Partners in the gospel: a united team (Philippians 2:12-30)

Photo by Steve Harper

for audio of sermon here is the link... http://www.standrews.net.nz/node/674

Like the students from North Tech I’m new to Whangarei… we’ve been here for about two months. One of the things I noticed coming here and really love, is that at night when you are outside you can look up you see the stars. Unless of course it’s cloudy and raining then when you go outside and look up you only get a wet face. In Auckland where we lived for the past decade you still saw stars but the night sky was diminished by the bright lights of the city, what has come to be known as light pollution. If you’ve grown up here or in the countryside you may not relate to the wonder of seeing the stars more clearly as special, but it is.

I worked with students in Auckland one of them was Adrianne. She had grown up in Hong Kong and she told us she had never seen the stars at night until she came to Auckland… I think if she’d come to study in Whangarei it just might have blown her mind. In the reading from the bible we had today  Paul says that if the Christians he is writing to can work together without grumbling and arguing, if they can show themselves to be a group of people who really care for each other then they will shine like the stars in the darkness around them.

Now in our services in Hope Whangarei we’ve been working through a book of the bible called Philippians, which is a letter written to the first ever church on the continent of Europe, written by its founder the apostle Paul. It’s called Philippians because the church was in the city of Philippi in Macedonia. Paul was writing from prison in Rome, he was in chains for his faith in Jesus Christ, and was writing to the church to thank them for their ongoing support for him, and to encourage them to stand strong Kia Kaha in their faith as they faced opposition from outside the church. But also he was writing to a church where there was some internal strife and conflict and he was writing to teach them how to be partners together in the gospel. How they could work together in unity.

We can tend to forget that the church was something new and radical and different, it was people from all different walks of life and background gathering together to be a new people and family because they had come to believe that Jesus was the messiah, that Jesus was Lord; they had come into a new relationship with God, through Jesus life death and resurrection. Philippi was a good example of that from what we know of the planting of that church in the book of Acts(acts 17), it contained Jew and gentile, and people from all the different strata’s of society, a slave girl a rich independent merchant, a roman prison guard and his family. Kind of like with us this morning they were bought together from all over and we’re working out how to be united in Christ. In first century roman society they would have treated each other with disdain, Jew and gentile, and according to where they fitted in a very rigidly hierarchical society but now their being together was to reflect the love of God for the world shown in person of Jesus Christ.

Paul had told them the way to do that was by not focusing on their own wants and needs but to consider the other person before themselves: to have the mind of Christ, of Jesus. Who being in the very nature God, did not consider it something to be taken advantage of but rather emptied himself and became a servant, in human form and was obedient unto death even death on a cross. That attitude of self-sacrificial love that is the very nature of God, is to be the guiding principle for being a church together. Now with the word ‘therefore’ Paul turns to talk of how that attitude can be lived out in practical terms.

Out of love for his dear friends, Paul encourages them to “continue to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good Purpose”. The Christian faith is not about working to earn God’s love or our salvation, neither is it having to live a certain way to appease an angry God. Salvation, being bought into a right relationship with God, is first to last the work of God. In Jesus God became a human being, he lived as one of us, in his death on the cross, he paid the price for all that we had done wrong, that separate us from God, his being raised to life again, is the promise of new life and new creation that we can know in our lives. As we come to acknowledge that, God dwells in us by the Holy Spirit and works in our lives to fulfill God’s good purposes. How we live and how we treat others and deal with conflict is an outworking of that.

Some people have seen Paul’s use of the words fear and trembling here as meaning, that some how we are afraid that we are going to lose that salvation, or that we live in fear of God. But it is like in the Old Testament, where fear means respect and awe of God and his love for us, his action and what he has done in Christ. The Ten Commandments are often seen as simply God’s set of rules  for us a list of do not’s…or else, however they are prefaced in the book of exodus with the story of God delivering his people out of slavery and oppression… God’s faithfulness and salvation. They are then ways that we can live out that love that God has shown us in our community together. We live out of the grace and love and salvation we have received from God…Jesus Sums it up in John 13:34-35 by saying “love one another as I have loved you.” And Paul is inviting us to work out how to do that.

