Thrive: Deepening Our Faith
Moses had been up on that mountain a while. After they escaped from Egypt, all that wandering around, God’s people knew they needed help. They had never been free to organize – to be a people, with rules and expectations, boundaries for community. So, Moses had Gone to meet with God.
In Exodus 20, God gives Moses the tables with the 10 commandments and then the next 11 Chapters are filled with instructions teaching how they should live together in community – rules about the treatment of animals, and property, and relationships, how to ordain pastors to lead them…God gives a system for a whole new way of life, the way of God’s Kingdom, the way of thriving. And it is glorious!
But it takes a while. Meanwhile, I love the way Rev. Meg Jenista Kuykendall describes the scene. She says, “Then, like a needle scratching a record, the camera zooms away from the mountain and focuses in on the people gathered at the base of Sinai. An ominous voiceover intones, “meanwhile, back at the camp” they got anxious. And before Moses even comes down from the mountain with it, God’s plan for thriving, for right relationship with God and one another, for community, is shattered. It was all built on the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Have you ever dropped something that when it left your hands, you knew…
We see two human leaders try to glue back together what is broken in different ways. Aaron first blames the people, then he says “I just took the gold and silver jewelry they brought me and threw it in the fire and out came this calf!” Aaron goes along with what the people want, then he denies that he has been disloyal to God, and he refuses to accept responsibility as a leader. Moses, on the other hand, stands in the breach, he tries to be the glue. He could have said, “God, I was up on the mountain with you when these people were unfaithful!” But instead he begs, “Don’t let the Egyptians think you are evil and meant disaster for us. Remember our ancestors and your covenant with them, your promises of abundance to them. And God relents.
Paul, like Moses, is away from the community and there seems to be some fracturing happening. Two of the leaders of the congregation, Euodia and Syntyche, are not of the same mind on something. We don’t know what it is, but it is important enough that they sent the question to Paul to weigh in on. Earlier in the letter, he addresses the question of circumcision as a requirement for being part of the church. It may be that one of these women held the Biblical standard of the law and the other held that Jesus had fulfilled the law and baptism was enough. We have differences of opinion like that today that threaten to divide churches. And Paul appeals to these two leaders to be of one mind in the Lord. Because there is something more important to focus on – if we back up two verses, Paul writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform us from humiliation to glory.” That is why Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
But, in between, he deals with what is going on in the valley. The people are getting anxious. They expected Jesus to return, but he hasn’t. It’s taking too long. Suffering is still happening. People are still getting sick and dying. They are still living under the oppression of Rome. Paul is in prison. He can’t go to Philippi and reassure them, and he knows what people do when they get anxious. They turn – to things they can see and get their hands on, things that represent power and wealth – to worship. They break the foundation of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
“Stand firm in the Lord,” says Paul. Be of one mind. Don’t major in the minors. Don’t let different perspectives, different opinions, different understandings and interpretations in the community fracture it. “Rejoice always – celebrate joyfully! Let everybody know how gentle and gracious you are. The Lord is near.” You don’t need any other god or power or thing.
And then these verses that are so often quoted, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
There is power in naming our fears, our anxieties, before God. Paul doesn’t say God will make our problems or vulnerabilities disappear. What happens when we write down the concerns that are weighing us down, when we talk to God about the things that are keeping us up at night, God’s peace comes and stands guard at the door of our hearts and minds and doesn’t let those fears and anxieties penetrate and turn us from faith in God to faith in idols, things we can make and secure and store up to try to protect ourselves.
And instead of thinking about all those things that could happen – all those “what ifs” and “unknowns” in the future – and instead of fixating on all the bad things that are happening, Paul directs our attention to the things in our world and in our lives that ARE glimpses of God’s kingdom.
Think back over your week…that may be too much…think back over the last 24 hours. How much time have you spent thinking about what is going well, and not what needs to change; what is noble, and not what is corrupt? Think about a room in your house – get it in mind. Did you think first of the things that you love about that space or the things you’d like to change? When you think about your work, do you think about the things you enjoy or the things you dread?
