Last week travel plans seemed to be a big topic of
conversation. It was the school holidays and the big winter storm and its
accompanying polar blast came sweeping up the country, affecting roads, ferry
sailings and flights. Flights were grounded, Passes were unpassable, you
couldn’t just slip down the road in many parts of the country because they were
cut off by slips and landslides. The snow fields were open with the best snow
in years, but you couldn’t get to them because snow had closed the roads to the
ski fields.
We were down at a farm just outside of Waipukerau in the
central Hawkes Bay for a weeks breaks. Another family staying on the farm had to
postpone their journey back to Auckland as the Napier/Taupo road was closed by
snow, as you can see the welcome to the sunny Hawkes bay sign was in near white
out conditions. When the storm finally subsided, we went down to Blackhead beach
to see the big swells coming in, and when we came back via another road we
discovered the road we were staying on and had travelled down to the beach on
was closed because of slips and flooding. We’d only crossed one bridge with the
river flowing over it as well as under. By the time we came back up to Auckland
on Monday all that was left from the storm was the occasional flooded field,
and the remnants of snow on either side of the road up by Taupo. But travel
plans dominated most conversations we had with other people that week.
The passage we are looking at today in the book of
Philippians seems to be all about travel plans as well. Travel plans not affected by stormy weather
but by ill health. They seem to be simply about why Timothy, whom we know from
other parts of the New Testament, was
delayed in coming to Philippi and why Epaphroditus, who is only mentioned in
this letter, was returning sooner than expected.
This is part of our journey through Paul’s letter to the
church at Philippi. A letter where Paul thanks the church for their support for
him in his imprisonment and encourages them to stand firm in their faith and to
know the fullness of joy that comes from knowing Jesus Christ. The same
encouragement it gives to us on our journey following Jesus.
So what are we to make of Paul’s talk of travel plans? It
seems incongruous that a passage of scripture that starts by urging people to
live in a manner worthy of the gospel and goes on to give such a theologically
profound and deep reflection on the incarnation and the cross as the example
for Christian relationships (in verses 4-11) should finish with two paragraphs
about travel plans. It wasn’t unusual for Paul to finish his letters with such
things but here they are right in the middle. You could easily just by pass
them as a personal note, simply see them as an interesting side-track about who
would have carried this letter from Paul to the Church at Philippi, why it was
Epaphroditus not Timothy. You could see it as Paul having to turn people around
from going down the wrong track, Paul is having to address people grumbling and
arguing about changes to travel plans between Timothy and Epaphroditus, like
the church had become an air terminal of passengers when all foreseeable
flights are cancelled. But in these two
paragraphs Paul keeps very much on track by giving the church at Philippi two
examples who lived in the very manner he has been talking about. Two people
they knew very well who were examples of being devoted to Christ and living
that out in loving God’s people with the mind of Christ, putting others needs
before their own. They show us that the ethical demands of the gospel do not
ask more than God gives the power to obey.
Ok lets have a look at Timothy and Epaphroditus.
Timothy had been traveling with Paul, since half way through
his second missionary trip. In Acts 16, Paul meets Timothy in Lystra and
chooses him to join his team. Timothy is a second-generation believer, his
mother was a Jewish believer. His father however was Greek and the inference is
he wasn’t a believer. The church in Lystra thinks highly of Timothy, in a church
made up of both Jews and gentiles he fitted right in. Paul was a aware that his
mixed upbringing would be an issue in ministering to the Jews, so Paul has him
circumcised. Timothy travels with Paul to Philippi and is with Paul on his
missionary journeys and stays with him in all his difficulties and his
imprisonment. We know that Paul sent Timothy to both Ephesus and Corinth on his
behalf when those churches were experiencing difficulties, to act as his eyes
and ears and also to speak in his place. Timothy is Paul’s protégé, who he is
wanting to reproduce his ministry. In verse 20 the Greek could easily read I
have no one else like me as much as I have no one else like him. Paul sees
their relationship very much as Father and son.
Epaphroditus is a member of the church at Philippi sent on a
journey to bring aid to, and be an aid to Paul. We don’t know much about him.
He was obviously a trusted leader in the church at Philippi and Paul calls him
a brother and a co-worker and a fellow soldier, someone who shares his
suffering for the gospel. We know from
this passage that his work for the gospel causes him to become seriously ill.
We also know that he a profound sense of love and concern for the church at
Philippi and they are concerned about him so Paul sends him back to them. His
return is not to be seen as a failure but rather that he has shown himself to
have the mind of Christ, preparing to take on the role of a servant even unto
death. But in the mercy of God he has been restored to health. Epaphroditus is a common Greek name, and
tradition tells us that the first bishop of Philippi was a Epaphroditus.