He gets down to the issue at hand. He encourages his readers to do everything without “grumbling or arguing”… which does not mean that there will not be conflicts, it’s how we deal with them that is important. The Greek word that we translate word grumbling and arguing or complaining is very rare in the New Testament, but in the Greek translation of the Old Testament it is used to describe the people of Israel in their wilderness wandering complaining about Moses and all the difficulties that they were facing.

 Grumbling and arguing has more to do with how we are feeling about an adverse situation or a problem rather than actually dealing with it, actually solving the problem. It’s a behind the back thing a murmuring in the background, not bringing it out into the open to find a way forward trusting God. The key thing that the people of Israel did in the wilderness was grumble about their leaders, question the direction they were taking them in. Many scholars have seen the second part of our reading this morning about Timothy and Epaphroditus, being Paul having to deal with one of the things there were rumblings and grumblings about. People were questioning Epaproditus as a leader which had either caused his illness, or because of his illness the he was unable to carry out the mission and ministry they had sent him to do. Paul affirms him and fills them in on the details, he sets them straight. They may even have been concerned that Paul was sending Timothy, instead of coming himself.  They were getting young untried timid Tim, not old experienced Paul who they knew and loved… and Paul affirms Timothy’s calling, care for the church and his credentials.

I’ve lead the Alpha marriage course a couple of times, and one of the most useful things I found was when Nicky and Sila Lee talk of solving issues in a marriage. They use the analogy of arguing about something being like a couple sitting on the couch with the problem between them separating them, and that that is unhealthy, things don’t get sorted, and can fester and ruin a marraige. Whereas they suggest the way to deal with conflict is to sit together on the couch, and with the problem out on the table in front of you. Out in the open so it can be dealt with and the problem solved by people working together.

The key thing for Paul was the Church holding on to the word of God, holding on the gospel truth, keeping the main thing the main thing. Often grumbling and arguing takes our attention off that.  Paul however says if they could do that he would be proud of them, t5hey would be his boast. Even though he was facing death, which he saw as martyrdom, dying for his faith, that he would have joy knowing that they too were able to rejoice in the gospel lived out in unity.

In fact Paul says that living in that way they would shine like stars in a generation that were struggling to know how to love one another. And in our broken and fragmented world, our multi-cultural, fractured and divided world struggling with how we can live together, if we can push past simply tolerating each other to this genuine togetherness and unity in Christ it will be a shining light for the world. For Paul as a Jewish man he would had psalm 8 in his mind as he used this metaphor. Because it speaks of the purpose of the vast array of the universe is to declare the glory and the greatness of God. We as a people in our love and community are called to do display that as well. If the gospel were a music he gospel is the lyrics and our lives working in unity is the tune that makes it catchy.

You know Paul would never have seen the star Alpha Centauri and its blue white companion Beta Centauri. Not because he lived in a big city and the stars were blocked out. Not because they are faint distant stars and you need a telescope to see them, in actual fact they are amongst the brightest stars in the night sky. But because he lived in the northern hemisphere. But if he had I’m sure that he would have had those two stars specifically in mind.

Because we know them as the pointers. They point us to the constellation known as the Southern Cross. You can always find the Southern Cross by finding these two bright stars. You students might want to do that one night. Our lives our community our attitude of having the mind of Christ our working together without grumbling and arguing and solving problems and issues together will point people not to the southern cross, but to the cross of Christ where they can find salvation healing and wholeness, community, family and unity in Jesus Christ. 

partners in the gospel: the one who has begun a good work in you... (Philippians 1:1-12)

if you would like to , listen to this sermon then here is the link to part 1   & part 2... as we have a limit on the data we can upload at the moment so it is done in two parts... 

I really enjoyed the launch service we had last week. It was a fitting culmination to a three year process of talking, praying, wrestling with and working through a new way for the Presbyterian Parishes up here in Whangarei to be church together. The work you have done… It was a fabulous way to launch Hope Whangarei, and celebrate our coming together, with fresh vision and vigor. 

