the flesh. And to prove it, Paul demonstrates why he, by his opponent's standards, should actually have a lot of confidence, even more confidence than them. By his opponent's standards, he's actually perfect. He checks all the marks. But by both birthright and by merit, he should have total confidence in the flesh, and yet he has none. In fact, Paul says, "I consider all these things a loss." Even more, he calls them garbage.

He continues on, he says, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I might know him in the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death; that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

What makes these things rubbish? What makes them a net loss for him? By all accounts, these should be a gain for him. The problem for Paul is that these things give people a misplaced confidence. They give people a false sense of security. They run the risk of not only tricking others into thinking that they've achieved some level of righteousness, but more importantly, these human standards have a way of tricking ourselves into thinking we have received the prize of salvation — that is, the resurrection of the dead.

Now in our day and age, I don't think we so easily, explicitly draw a connection between our heritage or our accomplishments or our merits and our eternal salvation. Some do, but I feel maybe in a Christian context you might not so easily draw that connection. I imagine most here would say they don't believe that our nationalities or our degrees or our job titles allow us to receive the prize that is the resurrection of the dead. Yet every single one of us, at the same time, relies on these things for our own security in the here and now, in this life. And in a way, these things are in fact our salvation. Our confidence in them keeps us from feeling any sort of anxiety over the worries of life. They give us a measure of meaning and purpose in a world where we are constantly faced with existential threats, where life often feels meaningless, where death is knocking at our door.

They are the comforts and the services of the city that keep us from remembering that we in fact live in a desert. And therein lies the danger of them. And this is why Paul considers these sorts of things a loss. They fool us into thinking we have achieved true meaning, true purpose, true salvation. It's not that they just lessen our anxiety about the worries of life. It's that they convince us that there's nothing to worry about at all. This is why Paul calls these things garbage. In our translation today, it uses the word "rubbish," and to be honest, that is a far, far too polite translation of what Paul is saying. The word in Greek has so much more crude meaning than "rubbish," right? It's junk, it's sewage, it's crap — I’ll stop there. This is church.

The thrust is we have no use for these things. They're useless to us, they mean nothing, and therefore they must be gotten rid of. This is something you need to eliminate from your life. Because here's the thing: if you have a pile of garbage lying around or a bucket of sewage lying around, it actually can start harming you if it lingers around. You need to get rid of it. And this can be a hard pill to swallow for many of us, because we have worked so hard to get where we are at today. We have given blood and sweat and tears to build our little city in the desert.

Now this isn't saying we all need to quit our jobs and tear up our degrees and sell everything we have and give it to the poor. But it is to say, we should truly recognize how unimportant these things are when it comes to our salvation. And more importantly, how easily these things get in the way of us truly knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection. These things are human standards. In our culture, they set goals for us, and we have to achieve a certain level of wealth, of knowledge, of power to procure security. But these human standards ultimately, they cannot keep the sands of the desert from encroaching on our cities. And so, for Paul, they're a loss. And they must be a loss for us to gain Christ, so that we may be found in Him, not by our own righteousness, not from a righteousness that comes from our accomplishments or our heritage or our merits, but by the righteousness that comes from God — the righteousness that can only be achieved when we place our faith in Christ Jesus.

See, righteousness is actually, it's not something you do. This is a state of being. It's something we are. It's something we become. It is a standing. And we can do nothing to earn that standing, nor can we receive it from other people. It's a standing that only one can give us: God Himself. It's the standing that says you are right before God. It's the standing that says, though this world is rife with worries and sorrows, though life seems entirely meaningless, though death comes for us all, there is still hope for those who are righteous in God. And that hope is the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, the hope that death does not render this life ultimately meaningless and pointless, because there is life found after death. But that standing and the hopes that come along with it, they don't come from within ourselves or from those around us, but through Christ Himself, in whom we place our faith, in our hope, in our trust.

It’s He who gives us confidence, not ourselves. Yet this confidence we have in Christ is different from the confidence that we might gain in the flesh, in our own works. In this passage, Paul makes it clear that he has actually achieved nothing. His confidence in Christ is more of a journey than a destination. He hasn’t attained that destination yet, and he is on the road. He says this: "Not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus."

Confidence in human standards can make us complacent. These human standards have goals that are set by our society, and our confidence is determined by whether or not we have achieved those goals. We made a lot of money, so we are wealthy. We earned a PhD, so we're intelligent. We built a company, so we're savvy. We found a way into a position of authority, and so we are powerful. But certainly, if we've achieved those things, we're not going to just sit idly by and do nothing. We're going to go and seek more wealth, and more knowledge, and more savviness, and more power. But the thing we will not seek is more confidence. We're not seeking it because we've already attained it. We're already confident in our own salvation. I am wealthy. I am intelligent. I am powerful. Of course, I would be saved.

Such was the problem of relying on righteousness according to the law in Paul's day. If someone is blameless before the law, there's no incentive for growth or change. One can confidently say to themselves, I've kept the law since my youth. Why wouldn't God consider me righteous? I have done enough. But we sit complacent, convinced of our own safety and our own security, completely unaware, or maybe even unwilling to admit it, that the city we built deep within the desert is teetering on the brink of destruction. One day, the water will dry up, and the cruelty of the desert will overtake us.

But the confidence found in the Lord, it's quite different. It's dynamic. It's moving. It never claims to have arrived on this side of heaven. It never says, "I have done enough." But instead, it says, "Christ is enough. Make me like Christ." It is a confidence that knows that our righteousness is not something that can be achieved. And because it's not something we can achieve, we are not tempted with stagnation or complacency, fooling ourselves into thinking that we have arrived at our goal. But instead, it is a righteousness that is given to us by God. And in that, it becomes a calling to live into that righteousness.

It calls us to put behind us our human standards, to forget them, to strive toward the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. It is here that God is calling us out of our desert cities, the testament to our own abilities, our own intelligence, our own power, our own will. And He calls us upwards, heavenward, to the mountain, that alpine forest that speaks not to man's own ingenuity and cleverness, but solely of God's power and majesty.

It's hard to leave that city in which we've built. How can we survive in a forest? The city is tame and controlled. The forest is wild and unpredictable. How can we leave behind all that we have worked for and done and come to a place where our efforts and striving mean nothing? This was the dilemma that faced Henry Nouwen. Many of you might be familiar with him, but for those that aren't, Henry was a brilliant Christian thinker and a Catholic priest, and he enjoyed a successful and prestigious academic career, spending nearly 20 years teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. But perhaps what Henry became best known for is leaving the academy and spending the last 10 years of his life with an organization called L'Arche, an organization that seeks to create communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live side by side.

And Henry in his later years reflected much on this move in his life, and he writes this: he says, “The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people was that their liking or disliking of me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then. Since nobody could read my books, the books could not impress anyone. Since most of them never went to school, my 20 years at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard did not provide a significant introduction. My considerable ecumenical experience proved even less valuable. Not being able to use any of the skills that proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. The experience was, and in his many ways, still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity. These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self. The self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things, and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and to give love regardless of any accomplishments.”

Henry Nouwen, he left the confines of the desert city, and he took that upward call to the mountaintop forest. He was wracked with anxiety and frustration while he did it. But notice what he said: his experience in a place where his only confidence could be in Christ, not in anything he had ever done. That is in which he discovers his true identity, who he really is, his true standing before God as a beloved son.

There's much, much to lose by moving out of the desert city. But there's so much more to be gained. When we leave behind our own confidences, our own assurances, our own prestige and accomplishments, we find Christ there. And where Christ is, we find life. True life. A lush forest of life that contrasts so deeply with the dead and barren desert below.

Perhaps God is not calling you to do something as drastic as Henry. Maybe the call is not to quit your job and head into uncharted territory. Maybe it is. But regardless, the upward call is always to leave our confidence behind. To stop convincing ourselves that our meaning, our purpose, our salvation is wrapped up in what we do or who we are, but that our hope, our salvation is in what God is doing in us through Christ Jesus.

So therefore, let us press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us leave behind all that which would deceive us into thinking we've already reached that goal. Let us leave it in the past, strain towards what is ahead. Let us put no confidence in the flesh. And most of all, let us hold true to what we have already attained. The love of Christ in which He died for us so that we might attain the resurrection of the dead.

Amen.

10.20.24 (Philippians 2:19-30) Philippians: Honor the Humble, not the Powerful (Dave Friedrich)

Today's message is simple. Don't honor power. Honor people like Epaphroditus.

So in the section of scripture in Paul's letter to the Philippian church, we hear Paul only really give one set of instructions, one short bit of instruction to the Philippian church. And it's to welcome this guy whose name sounds like something between a sneeze and a disease, Epaphroditus. Can I get a bless you? Paul says to them, look, welcome Epaphroditus. He's sending Epaphroditus back to them and welcomes him in the Lord with all joy and honor people like him.

Before we unpack what that looks like and what it is that is worthy of that honor in such people, let's talk about the consideration that we have to do something else to honor people of power. History has got a lot of examples of how we elevate the powerful. So take Alexander the Great, right? He conquers Egypt with mighty power. And what do they do? They make him Pharaoh, which isn't just any kind of ruler. Elevating him to the status of a god-king. He's a Julius Caesar. After his mighty powerful victories, the Roman Senate decides to give him a golden chair and crown him a dictator for life. Of course, a month later, some in that same Senate decide that's too much power, and they take his life. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere.

And there's Napoleon, the great mighty conqueror, who after all his victories, and there's this grand ceremony in the Notre Dame, crowns himself. History has a lot of examples of honoring power, of people like Napoleon even taking that honored position of power for themselves, crowning themselves. And this just isn't some relic from our distant past. We still do this today, even if it looks a little different. So whether it's powerful leaders or athletes, powerful entrepreneurs or entertainers, we have our own way of giving them their golden chairs, of crowning them as god-kings and queens.

We give them our undivided attention, following their every move in the media. We spend big money on tickets to their shows. We fill stadiums in their honor. We follow these new people called influencers on Instagram, the new gatekeepers of culture, who present themselves like our digital friends, who happen to be famous. So of course, we like their posts. We follow their stories and buy their products. And with every view, every like, and every dollar we give, we are extending the reach of their digital throne and kingdom. And it's typically not their moral character that we're enamored with, honor, or secretly desire for ourselves. No. It's how many millions of views they've got, right? It's their physical strength, their captivating beauty, their intellectual prowess. It's their success, their status, their impressive influence. Their rings of power, if you know Tolkien, or have Prime Video. It's that power that we are enamored with, that we honor and desire.

Well, in stark contrast, God's word to us in Paul's letter to the Philippians tells us to honor not power, but people like Epaphroditus. So what marks people like Epaphroditus? Well, the simple answer is humility, the humility of Christ. And while the word humility is not mentioned once in this section of scripture, the clues are all there, but that's what Paul is highlighting. So let's look at how that works.

Let's explore what this humility that we are to honor looks like, and we're going to do it through three lenses. The first lens is the bigger context of this letter—what humility looks like there. Then we're going to have another lens and we're going to focus in on this particular passage. And the final lens is we're going to look and zoom in on modern-day examples of Epaphroditus-like people, including some people in our own congregation here.

The first lens, the lens of this letter: We've talked about how this letter is overflowing with Paul's joy. Joy that cannot be bound, as we've said, because it's rooted in and grows out of the solid, unshakable good news of Jesus Christ. A joy that is in and found in the loving, overcoming, unifying humility of Jesus Christ. That summarizes a lot of this letter. Last week Heather pointed out how this humility that we see here is not something to be ashamed of, as it was in that culture, but actually is something that should cause us to tremble with joy at the goodness of it all. Most of all when we behold it in Jesus on the cross, but also when we become aware of God working that humility in us. And as we work out that humility in our lives.

The last part is exactly what Paul is doing in this section that we're looking at this morning. He's highlighting, honoring, celebrating with joy how these two people, Timothy and Epaphroditus, are working out that extraordinary humility in their ordinary lives.

Which brings us to our second lens here. It's a humility therefore that's not just reserved for the mighty Son of God or even for people who are passionate and ambitious like the Apostle Paul. But this kind of humility can be worked out even in lives like Tim and Timothy, who seem to struggle with shyness and being unsure of himself. It can be worked out in people like Epaphroditus, who is just your average delivery guy for the Philippian church.

Paul talks about Timothy and Epaphroditus, and we're going to focus mostly on Epaphroditus. But what he says about Timothy equally applies to Epaphroditus. And so when Paul's talking about Timothy, he sends the hope to the Philippian church as well. He writes, "I have no one like him who will show genuine concern for your welfare. All of them, a bunch of unidentified people, are seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ." So, as you notice here, for Paul, looking after the interest of Jesus Christ and showing genuine concern for the welfare of others like the Philippians or Paul are two ways of saying the same thing.

Do you hear that? And did you notice how the language here is echoing the language earlier said in chapter two? There's a lot of echoing going on in Philippians if you're paying attention. So, earlier in the chapter, Paul writes, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, like establishing your own self-serving digital thrones, seeking after your own rings of power." A temptation we all have. If you haven't noticed that, you're either very exceptional or incredibly unaware. We need to recognize that at work in each of us, that temptation. You can learn how to recognize and resist, and then do what Paul says: in humility actually, no, don't seek that. Value others above yourselves. Don't just look to your own interests. Look to the interests of others. Let that mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

And then he goes on and describes, gives us the Christ poem at the center of which, if you look, it's a chiastic structure. Humility, the humility of Christ, is in the center of that hymn in the whole book. Like we said before, Jesus' humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's just thinking of yourself less. Being other-focused, and especially focused on those who are in a bad way.