But this is not just a biographical journey, Paul’s emphasis
in these two paragraphs is to commend Timothy and Epaphroditus for their faith.
In chapter 1 verse 27 Paul had talked of living in a manner
worthy of the gospel resulting in unity and the one spirit, striving together
for the faith of the gospel. These two men both show their being loved by God
through their love for God’s people. Paul commends Timothy for his genuine
concern for the welfare of the church at Philippi. His relationship with
Timothy is as father and son. While that
may seem to imply a hierarchical relationship, Paul speaks of Timothy serving
with, a fellow slave, not in terms of being in a lesser position, they are
partners in the gospel. Epaphroditus shows his love for Paul by acting as a
servant and taking care of Paul’s needs. At his heart is a love and concern for
the Church at Philippi. Paul’s love for both these men comes though as well.
In chapter 2 5-11 Paul had talked of putting our needs above
those of others. That we should have the mind of Christ who did not consider
equality with God something to be held on to at all cost, but took on human
form and became a servant, obedient even unto death, death on a cross, there
fore god raised him up, and he is seated at the right hand of the father, and
every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory
of God. Timothy shows this attitude…. Timothy
is commended for being different than everyone else… For everyone looks
out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. Timothy is prepared to stay with Paul and
serve him in his difficult times. Going to Philippi could have been the right
career move, maybe the start of his own ministry and exerting his own leadership,
but he chooses to stay and serve, until the Lord Jesus says its time to Go. I
was assistant minister at St John’s in Rotorua for six years and people used to
ask me, isn’t time that you moved on and got ordained and got your own parish?
Until I sensed the call of god to move on, you know I was happy being the
assistant as part of a team. Jim Wallace was always quick to talk of
ministering together. But it was the right thing to serve in that roll until
God said to move. Likewise Epaphroditus was willing to serve and risk his own
life for the work of the gospel. To give
up his life for the gospel, and like Christ he was worthy of honour for that. We
don’t know what this illness was and I’m not wanting to glorify reckless over
work here. Who knows it may have been
that part of that mercy of God was getting some healthy systems in place to
ensure that his physical health didn’t suffer. In his letter to Timothy Paul
uses the same illustration of a soldier and an athlete to encourage Timothy,
part of those illustrations are of someone trained to compete and disciplined
to fight. Both Timothy and Epaphroditus are seen as examples along with Paul of
that servant attitude.
How do the example of Paul and Timothy and Epaphroditus’
travel plan speak to our journey following Jesus?
Really quickly two things.
The first is that in these travel plans we see how the
rubber of our faith hits the road. Paul and his co-workers not only believed
and taught the gospel they lived it as well. Karl Barth, possibly the most
significant theologian of the twentieth century put it like this
‘”this is how it
looks when a man (you could say person)
does not only think these thoughts, but, because they are true and
necessary thoughts, must live constantly in their shadow and can never get away from them in his
concrete decisions.”
Paul puts his own teaching into effect in the difficult
pastoral decisions he has to make. In this case travel plans for his
co-workers. It dictates how we live.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was invited on a speaking tour in America in 1939, just
before the second world war broke out, Christians in the west hoped to be able
to save Bonhoeffer from being caught up in, and even called up to fight for,
Hitler’s Nazi Reich. He was offered what could be a fruitful ministry with
Germans who sort refuge in the US. But he finally chose to go back to Germany
to encourage the Confessing Church, that had up until then been resisting
Hitler’s ideology. Even though it meant significant risk to him, and in the end
imprisonment and death.
Finally, We see again an example of how the love of Jesus is
to be worked out in our love for one another. In a church that was struggling
with unity, the unity it needed to witness to the gospel in the face of
opposition that Paul and Timothy and Epaphroditus lived out their faith by
loving each other and the church they were called to serve. This passage is
full of the fact that whatever the physical destination or journey that way we
should go is the way of Christ’s love. Can I say these travel arrangements
almost tripped me up and bought me to a stop. I’ve been struggling with the day
to day plod of ministry an almost despondency with ministry and they bought me
back to the centrality of love. On my desk is a piece of the old Ahuriri wharf
that was damaged in the Napier earthquake. I was given it as a gift at my
ordination by a very intuitive minister. It’s old concrete with stones from the
Hawkes Bay rivers embedded in it. He gave it to me just to remind me that
Church is about people held together by the strong ties of Christian love and
Christ like love. Just like that wharf that is where the journeys of mission
start and end.
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