More than Acquaintances - Phil 4:14-16

(Scripture read at the beginning for first time)

Introduction

This week, sometime, google “coronavirus” and “mental health.” It’s something that I don’t think is being talked about enough, but all of the evidence points us to the reality that we aren’t just in a health or economic crisis, but also a mental health crisis. Over the last six months, a federally run crisis hotline has seen a 1000 percent increase in the number of calls. It doesn’t take much insight to see why this is taking a toll as it is. Everyone is living in different shades of fear. Some are afraid that they or someone they love will die. Some are afraid that they’re going to experience the loss of their rights. Others are afraid that they’re going to lose their livelihoods. Many are experiencing anxiety on more than one of these fronts.

And, the compounding factor of this is that we’re having to cope with these fears in isolation. We’re afraid and alone, and where fear and loneliness coexist, hopelessness is sure to follow. And, hopelessness is at an all-time high right now.

God’s Word

This is just one way to highlight the importance of our mission to make maturing and multiplying disciples to the ends of the earth. I’m convinced that Jesus is calling us to join him in his mission to rid the world of hopelessness. And, in the pursuit of carrying out this mission to rid the world of hopelessness there is a process, a discipleship process, that Jesus has laid out so that we can be transformed and so that we can be a part of transforming others. We’ve framed up this process as Connect/Disciple/Go. What I hope to show you over the next few weeks is that this isn’t just theoretical; it’s practical. It’s real world. And, we’re going to begin by looking at connection. Jesus is calling us out of isolation and out of fake smiles and out of squeaky clean images, and He’s calling us to deep, personal, meaningful, raw connection. That is, He’s calling us out of hopelessness and loneliness, and He’s calling us into a community, a family where we can be ourselves and becomes the version God intended.

Connection is “sharing lives” with one another.

v. 14 “Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.” (connecting ‘koinineo’ in verses 14-15 and 1:7 with pencil) It’s this type of connection that we see being powerfully displayed in the relationship between Paul and the Philippians. Their relationship helps us to see the difference between typical, noncommittal, going-through-the-motions Sunday school classes, and life-altering, hope-giving, joy-inducing connection that Christians are intended to enjoy. First, you’ll notice that connection is “sharing lives” with one another. There’s a point being made in these short sentences that I don’t think the ESV does a great job of drawing out. Notice “share” in verse 14 and “partnership” in verse 15. These words share the same root word, and if you’re using an ESV, you can even see down in the footnotes that this word means “fellowship”. It means to be connected with. It’s the formation of a bond and a brotherhood. This word also occurs at the beginning of this letter in a way that Paul means for us to connect when we read it here. 1:7 says, “It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all PARTAKERS WITH ME OF GRACE, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.” “Partakers” is that word again. It means, as you’ll see in the footnote again, is to ‘fellowship’ or to ‘connect with.’ So, let’s zoom out and put this together to see what Paul is saying and what we can learn about connection. 1:7 = “You are connecting with me in grace.” 4:14 “You are connecting with me in my troubles.” 4:15 “You are connecting with me by meeting my needs.” So, we have this lofty theological reality. We have bonded, glued together by grace. We are fellow partakers, swimming together in the ocean of God’s grace. It’s a bond that’s been there from the ‘beginning of the gospel.’ And, this theological reality is lived out in our lives in really practical ways. Because we are bonded by grace, we share in one another’s troubles. Because we are connected in the gospel, and not in our hobbies or our personalities or even in our geography, we take care of one another and meet one another’s needs and add each other’s drama to our lives. Because, we’re partners fellowshipping together in the grace Jesus has provided.

Roommate or Husband?