This is a huge thing with Jesus, which was counter-cultural. In today's Gospel reading, we heard Jesus naming those who were in a bad way: the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. And he says, "Whatever you do or don't do to the least of these, even of his brothers and sisters, you are doing or you are not doing for him," with significant consequences, as we heard, scary consequences. So again, looking after the interests of Jesus here, we're also seeing, is looking after their interests. After the interest of people like Paul, who's writing this letter from prison.

So, Paul's day, prisons provided little to, usually just nothing for their prisoners. So people like Paul were in a bad way. They were totally dependent on others—friends—to bring them things like food and clothing, blankets, writing utensils. Books, as Paul says, in his other letters. And most of all, human companionship, which Paul makes the biggest deal about in his letters. Well, Epaphroditus was one of those friends, bringing a gift from the Philippian church for such needs. And so he followed the humble way of Jesus, all the way from Philippi to Paul's prison cell, which was most likely in Rome. And that would have been a long and difficult journey. It would have taken him anywhere from six weeks to two months to do. He would have started out with one or two weeks on the open sea, depending on the weather. And then there's going to be another 350 miles on land to travel. And he wouldn't have been speeding down the highway in an Amazon delivery van. He would probably have been walking, facing all kinds of dangers, whether it was bad weather or illness or the threat of constant robbery along the way.

In fact, Paul tells us, Epaphroditus got so sick that he nearly died. But Paul says God also showed him mercy, restored him back to health, back to life, in such a way we'll see in a minute, sparing his life and doing so, showing not only him mercy but Paul mercy. As Paul writes, "lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow," which shows Paul already had sorrow. Which I think is very interesting. The joy that he is experiencing and writing about and calling us to is not a joy that is sentimental without sorrow. It's actually many times alongside and intertwined with sorrow. Because in this age, yeah, it's rare that we ever just feel one thing.

Returning to Epaphroditus, what we find here is the humble descent and the eventual exaltation of Jesus Christ, described earlier in this chapter, is reflected in the life beautifully of Epaphroditus. Not to the same degree, but it's there. So just as Jesus left his home in glory to take the form of a servant to the point of death, even death on a cross, and God then exalted him back home to his Father's right hand, so Epaphroditus left his home in Philippi as he traveled great lengths to go to Paul's prison cell to serve him there to the point of death, Paul says. He uses the exact same Greek words from the Christ poem, the Christ hymn. And then what does God do? God restores him, brings him back to life. And what does Paul do? Paul honors, exalts Epaphroditus. He calls him "my brother, my co-worker, and fellow soldier, your apostle, your sent one." And then he calls on the Philippians to welcome him in the Lord with much joy and to honor people like him when he comes back home.

So Paul's highlighting a lot of similarities here. Of course, we know the big difference is that we worship Jesus in his humility, and we just merely honor people like Epaphroditus when they reflect that humility in their lives. But that's something we're supposed to do. This kind of worship and honor would have been profoundly counter-cultural, which we've talked about before. Worshiping a humble Savior and Lord and honoring someone like Epaphroditus who embodied that humility would be in stark contrast to the values of that day—stark contrast.

As George Guthrie writes in his excellent commentary on Philippians, in the broader Greco-Roman culture, which was based on a system of honor and shame, leaders rose in status by gaining wealth, ensuring it on others, by social connections, by great speaking ability, by advanced education, or by making shrewd political moves. Sounds like honoring power. Sounds kind of familiar. He goes on, "Yet in a counter-culture expression of values, the Philippians are to honor people like Epaphroditus, because he had suffered for the cause of Christ, following the pattern set by the Lord in embodying self-sacrificial service."

And while this may seem like a transparent good in a culture profoundly impacted by the Judeo-Christian ethic of sacrificial service, it would have seemed tacitly odd on the streets of Philippi and as an example of counter-cultural thinking. And while it's not as counter-cultural today as it was back then, I think it still is today. Don't honor power. Honor people like Epaphroditus.

People like Brian Stevenson, who's portrayed in the film Just Mercy, bring us to our final lens. Stevenson—he was in fact, if you read his book, that he was raised in the church and therefore deeply impacted and formed by the gospel, the good news of the humble descent of Jesus. So after attending Harvard Law School, Stevenson could have pursued a career of great power and prestige, but instead, he chose a different path. In the likeness of Epaphroditus, he dedicated his life to serving those in society that have been overlooked: the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Stevenson sees himself as a "stone catcher," in reference to the woman caught in adultery, who they wanted to stone. He follows the humble way, the humble and merciful way of Christ, going to those who are in prison in a bad way, and especially to those on death row.

Honor people like Epaphroditus, like Brian Stevenson, like Craig Parker of Greater Boston. If you get to know the Christian community of Greater Boston, at some point you were probably going to either hear about or meet this guy called Craig Parker. He is one of the most humble, faithful followers of Jesus you will ever meet. He has loved and discipled countless people in the gospel, including people from our own congregation, the more people I get to know.

Craig's been on staff with the Navigators since 1980, and he's the city leader of Navigators in Boston. He also co-founded an organization that supports a rural Kenyan village affected by HIV, and has helped build a long-term partnership with the Roma people in Croatia. If you know those people who are in a bad way from the people around them. Well, on New Year's Eve, this is what he was doing in 2016, he entered the Suffolk County City Jail, which is in downtown Boston, to help lead an inmate Bible study. And maybe you don't know, but that jail is right next door to TD Garden. And so he walks out from that prison, and he's walking past TD Garden, the home of the Boston Celtics, and he's hearing this bustling activity around the arena. But all the while in the distance, he's hearing another basketball game going on in the jail next door. Two basketball games. One getting a lot more attention than the other.

Well, this really moved Craig, and eventually led him to work at building a network of church-based volunteers to serve those affected by incarceration. It's an amazing work that he's done. We're learning from. Craig serves the interests of Jesus Christ.

What I have also noticed, and I was just thinking about this, I was overwhelmed with how stacked we are here at Church of the Cross with Epaphroditus-like people. For example, Hannah Bansil, Executive Director of Ethiopia ACT, an organization that serves these families in Ethiopia that are in extreme poverty and struggling with serious suffering serious illnesses. We have our own Gary Moorehead, Founder and Director of Cataluma, a ministry that serves the refugees of Greater Boston. We have Christine Jones—she's here—Deputy Director of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund of our province that does this kind of work globally. We have Hannah McKnight—oh, there you are—she works for Matthew 25, an initiative in our diocese that serves well, inspired by our gospel reading, and serves the least among us in our communities.

I could go on and on. There are so many of these kinds of people in our congregation, and I can also tell you about all the people here who don't seek honor for the power they have in their degrees, in their resumes, in their wealth, in their profession. But rather, they see that power as something they are supposed to use to serve others and the common good and the gospel. It's really present. We are stacked here in so many ways in this regard.

I could go on, but it's time to bring this sermon to a close. I'm over time. So I'm going to end with one simple—I'll try to keep this sermon simple—one simple way you can honor people like Epaphroditus today after the service. Walk through those doors for the Justice and Mercy launch celebration that we're going to have in there. Where you're going to meet the Justice and Mercy team—again, people like Epaphroditus—led by Corinne Sampson, our Director of Justice and Mercy.

You're going to meet people like Epaphroditus—this team that's going to share with you three initiatives they have been working on for our community. Three ways to serve the interests of Jesus Christ here as our body. Three ways that we can follow Jesus down that humble path to those who are in a bad way: a homeless ministry, a food justice ministry, and a prison ministry that we learned about, of course, through Craig Parker.

We're going to hear more about that during the announcement, but for now, remember: Don't honor power. Honor people like Epaphroditus. In there, after the service.

Amen.

10.13.24 (Philippians 2:5-18) Philippians: The Christ Poem (Heather Kaufmann)

One of my favorite things about living in Vancouver, Canada, where I was for three years studying at Regent College, was the mountains. On a clear day, which were not that frequent, given how often it rained there, you could see the mountain range in the north of the city from just about anywhere.

One time in the first few months that I was living there, I was biking home from campus in the late afternoon, and I noticed there was a small alleyway between two houses at the top of this high hill, one of the many hills in the city. And through this alleyway, I can see a sliver of the mountains. So I pulled my bike off the main road and down the alley, and as I walked closer, this beautiful vista opened out in front of me, of the city and the silhouetted mountains behind. The sight took my breath away, and its beauty and vastness, and also its surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see it there. The sight of these mountains filled me with wonder, even joy. And in pausing to look at them, I allowed myself to be drawn out towards something so much bigger, so much greater than myself. Something that’s always there, always present on the horizon, even when I can’t see it.

After that, I’d often return to this alleyway on my commute home just to pause and to wonder at these mountains.

What would it look like to see Jesus with this kind of wonder? And how might such an experience of wonder change us? Today, as we explore Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 18, we’ll walk through these three movements. First, we’ll take some time to behold the glorious and wonderful humility and exaltation of Christ. Then we’ll consider how we respond to Christ’s humility, with fear and trembling, like standing before a beautiful mountainscape in wonder. Wonder that moves us to worship and to humble service. And lastly, we’ll look at how we can cultivate this practice of wonder, this posture of fear and trembling. So let’s keep these movements in mind as we move through the text today.

Two weeks ago, Dave preached a sermon on humility, looking at the theme of humility in Philippians building up to our passage for today. In this letter, Paul is inviting the Philippians, he’s inviting us, to imitate the humble way of Jesus, who descended to humanity, became a human, and was obedient unto death on the cross. This is what brings Paul joy, even while he’s in prison, to see his fellow believers living together in humility and unity.

But what is it about Christ’s humble way that Paul is asking his readers to behold and to imitate? We’ll find something of an answer to this in our passage for today in Philippians 2, which I invite you to open your Bibles if you’d like to follow along. We’ll start in verse 5 here with what is sometimes called the humility poem or the Christ hymn. So it reads, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped.” So Christ shares in the form, the very nature of God—He is God—but He does not count this equality with God as something to be grasped, something He’s trying to use for His own advantage or that He’s striving for.

Instead, He chooses to empty Himself. He strips Himself of status, taking on the form of a slave in human likeness. And then verse 8, it says, “He humbles Himself.” Some translators say even that He humiliated Himself. And He becomes obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

So Jesus isn’t giving up His equality with God, but He’s choosing not to grasp it, to use it to His own advantage. Instead, He expresses His equality with God in this self-emptying act of sacrificial love unto death on the cross. And because He is God, the ladder that Christ has to come down from His place with the Father is so much taller, so much higher than any mountain that we have to come down as we imitate Christ’s humility, so much taller than the fire ladder that Dave talked about. Imagine a ladder coming down from the highest peak of one of those mountains in Vancouver, descending into the valley. That is the height, the vastness of Christ’s humility.

So this is the first movement, looking at Christ’s humility and then at what happens as a result of Christ’s humility. Continuing in verse 9, Paul says, “Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place. He gave Him the name that is above every name.” Jesus, because of His humility, is exalted. And this is something to wonder at, which brings us to our second movement, our response to Christ’s humility, which is a response of wonder.

And wonder is what we see as the passage goes on. God exalted Jesus to the highest place. He gave Him the name above every other name, so that 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.

Our response to the humility of Jesus is a response of wonder and awe, bowing before Him and confessing that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. As we look to Christ, we are drawn outside of ourselves to something, to someone, who is so much greater, who through His self-emptying humility is worthy of our praise. We worship a humble God, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ, who descended the tallest ladder of humility and who did not count His equality with God to be an object of desire, but emptied Himself. This is how God chose to launch His mission of cosmic salvation to restore and reconcile all things to Himself. He didn’t seek out or even try to use political power, or physical strength, or wealth, or intellectual prowess, but He humbled Himself to bring about our salvation.

And our right response to this humble God is a response of worship, of awe, reverence, and adoration. To gaze on the surprising beauty of Christ, which, like the mountains rising above Vancouver, fills us with wonder. When was the last time you found yourself filled with this kind of wonder at the work of Jesus Christ, at His humility? When the clouds cleared long enough for you to see His glory, when you sat at His feet just to wonder at the awe-inspiring work that He did, have you noticed if this posture of worship changed the way you lived out your faith?

As our passage goes on, we see something more of what this posture and our response to Christ looks like. After the humility poem about the work of Christ and starting in verse 12, Paul says, “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Which is to say, practice your salvation. Live a life of faith born out of the knowledge that God has saved you. And do this from a posture of fear and trembling.

Maybe you, like me, hear the words “fear and trembling,” and this little thought bubble comes up above your head with a bunch of question marks in it. What can these words mean, to work out your salvation in fear and trembling? I don’t want to be a fearful person, or a person who trembles all the time. And what does working out your faith have to do with fear and trembling?