   

It kind of feels strange doesn’t it, something’s have changed and

others seem to be exactly the same.  In an email to a friend this week I likened the process to a Microsoft windows update. You now it will happen and when it does you have that moment of anxiety, wondering if the whole system will simply crash, rather than update. In anticipation, you watch the circle of white dots going round and round on your screen, the only sign of activity as windows configures your update. When it’s done and launched, it oddly seems to be the same. Something’s have changed, something’s have been renamed and you can’t find them and there are new things, things that you didn’t even know you needed, some that you like and others you wish they hadn’t changed and you can guarantee their will be a glitch or two along the way … and then you get on with the work you use your computer for in this new environment. That’s Hope Whangarei, new and different, same and familiar, called to be, led by the spirit to be, getting on with the work of being the church and proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

I really think we got off to a good start, and I’m looking forward to working with you at being and becoming that flourishing Christian community, that is intergenerational and missional, that is connecting people to God and to each other in Christ, that is our vision, that is our purpose.

Today we are starting a series of sermons looking at Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, all three centers, congregations are going to be working their way through this letter, and the series is called partners in the gospel. In his opening prayer for the church which we had read today Paul says he gives thanks for the churches fellowship or partnership in the gospel (v3), their partnership in grace (v7), and I think it’s good for us as a church at this new juncture to explore what that means. What it means for us to be partners together in the gospel.

On one level Philippians is a letter that is kind of like the ones my mother made me write after Christmas or my birthday when I was a child.  You know the ones to say thank you to that mysterious array of distant relatives, that we hardly ever met, who had sent a card, sometimes with money tucked inside, a one or two or five dollar note or ten if we were lucky… and in those letters she’d make us tell auntie petunia or great uncle bob what class we were in at school and what we liked and what we did as a hobby. Paul is writing to thank the church for their continued ongoing support for him, in prayer and financially. Paul does fill them in on what is happening in his life. In fact Paul is in prison, and prison in those days was not a state supported institution, it was user pays, you had to provide your own food and support. So the financial gift from the church was a lifeline for Paul.

But Paul saw this gift and ongoing support, even when others had abandoned him, written him off as evidence of a deeper connection, a deeper commitment, that the church in Philippi, were indeed partners in the gospel. In the midst of great difficulty, and you can read about that in acts 17, they had come to faith in Christ, and amidst pressure from outside and amidst difficulties within they were seeking to be a people who in all they said and did and how they loved each other and even how they dealt with conflict, defended and confirmed the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Philippians is a letter and the reading we had today is the formal greeting part of that letter, it follows the same structure as any personal letter that was written in the first century. It has an introduction, who it is from and who it is for. Then it has a greeting, and a brief prayer of thanksgiving, and a prayer wishing the best for the person being written to. In the pagan first century they would have been offered to the gods. But Paul takes this formal part of the letter and he transforms it. He infuses it with theological depth, and Christian warmth and uses it to preface and introduce what he is wanting to share with the church at Philippi… and with us…as we read it …two thousand years later and a whole half a world away.

Let’s work our way through the passage and see what it does have to say to us.

Firstly the introduction, Paul uses this to speak of the fact that he and the people he is writing to are partners in the gospel because they, we belong to Christ Jesus. He identifies himself and his offside Timothy as servants or slaves of Christ Jesus. He writes to all the believers in Philippi acknowledging them as God’s holy people in Christ. People who have been set aside in Christ and for Christ. First and foremost we are partners in the Gospel because of what Jesus the messiah has done for us. It is because of Christ, his life, his death his resurrection that we are bought together.

 I don’t think it’s going overboard but in writing to all the believers Paul is affirming that catch cry of the reformation, which we are a priesthood of all believers, we are all bought into that relationship with God through the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is affirming the understanding of the body of Christ that came about because of the charismatic renewal, that we are a ministry of all believers. We have all been given a gift and a part to play. It resonates with what is a developing understanding of the church, that we are all called to be missionaries together, partners in sharing the gospel in our time and place.

