Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-september-12-2023
Philippians 1:3-11
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Paul’s Letter to the Philippians is my favorite of all the letters written by the great apostle Paul. Romans is probably the letter with the most important theology in it, but it takes a lot of hard work and concentration to follow Paul’s arguments in Romans. Philippians, on the other hand, just seems to exude a profound sense of joy. Paul seems eager to share with his friends in Philippi the great joy he gets from being a follower of Jesus and seeing the church at work in the world. This letter also expresses the great joy Paul gets from his friendships with others who follow and serve Jesus alongside him.
Joy sometimes seems in short supply – even in the church. Joy is called one of the “fruits of the Spirit.” But the more I look around the contemporary church landscape, the more I think there’s a real shortage of joy among those of us who call ourselves Christians. It’s a tragedy that so much of the focus of the Christian faith is on getting people to accept the correct doctrines and to behave according to a strict moral code. The doctrinal emphasis confuses most people, and the moralism leaves people either self-righteous or burdened with guilt. And neither doctrines nor moralism really puts people in a joyful state of mind. We seem to forget that our master said he wanted his joy to be in us.
But Philippians seems like an antidote to that shortage of joy in the church, since it’s a letter that so forcefully expresses the joy Paul experienced as a follower of Jesus. And that joy is particularly striking when you consider that Paul apparently wrote it from prison. And of course, prison in that time was even worse than prison today – all the brutality without any concern for the welfare or the ‘civil rights’ of the prisoners. In fact, in those days most prisons didn’t even feel any obligation to feed prisoners. If you had family and friends to bring you food, fine. Otherwise, they’d haul your carcass away when you starved. There’s a reasonable chance that Paul was in chains as he wrote this letter.
But even in those difficult circumstances, Paul’s letter to the Philippians expresses this startling sense of joy, based on the hope they share because of their faith in Jesus. Paul sees God’s hand at work in the world, and he believes that all the followers of Jesus are being used by God in a great project – the project of bringing his kingdom to fulfillment on earth, as it is in heaven.
Those who have gone with me to take communion to home-bound people, or to people in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, know that I often read this passage on those visits. It seems so appropriate for those occasions because people in those circumstances often struggle with a sense of confinement that borders on imprisonment. And those believers often find it inspiring to remember that the apostle Paul could be living so joyfully in a real prison because of his faith in Jesus – a faith that they share with him.
There’s a great Christian book entitled You Are What You Love, by James K. A. Smith. Dr. Smith makes the point that our faith is shaped much more by the loves of our hearts than by religious doctrines that accept or the rules we obey. In fact, he says that what we believe in our heads is actually shaped by what we love and long for in our hearts.
And in making this argument, Dr. Smith points to this very passage from Philippians, and specifically to what Paul writes in verse 9. Paul tells his friends at Philippi that he’s praying that the love they have for God and for one another (and for him) will lead to a deeper and more profound understanding of what God wants for them, and that it will shape the way they live as followers of Jesus. He seems to believe that the love for God comes first – that if we come to a deep and powerful love for God and for others in his name, then greater understanding will grow out of that love.
In this passage, Paul says that out of their love for God and one another, and out of their deepening understanding, his friends in Philippi will display more and more the purity and goodness of Jesus. And the more they do that, the more their lives will give glory to God.
As someone who has the privilege of sharing in the spiritual lives of others, I understand Paul’s feelings as he describes them in this passage. I also hope that all my friends in Jesus – including those who read or listen to these Reflections – will experience a greater and greater love for God and for other people. And I share Paul’s confidence that that love will “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.”
Let’s pray. Lord, we want to be filled with a greater love for you and for other people – the love you intended for us and that Jesus modeled for us. By your Holy Spirit, awaken that love in our hearts so we can understand your will better and live with a joy that can’t be imprisoned by the circumstances of this world. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 142 and 143; I Kings 16:23-34; and Mark 16:1-20.)
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