Partnership in the Gospel

Philippians 1:1–18 NRSV

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.

Let us pray.

There are so many ways to love God and proclaim the good news. The question we have is what kind of witness will we be? We can’t control the things others are going to do, so who will we be instead?

Today, I want to contrast the encouragement we hear from Paul to the Philippian church with some of our modern ways of comparison and competition.

These last few weeks, we’ve heard the stories of St. Paul’s conversion and the beginning of his missionary journey through Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and on to the city of Athens. Now, imprisoned in Rome, Paul writes letters to the churches he has connected with through the years, writing to encourage and admonish them as they mature in the faith.

But how do we know if we’re doing it right?

So much of life can seem like a rat race of comparison and one-ups. Our culture is filled with this kind of us-vs-them thinking, where we compare ourselves to others, against others, in order to justify who we are, to feel good about what we do or say. Take the example of this week’s Met Gala, where fashion and riches were on full display in New York, a spectacle of statements and comparison and virtue signaling, all steeped in excess and wealth.

Or let’s consider the ways we see the ethic of “might makes right” in the world. Not encouragement, but power wins.

I don’t want to get terribly deep into politics, but there are two issues that have been on my mind lately, but I think tie in with Paul’s teaching and encouragement to the Philippians. First, there is the question of Christian nationalism. We’ve obviously heard a lot about this in the news, and so how do we reconcile Paul’s teaching that all proclamations of Christ serve some sort of greater good while also being witness to all forms of heresy and blasphemy?

For clarity, here are three historic examples of Christian nationalism.

First, there is Christendom and the Roman empire. Emperor Constantine made the decree that the entire Roman Empire was to be Christianized. All citizens were to be baptized and belong to the Church, which was endorsed by the State. There was no distinction, only uniformity. Empire reigned with Christianity being used to justify it’s existence.

Second, the confessing church in Germany. During the Nazi Reich, the State church again went along with and endorsed the structures of Hitler’s regime.

In third, I recall not necessarily from the government, but the church and surrounding entities that during the Bush administration, there’s a lot of people saying things like we needed to go in the holy war against Muslims and that God had I think what it was Reagan had made America a city on a hill. These are all examples where the state uses the church for Power.

The second thing I’ve been thinking about is exceptionalism, which I want to actually think about it more in the personal terms of exceptionalism. I’ve known plenty of people who proclaim Christ in very loving, humble ways, and I’ve known plenty of people who proclaim Christ through things like pride, envy, and even contempt or judgment for the one who is other than us. We may say we love Christ, but our actions and way of considering each other as partners in the gospel doesn’t always seem to reconcile with what we understand as Jesus’s loving way.

Let me give you a personal example: times in my life, even in recent years, where I’ve felt like I need to be the authority, the most put-together and organized person. An expert on matters of faith because of my education and experience. And it’s pretty easy to fall into pride at some kind of exceptional way I have accomplished it. It’s tempting to look down on others who I have authority over, tempting to use a perceived exceptionalism to lord it over others. And again, I’m talking about all of these in very personal terms. But I also know we can experience this in systemic ways, state and national ways. It’s the sense that some of us are somehow better than others.

Of course, there’s a dark side to this that we have to acknowledge. Proclaiming Christ example is the way of good news and will persist through anything. We do muddy it up, but there’s a sin here of pride which betrays a deep insecurity. We have to talk about ourselves as exceptional or blessed by God or the best at our particular role. I don’t know about you, but I often do this when I question whether or not those things are true. When I wonder if I’m a fraud or if I’m off point.

Some of the divisions in the early church that Paul is talking about have to do with people trying to wrap their heads around what right practice and right belief looks like. How did this faith in Christ coincide with or parallel public life and community and family? Paul seems very encouraged by the way the Philippians are living out their faith, and perhaps he simply is cautioning them against forms of superiority or exceptionalism that he’s seen elsewhere. But we both know that issues of division and pride show up in every single community, small or big. 