What Paul is saying here ties back, though, to the end of the humility poem in verses 10 through 11. It ties back to worship. To say that we live in fear and trembling is to say that we live in this posture of wonder and awe at the humble God who has been exalted, who has power over death, who is a consuming fire. To fear the Lord is not the same thing as being afraid of the dark, or fearing for one’s future, or being afraid for one’s safety. It’s a fear that’s born out of the knowledge of how great God is, how majestic and powerful and humble. And it’s a fear that acknowledges our own lowliness, our own smallness in the face of our glorious humble Savior as we gaze on the beauty of Christ, who is exalted to the highest place but who also chose to come close by becoming human.

So fear and trembling, this is our posture here towards God. And it’s a posture that Paul ties to living out our faith. He ties it to practice. We seek to live in imitation of Christ and His humble way in fear and trembling. And this humble way is a way of service, of a humility that’s enacted in deed.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who lived in the 16th century in Spain, was the founder of the Jesuit order. He was also a man who knew what it was to wonder at the living humble God. And he also lived a life of service. Ignatius is known to have said that humans were created for this end: to praise, reverence, and serve the Lord their God. To praise, reverence, and serve the Lord. Notice that he doesn’t say our end is just to praise or just to serve, but to praise, reverence, and serve. To live lives of awe and wonder out of which our service flows.

Evelyn Underhill, who’s responding to these words of Ignatius, writes that unless those first two are right, unless we’re practicing praise and reverence, the last of this triad, service, won’t be right. Unless the whole of our lives, she says, is a practice or a movement of praise and adoration, the work which that life produces won’t be much good. Our service must be an outpouring, an overflow of our worship, of our posture of wonder and awe before the Lord.

So now we come to our third movement. What does this actually look like? How do we cultivate a practice of wonder, a spirit of fear and trembling before our humble God, such that our service flows out from a place of worship? One significant and perhaps rather obvious way that we do this is in coming together each week on Sunday for worship, like we’re doing right now. To sing songs of praise that reorient us, that turn our gaze towards Christ as we pause to wonder at His work. We can cultivate this spirit of fear and trembling when we read Scripture, when we slow down to meditate on a particular word or phrase about God’s character or His teaching, when we delight in the law of the Lord, when we meditate on His precepts, as the Psalms say.

We can do this when we go out in nature, when we behold the beauty of the mountains, as I did in that alleyway in Vancouver, or when we behold the Charles River from the Esplanade and the line of trees all golden and glowing along the edge, or the dappled light that comes through the trees in the Middlesex fells. We’re practicing wonder when we pause to thank God for the beauty of His creation and to delight in what He’s made. Maybe these kinds of spiritual practices feel a bit rote for you right now, a bit dry. Maybe you show up on Sunday for worship, but you’re feeling a bit distracted or weighed down by your own worries or fears. Or maybe the beauty of Christ feels like a distant reality, unrelatable, something that doesn’t speak to your actual day-to-day life.

In some seasons, it’s true: God does feel distant, and it can be hard to see Him, like the many days those clouds covered over the mountains around Vancouver. But there’s also the reality that the practice of intentionally turning aside, of biking down that alleyway to look for that horizon of God’s sweet humility—this is a practice that shapes us and transforms us. We can choose to cultivate a practice of wonder, and God desires to meet us in that. And when we do this, when we’re looking outwards in fear and trembling on the beauty of Christ, on that light-filled horizon, we begin to shine like stars in the universe, as it says in verse 15, as children of God without blemish in a crooked and perverse generation. When our gaze is so focused on Christ, when we are so steeped in the reality that Christ dwells in us, that it is His light that’s in us, we shine like stars in the world. Because a posture of worship draws our gaze outwards towards that horizon, towards the beauty of Christ’s self-emptying love. And our service, our counter-cultural way of humility in the world, shines the light of God through us.

At the end of our passage for today, Paul names what the result, what the fruit of this way of wonder is. And that fruit is joy. Paul himself knew well what this joyful, humble way of service looked like. He dedicated his life to Christ for the building up of the church, even when that meant ending up in prison. And as his many letters show us, as we even see in Acts 9 at his conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul worked out his salvation in fear and trembling. He sat in awe before the humble exalted Lord Jesus Christ. And he encouraged others to do so as well.

That’s the place from which he wrote the humility poem, which is in itself an invitation to wonder at Christ’s humility. From his prison cell, Paul wrote here at the end of our passage, verses 17 through 18, “Even if I am being poured out as a drink offering over the sacrifice and the service of your faith, I rejoice. And I rejoice together with all of you. In the same way also, you should rejoice and be glad with me.”

Even as Paul, like Christ, is emptying himself—he’s being poured out for the sake of others—he rejoices. He looks at Christ’s humility, Christ’s descent into humanity and unto death. He looks at the way that God exalted Him and gave Him the name above every other name, and he praises Him. He wonders at His work. He knows that our right response, our duty, and our joy is to worship the humble God in fear and trembling. And I bet that Paul was also cultivating this posture, this practice of wonder in his day-to-day life.

I want to end here with the words from a hymn by William Faber. It’s called “The Fear of God.” And this hymn shows us a little bit of what this joyful worshipful posture looks like. It goes: 

There is no joy the soul can meet
Upon life’s various road
Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks
Under the eye of God.

A special joy is in all love
For objects we revere;
Thus joy in God will always be
Proportioned to our fear.

Amen.

10.6.24 (Matthew 3:13-17) First Things First Sundays: One God (Ryan Ruffing)

There's a place that I like to go to be quiet, a place of solitude and prayer. It's a place that I imagine many of you might be familiar with, Jamaica Pond in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood where my family and I live. It's a beautiful place. It's a place that I like to go and sit on one of the benches, a particular bench there, and look out on the beauty, take in the beauty of the surroundings.

I was there recently on a fall, one of these beautiful fall mornings we've been having. I hope you're enjoying them as well. I was sitting there on the bench and looking out on a beautiful scene, the beautiful water, watching birds wheel through the air, against the contrasting sky with gray and white clouds and blue shining through. As I sat there taking in the trees and the water and the whole scene, I just felt my heart and my spirit lifted.

Maybe you've experienced this before in moments of quiet, out in nature. The beauty and the stillness fill you and refresh you seems to feed you. In that moment I felt my heart consoled. I felt my heart lifted to worship God who is giving this moment, this beauty. But there's something else in this scene, something else I became aware of, the steady hum of traffic. It's just out of reach where you sit at Jamaica Pond over on the J-way, but it's close enough that you can hear it pretty much anywhere where you are on the pond.

And as I became aware of that hum, I started to think about the people passing by in those cars. I've driven that road many times. It is far too fast and far too narrow for any sanity to happen. It is constraining you. Everything in your attention needs to be on the road. There's no looking up. There's no considering the beauty that is just next to you. Your focus is ahead. I wonder if you feel like this in your life sometimes. I know I do. Life is too fast. It is too demanding. The lane is ever narrowing. The car behind you is honking for you to go faster. There's no time to raise your view and look over at the beauty to take in what is beautiful. There's no margin.

As Dave mentioned at the beginning of the service, we're in a series that we've been calling First Things First Sundays, this series where every first Sunday of the month, we're coming back to the words of the Nicene Creed as a jumping off point of our reflection on Scripture. We're pausing our Walkthrough Philippians, so we'll continue that next week. We're coming back to the Creed.

On the very first Sunday of this series, last month, Dave considered the first words of the Creed. We believe. This morning, we're going to take a look at the next two words, One God. For those who like looking ahead, we'll be done with the series sometime in 2035. I'm kidding. It's going to take way longer than that.

This morning, we'll consider these words One God, but I also want to draw our attention to a structural element of the Creed to zoom out a little bit. You can see the Creed printed here. If you skip forward in your... The Creed consists of three stanzas, three movements. The first here on your left is concerned with the Father. The middle stanza, the largest of the three, is concerned with the Son of God, Jesus. And the last of the stanzas, on the right, is concerned with the Holy Spirit.

So, if we take these words, we believe in One God. In the context of the structure of the Creed, that statement might sound something more like this: We believe in One God, in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity. You can take it down. You don't need to read the whole Creed right now. A statement of the doctrine of the Trinity.

No sooner are those words out of my mouth than I know many of you, maybe most of you, feel as though a math problem has just been plopped down in front of you. A little logic puzzle to try to figure out how can it be that One God can also be three persons, One God in three persons. How does that work?

And while I want to give my love to all of you who I know love that math problem, logic puzzle feel, I want us this morning to consider more of the invitation of the doctrine of the Trinity. If you want to talk about the logic of it afterward, please come. We can talk. But I want to make sure that we're not like, when we consider the doctrine of the Trinity only through this logic puzzle sort of view, we can become a little bit like a food critic who has lost all love of the taste of food and all sense of its nourishment.

We can get so caught up in the dissecting of this aspect and that aspect that we no longer are nourished by or enjoy the flavors. So this morning, that's what we're going to focus on. We want to understand the meal that the doctrine of the Trinity is, to allow it to nourish us and to bring us more into the reality of God.

I think that the doctrine of the Trinity, this statement, One God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can actually be for us something of a signpost on that busy road. It can be something that says, turn off here, come into, enter into the mystery and the beauty that you were made for. In order to receive that invitation, we want to come with our hands open to receive nourishment, to receive a meal.

We're going to do this this morning from our gospel text out of Matthew 3 verses 13 through 17. If you want to turn there with me, I would love to have you follow along. Matthew chapter 3 verses 13 through 17. This text is the baptism of Jesus, perhaps a familiar text to some of us, and maybe not to others.

As we open this text, I want us to see as we walk through it, two main motions going on here. The first is a motion of revelation, of revealing. There's a deep revealing nature to this text, but it is also a deep text of invitation. We're going to handle both of those in turn, revelation and invitation.

So first revelation. Here at the baptism of Jesus, there is a deep reality being uncovered, being opened up. It says that as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened. We get a feel of the curtain being pulled back. Something new is being seen. Something is being revealed. We should feel excited. What is being revealed? Often when something is revealed in our lives, something new that we didn't know before, what it does is it upends. It overthrows our previously held notions.

And since the revealing that's happening here, the revelation that's happening here is about the nature of the person of God, I want to ask you a question before we look at what's revealed here. I want you to think about a question: What do you believe God is really like? What do you believe God is really like? Maybe you're here this morning and you're saying to yourself, I don't really even believe God is there. Maybe think about this question. If he was there, what do you think God would be like?

If you have some good theological answers that are popping into your mind, I want you to go deeper than that. I want you to consider not what is the right answer to that question, but what do you really believe God is like? I think that no matter how much we have those right theological answers to hand, we're all walking around in this world with various kinds of assumptions, various kinds of gut-level down-in-our-bones beliefs about who God really is.

Maybe down deep on that gut level, you know God loves you, but really you think of him as a disappointed parent. He loves you, but he's saying, come on, let's try a little harder. Do a little better. Get it together. Or maybe down deep God is for you a distant friend, a friend that you had a great season with 10 years ago and it really changed your life. Maybe you even talk to that person regularly, but it's really mostly about reminiscing about what happened back then. It hasn't been a whole lot of new relational ground being broken today.

Or maybe you think of God as just a bright ball of light, an impersonal force out there whose light shines and it's bright and it feels nice, but doesn't know your name. A force that might better be called the universe. What is God really like? What do you really believe God is like? With this in view, we want to open up this revelation, this picture of who God really is. I wonder if it will speak to that gut level sense.

Let's look, beginning with verse 16. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. This is anything but a static picture. What we have here in this revealing is a dynamic moving picture of the person of God.

All three persons of the Trinity are here in view. The Son is rising out of the water. The Spirit is descending and coming close. The Father is speaking. It's a dynamic relational active picture. And the picture is of a God who is moving toward humanity, moving down descending, as Dave talked about last week, coming down into our context. This Trinity, this unity in dynamic Trinity is pictured here, but there is a flavor. We get a sense of this relationship. What is the relatedness going on in the dynamic dance of the Trinity?

The Father speaks and defines their relation. This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. At the heart of the Triune Fellowship is a heartbeat of love, of powerful love given between the Father and the Son shared in the unity of the Spirit. And we should see importantly, we should know first of all that this is not actually first of all love for us. That's often where we start.

When we talk about the love of God, we mean the love of God for us, love of God for humanity. But what's pictured here is first the love of the Father for the Son. The love that is shared within the Triune persons before the beginning of time. Can you conceive of a reality that has as its heartbeat, as its dynamic beating heart, a God who is unity in Trinity, swimming in the reality of the beating heart of love?

What is at the heart of the universe? This reality we inhabit is not a detached mechanistic force, but is rather the beauty of a dance of love. That dance of love is what has breathed the entirety of what we experience in the goodness of God and the goodness and the beauty of creation. To truly know this would be like entering another world. To walk around in your days and to actually experience and to say this world is a world that consists that has as its heartbeat the beating and beautiful heart of the love of God shared between and within his Triune person. Would be like entering into a new world.

Like in the Chronicles of Narnia when Aslan opens the door to Narnia and they step into a new and big world to know this indelible reality that at the heart of all things is the heartbeat of love. I wonder if your imagination, your hoping heart might actually allow you to believe that that gut level feeling, that gut level picture of God that you carry around, be it distant, be it angry, be it uninterested, is actually wrong. Immersively and beautifully wrong that we might discover that that is not who God is, but that this is who he truly is.

