Philippians 2:1-13
When I was a teenager, I was asked to stand up for what I believed in. And I mean that literally. During a Christian Education session at my beloved church camp, the chaplains asked us all to stand up or raise our hand. They told us they were going to read aloud the Nicene Creed, and any time they reached a faith statement or a theological concept that we weren’t sure about or had questions about, we were invited to sit down or lower our hand. If we wholeheartedly believed in a statement of the Creed, we were invited to stand up. It was an interesting exercise, as each line of the Creed went by and heads and hands would bob up and down as different campers, counselors, and volunteers responded. At the end, the chaplains invited all of us to gather together and say the Amen in one voice. They asked if anyone noticed any parts of the Creed where no one was standing, and we all shook our heads and mumbled no. They asked if there were any moments when everyone was standing, and again we all shook our heads and said no. We were a pretty skeptical and curious bunch, as most young people are.
What the chaplains taught us that day has stuck with me, and has been coming back to me these past few weeks. At any given moment, some of us are plagued by doubt, while others of us feel steadfast and certain. On any given issue, there will be those who have questions and those who feel up to answering them. There will come seasons of life when prayer comes easily for some, and others when it is a struggle for us but comes naturally and comfortably for others. As with everything worth knowing, the details of our faith and our religion require curiosity and education and discernment, none of which can exist in individualistic isolation. The Nicene Creed begins “we believe” because it is a statement about our shared faith, even when every I and Me in the room is in a different place with their beliefs. We believe together, we pray together, we labor together, and the details get revealed to us by God in the midst of our togetherness. This lesson is part of why I believe that I still need the church, why the world needs the church, even as fewer and fewer people feel the same. The life of faith can only be lived in community, and for followers of Jesus of Nazareth, that community is and has always been ekklesia, the gathering, the church.
The ekklesia, the gathered church, of Philippi was the first Christian church planted in Europe, and a community with which St Paul had a very affectionate relationship. The letter to the Philippians has a very different tone than some of Paul’s other well-known letters. While elsewhere Paul is preachy and perhaps a bit harsh, to the Philippians he gives gentle nudges and offers reassurance. Paul references specific leaders by name, most of whom are Gentile women, and offers them words of comfort and encouragement in the midst of turmoil and confusion. Throughout the letter, Paul offers lavish prayers and bursts into song, referencing what must have been well-known hymns of the earliest church. All the while, Paul encourages the Christians in Philippi to act as a community of faith walking the way of Jesus, loving one another even when conflicts arise and disagreements threaten their unity.
The Christians of Philippi knew a side of Paul that we rarely see. Shortly after he came and preached the Gospel to them for the first time, Paul and his companions were thrown into a Roman prison in the city for healing a young woman. Jail in the Roman Empire was not like what we might imagine in state or federal institutions today. The jailer was not obligated to provide more than the most basic sustenance and shelter. When someone was jailed in Paul’s day, their meals and all their material needs had to be met by friends or family in the community. For Paul, a Jew from Tarsus, the only friends and family he had were the newly converted Christians of Philippi who had listened to his preaching and witnessed the healing that led to his arrest. Paul came to them as a leader, and very quickly became a humble recipient of their generosity and hospitality. Paul saw firsthand how the community came together for him, and his letter to them reminds them of their capacity for such love, and encourages them to live into that gift in everything that they do, even if he never has the chance to see it for himself again.
The portion of this letter that we read today is a moment of pastoral encouragement from a concerned preacher to his beloved congregation. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete. If what I’ve taught you means anything, if our relationship is as important to you as it is to me, remember who you are. Remember the love of Christ that has brought you together, that led us to one another, and keep that love at the center of your life together. Paul is not writing these words to any individual, but to the entire community of faith. To be of the same mind, having the same love, is not about winning arguments or convincing someone that you are right and they are wrong. It is about an entire gathered people choosing to say We Believe together, choosing to say a resounding amen together, choosing to look not to our own individual interests but the interests of others.
Paul does not point to his own life as the primary example of how to live, but to the life and death of Jesus. Quoting a hymn that we believe would have been regularly sung among the believers of the early church, a hymn Paul himself would have taught the congregation in Philippi, Paul reminds us of the story that unites us all as followers of Jesus. This hymn is sometimes called the kenotic hymn, from the Greek kenosis which means to be emptied. Christ, although he was and is God, chose to empty himself in order to live as we live, to experience our joys and our grief and our pain and our hope in a body that could die as ours do. That act of kenosis, of emptying, is similar to what Paul experienced in that prison in Philippi, and the vulnerability of that emptiness was filled up to overflowing by the love of his fellow Christians. He was not too proud or too embarrassed to receive their help, because Jesus wasn’t. Paul understood that to live a Christ-like life was to live a life of mutuality and community, and he brought that message to every new congregation he planted. The same message matters to us now.
It matters because we are living through a true epidemic of loneliness and isolation. It matters because every message outside of the church, and even a lot of loud messages within the church, demand individualism and appearances and personal salvation at the expense of community and dignity for the marginalized. It matters because too many of us are living lives dictated by I and My and it is exhausting us and in some cases it is actually killing us. What Jesus taught Paul, and what Paul taught the church, is the opposite of individual. The Gospel is not singular, but inherently and radically plural. The Gospel isn’t just for you, it’s for all y’all and all them too. None of us would be here if it weren’t for someone else. It takes all of us to proclaim what we believe, and it takes all of us to live what we proclaim. When you can’t stand up, I’ll stand and raise my voice on your behalf. And I know that when times come that I can’t stand, I believe that the church will still be here standing up for me.
Mother A Writes 