The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity (November 13, 2022)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

<Introduction about progress>

It’s always interesting to me how St. Paul talks to the various congregations that he oversaw. Over this past year, we’ve seen him address a number of different parishes, often to rebuke or exhort them. We can think about the Galatians who had fallen prey to the false teachings of the Judaizers or the Corinthians who were beset by factionalism, internal divisions, and moral turpitude. Today’s reading is the opening of his epistle to the Philippians and we don’t see a rebuke in Paul’s writing here. In fact, quite the opposite: Paul is incredibly thankful for the Philippians and has nothing but good things to say about them. A while back, I preached a sermon about the plight of the Philippian church which was facing heavy persecution at this time no doubt because the area of Philippi was heavily nationalistic and wrapped up in emperor cult worship. It was not easy to be a Christian in Philippi. So St. Paul wrote a letter of encouragement to the Christians there.

In all this, St. Paul commends the Philippians because, in spite of and through their circumstances, they are advancing, they are making progress in their Christian walks. As all talk of progress and advancing, we must ask: what are the Philippians actually advancing toward? And, by extension, what are we advancing toward? Life is a circle: we spring into existence from the mind of God, he speaks and we are created, he sends us forth into the world; and the rest of our life is about returning to him. As Christians, we know this path back to God is Jesus Christ who saves us and shows us how to live. By following him as disciples who become like our master, we hope, pray, and strive to return to God so that at the end of our lives we hear “Well done my good and faithful servant.” Paul summarizes this in these opening verses of Philippians: “he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ.”

Here’s the thing that really grabbed my attention this week as I sat with and prayed through this text: as the Philippians made the progress towards God that St. Paul praises them for, we don’t see him let his foot off the gas when it comes to his prayers for their community. In fact, quite the opposite: “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine.” We know St. Paul was a man of prayer so when he says he prays for the Philippians, he doesn’t mean once in a blue moon when he happens to pray and he doesn’t mean it in a sort of “thoughts and prayers” way that we do now; he really and earnestly prayed for them. And I think this leads us to a general principle that we can take home today: the more progress we make in the spiritual life, the more we need to pray.

The first question we should probably ask is what does it mean to make progress in our spiritual walk? How do I know I’m further along the road than I was last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, etc.? The answer is somewhat simple and can really be assessed using two questions: (1) Am I sinning less? (2) Am I growing in virtue? Am I, by the grace of God, falling short less frequently? And, in place of that failure, am I receiving healthier habits of soul through the grace he gives me? In both the negative aspect of the question that involves the purgation of sin and the positive aspect of acquiring virtue, prayer is a necessary first step because James 1:5 tells us that “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” This certainly applies to other virtues: “Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief.” As the great Collect in the Prayer Book says, God is “always more ready to hear than we to pray.” Jesus tells us this in the Gospels: human parents, who are wicked, will give their children food when they ask for it; no one gives their kid a rock or a scorpion instead of bread. If that’s true, how much more does God our Father want to “fill the hungry with good things”? So we should be constantly asking ourself: “am I sinning less?” and “Am I growing in virtue?” And we should always be praying for both.

Yet the progress we make requires action; God wants our participation, our co-operation. God does not want to make us robots; he wants to make us fully human. When we co-operate with God then, we will what is Good and we obey him. At the end of our reading this morning, Paul gives us a list of criteria that mark participation with God: love abounds in knowledge and judgment; We approve things that are excellent; we are sincere and without offence; and we are filled with the fruits of righteousness. Each of these things take practice. Let’s just look at the idea of being filled with the fruits of righteousness. Undoubtedly, Paul has in mind the fruit of the Spirit here: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. These things don’t happen “naturally.” That we exhibit any of these fruits is a gift from God but they require us to build them up and strengthen them. If you want to be loving, it means loving even those who are not naturally lovable to you; if you want to have joy, you have to intentionally choose it in all situations, even when it’s tough. If you want to be more long-suffering, eat peas with a knife. We could go on, but the point is that we have to strive, we have to put in the ongoing effort and that our ability to do so is itself grace, a gift from God. And the beautiful part is, the more we do these things, the more we will what’s Good, the more we obey him, the more we become like him.

And this leads us to the crucial question this morning: why does spiritual progress require us to pray more? There are, I think, a few reasons why a person who is closer to holiness needs to pray more. The first is because the more we grow in holiness, the more we have to give of ourselves. This is not easy and it’s not supposed to be easy. “Pick up your cross and follow me.” If we want to progress from where we are now, it’s going to require more prayer. The second reason we have to pray more as we grow in holiness is that the holier we become, the more the devil will be inclined to attack us. When God and Satan are talking at the beginning of Job, who does Satan want to target? The most righteous man on the face of the earth, Job. If Satan can cause Job to fail, it would be more remarkable than if he corrupts just any old person. Growth in holiness puts a target on our backs. And finally, a third reason why we have to pray more as we progress is that when we make progress, it can be very easy, given our human proclivity towards pride, to buy into the myth of self-reliance. We begin to think things like “Wow, I’m really doing a good job, I’ve got this righteousness thing all figured out” or “Man, I am the humblest person I know!” We may use this to be impressed with ourselves and, like Peter when he stepped out on the water and began to sink, forget that our true dependence is always on God, not ourselves; but, we can also use this pride as a way of looking down on others: “Well I have so adequately conquered my sins while my fellow parishioners are struggling with x, y, or z.” But of course this is always wrong: God is not on the hook for any of the bad things you do but he is always the first cause of anything good you do; you cannot do good without God. And the second we forget that, the second we get lulled into a false sense of self-succiency, the quicker we will fall.

Here’s the sobering reality folks: a lot of people are going to Hell completely unaware that that is the trajectory they’re on. Many are trapped in cycles of sin, content to plateau in their pursuit of virtue and holiness. Rather than co-operate with God, they want to do their own thing and give their lives over to some lesser pursuit: money, power, status. And to accentuate the urgency, there is an added element of responsibility that we have. Those of us who have been baptized, who have been raised in the Church, who attend Church. We know more than the person who doesn’t regularly darken the door of a Church. What this means is that the progress of the Christian life must be our absolute, number 1 priority. Progress requires us to be intentional about our co-operation with God because we’re aware that it doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t happen by osmosis, it doesn’t happen as some sort of legal fiction where God just pretends we’re actually just when we’re not. We need to actively receive what God gives us so that we become like Christ. In Philippians 1, Paul is right to pray for the maturing and progressing Philippian community; if they really were progressing, they need all the prayer they can get! And the same is true for us: the more progress we make, the more we need Holy Communion, the more we need to pray the Daily Office, and the more we need to spend time with God in other ways. This task of progress can never be separated from prayer. It’s only possible when we’re aware of just how profound our dependence on God is that progress becomes possible.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.