When I was in high school I had an experience of my heart and mind being rewritten, revised on a particular topic. Not on the nature of God, that for me and my story came later in college. But in this season, in high school and specifically my senior year of high school, my mind and heart were rewritten about the nature of Mrs. Beale. Mrs. Beale was a teacher in my high school and she was the most feared teacher in my high school. She taught senior AP English, which if you knew anything as an underclassman at Mary'sville High School, you knew that senior AP English taught by Mrs. Beale was the hardest class in the whole school, harder even than AP calculus.

Mrs. Beale's senior AP English class was so scary that I have a memory of walking by her room as an underclassman and kind of like looking in the door, trying to get a peek of like, what's it really like in there? And my gaze as I looked in the door, I looked above the door and there was a paper that had been printed out with flames on it. And over the flames was written the words from Dante's Inferno, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Struck fear in my heart.

But fear, fear does it was when I was a senior, I entered that door. I walked through that door into Mrs. Beale's senior AP English class. And it still brings a smile to my face to remember what I discovered that year. In many ways inside that door, it lived up to the reputation. It was hard, a lot of work. It was a challenge, a place of digging into difficult texts, a place of learning and growing as hard as that can be.

But it was also a place of laughter, a place of enjoyment, a place where day after day Mrs. Beale put before us beautiful art and amazing snacks that I now understand as an adult were bought out of pocket by my public high school teacher, every day, every day. It was a place Mrs. Beale's room was a place of gift. It was a room that had a view out onto a bigger world, a place where I was introduced to new ways of walking in the world.

Do you believe that there is a door where you might risk entering and find a new world opening up before you? Where is that door? Where can it be found? This text in Matthew 3 offers us a revelation, yes, but it also offers us an invitation, an invitation to risk and to find. John the Baptist who sat courtside for this amazing revelation was right there with Jesus baptizing Jesus. In seeing this revelation, he has a palpable awareness that there is one person of the Trinity who is not in the place he's supposed to be in.

When Jesus comes to John for baptism, what does Jesus say? He says, or what does John say to Jesus? He says, no, no, no. I'm not supposed to baptize you. You need to baptize me. You see, John had proclaimed a baptism for the repentance of sin, a way of becoming right with God, washing clean our sins, all the ways that we have broken God's ways, all the ways that we have centered the world on ourselves, have sacrificed others' good for the sake of our own pleasure or power or gain, all the ways that we have insisted on our way over God's way and have caused havoc.

That's what John had proclaimed, come and be washed clean of these things. And so when Jesus comes to John saying, baptize me, John knows who he's talking to. And he says, you don't need this. You don't need the baptism that I'm proclaiming. Your relationship with the Father is already right and the revelation that is unveiled shows that. In seeing this picture of the baptism of Jesus, we need to not lose the incongruity that was so palpable to John. It might be a familiar, if you grew up in the church, the baptism of Jesus, it's a familiar scene.

But don't lose the incongruity, the deep tension here. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of the Father, is standing in your place. Standing in our place is standing in the place of sinful humanity. Is standing there in solidarity, in association with those he has no reason. He does not need to associate with. He is without sin. His theme in Jesus' life and ministry is fully lived out only at the cross. In the cross, Jesus takes our place in a final and definitive way, holding nothing back, dying a shameful death for us, experiencing estrangement from the Father for us, taking on our sin for us.

This text of Jesus' baptism offers us an amazing invitation. And that invitation is to see that the Son of Man, the Son of God, has stood in your place. And so you, if you will follow him into that death, which is baptism, you can stand in his place. You can enter in to that place with Jesus and hear the words of the Father spoken not just over him but over you. This is my beloved Son. This is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.

Where is that door? Where do we enter in? Jesus says in John 10 verses 9 through 10, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture." A beautiful place, refreshing, feeding, a pasture. The thief, Jesus continues, only comes to steal and kill and destroy. "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."

I don’t know where you are coming to this morning from. I don’t know what exactly you are bringing into. What that assumption is that you are carrying about who God is. Maybe you’ve crossed that threshold of the door many, many years ago, but you’ve just been hanging out in the foyer. Feels like, yeah, I just haven’t gone all the way in. Maybe you’re standing outside and you’re looking in the window and you’re like, is this really the door I want to go in like I was with Mrs. Beale’s class? Is that really where I want to go?

Hear the invitation of the Spirit to enter by the door of the Son and find what you are looking for, what you are longing for. No matter how fast your life is going, no matter how constrained those lanes feel, see this revelation and pull off the road. Sit at the foot of that majesty, not just observing it but stepping into it by the door of the Son and find what you are looking for, what your heart is longing for. You were made to feast on this reality, to sit and behold the beauty of God and not to just stand far from it but to enter through the door and come within its loving embrace.

Hear the invitation of the Spirit: enter by the door of the Son and come into the embrace of the Father this morning. I know it often seems like a frightful door. It seems like a scary door. And if you are standing here looking at it and saying, you know, I don’t really want to go there. I don’t want to walk through that door. I want to offer you, well, really at the end of the day is the only thing I can offer you, which is my own experience.

I stand witness, my life stands witness, my heart stands witness to the reality that to walk through that door, to walk with the Triune God within the love of the Triune community, that I have experienced in that a love and a joy and wonder in my life that I believe, I am convicted I would not have known otherwise. There is a beauty in walking with Jesus in the light of the Father that has fed and nourished me through hard seasons, through encouraging seasons, through dry seasons and seasons where I feel uplifted.

That invitation that comes just by the Spirit to walk through the door of the Son and enter into the embrace of the Father, it is where we can find and know true life. Perhaps in this season, as you are speeding along in the rush of traffic, you feel like you just have to stay in that lane, keep it moving. The road seems so hard to get off. It feels so fast, so constraining. But there is a great mystery just off of your periphery.

Hear these words as an invitation to pull out of the flow of traffic and to sit with them, to enter into His life. We believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

9.29.24 (Philippians 1:27-2:4) Philippians: The True Honey Harvesters (Dave Friedrich)

Ladders and the Honey Harvester

Ladders … Back when I was in the fire academy, we had to do this terrifying drill with ladders—especially terrifying especially for someone like me who's afraid of heights. I know, not ideal for a firefighter. But here is how the drill went:  A group of us would hoist, extend, and hold a ladder straight up in the air, sometimes as high as 35 feet— almost as high  as this ceiling– while the next in line had to climb up to the top, then over the top, and back down the other side. Not my favorite drill, to say the least..But it did serve a good purpose: testing balance, trust, and nerves—simulating real fear, which it did, as well as building confidence and teamwork at dangerous heights. My hands are sweating just thinking about it.

But ladders aren’t new. We’ve been climbing them for a long time. We see this in ancient art, like the famous 8,000-year-old rock painting known as the “Honey Harvester.” Found  in the Spider Caves of Spain, it shows a figure climbing some kind of ladder, to get honey from a hive. It is the earliest known art representing both  someone using a ladder, and someone harvesting honey.  We’ve been climbing ladders, to get to the honey, for a long time.  

Climbing Ladders for the Wrong Honey

Today, we climb different ladders to get to the honey:  the professional ladder to get to  success and status, the political ladder to get to  power and influence, the social ladder to get  approval and recognition, affluence and comfort, a name for ourselves. 

But often  in our climb, not always, but often, in the brutal competition that is required of us to get to the top, we end up stepping over others, alienating others, and leaving our Christian communal values behind. 

And when we do reach the top, it might feel  exhilarating … for a moment. But too we often find ourselves alone, miserable—morally and  communally, compromised—and the hive, empty. 

What If The Honey Is At The Bottom

Here’s the big question.  What if the honey—the true reward—isn’t at the top of these ladders, but at the bottom?  In something like humility? Namely the other-focused, sweet humility of Jesus? What if progressing in our professional, political, and personal life, means progressing in that?

What if, like Jesus said, everyone who exalts themselves, in selfish ambition, and empty conceit, ends up being humbled and brought low anyway. And what if all who humble themselves, in unifying love, end up being exalted?

Recap of the Sermon Series

We are in the middle of a  sermon series on Paul’s letter to the Philippians which  we have titled:  Joy That Cannot be Bound.  Joy.  It speaks of fullness. Expansiveness—the way things ought to be. The honey we long for, and the honey we were made for.

We’ve mentioned how Paul’s writing this letter from prison, in chains, and yet he’s talking about a joy that is resilient, one that can take root and grow, like a tree, in the most difficult of circumstances, like a jail cell, because it's grounded not in our circumstances, but in the good news– the unshakable joyful news, and way, of Jesus.   

The Sweet Completion of Paul’s Joy    

In the part of the letter we heard this morning, Paul writes to his friends, “Make my joy complete.”  But note how his joy is completed. It’s not, “Make my joy complete, by sending a little more cash, so I can outfit my cell with a velvet couch, and order in the finest foods Rome has to offer, something that really says, ‘This cell is fit for a Caesar, not just a common prisoner.’ 

No, Paul’s joy isn’t completed by self indulgence, exalting himself, or by living like Caesar. It’s completed by him and his friends living Jesus, in his humble, other focused way.  He says, “make my joy complete, by how you all live together—being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Doing nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regarding others as better than yourselves, each of you looking not to your own interests but to the interests of the others.”

For Paul, the honey—the sweet completion of his joy—isn’t found in his own personal comfort. It’s found in watching his friends live lives bound together by a love that is humble, united, other-focused. His joy is tied up in this kind of togetherness, in a shared humility and love that puts others first. 

That’s the real reward: a community, a people, not scrambling  up ladders, and stepping on and over each other on the way, but a people descending, getting low, and lifting each other up in humility. Which is something that marks Church of the cross, is it what makes our community so “sweet.” 

This is the kind of thing that belongs to the people of God.  To the citizens of heaven, to the citizens of the kingdom of Jesus, who is the ultimate example of this way. 

Citizens of a Heavenly Colony

At the beginning of our passage Paul urges the Philippians, “Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  In the Greek it is: live as citizens worthy of the gospel.” Later in the letter Paul says our citizenship is in heaven.  

This would have struck a chord. The Philippians were proud of their Roman citizenship—Philippi was a Roman colony with all the privileges that entailed. They understood what it meant to belong to an empire.

But Paul points them to a higher allegiance. Their true citizenship is in heaven, not Rome. Their lives should be centered on the Lord Jesus and His way, not on the “lord” Caesar and His way. True privilege, true unity, comes not through lording it over each other, but through serving each other in humility. Not by climbing ladders, but by following the example of Christ, who descended to the lowest place, humbled Himself, and gave His life. Who in turn God exalted to the highest place. As the next passage, and the center of the whole letter, reveals. 

This sweet unifying humility isn’t cheap. It mirrors Christ’s loving, humble sacrifice, and it often involves suffering, as it did for Paul and the Philippians. But while it’s not cheap, it’s a gift. You have been granted, “graced” in the Greek, not only to believe in Jesus but to suffer for Him. A gift that shows our true citizenship—in the kingdom of Jesus, a place that flows with honey, that we can begin to taste now.

Humility Now and Then

Today, in the west, most people recognize humility as one of the  better qualities in a person, that the best leaders are humble leaders, that communities are unified and thrive when it is prevalent, and they are divided and diminished when absent. But this wasn’t always the case. It’s only because Jesus taught and modeled this, in the way He did, and then Christian like Paul made a big deal about it, that we now admire this like we do.

In Roman culture, if we think of the political social ladders of that day, humility was one of the bottom rungs. Not something to be admired and or pursued. It was shameful, down there with being a servant, or in prison like Paul, or worse of all, being a servant on a Roman cross. 

But because of Jesus  and His beautiful unthinkable countercultural example, Paul puts humility on a pedestal, as the bond that brings and keeps people together, as the thing to pursue, as the thing that would complete his joy.  The honey.

Throughout this section Paul urges them to live with one Spirit and One Mind. That is with the Spirit of Jesus, which He mentioned in the previous section, and with the Mind of Jesus, that He mentions in the next section. And what is that way of the Spirit and Mind of Jesus?  It’s the way of water.  

The Way of Water and Unity

What happens when water hits a ladder? It doesn’t climb upward. It trickles and flows downward, always seeking the lowest places. Water always descends, filling cracks, and valleys, the spaces others ignore.

It reminds me of our Psalm reading:  “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil …. running down  … like the dew of Hermon descending on the mountains of Zion.”  Dew that descends in loving, unifying, humility, especially to those who have been ignored.

And as this humble water descends, and gathers—when we are all practicing this unity together—it becomes one of the most beautiful, powerful, unified forces in creation. Trickles become streams, streams join to form rivers, and rivers merge into seas and oceans—vast and beautiful, strong and unstoppable. Which we need to be, because there is always opposition to following Jesus. Paul felt it, the Philippians felt it, and we will feel it if we go with Jesus, in the counter cultural way of Jesus. In Boston this is still very counter cultural!

A Unity Beyond Conformity

But this humble way, brings a unity that is beyond mere conformity.  It’s not about looking and thinking exactly the same in everything. That’s a cult. Just as rivers are fed by many tributaries, each bringing water from different landscapes, cultures, and climates, we too bring not only our unique gifts, which Pete talked about in his sermon, our unique gifts and experiences, but also different perspectives and convictions, from how to raise our kinds, how to vote, to the roles of men and women. While these different convictions matter, and are worth debating, on this side of glory we will never reach full agreement on these kinds of things. What we can agree on and find unity and joy in is the way of Jesus:  which is the way of humility.   

