Sermon for July 16, 2006

THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING

2^nd in a series on sermons from Philippians

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Philippians 1: 12-30 from the Good News Bible Translation

¹² I want you to know, my friends, that the things that have happened to me have really helped the progress of the gospel. ¹³ As a result, the whole palace guard and all the others here know that I am in prison because I am a servant of Christ. ¹⁴ And my being in prison has given most of the believers more confidence in the Lord, so that they grow bolder all the time to preach the message fearlessly. ¹⁵ Of course some of them preach Christ because they are jealous and quarrelsome, but others from genuine good will. ¹⁶ These do so from love, because they know that God has given me the work of defending the gospel. ¹⁷ The others do not proclaim Christ sincerely, but from a spirit of selfish ambition; they think that they will make more trouble for me while I am in prison. ¹⁸ It does not matter! I am happy about it—just so Christ is preached in every way possible, whether from wrong or right motives. And I will continue to be happy, ¹⁹ because I know that by means of your prayers and the help which comes from the Spirit of Jesus Christ I shall be set free. ²⁰ My deep desire and hope is that I shall never fail in my duty, but that at all times, and especially right now, I shall be full of courage, so that with my whole being I shall bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die.  

²¹ For what is life? To me, it is Christ. Death, then, will bring more. ²² But if by continuing to live I can do more worthwhile work, then I am not sure which I should choose. ²³ I am pulled in two directions. I want very much to leave this life and be with Christ, which is a far better thing; ²⁴ but for your sake it is much more important that I remain alive. ²⁵ I am sure of this, and so I know that I will stay. I will stay on with you all, to add to your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶ so that when I am with you again, you will have even more reason to be proud of me in your life in union with Christ Jesus.

²⁷ Now, the important thing is that your way of life should be as the gospel of Christ requires, so that, whether or not I am able to go and see you, I will hear that you are standing firm with one common purpose and that with only one desire you are fighting together for the faith of the gospel. ²⁸ Don't be afraid of your enemies; always be courageous, and this will prove to them that they will lose and that you will win, because it is God who gives you the victory. ²⁹ For you have been given the privilege of serving Christ, not only by believing in him, but also by suffering for him. ³⁰ Now you can take part with me in the battle. It is the same battle you saw me fighting in the past, and as you hear, the one I am fighting still.

The apostle Paul is using a very important word in this letter of his to the church members in the Greek city of Philippi. The Greek word shows up in the very first sentence he writes which we looked at last week and it shows up in the translation we are using today—the Good News Bible translation.

The word in Greek is Doulos and it means slave or servant. It even has some currency in its female form-doula-in medical circles in our country. A doula is a woman who is available to help an expectant mother or a new mother with the care and wellbeing of the new born child. I looked it up on the internet and there is even a guide book and a course on how to become a doula, someone who provides physical, emotional and spiritual support for the mother and father during birth and right after a child is born.

Paul uses the word when he begins the Philippian letter to describe himself and Timothy and the best translation of it is not just to call him a servant but really a slave for Jesus Christ. Paul has put his life at Christ’s disposal and he is willing to do whatever it takes for people to experience hope and new life and grace in Jesus Christ. He shows that in the verses we just heard where he reminds us that he is in chains in a prison environment and then he says to those who are worried about him and even worried if this kind of fate awaits them in the future—he says, it is actually a GOOD thing that he is in prison!

He says that the guards are aware that his imprisonment is because he is a servant of Jesus Christ and it is good for others to see this. In fact, his being in jail has even made some of the other church leaders more bold in their efforts to share God’s great news with others. 

Doesn’t this sound like Paul? This is the fellow who made that audacious statement in one of his other letters, “In all things God is able to work for good with those who love God.” That is such a scary sentence and bold sentence. In ALL things?  Well, have you seen God do that in the midst of tragedy and suffering and pain and loss? I have. It does not mean that the pain is deserved or that the pain is not real and unfair. It means that God is able to bring good out of whatever life throws at us for those who love God.

We quoted Paul’s words last Wednesday morning in Littleton cemetery as we did the graveside service for baby boy, Andrew Sommers who worked very hard for the ten days of his life to overcome the difficult odds of being born ten weeks early but just had too much infection to overcome. And we said as we stood by his casket that it may be hard to believe but God is big enough to bring hope and new life even out of this tragedy. And we had said the day before at the funeral service for Andrew that the fact that his name was Andrew is significant because Andrew in the Bible—our namesake—was the disciple who kept bringing more and more people to meet Christ and to learn from him themselves and we said that the same thing can happen from baby Andrew’s life as well.

Paul says it again in these verses that even his being in jail is something God has already brought something good out of.

I saw that same radical faith last week when I read of the physician in Gunnison, Colorado who was diagnosed with MS and had to give up his practice and now runs a bed and breakfast in Gunnison and who talks about the benefits of his different life now, saying that being forced to change careers and to slow down has let him have more time with his three sons and do bike rides together—the latest ride being Ride the Rockies as well as the Bicycle Tour of Colorado. 

It is a good thing Paul says, that he is in prison because it has brought more people close to God! Then he says, on a different topic, that there are some church leaders and some preachers who are jealous of each other and who have become leaders out of selfish ambition. It still happens. I remember former St. Andrew church pastor, Russ Brown, being approached by another minister 25 years ago. This church was thriving then as it is now and Russ was the target of some jealously among his fellow ministers. This one minister was fairly blunt—though he was partly kidding. He asked, “Russ, when are you going to leave St Andrew church so I can be appointed there instead of you?” 

Russ wisely suggested that this colleague should just concentrate on building up the congregation he was in then—just as Russ had done here—instead of looking around for greener pastures somewhere else. 