We all have unbidden thoughts. Those things that pop into our heads and we didn’t invite them. We get to choose whether we allow them to stay. We get to choose what we will focus on. And we can flood the field.
N.T. Wright wrote in his commentary on this passage something that I think was true 25 years ago when he was writing, but may be even more true today with our constant consumption not only of TV media, but social media as well. He wrote, “Paul’s command…to think about all the wonderful and lovely things listed here, runs directly opposite to the habits of mind instilled by the modern media. Read the newpapers: their stock-in-trade is anything that is untrue, unholy, unjust, impure, ugly, or ill-repute, vicious and blameworthy. Is that a true representation of God’s good and beautiful world? How are you going to celebrate the goodness of the creator if you feed your mind only on the places in the world which humans have made ugly?”
LOVELY THOUGHTS ARE A GUARD – not an escape. When we focus on what is good, when we flood the field with what is true, and reputable, authentic, admirable, gracious, things that bring us joy, our faith deepens as we gain a sense of God’s wholeness, we get a glimpse of God’s will being done. And peace, even in the midst of chaos, beyond human comprehension or explanation, comes to stand guard at our hearts and minds.
Where do we find those lovely thoughts?
We can turn to the Psalms to set our minds on the beauty of creation and God’s creatures, including human beings, even ourselves.
Or Psalm 8 – “When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made—the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place—4 what are human beings that you think about them; what are human beings that you pay attention to them?”
Or the 139th Psalm, “God, your plans are incomprehensible to me! Their total number is countless! 18 If I tried to count them—they outnumber grains of sand! If I came to the very end—I’d still be with you.”
Where else can we find lovely thoughts?
We can turn to nature. We can notice the colors of the fall leaves and watch as they drift through the air on cool fall mornings. We can contemplate the majesty of the mountains and the vastness of the oceans; the diversity and interdependence displayed in every ecosystem.
Where else can we find lovely thoughts?
Paul summons us to be a display for people to find them in us.
Politically Philippi was a colony of Rome and a lot of the Philippians were Roman citizens, as was Paul, but Paul tells them you are citizens of heaven. You are to be a colony of heaven.
So, Paul writes, “whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, put it into practice.”
There are a lot of things that we could be anxious about, even here at church. Our attendance is still only 2/3 of what it was before COVID. We have about 50 regular attendees online, but we don’t know most of them. How do we build community? How do we support one another when we don’t have contact beyond a camera and a screen? We don’t have children often in worship or in the nursery. Sometimes it feels like we are in the valley, waiting. We might get anxious. We might be like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai and wonder what God is up to, or we might be like the Philippians and wonder if we are doing something wrong.
Paul calls us out of our anxious worry to focus on what is lovely, what is good – it deepens our faith and transforms us so that we are a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.
We have an opportunity to do be a glimpse this afternoon at Trunk or Treat with every interaction. We will also have a Movie Night in the backyard on Nov. 6th – we are showing 101 Dalmatians, but you don’t have to be interested in the movie. Come and be lovely and welcoming. Talk with the parents and laugh with the kids. The Thanksgiving and Christmas season is the time of year when people look for a place to worship. Laurinda talked last week in the Celebration of Ministry about inviting people. Invite someone to Trunk or Treat or Movie Night or to come to Thanksgiving Dinner and Worship with you. If you know someone who has experienced a difficult year, invite them to come with you to the Advent Service of Hope. At Christmas, people want to sing and hear Christmas carols and the Christmas story, offer that to your friends and coworkers. Share your joy!
In the coming year we will be engaging more with the children of the Day School. Barb and Davis lead Chapel with them each week, many of you have served as grandparent-for-a-day, lots of us have been part of VBS…we are going to be praying about other ways that we can be in ministry on a more regular basis as a congregation with the children whom God has brought right here, into our church. I hope you will start praying about that too – and anticipating what lovely glimpses of the kingdom of God we will get to see.