What Does This Humility Look Like?

But what does this look like? And what doesn't it look like, in everyday life? CS Lewis,  in Mere Christianity, said:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy [i.e overly flattering , fake] person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Which is why AA meetings start the way they do. Which is why confession is part of our liturgy. Anglican liturgy is realistic liturgy. The temptation of the ladder is an ever present temptation, and we succumb to it more that we like to admit, which is why it is a grace to have an opportunity for confession every week. 

This next quote often gets attributed to Lewis but  actually comes from Rick Warren, and summarizes Lewis' quote well:

Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves.

That’s the humility Paul is talking about. And that’s the kind of humility that leads to unity.  Not thinking less of ourselves. But thinking of ourselves less, and others more. 

An Example of Humble Unity

In preparing for this sermon, I came across a story that struck me deeply. The author shared about his ministry among Jewish and Arab believers in Israel. Two members of that group—one Jewish, one Arab—traveled to the U.S. for a series of meetings. They graciously agreed to speak at the university where he taught. In a chapel service, these two brothers in Christ stood side by side, sharing how the gospel breaks down barriers that seem insurmountable to the world.

The Jewish brother spoke on, “Why God Loves the Arabs,” and the Arab brother shared, “Why God Loves the Jews.” As you can imagine, the impact of their words—and their very presence together—was profound. It was a powerful reminder of how the gospel transcends division and creates unity, even in the most divided and difficult contexts. 

Unity In Our Divided World, And Nation

Oh, how we need more of this in our world today—in our own nation. We need Republican Christians speaking about “Why God Loves the Democrats” and Democratic Christians speaking about “Why God Loves the Republicans.”

Because the honey, the true joy, isn’t found in climbing our political, professional, or personal ladders in self exalting, self-centered ambition. It's found in another ambition, in getting low, in other-centered humility, in lifting others up. The sweetness we seek is found in the mighty, unifying love of Christ, who descended all the way down to give His life in order to lift all of us up with Him.

Our Call As Citizen Of Heaven: The True Honey Harvesters

So, citizens of heaven,  let us live lives worthy of the good news of our King. Let us think about those who are different from us—politically, ethnically, culturally—in any way we find threatening, whether out there in the world, or in here within our own community.

And in all humility, let us consider, “Why does the Lord love them?” as we follow His humble descent, and become the true honey harvesters of our day.

9.22.24 (Philippians 1:12-26) Philippians: To Live is Christ (Ryan Ruffing)

When I was in my middle school years, my family, we took a trip out west from Ohio where we lived. We drove all the way to California. And on this trip we saw amazing, beautiful landscapes, vistas, incredible things. But there is one natural wonder that still in my mind stands out. It's rooted deep in my heart, this vision of this thing we saw. It was the great sequoias, the giant sequoia trees of California. If you've ever had the opportunity to see these trees, you know what I mean. They are majestic. They are gigantic.

As I stood among them, walked among them, I believed in my middle school mind that this must be the place where real giants dwelled. That was the size and scope of the setting. I remember looking up at the one particular tree, General Sherman. This is the largest of the giant sequoias. It is one of the largest living trees on earth and one of the largest trees to have ever existed on earth, we believe. It stands at over 270 feet tall. It is over 100 feet around at its base. And as we stood there looking at it, the forest ranger told us something amazing that has stuck with me. He said that if a giant sequoia grows on the right ground, if it grows on a level ground and therefore the tree itself is balanced when it grows, a giant sequoia can go on living and growing forever. Indeed General Sherman is thought to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old. These trees can go on living and growing forever.

But if a giant sequoia is planted begins to grow on a slanted ground, a bad ground. And then when the winds and storm come, the tree will fall down.

Last week Dave got us started on a new sermon series in Paul's letter to the Philippian church in Philippi. And Dave highlighted that this letter is one of its central themes is resilient joy. Joy amidst circumstance. It is a letter written out of prison. And it is astoundingly a letter that even in the midst of that circumstance is overflowing with, brimming with beautiful, resilient joy. A joy that cannot be bound. Dave help me noted that this joy, this resilient joy is so beautiful in our world because our experience of joy is often fleeting. It is often not resilient. We face circumstance and the bubble of our joy bursts. Joy that maybe we knew just a moment before seems to vanish and flee.

Well of course we should never expect that in this fallen world our joy would go on unabated that would be constant and always with us. In this broken world we have times of lament and sorrow that are right and good. But I also hope that in reading Paul's account of resilient joy that something would stir in our hearts, something would awaken, a desire would awaken to grow in this path of resilient joy. As I read Philippians I want to sit at the apostles' feet. I want to draw close to him. I want to listen to his words. I want to know what Jesus gave him that allowed the joy that he knew to go on persisting through circumstance in the midst of difficulty. I want to know that kind of joy.

This morning we are going to consider the second part of Philippians 1 verses 12 through 26 that we've just heard read. In this text we'll see that joy is a lot like a giant sequoia. If it is planted on the right ground, a level stable ground, there is no reason why our joy can't go on living and growing more and more stable and strong, go on living and growing forever. But of course if our joy is planted on an unstable ground then when the wind of circumstance blows it will fall down.

I invite you to turn with me to Philippians 1 verses 12 through 26. Let's read along together. As we start to dig in here, one thing I want to just get out of the way of our thinking is a kind of circumstantial thinking when it comes to joy and when joy departs. This is probably a familiar idea that we've heard the idea that joy is not rooted in circumstance. But I think for all of us when joy leaves us in these times when joy seems absent, often the way that we default to think about that is through the lens of circumstance. We say, well why am I not feeling joyful? Well, it's because this thing happened to me. This thing has occurred in my life and so I'm no longer joyful like I was. And what Paul wants to orient us to, again, using this sequoia metaphor is that the ground that your joy is planted in is what matters. The wind and the storm is going to come either way. The ground that your tree is planted in is what matters.

Later in Philippians, Paul will write this, I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need in any and every circumstance. The question is not whether or not circumstances will come into our lives. The question is where is our tree of joy planted? And so that's the question that Paul's going to ask us and he's going to ask it to us through this text in a few different ways.

Because he asks these questions, I want you to imagine actually being there with Paul, being there in prison with him in your mind's eye to take yourself to that place, sit at his feet and listen to the questions he asks. His first question is this, is your tree of joy planted in the ground of your own effectiveness? Is your tree of joy planted in the ground of your own effectiveness? Paul of course, we read his story in Acts, we read his letters. Paul was clearly an effective guy. He was involved in so many missionary efforts. He was planting churches. He was preaching the gospel and engaging the Greco-Roman culture around him. He was organizing the gathering of funds for the alleviation of the poor. He was all the while spurring others to do as he was doing. His life seems constantly on the move, constantly effective.

He cuts an impressive figure as a leader. But now these winds of circumstance are blowing and Paul has been put in prison. His circumstance is that his effectiveness has been cut off. Some scholars think that this imprisonment probably lasted as long as two years. For two years, Paul was not effective in the way he was used to being effective. If his tree of joy had been planted in the ground of his own effectiveness, is that if that is where his joy grew out of? Only in this circumstance you would find a man despondent. But that of course is not what we find. Instead he's reveling. He's reveling in what? In the ongoing effectiveness of Jesus.

Look at verse 12, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. Notice he doesn't say advance my work or my ministry. So that, he continues, it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord, by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

What is Paul reveling in? He's reveling in God's ability to make a way where there was no way to be effective in the most unlikely circumstance. And not because of what Paul was doing, but because of what had been done to him. He had been constrained and limited and he's reveling in saying, look what God is able to do. Even when our effectiveness is cut off, is cut short. He points to Christ's effectiveness, to the advancement of the gospel. And he even points amazingly in this text when he is limited to the effectiveness of others. Other people are becoming bold, they're preaching the gospel, he's pointing to other people.

Now we should probably think, just because it would have been on brand for Paul, that he was still being diligent in sharing the gospel and making as much as he could of the opportunities he had of sharing his faith in Christ with the guards around him. But he doesn't say that. He doesn't emphasize here his effectiveness. He points to the effectiveness of Jesus.

We need to be freed up of the burden of our own effectiveness. We need to be freed. It needs to be taken away, this idea that what matters in my circumstance, in my work, in my communities is what I can do. What I can pull off, what I can make happen, the impact that I can have. Jesus' impact is what is going to make a difference in your life, in the lives of your friends, in the lives of your community, in the lives of your family. That is the ground of joy. The ground that the joy can grow out of that is stable and strong. If you root your tree of joy in the ground of your own effectiveness, it will fall down. Paul invites us to move our tree into this more stable ground.

We now ask his second question there in that prison cell. Is your tree of joy planted on the ground of what others think of you? Is your tree of joy planted on the ground of what others think of you? 

I don't think any of us can probably answer that question with an immediate and emphatic no. We are all susceptible and looking to others, queuing off of others for our validation, for our worth. I want to know that part of this is a healthy part of being human. It's part of how we're made. We are communal animals. We want to look to others to know what it means to live and to flourish. When it's functioning in a healthy way, that's a beautiful part of life to share and to know others' approval and validation.

When it becomes unhealthy, when others become the ones who arbitrate our worth, who tell us when and when we are not valuable, when we notice in ourselves that feeling of, you know, I haven't, someone hasn't praised me in a while. I want someone to notice me, to notice that I'm worth it. We might think and begin to know that our tree of joy is planted and that ground is growing out of that ground.

Paul ministered in a context. He ministered to people who knew so well what it meant to be thought badly of. They were intimately acquainted with the reality of social condemnation of others looking at scans of them. They belonged to a group, Christians, who were despised and rejected as outsiders, as heretics, as dangerous people, both by the Roman culture and also by the Jewish culture. They were already outsiders.

For the Philippian Christians and for Paul, this situation was made worse by the fact that he had been thrown in prison in a highly stratified honor-shame culture that was what Roman culture was like. Being put in prison was a deeply shameful thing. From the lowest rung on the ladder, they had been demoted down. Their leader was in prison. Their friend was in prison.

But then Paul tells us in this section of the letter that the situation had gotten even worse, that people had stood up publicly and though proclaiming Christ, they were doing so from selfish ambition seeking to harm him, seeking to bring him down a peg. Certainly this pile of circumstances seems more than enough to rob anyone of their joy. To be seen and despised so openly in public, we would imagine would rob anyone of their joy. But how does he respond? How does he respond to these public adversaries?

Look at verse 18. It's amazing. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice. In that I have joy that Christ is proclaimed. It's an amazing response. You see, Paul cared more about the reputation of Jesus than he did about his own reputation. He cared more about what others thought of Jesus than what others thought of him. And because of that, he was glad for people to hear about Jesus, even if that message came through the words of someone who in the next breath was going to malign him. He was insistent. His life was aimed at the glory of Jesus and not his own glory. And that vision of Jesus' glory, what he sought after was so holy and engrossing to him that he just didn't seem to care.

We can almost see this in this letter almost more vividly by what's not there. Consider that in this situation, we would imagine someone of Paul's stature writing to his followers to be telling them, you know, we got to get on it. We got to get those political wheels turning. Let's undermine those people. Let's go after them. Let's accuse them. Let's fight them publicly. But he doesn't say that. He just says, Christ is being proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

There's a freedom here. Paul is relieved of seeking his own glory, and so he can rest in the seeking of Jesus' glory. When we're freed of that weight, when we're freed of seeking our own glory, we are often emboldened. And when our vision is on Jesus' glory, we're often emboldened and strengthened to pursue the work and the words of the gospel. Can you imagine what it would be like to be freed of the perception that others have of you? What it would be really like to walk around in the world and be a free person who has your eyes set on Jesus and you care what he thinks of you? Can you imagine what kind of boldness you might have? What kind of energy and love you might show to your neighbors? What kind of radical acts of kindness you might pursue? What kind of words you might share?

It's amazing that when we're freed of others' perceptions of us, often in this boldness, in this free living that we can have, it's amazing that often those people who we used to care so dearly about their opinion of us. That opinion can actually begin to change. They can begin to see something else in us. They can begin to see the beauty of Christ showing through our lives.

In preparation for this morning, I came across a story of a woman who was involved in a house church ministry in an Asian country. The Asian country was kept anonymous for security reasons, but it told this amazing little story of her faithfulness that I think exemplifies just what I'm talking about. This is what I read. When she was in her 20s, one sister who had since gone to be with the Lord was put in prison. She shared the gospel. She prayed for fellow inmates, some of whom were healed. She cast out demons and generally worked for the improvement of the prison context.

One day the warden came to her and said, we don't understand what you are doing, but we are going to take you to another prison so you can do the same things they are. Would it be like to see Jesus' glory shown so powerfully through our freedom and boldness of love that others would look at us and say, I don't know what you are doing, but it's good. It's beautiful. I want more of that to be happening in the world. I don't understand it, but I want more of that.

This can only come, this posture can only come if our tree of joy is transplanted out of the ground of our own glory and is transplanted into the ground of Jesus' glory. We can be people whose joy grows out of seeing and knowing Jesus' glory and pursuing that glory in the world.

And now Paul has one final question for you. Again, we are in his prison cell and he looks you in the eye and he says, is your tree of joy planted in the ground of making and following your own plan for your life?