What does it mean to be connected? Does it mean that we just attend the same church? Does it mean that we just meet in the same room together a lot? Does it mean that we know one another’s names or that we have similar interests or that we have a similar worldview? All of those are good and are part of connection, but they stop short of being a real connection. Connection is sharing your lives with one another. It’s the difference between being a roommate and being a husband or wife. You can be in the same room a lot and share bills together and know a lot about each other without having a meaningful connection. I have often had couples that have sat in my office and said, “I just feel like I have a roommate and not a husband, not a wife.” And, we know what they mean. They’re sharing bills but not life. They’re sharing a home but not a connection. And, it’s a picture of how we often are in the church. We share bills, and we share a building, and we share interests, but we don’t share ourselves.

No Shame = “This is me”

So, there’s no meaningful connection To be connected is to share “who” I “am”. That’s what Paul does when he shares his troubles with the Philippians. How else would they know about them? Paul is on record for how uncomfortable he is to accept the help. In 2 Corinthians, he even says that he’s been ‘robbing’ the Philippians. But, he’s let them in. He’s been vulnerable with them. Grace is calling us to be more than roommates. We are fellow partakers. We have been washed clean. We have troubles, but we no longer live with shame. So, the space has been opened in our lives by Jesus to let others in on our hardships and troubles, sins and failures. We don’t live in shame. Jesus fixed that. So, now, I can expose that raw nerve that I’ve been trying to cope with alone. I can be vulnerable with you and confess to you and seek your help. That is, I can connect with you. Can we just say enough with the pretending like we’ve got it all together? Can we just say enough with trying to deal with all of our own junk with all of our own weakness? Y’all, that’s what our groups are about. They’re not about filling up your schedule. They’re not about giving more to do. They’re about us moving past being roommates to being a family. They’re sharing in troubles because we share in grace.

A Problem and an Opportunity

So, from Paul’s angle, we see that connection is sharing who I am, and from the Philippians’ angle we see that to be connected is to share “what” I “have”. The hard thing about being vulnerable and exposing a nerve is that you don’t know how the other person is going to respond. They could ignore. They could weaponize your weakness, your confession, your need against you. They could help. That’s the problem, and that’s the opportunity. It’s an opportunity to bond, to build trust. The Philippians were in the midst of a terrible poverty; so, how could they help Paul? But, like a mother who forgets to eat herself because she’s always feeding others, the Philippians increased their own suffering in order to alleviate Paul’s suffering. And so, they showed the world, and the global Church, a picture of Jesus who suffered that we might rejoice. These aren’t surface level connections. These are “I’ll-miss-a-meal-for-you connections.” Is this spirit among us? Let’s share who we really are, and let’s share what we have with one another because we share in the cross-borne, bloodstained grace of Jesus. Let’s share our lives and connect with one another.

Connection is “taking responsibility” for one another.

v. 15 “…no church entered into partnership with me…except you only.” Let’s not settle. Let’s not settle for a lesser joy. Let’s not settle for a lesser version of the church than the one that Jesus purchased. Let’s not settle for acquaintances when Jesus purchased a brotherhood. Even in the early church, this type of meaningful connection was extraordinary and exceptional. “No church entered into partnership with (Paul)....except (the Philippians) only”. This means that they weren’t following the example of others. They weren’t jumping into a flywheel of momentum. They were taking the initiative. They were taking responsibility for the wellbeing of Paul. That’s what connection is. Connection is “taking responsibility” for one another. It’s taking the responsibility upon yourself to forge relationships and bonds with those that God has brought into your faith community. It’s taking the initiative to enjoy bond that Jesus has purchased. One of the most mind-jarring wonders of the gospel is that God came to us and saved us and loved us by his own initiative. So, the attitude of slipping in the back and sitting silently with the expectation that someone else will initiate connection with you is counter-gospel. It’s setting up your ‘fellow partakers of grace’ for failure. No! Connection is my responsibility. It’s grace’s call on my life. I want to set you up for success. After all, I’m a co-laborer, not a consumer.