These examples live among us. Just like Paul doesn’t get into specifics about particular people he knows or issues that would add too much detail to the letter, so we can also think of plenty of places in our lives where there is this kind of strain. Where we project our insecurities upon others. Where we feign exceptionalism to cover up fear. Well, we don’t need to name every detail here at St. James. Can we pause to think and consider where we might do some of this ourselves, where we might experience it from others?

What if we took heart like Paul does with the Philippians and we learned to confess and move on to celebrate what is good?

An important part of our life together that pushes against the tides of exceptionalism or nationalism or us-vs-them-isms is sharing our needs with one another. Each week, we lift up our prayers and our longings together. We tell stories of God’s faithfulness and share about our hopes. We lament together, encourage one another, and celebrate success together.

We are instructed: to live in anticipation that the one who has started this good thing in us will see it to completion. That God is not done with any of us, but that we are all faithfully journeying together along the way to God’s home. We are fellow travelers and share the passage with each other.

Paul is basically being a cheerleader and instructor with this opening message to the Philippians.

“Good job, keep it up!”

I’ve run a number of organized races in my time, 5ks, half marathons, etc. I’ve also stood on the sidelines, watching others finish a great race, like Ski to Sea or the Chuckanut 50k. What happens along those sidelines? You cheer people on! I love this experience, especially late in the field of a race, where the participants are a bit more spread out, so you get to cheer on specific people as they pass. Strangers. “Good work, keep it up!” “You’re almost there.”

Imagine the great cloud of witnesses, surrounding the sidelines of our lives. “You’re almost there.” “You’re doing great.” “Nice work!”

“The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ!!”

Will we be this kind of people?

Contrast this with exceptionalism and nationalism. We might also call this tribalism or nativism. We live in a time when encouraging the other along towards completion is so foreign to our discourse. No, we’re gonna take it for ourselves and make the other like us — Soli Deo Gloria.

We may hear things couched in terms of being blessed by God, but we know these nationalist and exceptionalist perspectives are sin and projections of our own insecurities and failures.

Of course, today I’m also thinking about mothers and parents and the people who see through all the fronts we put up, the exceptionalism we feign, and see us for who we are.

In a very real way, I can hear Paul’s words like the words of my own mother, cheering me on and encouraging me in the work set before me. Mothers, grandmothers, aunties — would we be encouragers and supporters of this strand?

You’ve got it. Keep up the good work. God is doing a good thing in you.

Who is the church going to be in the world like this? Paul makes an uncomfortable but strong statement that Christ will be proclaimed no matter what so how are we going to proclaim it him?

What does it matter? Christ is proclaimed!

But will we proclaim out of the abundance of love in our hearts, encouraging each other to keep growing?

Or will we proclaim out of exceptionalism or superiority? Projection and fear? Or loving mercy and the encouragement of grace?

And again, let’s bring it home: we are a welcoming people who want all to belong. We do that because of the way we understand Jesus love for us. A question I want to leave us with today is how are we leaving that up? How are we acting as Christ describes or as Paul illuminates in the Philippian church? Are we being partners in the gospel or are we being antagonists? Are we projecting our hurt and pain upon each other in unhealthy ways or are we giving and receiving love to one another mutually without power without status

One of the things I like about Presbyterian policy is that we don’t consider any of the ordained offices of the church to be higher or lower than another. We understand that there are different callings we live out, but within those ordained by our church — ruling elders and teaching elders and deacons — all are called and all take the same vows to faithfully live out their witness in the church.

We don’t need power. We need mercy.

We don’t need fear. We need honesty and connection.

We don’t need exceptionalism. We need participation and collaboration.

The church is a beacon of Hope and light in a dark world because it doesn’t reform itself to these patterns of dominance in the world. Rather, we are reformed in the renewing of our hearts and the drawing near to one another in Christ, amen.