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.