Grace has Built a Bridge

There are best friends here that are waiting to be made. There is counsel here waiting to be given. There is love here looking for a place to express. Every Sunday, lonely people are here. Depressed people are here. Hungry people are here. Anxious people are here. Every week, there are people that God is calling to take new steps in faithfulness and to begin new ministries. There are those who God is going to use you to call them into ministry. But, we have to take responsibility for each other. We have to take the initiative to build the partnership. There are both “needs” and the “means” to meet those needs here every week. And, grace has built a “bridge”. Grace built the bridge between Paul’s troubles and Philippi’s partnership. Grace built the bridge that connected a gentile congregation with a Jewish evangelist. And, grace has built the same bridge in our church. Grace has overcome our shame and our differences and our age gaps and our financial gaps so that we can connect with each other, partner with each other, and help each other.

A Bridge to Every Believer

It’s a bridge that God has built between you and every other believer, no matter where they live or what their story is. Geoffrey is a pastor that we partner with in Swaziland (eSwatini), and he’s going through a difficult time right now. He’s had to move to a remote area for his family, and he doesn’t have access to good water. So, every morning, he’s racing to the closest water hole to his house to try to beat the cows there so that they won’t pollute the water. Then, he is filling up a wheel barrow with water and rolling it home for his family to use throughout the day. The cost to dig and plumb a well is $7000 or so, five years wages in eSwatini. Wednesday, Andrew said that he’d been up all night trying to figure out how he could get Geoffrey the well they need. And, I thought, “That’s it! That’s a bridge that only grace can build. That’s initiative that comes from grace getting deep into your bones. That’s love that overcomes an ocean’s worth of distance. That’s ‘sharing in troubles’ as ‘partners in giving’ because we’re ‘fellow partakers of grace.’ And, Geoffrey’s not alone. Many of you are struggling with issues in your life that are about to drown you. And, that’s why we can’t settle for acquaintances. That’s why Jesus has purchased for us a brotherhood. That’s why you’re going to have to put yourself out there and get chest deep in someone else’s drama. That’s why we need to serve on mission trips together and attend groups together and host cook outs with one another. We need each other. We need people to know us. We need to share troubles. We need to move from “acquaintances” to “brotherhood”.

Connection is “committing” to one another.

v. 16 “Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.” You see, connection is “committing” to one another. It’s not mindlessly listening to someone so that you can say you did it. It’s really engaging them. It’s not throwing them a few dollars and forgetting about it. It’s following up and helping them find solid ground for the long haul. It’s not just having sympathy for their depression. It’s walking with them until they reach the light. The “depth” of our connection reveals the “degree” to which grace has taken hold of us. It’s a stubborn insistence to take care of one another. Even Paul seems surprised by Philippi’s commitment to him. He says, “Even in Thessalonica”! It was just ‘one and done’, but they’d helped him ‘once and again’!

Connection is a Discipline

True connection is a “spiritual discipline.” It wasn’t easy for Philippi to stay connected to Paul. They had their poverty and their own suffering. Paul had left their town to go to Thessalonica, and then he’d left their region when he left Macedonia, but they refused to let Paul get out of sight and out of mind. It would be easier for them to move on, but they were determined, committed to loving him well. Right now, we’re a lot like the Philippians. There are a lot of obstacles to our connection. We’ve got COVID, and we can’t meet in our groups. And, people are trying to figure out their jobs and what school will look like for their kids. In fact, the easiest and most natural thing to do would be to disconnect from one another. But, there’s another way to look at this. The obstacles to our connection are also opportunities for us to show how much we love one another. It requires discipline and creativity and passion and drive. But, elders, now is the time to show our flock how often you think of them. Teachers, this is your opportunity to show your group that they’re far more than acquaintances. Youth and children’s workers, let your students know that they’re still connected with you.

The Church Isn’t Lonely

We’re the Church, and we know that we’re not alone. But, sometimes it still feels lonely. And, as your brother, it breaks my heart to know that you might feel as though you’re isolated in a room filled with other believers. So, let’s each one of us take the responsibility and the initiative to walk over the bridge that grace has built that we might share our lives with one another. Let’s connect together.