The other thing that this introduction does is that it expresses the humility and servant nature of leadership in the Christian faith. Paul identifies himself and Timothy as servants of Christ, it is a title that he uses in most of his letters. In addressing the church at Philippi he acknowledges all the believers first and then also the overseers and deacons. Not as an afterthought but to acknowledge that those roles are servant roles. This foreshadows Paul’s plea to the church in chapter two to have the humility and the mind of Christ, shown in Christ’s incarnation his own servant attitude and his death on a roman cross. When I was growing up in my home church in Titirangi it was always printed on the front of the newsletter that the ministers were the congregation and ‘The minister’ was the assistant or servant to the ministers…

This being in Christ is reinforced in the greeting that Paul brings. He greets his hearers with grace and peace, that comes from our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of the grace of God that we are bought into a new relationship with him, that we are able to know and receive the pace of God in our lives.  The word peace comes from the Hebrew shalom and has the sense not of an absence of conflict, or that wonderful relaxed feeling you get when you just stop and rest. Rather it has the idea of wholeness, of a matrix of right relationships, with God, with the spiritual realm, with one another, with the created world, with our possessions. As we move on through the letter in Philippi Paul will focus on very practical ways in which the church can work on, having that peace with one another, by having the mind of Christ, by people who are in conflict in the church working at reconciliation, through a process that we would call sanctification, become more like Christ in the way we live.

Paul then turn and gives thanks for the church at Philippi, again his focus is on their coming to faith in Christ Jesus. He remembers that it hadn’t been an easy time, there had been riots and he’d been imprisoned as the gospel had been preached but those who had come to faith had been sincere and committed. He sees their ongoing love and support for him as a sign that this conversion to Christ had been genuine. It is by grace that we are put right with God through Jesus Christ, not because of who we are or what we do, but as we experience that grace, it should change us, it should transform us. Paul sees that generosity and sacrificial giving to support him, that willingness in a roman city to identify with someone sitting in a roman prison as a sure sign that their coming to Christ had been genuine. He assures them that he and they could have confidence that the one who had started a good work in them would bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus. It is the same hope that we have that Christ is at work in us and will bring to completion the good work he has started in us.

Paul moves to pray for the church, that their love might abound more and more. He does not define what that means, except to say that it will grow through wisdom and insight. That it will be shown in ethical behavior what he calls fruits of righteousness. As we come to understand how much God has loved us in Christ, our love for God will grow. AS we come to understand how much God has loved us in Christ, our love for one another will grow. We will treat each other with forgiveness, respect and sacrificial concern. AS we come to understand how much God has loved in Christ our love for those who do not know Christ will grow, we will treat them with dignity and justice, will offer them compassionate service, and introduce them to the god who loves them.

I’m having one of Lorne’s Toblerone moments… seeing the church grow in upward, inward and outward dimensions.

Paul’s prayer for the church at Philippi I believe is God’s prayer for us as a church as well, that our love might continue to grow and abound more and more, as we know Christ’s love more and more and we are given insight to the dimensions of that love and grace, and that it would abound more and more in our care and love for one another and in our care and concern for the city of Whangarei and beyond…

Last week before the service, I was very nervous, so I went out early into the garden at Glenys Curries, where we are staying at the moment, and took my camera to just do something to calm my nerves. Photography does that for me… While I was out there I took this photo of the dew on the branches of an ornamental cherry tree. Weeping cherry. Which I thought was a wonderful image of what God is doing with us here. For me it is a symbol of the trust in God to be able to bring to completion the work that he has begun. The tree had been pruned and shaped, and is in its winter condition, simply bear branches. But as you look at those branches you could see buds getting ready to break forth with spring growth, you could see this tree that has been there for a long time and is well established about to burst forth into new life. The one who has started a good work is able to bring it to completion. Is at work within us and through us to see our love grow with wisdom and insight. Calling us to be partners of the gospel together.