A Letter to us All

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 27 September 2020 by Revd Richard Carter.

Readings for this address: Paul’s letter to the Philippians

Today I want to reflect upon the passage that we heard read for us from Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2.1-13. It is the most powerful of passages in what is an absolute gem of a letter. Paul is in prison and he writes to a community he obviously loves deeply. We know how when he writes to some communities he spares them nothing but rages against what he sees as their deceits, delusions or hypocrisies. But writing to the Philippians there is a real warmth of tone. The Philippians are the first Christian European community recorded in the NT that Paul has converted. He has lived among a group of them, spent time with them, then encouraged them to move outwards. Philippi is an important colony in the Roman Empire, it has rich natural resources and trading routes and is a key city in the expansion of the Christian Gospel. Imagine them like a St Martin’s or your own loved church community.  Paul holds this community close to his heart and his letter to them has a relaxed, loving and encouraging tone. And this community have also shown concern for Paul.  They have sent a messenger Epaphroditus to be with him and to minister to his needs and to bring him a gift from them. He calls him his brother and co-worker and has cared for him through sickness. Like all of us Paul himself needs reciprocity through relationship of mutual care. He calls this community in Philippi beloved and tells them that “you shine like stars in the world.”  One senses his trust and this trust allows him to disclose things that are deepest and closest to his heart. So while we learn in this letter about the Philippians we also learn in this letter a lot about Paul and the faith that sustains him even in his own personal suffering.

The subtext of this letter  is the sense that Paul’s imprisonment must have deeply concerned this early Christian community. What had happened to Paul the apostle who had inspired them with the Gospel? Was his imprisonment a sign of failure of God’s power to liberate and save.  Paul writing to them wants to readjust their understanding of what success and failure mean for a follower of Christ and how suffering as a Christian can be understood. Though in prison,  we sense in him a genuine joy- “rejoice” he tells the community in Philippi- “again I say rejoice.” In chapter three of this letter he writes 3.7 “whatever gains I had these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found by him.”  And then in 3.10 he seems to go even further and say. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection by the sharing of his suffering and by becoming like him in his death.” Now this would have sounded extreme to the community in Philippi  who obviously cared a lot about Paul- it is even more troubling for us. What was he saying? We, in the days of risk assessments, are understandably uncomfortable with a call to suffering, a call that seems to embrace even death itself.  But this is not a death wish or a recklessness. And in order to understand what Paul is saying I want us to return to the words we heard today.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

I want you to imagine these words are being addressed to us here in this our own Christian community. For we too are  the beloved. These words have often been seen as  a song or an early creedal statement in which  the first Christians expressed their longing not only to honour the life of Christ Jesus but actually to become like him.  Addressed to us they are speaking to us in the very place of our need, our suffering and also our hope.

“If” the passage begins, “if there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from  love, any sharing in the spirit, any compassion and sympathy- make my joy complete.” If? We know that there is.  We too, as these words are read out to our community, just as they would have been read out to the community of Philippi,  have witnessed with our own eyes and in our own hearts the flourishing of these very things- the consolation of love, the sharing of the Spirit, the growth of compassion here among this community during this time. Paul at his most persuasive calls us to go still further. You cannot doubt these things he says- allow these very gifts to lead you into a deeper unity of mind, heart -a unity of love. In order to do this he tells the community they have to let go of all divisiveness, the selfish ambition, or conceit or self-interest that can so easily poison any community. A Christian community, he challenges, has to move beyond self. The me has to become us.  Paul gives us a message now which is at the very heart of our Gospel and which has and will turn the way we live and the ways of the world upside-down.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus

This message is not just going to be about Jesus Christ it’s going to be about us. How we live our lives, how we in our own lives not only acknowledge but actually live Christ- become Christ in the world. How do we live Jesus?

And then we have this insight into the very nature of Christ himself:

The one who though one with God lets go of all power. He does not exploit power through manipulation or punishment or force.

Instead he empties himself taking the form of a slave.

It’s hard to overestimate how revolutionary that idea is. Listen to Tom Holland’s lecture who argued Classical thought recognised pity or compassion for the oppressed but not becoming the emptied one oneself. I wonder what this self-emptying means for us? I wonder what this slavery means. These are painful troubling words for us who have often also built our lives on principles of  mastery, achievement and material success. And indeed in the last few months recognised our nations complicity in the horror of slavery.  Here we are told that the place of God is not the place of the master but the slave.  All who long for status, recognition, power or authority will rebel against these words. Christ is not now the judge or the miraculous liberator, or the king- he is the one with shackles on his hands, or beaten for crimes he did not commit and strung up on a tress to be mocked and shamed by the powerful.  This emptiness is the extreme of what it means to be mortal, of entering into the terrifyingly unknown, and abandonment, into the place where we too will face suffering and ultimately death itself. And strangely this particular period in our history reminds us of that more intensely than perhaps many of us have been reminded before. Every time we get on a bus or go for a tube is there not the slight whisper within you- that you too can die. Every time the facemask slips or you feel an unknown cough. We too can be one of those figures on the evening news. Or in a hospital bed with no loved ones around us. Or if it is not us this could happen to those we love most.  Isn’t this time the time of self-emptying because all those health and safety measures we put in place cannot take away the fact that all human beings are ultimately mortal. Have we not all at some moment questioned the logic of it and though we  would like to believe we are in control,  realised that actually no government, or health service, or risk analysis, though they may be able to make things safer- can guarantee life itself. Only God can do that and what Paul is saying is that Christ shows us the way.

I said this was a message in which Paul tells us to rejoice. At the moment perhaps it feels raw and far to exposing. No one wants to talk about our death as though it were inviting bad luck. Every death is framed in terms of suffering or tragedy like a huge dark enemy rather than something of God. Is there a way of moving beyond the reality of suffering and as Sam said in this week’s pipeline make it beautiful? Paul is not whistling in the wind. He’s not being stoical or still worse masochistic- he is living in the realisation of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection. Not just as an intellectual creed but as a bodily reality. It is the self-emptying that makes room for God. It is the stripping away of all the facades and props and delusions and saying in the words that have become at this time familiar to us: “I want to live God’s future now” or using the words of another Autumn Series “In God I trust”  Paul is not wanting to die. He is wanting to live both in this world and the next and for him to live is Christ. This is not a yawning emptiness or a fanatical recklessness- this is the joy of discovering the eternal love of God in Christ and wanting to live in that love forever. This is not a death wish it is a life wish, manifest in the Gospel he wants to share with others. I of course cannot express this better than Paul does himself. Writing to the Philippians Paul speaks beyond his time to all of time. Not just to a community then but a community now trying to understand the meaning of their lives and the reality of suffering and death itself.  But also a community like us learning and yearning to live resurrection. And this insight comes from a man in prison who prison cannot contain. Just as our lock-down, our wilderness place cannot contain us either but can also become our place of resurrection.

I urge you to go home and read this letter. Its only four short chapters, it will I believe both challenge you, unsettle you and inspire you as it has me as I have prayed it and reflected upon it to prepare these words. I haven’t mastered what he’s saying but I have been emptied and opened up by this letter and longed to know the power of resurrection even in the sharing of Christ’s suffering.  If you read this letter and pray with it then I will have done my job in this reflection. I want to end with Paul’s own words from chapter four as he concludes this same letter to the Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is beautiful, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.