Is your tree of joy planted in the ground of making and following your own plan for your life? So many of us in this cultural context have grown up from such an early age being fed the message that what it truly means to be alive, what it truly means to flourish, have a good life, is to determine your own plan, to fix your own course, to end proactivity and power, to grab life by the horns and say, I'm going this way, and then to rest at nothing to see that through.

To this context, Paul's example again powerfully speaks, Paul was someone who had had plans for his own life. He was a descendant in the first-century Jewish culture of his day. He was on his road to greatness, to great things. He was trained under the best rabbi under Gamaliel. He was part of the ascendant group, the Pharisees, zealous after the law, pursuing he was on his way to be one of the primary leaders of his people. And he must have relished that. He must have taken joy in thinking about that path that almost seemed preordained, like he was just walking down it, until Jesus ruined his life. He ruined his life in the best way possible.

Jesus took that zealous young man, that man who had plans for his life, was heading in a direction. Jesus stepped into that life, and he struck him down. He blinded him on the road to Damascus, and he taught him what it truly means to live. What it truly means to live.

Paul entered into the school of Jesus, and Jesus taught him that to have true joy is not to have your own plan, but to know Jesus' plan for your life. To live in a posture of holy resignation, freed from your own ambition, in that unhealthy way, freed from your own powerful seeking of what you want, and to be resigned, to be freed, to learn from Jesus his path. And Jesus had an amazing path for Paul. He had an incredible path, a hard path, a path full of trial and difficulty, but an incredible life.

Paul got the opportunity to sit in the front row and see the work of the gospel breaking into people's lives. He got to see people awaken in the depth of who they were, to know the love and care of God for them. He got to see whole communities transformed, families transformed. He learned in this school the day in, day out trusting of the plan that Jesus had for him, the year in, year out trusting of Jesus' plan for him, that in this circumstance, in that prison, he is able to say this: Yes, and I will rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.

He doesn't know how, he's in prison, but this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To live is Christ, and to die is gain. What good are my plans, Paul says? I have discovered the secret of being content in all circumstances. I have discovered the truth of Christ, of being in Christ, of having my life so firmly rooted in his life, my desire so firmly formed by his desires, my plan so firmly formed by his plans, that is life, he says. That is what it means to come alive, to have our lives taken up into Christ's life.

Paul's joy was unbounded because he had planted his tree of joy in the life of his Savior, who was unbounded. Paul knew in the depth of his person, maybe more than he knew anything else, that Jesus had died and had risen again, that death couldn't hold him. That person who had encountered him on the road to Damascus was supposed to be in death's tomb, in prison, chained by death. But he wasn't. He was free. He was unbound, and Paul had encountered him, and he had learned the truth that to become alive, to become a truly joyful, full, whole person is to put your life in his life. To live is Christ.

What would it mean for our tree of joy to be planted in that ground, to be planted in the reality of the risen Jesus, to know that our plans can be surrendered to his plan because he is both the one who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows our desires, who knows our giftings, and who is also the one who is powerful enough to see us through any circumstance? Do you know that that is Jesus who you have planted your life in?

If you are a Christian here today, that is who you have planted your life in, the one who loves you and knows you so completely, he knows the path of life that is the best one for you. You can surrender to him. You can do that without fear because he is also the one who is powerful enough to see you through any and all circumstances.

Paul invites us from his prison cell to know that we can plant our tree of joy in Jesus' effectiveness, in Jesus' glory, and in Jesus' plan for our lives. And friends, if that is where we plant our joy, if that is the ground that we plant our joy on, it can be like a giant sequoia. It can raise up glorious and majestic into our old age and on into death and into eternity. That joy that we experience in a fleeting way from moment to moment in little bits and tastes, those are the crumbs of the banquet that we will experience. That joy in Jesus, planted in Christ, will go on growing, becoming more stable and strong, and go on living forever.

May it be so. Amen.

9.15.24 (Philippians 1:1-11) Praying with Joy for What Really Matters (Dave Friedrich)

Introduction––A New Series & Thanksgiving

Today, we begin a new series on Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, called “Joy That Cannot Be Bound,” an 8-part series will take us to the end of November, alongside our First Things First Sunday, which will continue on the first Sunday of each month during Ordinary Time.

Paul writes (vv. 3-4): “I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all  of you, praying with joy.”  The people of this Philippian church are dear friends of Paul .They were the first community in Europe to embrace the gospel that he preached there. They stood by him and supported him throughout his ministry, and overall, they were doing quite well in living out the gospel.

I can relate to Paul. I’m not in prison, but I do thank God for all of you! You’re the first church I’ve pastored. You’ve supported me generously from the beginning, and all things considered Church of the Cross is doing quite well in living out the gospel. When I think of you all I too am filled with gratitude and joy.

The Expansiveness & Fragility of Joy       

Joy …. have you ever noticed the expansive nature of joy? How it can sketch out like sunlight spilling into a room, filling corners, and enveloping everything it meets. How joy expands you, increasing the quality and quantity, the actual length of your life, how it broadens your perspective, and makes you feel lighter and invincible. How it makes space in your soul––for hope, for love, for everything that’s good. 

And have you noticed how joy expands, not only you, but spills out beyond you. How it's contagious, how it deepens relationships, and strengthens communities as we come together to celebrate the good things of our God. Joy grows and fills, expands and overflows.

And yet, have you noticed how easily external circumstances or inner worry and turmoil can so quickly steal our joy? How a perfectly good day can be derailed by a single text or email, or how your mind can start to replay that one troubling conversation from last week and rob you of the delightful peace you just had. Joy can be so expansive and fleeting and fragile, like a soap bubble ready to pop. 

The car breaks down, someone says something offhandedly at work or school, you watch the presidential debate, or you just wake up feeling…off.  Suddenly, all that joyful expansiveness collapses in on itself, and everything feels smaller, tighter, heavier, meaner. Life’s little anxieties and irritations can so easily steal our joy, and make us feel confined and chained inside, like we’re in some kind of soul prison.

Paul’s Joyful Prison Letter

Then we have this letter, Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, a letter he wrote from a literal prison, “in chains” as he repeats in Greek––yet so much of this letter is about joy. The word for joy, in its various Greek forms, shows up 16 times. Not to mention all the other joy-related words, like thanksgiving and praise, confidence and contentment, hope and love. And gospel, or good news, a word Paul uses in this letter, more than in any other letter. This prison letter is filled and overflowing with joy.     

But Paul isn’t writing about a joy that is fragile, like a soap bubble ready to pop at the slightest irritation. He’s writing about something that is solid and resilient and enduring, like a fig tree, a tree that can take root and grow in the harshest and rockiest of environments, whose roots can break through thick concrete if needed, to get those nutrients, to live and grow and produce those delightful fig fruits, that aren’t technically fruits, but rather inverted flowers. That is the kind of joy Paul is writing about in his letter, and praying with in chains.   

The Joy That Cannot Be Bound

So what is this joy that cannot be bound?  What is it rooted in?  From where does it grow?  Does Paul pray with joy, because he happens to have a joyful disposition?  Or because he’s learned how to find the silver lining in his cell? Does he live and pray with joy in his chains, because he’s just naive, overly optimistic, incredibly detached from real life? No. He lives and prays with a joy that cannot be bound, because he is rooted in, lives out of the good solid news, the solid, unshakeable, joyful news of Jesus Christ. Because Paul lives and prays in Jesus Christ. 

Writing to his Philippian friends, he says that he always thanks God for them, and prays for them with joy, why? Verse 5.  Because of their koinonia in the gospel. Koinonia is a rich word meaning a fellowship, partnership, and participation in the joyful news of Jesus Christ. And Paul highlights a wonderful part of that good news. 

The gospel of Jesus is like a prism through which the light of God shines, refracting into a spectrum of rich, vibrant colors—each representing a different facet of the gospel’s beauty: forgiveness, Christ-likeness, resurrection, new creation, and more. Here in verse 6, Paul highlights one of these radiant colors—the promise that God, who began a good work in the Philippians, who began a good work in us, will be faithful to bring it to completion by the Day of Jesus Christ. 

Paul’s Joyful Confidence

That promise is one of those vibrant colors of the gospel  that gave Paul an unshakeable, joyful confidence, that can take root and grow no matter the circumstances or chains we find ourselves in. Because it is based, not in anything shaky, like us, or our forever changing circumstances and psyches. It's based on the almighty, loving, faithfulness of our God revealed in Jesus Christ. 

This God, our God, has begun a good work in you, and will continue to complete it in Christ, until the day of Jesus Christ.

You can count on that, with increasing joy, no matter what is happening, or how you are feeling.

The Working Genius

I’ve mentioned before how our staff took the Working Genius survey, which helps teams identify their strengths, competencies, and frustrations across six categories—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement and Tenacity —to improve effectiveness and collaboration.

When it was just Ryan and me in the office, one strength was noticeably absent: Tenacity—the ability and drive to see tasks and projects through to completion. We had plenty of ideas and innovations and starts, but not as many completions.

Then we added Heather Kauffman, our Pastoral Resident, and Pete Williamson, our Executive Pastor, to the team, both of whom have Tenacity as one of their strengths. Now all kinds of things are crossing the finish line. We’ll be talking about something in the morning, and by the end of the day, sometimes by the end of the meeting, things have already been completed! What a joy that is, to be able to rely on that strength of theirs, and see the impact on our team and for our church.

Our Tenacious God

That’s a joyful confidence we can all have on a meta level. Our God is the most tenacious being there is, and in Christ we are on His team. He’s our divine Leader who finishes what He starts like no one else. His faithfulness, his steadfast love, his creative and resurrection power are beyond our comprehension. And He directs them all to complete the good work he began in us. That’s good news. That’s joyful news.

God’s Good Work––Christlikeness  

But what is that good work?  It’s many things. Our conversion, justification, sanctification, resurrection, and glorification, it’s essence being Christ-likeness.  Which is revealed in this section of Scripture. Paul says he longs for his friends with the compassion of Christ.  Longing is love’s response to distance between people. Paul longs for them with the compassion of Christ.  That is God’s good work––sharing the love of Jesus with someone like Paul, with someone like you, with someone like me. Going back to the imagery of our Gospel reading (John 15) by God’s gracious work Paul has become a fruitful branch of the Vine, bearing the fruit of his love, with a joy that no one can take away. 

The “Supreme Things”––What Really Matters

Paul then prays for that love to overflow more and more in the Philippians. He tells them, “This is what I pray for you.”  It's worth memorizing and making part of your prayer language. He prays for their love to expand, but with knowledge and full insight, i.e. with moral discernment so that they can determine what truly matters, the “supreme things” in Greek––what matters most.  Good intentions, and loving feelings, while important, aren’t enough. We need knowledge from God’s Word, and deep perception from the Spirit, to discern what really matters in a particular moment.  

This whole section, verses 3-11, teaches us how to pray with joy, in Jesus, for the supreme things, for what really matters.  With a growing confident, unstoppable joy.  I encourage you to re-read this section on your own and go through the discussion questions in the guide, which we shared in the weekly email for neighborhood groups. This week I’ll also post them at the end of the sermon transcript, which are now available by Sunday evening.

I also recommend spending the next few months reading and re-reading the whole letter, going deeper, memorizing parts, and letting the whole letter with all its parts fill and form you, and teach you how not only to pray with joy in Jesus for what really matter, but how to live with Joy in Jesus for what really matters, which is what the rest of the letter is about. 

Back to the prayer.  Oh how we need to pray this, and have God answer this. We are saturated with information, we hear so many conflicting voices, so much noise. We need the grace, the ability, to sift through it all and determine what really matters. This is one of the greatest needs of our age.

We need to know, in the heat of a political debate, whether on the broader culture level or with a family member or friend, what really matters. Is getting the vote, or winning the argument, or something else. The book, The Afterparty is a great help here. When deciding how to steward our sexuality and bodies, we need more than to know how we feel or what our surrounding secular culture is saying, we need knowledge from God, from His word, to know what matters most. When choosing careers, where to live, or how to use limited Sunday space—like whether to go to two services—we need to know more than our likes and dislikes, or what makes us comfortable, we need knowledge discernment from God to determine what truly matters.

The Day of Jesus Christ

What Paul prays next points us to what ultimately matters most: the discernment that enables us to be pure and blameless on the day of Christ, when God calls all to account, rights every wrong, and finishes His good work. A great and terrible day, as the OT puts it—great for those in Christ, and for those living in the way of Christ, and terrible for those who are not.

Paul prays for the Philippians, who are in Christ, that they would arrive on that day with lives that are pure and blameless—having lived in a way, with motives and deeds, that God would approve and say, “Well done.” And of course, with much forgiveness from the cross for the times they fell short.

Paul summarizes this pure and blameless way, with similar imagery to our gospel reading, as a life “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from Jesus.” A Christ inspired, Christlike life. A life shaped by Jesus’ humble, non-grasping, self-giving way, which is Philippians chapter 2—the joyful love of Jesus that fills Paul, and that Paul prays would fill and overflow in the Philippians, that they, in our gospel imagery, would become fruitful branches of the Vine, living for what truly matters, so that they would do well on the day of Jesus Christ. 

We can pray for this with confident joy, because our eternally tenacious God is committed to finishing this work. Therefore this is a joy that can take root and grow, no matter how dark our circumstances or minds may be.

