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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.
This is a passage that has a certain sentimental resonance for me. Way back in the 1990s, when I was being trained to be a lay pastor, this is the passage I wrote my first sermon on. I asked the pastor who was teaching the course if he had a passage to suggest for me to work on. He named this passage, and when I finished writing the sermon, he revealed that it had sentimental resonance for him, as well. He had been invited back to the first church he had served many years before for a kind of homecoming service. And when the day came, this was the passage he had been asked to read.
He said there was a great connection between him and the people of that church, because he never forgot their affection and compassion when they stood beside him at the grave site of his wife, who passed away leaving him with two small children to raise. This passage, in which Paul talks about the love and affection between followers of Jesus, seemed the perfect choice for a day in which he joined in worship with his old friends from that congregation.
Over the years since then, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians has become my favorite of all the letters written by the great apostle. I say that because Philippians seems to exude a profound sense of joy. Paul writes to his friends in Philippi about the great joy he gets from being a follower of Jesus and seeing the church at work in the world. In his letter, Paul also expresses joy and appreciation for the others who follow and serve Jesus alongside him.
I guess that’s the reason Philippians seems so meaningful to me — because of its expressions of joy in the Lord. It seems to me that joy is often in short supply in our world – and even in the church. You might remember that Paul lists joy among the “fruits of the Spirit.” But when you’re in the company of others who claim the name of Jesus, it seems to me that there’s a real shortage of joy in the air.
When I think about it, it occurs to me that this might be because so much of the focus of the modern church is on getting people to accept the correct doctrines, and to behave according to a strict moral code. And neither a focus on doctrine nor a focus on morality really serves to build up people’s joy. The doctrinal emphasis confuses most people, and the moralism leaves them either self-righteous or burdened with guilt. And confusion, guilt and self-righteousness is hardly a recipe for a joyful way of life. Too many of us who call ourselves Christians seem to forget that our master specifically said that he wanted his joy to be in us.
But it seems to me that reading and thinking about Paul’s letter to the Philippians can provide an antidote to that shortage of joy in the church. I say that because 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 think about the fact that Paul apparently wrote it from prison. And of course, prison in that time was even worse than prison today – 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 as followers of 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 know that I often read this passage. It seems so appropriate for those visits, 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.
In his great book entitled You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith makes the point that our faith is shaped much more by the loves of our hearts than by the religious doctrines in our heads or the rules we obey. In fact, he says that even what we believe in our heads is powerfully 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. 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 love 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 prays 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 believers. 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
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