In this age, the darkness will never fully disappear, and our joy will always be mixed with tears. Only in the next age will it be pure joy. But even now, this kind of joy can take root, grow, and become bigger than the darkness that envelopes us, as we learn from this letter to pray, and live, with joy in Jesus, for what really matters, knowing one day this joy will envelope everything.

Bikerides and a Prayer

Lately, I’ve retired my e-bike and started riding my regular commuter bike, one the Ryan and I built up from scratch, which has slowed me down some, and actually made my rides more enjoyable, and conducive to prayer on my way to work. For the past two weeks, I’ve been praying with joy for our church, thanking God for the same things Paul did and asking for the same things.

I’ve also been praying a related prayer for you all, one I’ve prayed for myself for some time: Father, don’t let me/us die until we have lived a life in the grace of Jesus that will cause You say on the day of Jesus, “Well done! You’ve been faithful with a little, now you’ll be in charge of much. Enter into the joy of your Master!”  When joy will envelope everything.  

These are the kinds of prayers we can trust God to answer, this is the kind of good work we can trust God to do. As we learn to pray with increasing joy in Jesus, for what really matters, to the glory of God.

STUDY QUESTIONS

 Taken from:  Philippians:  8 Studies for Individuals and Groups, by N.T. Wright

PAUL’S REASONS FOR THANKS
Philippians 1:1-11

There’s a wonderful old prayer attributed to the sixteenth-century sailor Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596). He prays that when God leads us to undertake any great piece of work, He will also remind us “that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same, until it be thoroughly finished, that yieldeth the true glory.” Drake himself was certainly a “finisher” as well as a “beginner.” As well as being a legend in his own lifetime for his military exploits, he had sailed right around the world. Once you’ve set off on a journey like that, there’s no point stopping halfway.

OPEN
What are some examples you’ve seen that bear out this principle that there is more glory in finishing than beginning?

STUDY

1. Read Philippians 1:1-11. In this opening to his letter, what convictions does Paul express?

2. Why did the Philippians bring Paul joy?

3. Who is someone of whom you can say “I thank my God every time I think of you” (v. 3), and why?

4. This letter is all about partnership (v. 5), one of the most important words in Paul’s vocabulary. It is sometimes translated fellowship, but it clearly has a practical, even financial, implication which our word fellowship doesn’t always carry. Although it develops particular Christian meanings, including the delighted sharing of worship, prayer, and mutual support and friendship, in Paul’s world it was the normal word for a business partnership, in which all those involved would share in doing the work on the one hand and in the financial responsibilities on the other.
   How had the Philippians worked in partnership with Paul?

5. Consider the Christian community you are part of. Would you say that you are in partnership for the gospel, or is your fellowship more social? Why do you answer as you do?

6. As Sir Francis Drake reminded us in his prayer, the glory is not in beginning a great task but in finishing it. The confidence Paul has throughout this letter is that God himself is a finisher as well as a beginner (v. 6). The particular work which God has begun, and will finish, is the work of grace, through the gospel, in the hearts and lives of the Philippian Christians.
   How is it easy or hard for you to trust God to complete the work He’s started in you or in others? And why?

7. Paul prays that the Philippians’ love will overflow in knowledge and wisdom (v. 9). How does this idea contrast with more popular ideas of love?

8. Paul also prays that this wise love will result in moral discernment (v. 10). Why is moral discernment a necessary component of Christian love?

9. Finally, Paul prays that the Philippians may be filled to overflowing with the fruit of right living (v. 11). The word for right living is often translated righteousness. Here it emphasizes the behavior which results from both God’s faithfulness and the status of being forgiven family members.
   What are some of the fruits of right living?

At every stage of the process—when people first hear the gospel, when they believe it, when they begin to live by it, and when they make progress in faith and love—nothing is done to the glory of the people concerned, as though they were able arrogantly to advance their own cause. Everything is done, as Paul insists here, through King Jesus, “to God’s glory and praise” (v. 11).

PRAY

Paul’s prayer for the church (vv. 9-11) is a prayer that all church leaders might wish to use for the people in their care. It is also a prayer that every Christian might use for himself or herself. For yourself and for others, pray that all of you will have love which overflows in knowledge and wisdom, the ability to discern right from wrong, and the fruit of right living to the glory of God.

9.8.24 (1 Corinthians 12:12-27) Being Christ's Body: Volunteer Sunday (Pete Williamson)

Well, as we've noted, it's volunteer Sunday, you won't find that on the liturgical calendar, but we're talking about our heart of who we want to be as a community, what it means to be church together. And one time in my life, in the life of this church, that I really felt we had a strong sense of who we are and how we wanted to relate to one another and build this church was a bit over four years ago. In 2020, where our founding pastor Mark Booker had announced that he was leaving.

His last Sunday with us was on February 23rd, 2020, and that triggered a global pandemic. And a number of us, about that time, gathered in the Green House, which is a house with a long history with Church of the Cross, to talk together about ‘where to next’ and to pray together. And one of the things we kind of had to realize in that moment is that this is not a church about a particular person or a particular style of leadership or anything like that, but that we, the people, to use an American phrase, were the church. And we had the resources within ourselves, within one another, to be the church God was calling us to be. In short, we were realizing that call to be the church as God had intended it; that fruit of his Holy Spirit, the church following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I always think it's interesting to think about that moment after the ascension. What could have happened? Because we kind of accept what did happen, it's described in the Bible, but it could have been something else. It could have been a political movement to influence the powers of the time. It could have been some sort of academic school, which valued precision of thought over everything else. It could have been some sort of monastic community going out and living in isolated practices out in the wilderness. It could have just died out. But this is what God did. He gave us a community, a people who broke bread together, who shared their lives together, who gave to one another as there was need. That was God's plan. But that real community, that sense of true bondedness and uniting with one another, is an increasingly rare thing in our culture.

We have an extremely isolated culture, in increasing measure. Andy Crouch in his book “The Life We're Looking For” talks about the idea of a household. And not necessarily a literal household. He describes it like this:

“You are part of a household if there's someone who knows where you are today and who has at least some sense of how it feels to be where you are… You are part of a household if someone would check on you if you did not awaken.”

And increasingly, people in this country in particular, but it's around the world too, are finding themselves householdless, without a real people that they are bound to. This phenomenon has been described for a while by many people. Robert Putnam, a secular sociologist, described it in his book, Bowling Alone. This is 25 years ago now. The title of that book comes from the fact that Americans were bowling as much as they always had. But they were not bowling as parts of clubs or teams anymore. They were increasingly bowling alone. And he describes that in the 25 years since his book was published, attendance and club meetings has decreased 58%, family dinners have dropped 43%, and having friends over has dropped 35%. We are an increasingly isolated and lonely culture. And no one wants that isolation. Many people have commented on it. But there are some streams of ideological thought that have really made the space for these historic levels of isolation.

And one of those ideologies is individualism. It's a vision of human flourishing that is all through the waters that we swim in. And it's this idea that we are most alive, we are most ourselves when we stand alone. When we have declared independence from other people's influence so we can authentically express our own unique self in a way that is unhindered from being bound to some other bigger thing. We cherish autonomy, self-law, the right to do what you think you want to do. And the voices of other people speaking into that are generally unwelcome.And so we often tell stories, in fiction, or other places, of people who have broken away from the shackles of the people who are holding them back from finding their true individual self. And it's not that people don't want community in theory. But our vision of community has increasingly become a more specific narrow thing of people who have a very similar frame of reference to you, entered voluntarily, for the mutual benefit of the individuals, that is kind of left when it stops meeting that purpose.

We also have a very consumeristic culture. Whether we might not use this exact language, but often we associate the good life with good consumption, with receiving and intaking a series of good things, whether it's goods or services or content online. And there's a series of professionals and corporations out there which are producing this stuff. And your role as just a person in society is to consume it. And it's highly produced, it's top quality in terms of professionalism. And it's personalized just to you. This is where the individualism kind of meets the consumerism. Your TikTok feed, which you shouldn't have, but you might: It's personalized just for you. It's tailor-made for your preferences and your set of experiences. It's personalized, but it's not personal. You're not encountering a person. You're not engaging in a relationship of love and kindness. There's an algorithm which is learned to sort of hack your psychology so that you are getting this experience that is going to meet your very particular way of liking things.

Growing up in the church in my setting, we loved the idea of being counter-cultural because we listened to DC Talk. But we weren't as critical as we could have been of some of these streams of thought that were shaping the visions of human flourishing that were really dominating our culture. And often churches have shaped what it means to be church around these ideologies. A sense of individualism, where the gospel is presented as this unique thing you have with God and community is kind of some secondary benefit if that. A gospel that's suited just for where you're at and what you need in your own individualized experience.

It's been shaped by consumerism, where churches are often presented as this thing that is provided for you by a set of professionals and your purpose in coming to church is to consume.

“Oh, so well fed, at church this morning.” And in different churches, what it means to consume is kind of emphasized in different ways. In some churches, many churches, it's the sermon. That's really the content that you're eating. In some churches, it's like a musical worship experience. And there's other things as well. But what you start to realize when you're really leaning into these ways of thinking is that you can get a better sermon through a podcast than you can at your local church. I'm talking about other local churches here, not this one. You can get a better musical experience on Spotify than you can at those other local churches. It's actually part of why in our church service, we seek to be deeply multifaceted and embodied. We stand up, we sit down, we meet one another, we have the passing of the peace, we have a sermon, but it doesn't dominate the whole service. We have musical worship, but it doesn't dominate the whole service. We share in the Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist together, all these things coming together, because we don't want what we are doing here as Christ body together to be something that you can put in a can and get on an app. It's not God's heart for the church.

And people respond in like turn to these trends and their relationship to church. They see church as a potentially useful tool that may not actually be useful because what really matters is your individual faith. And so commitment to a body is kind of not necessarily part of it. And people bounce around, they like the experience maybe of being new. This is a trend that people like to experience being new because when you're new, more things are tailor-made for you, more things are pointed towards you and that meets our sort of consumeristic needs. And when it starts to fade, you see the cracks behind the service, you start being asked to be involved, some people then find a different experience at a different church. People go to church, expecting to be able to consume, and you can find a church that is personalized to you that will kind of allow you to consume in your own personalized unique way. Obviously it varies a lot how people experience and enter a church, but these are trends that have shaped how people have received being the church.

But when we let these wider cultural trends shape, what it means to be church, we nullify God's purpose in the church. Because the purpose of the church is to enable us to live out the full humanity that God has given us in Christ Jesus. And this kind of gets back to something I was alluding to before, that there was all these other options.

But we don't need a political movement to live out our full humanity.

We don't need to the perfect precision of thought that an academic school might have given us.

We didn't need to be an isolated community in the wilderness.

What we needed was to be a body, to be bound to one another in love, to put down our dramatic declarations of independence and instead make bold declarations of dependence on one another. Because it is there that we are fully alive. So when we talk about this vision, particularly on volunteering Sunday, about being the church, this isn't to satisfy God's cravings. And this is not to primarily to meet the mechanical needs of running an organization. This is for us to live out the call to be the body of Christ because God who made us knows that's what we need. We need to be people in a household. We need to be bound to one another in love. We need to be a body.

The first thing God says that is negative about His creation is that it is not good for the human to be alone. So He made more, He made more in diversity so that there might be bonded relationships of love between people because that is what it means to be fully alive in Christ. And this image that God gives us in 1 Corinthians 12 that we read this morning is the image of being a body, but not just any body. To be the body of Christ. And so I want to dwell on that image for just a little bit. 

First thing, it is the body of Christ. We enter in and our full humanity is not something that we assert by ourselves and create for ourselves, but it's something we enter into and we share together in Christ. We participate in Him together. We find this thing together in the person of Christ.

And then we get this profound image of it being organized like a body. Now the first thing you can perhaps say about a body is that it's one thing. We were doing an event on campus back in the old days when I was a campus minister, where we had a Rabbi, the Muslim chaplain and  a Christian chaplain talking about this question of what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself. And then the Rabbi, Getzel, my friend, he brought out an image from a rabbinical source of when you're hammering against the wall like a nail and you miss and you hit your thumb. The idea of your left hand taking revenge against your right hand for hitting it is kind of ridiculous. The body does not work like that because it understands that it is part of the same self. And then we bring that idea of what does it mean to love the neighbor as your same self. We are the one body.

The body is a wild thing. If you hold a lung and a toe together you would never think that they're part of the same thing yet they are. It is so diverse yet it is so unified. And this vision of being the body is really rooted in the kissing point between unity and diversity. It is a deeply diverse thing and here some elements of the culture get validated. That we are all different. God loves diversity. He made us in different ways. He created all things in different order and in different kinds. But all of a sudden the purpose of our difference, the different giftings that God has given each one of us is not to go and seek personalized experiences and to consume in personalized ways but to bring our gifts together in the bondedness of love for the purpose of serving one another. And the ways that we all need, we need one another. The hand cannot say to the foot, I do not need you. So we need to affirm the ways in which we are different but let that be a call to be bound to one another, have an obligation or duty - these unpopular words - to one another because that is love, to have a duty to the other.

And it is unified. It is one thing. It is necessarily bound together. I read a shower thought online, probably like 12 years ago now - you know those profound thoughts you have in the shower, people were sharing these online. And the shower thought was this: you stroke your wife's hair thinking it is lovely when it is on her head. But if you find a clump of it in the shower you will think it is gross. Same stuff, what is the deal? And I thought, oh that is a little bit profound. But actually if you think about it, that is actually the least true of hair, out of all the body parts. Like you hold your wife's hand when you are walking down the street but if you find her severed hand in your bed, you will probably have a different sort of reaction. Why? Because we have a pretty instinctual understanding that body parts are supposed to be attached to the body. They are supposed to be in the body.

And sometimes this vision that the world paints of human flourishing, looks a little bit like a spleen living its best life out on the street. Unrestricted from the bonds of the body, living its own way of being. But if you encounter a spleen on the street, firstly it would be like what is that? Because you don't know what a spleen looks like. But secondly, you know one thing about that spleen, that’s a dead spleen, right? And there is probably a body nearby that is really wanting a spleen. The spleen is one of those things you don't think about unless you really suddenly have to. But my point I hope is clear that this image is given to us.

And it emphasizes our difference, our diversity, our uniqueness. But it also emphasizes the necessary bondedness. Not as some sort of optional, nice to have, not some sort of like thing that might help the spleen out on a good day if the body is working right. But as a necessary function of being human together, we are bound to one another. The spleen has an obligation to the lung. The lung has an obligation to the foot. We need one another. We cannot say to one another, I do not need you.

Our vision of being the church is really seeking just to live in tune with what God has told us. That the core for each of us is to bring ourselves, who God has made us to be, into this body for the building of this community. Not as some professional service provided by the clergy and staff to a bunch of consumers to make a message that you want to hear. But something that we are lent into together. Again, not as a pragmatic solution to the slick running of an organization, not so that we can fill all our rosters, but so that we can live into this calling of being Christ's body.

And there are all those details and we are going to talk about different ways to volunteer and things like that. But this is who we want to be. This is our heart to be the church, to be that body, to be that household together bound in duty to one another, committed to one another. Because that is the heart of love and the calling of God has to us and the call for each of us to live into our place in the body.

One of the roles of a Deacon, I'm a Deacon, is to straddle the threshold. A threshold, many thresholds, but one of them is between the clergy and the laity. And that means one of the roles with the laity is reminding them that this is not the professional work of religious professionals. This is all of us called to the work of God in the world. It's partly why the Deacon does the dismissal to send people out and to the work of the world. So that's a little bit of what I'm doing today.

And I also want to be clear, because the goal here is really not to twist a bunch of arms to sign up for more stuff. What it means for you to take your place in the body right now, for who God has made you and where you're at in your season, may look like stepping down from a couple of things, and stepping back from a few things. But nevertheless, the call is there to take our place in the body. You might be new here, relatively new here. And this isn't necessarily a call that you must get involved on week two, though some people do that and they love it. It's about finding your place in the body and recognizing that this is what it means to be the body of Christ together.

You see, a year after our first Rector left, we called and welcomed Dave to be our new Rector, our second Rector. But we didn't really welcome him, actually, because he'd actually been part of the church for a number of years. He was ordained, but he had really just been like a member, someone sitting in the pew involved in some ways and things like that, and he became our Rector. And that was actually a really important moment of self-understanding of who we are. Because it can be tempting, you know, when you're in an interim to imagine some unknown person coming from outside and being some super pastor who's going to provide us the content, then we can just sit back and consume, like we've been taught to do.

But we didn't choose that.

We chose one of us to step into his role in this body to be the Rector. We got the super pastor from the inside as the reminder that we are all called, wherever we’re at, whether we're taking out the trash or we're the Rector, to be in the body and bring our gifts and strengths into the body as God has ordered them. This is who we want to be as a church. This is the direction we're going because we believe it's God's heart that we are all here as the body.

And so the encouragement, I hope, is clear that each of us understand how God has made us and bring those gifts into this body, committing to one another in the bonds of love so that we might live out this version of being Christ's body.

9.1.24 (Mark 9:14-29) We Believe: First Things First Sundays (Dave Friedrich)

“WE BELIEVE, HELP OUR UNBELIEF”

INTRODUCTION: THE STRUGGLE OF BELIEF

If Only I Could Believe.  That’s not just a phrase—it’s the title of a book written by an old colleague of mine from L’Abri, where we used to work, a place dedicated to offering honest answers to honest questions about life and the Christian faith. 

In the book, my former colleague shares a story about a conversation he and his wife had with a woman who didn’t consider herself a believer but was still eager to talk about life, and how she had drifted away from the religious upbringing of her childhood. They also tackled the Big Questions—the existence of God, the problem of suffering, and whether faith is just wishful thinking.

As the conversation grew more personal, it became apparent that her intellectual doubts weren't the real barrier to Christian faith. Hearing good, solid answers to the big questions wasn’t really helping. For suddenly, with a sense of longing, she blurted out, "If only I  could believe!" 

That meeting left a deep impression on my colleague, so much so that he continued to reflect on it, respond to it, and eventually wrote a book about it.

BARRIERS TO BELIEF

These kinds of meetings show us that, just as there are different barriers to someone’s health that require their own specific treatment, there are different barriers to Christian belief that require their own unique responses. Some barriers just need sound arguments, others need inner healing, and still others need old fashioned repentance and prayer. 

FIRST THINGS FIRST SUNDAYS & THE NICENE CREED 

This is the first sermon of First Things, First Sundays , where we reflect upon Bible passages that underpin and relate to the phrases of the Nicene Creed.  

What is the Nicene Creed? It’s a core Christian statement that we recite every Sunday after the sermon, used across various traditions. It summarizes the good news of who God is, of what He has done and become, what He does and what He will do. It serves as a declaration of core Christian belief. Today, we are going to look at passages that relate to the first phrase, "We believe," especially addressing those of us, or that part in all of us, that at least at times might want to blurt out, "If only I could believe."

THE ORIGIN OF THE CREED

Before diving into the passages, let's first talk a bit more about how the Creed came to be. For the rest of the sermon, I mostly just call it 'the Creed.' There are other creeds, but this is the most widely recognized and used creed in the Church.   

The Creed was written during a critical and divided moment in Christian history when a number of people were denying the full divinity of Jesus. This denial contradicted the early Church's witness, now known as the New Testament, as well as centuries of Christians experiencing Jesus as fully divine in their worship and life together. It also undermined the very foundation of Christian hope—Jesus' divine power to save from sin and raise the dead. To a lesser extent, another group was denying His full humanity, which challenged the belief that His sacrifice truly represented and redeemed humanity, making salvation ineffective and again, further undermining Christian hope.

In other words, the stakes could not have been higher. In response, the leaders of the Church came together and wrote the Creed to preserve unity in the Church by protecting and promoting the full truth of the Good news of God in Jesus.

THE DRED SCOTT CASE

A comparable situation, with of course important differences, occurred in 1857 with the Dred Scott case, a pivotal and divided moment in U.S. history.  The Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether free or enslaved, were not citizens and had no right to sue, effectively denying their full humanity. This decision fueled the abolitionist movement, leading to the Civil War, as well as some significant documents: the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) which abolished slavery and affirmed the full humanity of Black people.

Both the Amendment and the Creed corrected profound falsehoods—the Amendment by affirming the full humanity of Black people, and the Creed by affirming the full humanity and especially the full divinity of Christ, and both paving the way, eventually, for greater truth and unity, and more of the way things should be.

But it was centuries of affirming the truths in the Creed  that made things like the abolitionist movement and the 13th Amendment possible. For example, the Creed's declarations about “Jesus as Lord,” meaning He is our true Leader; that He is “God from God, who became human,” meaning He shows us what God is like, in our shared humanity; that He “came for our salvation,” meaning—according to the gospels that are read every Sunday before the creed—that he loves, saves, and dignifies all people, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity, especially those who have been treated otherwise.  These kinds of truths, declared and believed over centuries, pave the way for countless good things in history, which the work of Tom Holland, Larry Siedentop, Rodney Stark, and many others attests to. 

THE POWER OF BELIEF 

Human belief is powerful.  Just consider the placebo effect, how just believing a treatment will work can cause your brain to trigger real positive changes in your body, even if the treatment isn’t real. Showing us how strongly our mind, body and belief are connected, and how we seem to be wired to believe. 

THE POWER OF BELIEVING THE OF THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

More than this, consider the power of belief  when we actually believe things that are true, especially things like the good news of God in Jesus.

In our Old Testament reading we heard God promise some good things to Abraham, and Abraham responded by believing God, and it says his faith was reckoned, was considered, as righteousness. When we believe, when we put our faith, our confidence in God and what He promises, or the good news of who He is, what He has done, what He does, and what He will do, like the things we find in the Creed, God in turn considers us, declares us, to be good and righteous people. That’s a good deal. That is powerful. It makes reciting the creed on a Sunday morning a significant moment, not just the first time, an opportunity, every time we recite it, to receive something powerful.

Paul, in his letter to the Roman church, famously wrote that he is not ashamed of the good news of God, because it  is the power of God for salvation, for all who believe. Those who actually believe from the heart, the good news that we declare in the Creed, they receive power that overcomes what’s wrong in the world and in us, and frees us to live in the fullness God intended us to live in. If we yawn when we come to the creed, we might want a different approach.

We heard in our New Testament reading from 1 John: “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”  The ultimate overcomers are those who believe, those who trust, those who put their full weight on what we declare in the Creed.

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO BELIEF 

The stakes are high. These kinds of promises make us want to believe, and want to overcome any remaining barriers to belief, in us personally, or in our family, friends, and communities.  

But as we said earlier, different barriers require different approaches, some barriers just need solid evidence and sound arguments. And there are plenty of both of those for Christians beliefs. 

Frank Morrison, author of Who Moved the Stone?, used to recite the Nicene Creed on a Sunday morning with a good dose of skepticism, particularly those parts about the physical resurrection of Jesus. When it came time to say, “We believe” he told himself it was just a ritual to perform, rather than a declaration of true belief. But in the long run this wasn’t satisfying to him, so he decided to look into the evidence, to settle for himself, once and for all this question of Jesus’ physical resurrection.  Well the historical evidence to compelling it transformed his doubt into conviction, belief, that it did in fact happen. Some barriers need solid evidence and sound arguments.

Others need inner healing and communal support, because the trusting mechanism in us has become wounded, broken. 

 And still others need old fashioned repentance and prayer.  In line with repentance a big barrier is inner resistance to God, to God being in charge of my life. Getting over this barrier requires a new mindset that says yes to God being in charge of my life. 

And still other barriers require the grace that comes from a prayer. Plenty of people get all kinds of help without praying for it. But there is some help that will only come in response to a prayer. We want to pray especially for those kinds of things. And in the story of our gospel reading we are given such a prayer.

THE FIVE WORD PRAYER

The story begins with Jesus returning from a mountain to find a crowd arguing with his disciples. A desperate father steps forward, explaining his son's severe and spiritually influenced seizures. For those in the medical field, none of the benzo meds are going to work on these seizures, The father initially seeks help from Jesus' disciples, but they are unable to heal the boy, because, as Jesus says later, this kind can only be addressed by prayer. There is something specifically dark going on in this boy's suffering that needs to be addressed with prayer. 

When the man asks Jesus for help, Jesus responds, "All things are possible for one who believes." What a huge promise, a promise the father wants to believe, for his son, and therefore wants to overcome any remaining barriers to his belief. But instead of blurting out, “If only I could believe” He sees the solution with Jesus, with help from Jesus, so he asks Jesus, that perfect 5-word prayer, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

And after one final convulsion leaves the boy seemingly lifeless, and maybe causing the father to wonder if Jesus heard his prayer, or if all this just made things worse, Jesus eventually takes the boy's hand, and the boy rises, fully healed, along with the faith of the father. 

Here Jesus is displaying the good news of God from God,  in this boy, and in this father, showing that, not just certain illnesses, but certain barriers to belief can be overcome by prayer, by a simple 5 word prayer, prayed to Jesus: I believe, help my unbelief.

I BELIEVE, WE BELIEVE

Coming back to the Creed.  We start and continue to say throughout the Creed, “We believe.” The original Greek version is “we believe.”  The later Latin translation is “I believe” from the Latin word credo where we get the English word creed from.  “I believe” is how they currently say it in Roman Catholic churches, and is the version we use at baptisms. And there is a place for both. “I believe” speaks to personal commitment and faith.  "We believe" speaks to communal and unifying faith. 

“We believe” also helps us be honest, and to be supported by the faith of the body, if say, we are struggling with our faith, or one or more of the lines in the Creed. We can say “we believe, all of us, collectively, even if I’m not currently, for whatever reason, not believing every line individually as I would like to. We as a body are believing together.”     

I want to offer you something else, not only for honesty and support, and not just to say but to pray, along with the creed, or any of the Christian creeds. And riffing off the father’s prayer, it would be:

We believe, help our unbelief.

In a moment we are going to recite the creed, and for this Sunday we will pause at the end and respond with.

We believe, help our unbelief.

To be clear I’m not changing the creed. I have no interest in causing that kind of controversy. This is merely a prayerful response to the Creed.  A way to ask Jesus to overcome any remaining barriers to belief, in us personally or communally. 

Jesus, we believe.  Help our unbelief.  May it be so.