There can be competition and jealousy among church leaders and ministers and there can also be great collaboration and colleagueship. Our church just hosted last week a three day immersion experience for Methodist ministers who have been newly appointed to large churches in our region. We took time together in that immersion experience to share ideas and to talk about what is working well in all of our settings and we encouraged them to borrow any ideas that they wish as long as they give us credit. 

That is a healthier spirit than the one of competition Paul refers to. Remarkably, the jealousy and competition does not bother Paul! He says it does not matter as long as people are experiencing new life in Jesus Christ! A different way to express this is to say that the character or the motive of the preacher is not what is important and that God can use even bad motivations and bad characters to bring about new life. 

Fred Craddock, former professor at the Methodist seminary in Atlanta, had a story about this insight from Paul that the effectiveness of the message does not depend on the character or motivation of the preacher. He tells about a college fraternity in the 1970’s that was sponsoring an all school talent show and the acts were practicing one evening in the school gymnasium. The fraternity itself had an entry in the show and its entry was a group of three brothers who were imitating an old fashioned Christian revival meeting. Two of the fraternity members were the gospel band who sang and played emotional music. The third took the role of the slick-haired revival preacher who in his highly emotional and very loud preaching style was inviting people to come to Jesus and take a new direction in their lives.

The fraternity members were overdoing everything and having a great time but in the back of the gymnasium was one of the custodians who was listening intently because his life was in need of some changes and while the preacher was carrying on to beat the band in his overdone, humorous way, the man at the back silently knelt on the floor and gave his life to God. 

Did it work? Could his change have been real and complete when the fraternity members meant their act as a cruel joke? The apostle Paul says yes because the character or the motivation of the preacher is not what is important, it is what God can do through even those bad motivations or bad characters!

The next thing we see in this letter is that Paul is wrestling with is mortality. He prays that he can be full of courage so that with his whole being he can bring honor to God in Christ. And he knows that he is going to die and we see him vacillate between whether it would be better for him to live or to die. If he dies, he says, that would be good because then he is with Christ forever. If he lives for a while, that is good also because then he can go on doing good with the church members he has created.

And he says, whether he lives or whether he dies, he belongs to Christ. That statement of belonging to Christ comes from Paul’s writings and we use it when we receive communion. But we also use it when we commemorate the end of a life. We said that about little Andrew last Wednesday when we laid his body to rest at Littleton Cemetery. We talked about that faith when, on Thursday, here in the sanctuary, Cindy Bates led us in a inspiring celebration of the life of Vera Adams, the last of our charter members of this church from almost 46 years ago. Vera left us so many reasons to be grateful for her witness and her faithfulness. She told me two weeks ago when I visited her at Littleton Hospital that she felt so ashamed that she had not been able to be in worship for three Sundays because she had been ill and she just hated to miss church. It was the kind of faithfulness that each of us promise we will live by when we join the church. We say that we are going to be in church every Sunday that we are not ill or out of town. Then many of us follow through and others do not.

Vera followed through with her promise. She did what Paul asks us to do in the next part of this letter. He encourages his friends then and now, live your life in a way that is worthy of the good news—a life that shows the good news of God in Christ. We say we want to do this. Let our light so shine and our joy be so obvious that all who see us may come to praise God.

You and I are the only Bible many people may read. What do they see—a life that is worthy of the good news or something else? Remember Professor Marcus Borg who teaches at Oregon State University—remember what he learns when he asks the students in his religion classes, students who do not come from any church background, to describe Christians? I shudder every time I remember it.

Those students are very consistent. They characterize Christians in this way: literalistic, anti intellectual, self-righteous, judgmental and bigoted. I know why that image is there. How do we change that perception? By more of us showing in our lives the spirit of Christ that is accepting, humble, tolerant, compassionate. By living our lives in a manner worthy of God’s good news in Christ.

I want to end with another very audacious line at the end of chapter one. Paul says that because he is in jail now, he has suffered for Christ, and he refers to some hardships that people in Philippi are having and he says that they now have the privilege of suffering for Christ.

The privilege of suffering for Christ. Most of us in the western world have not experienced that. Our life of faith is usually convenient and comfortable. We complain when the worship service times are not convenient for us on Sunday when new Christians in some African countries walk a couple of hours to even get to church and are happy to spend two hours in church and then walk the two hours back home.

I almost get embarrassed at how easy it is, how non-demanding it is for some of us to exercise our faithfulness to God compared to some of the examples over the life of the Jesus movement. We would not even have to mention the apostle Paul and the beatings he suffered, the other times he was jailed. We could look at people in our own time like missionary Benjamin Weir who in the mid 1980’s was in Beirut, Lebanon where he was kidnapped by Islamist extremists and was held in a bare cell for sixteen months, blindfolded most of that time and still found a way to stay close to God and to celebrate each day of life.

We would look a few years earlier in the twentieth century at German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who left the safety of his seminary teaching role in New York in 1939 and took the enormous risk of going back to his native Germany when Hitler was about to start a World War, and then later participated in an almost successful plot to assassinate Hitler. You know the rest of the story, I hope. Bonhoeffer was arrested, placed in jail for being part of that plot, and just six weeks before the war ended, was executed.

Paul says to the Philippians, you have the privilege now of doing what I am doing also—suffering for Christ.

Maybe I am wrong about this but I think not very many of us yet have experienced a faith that has required very much of us or cost very much or demanded very much of us. You could be helpful to me and email me your stories about how being a follower of Christ has really asked something and demanded some sacrifice or even suffering from you.  I think some of those emails might come from the people who are involved in our mission trips this summer and previous summers who are doing some hard work and also experiencing great rewards for that as well.

This expectation that to be a disciple of Christ—not an admirer but a disciple—will ask something of us, require and cost us something, perhaps even in sacrifice and suffering, is the backdrop against which we dare to talk with each other about the commitment involved in being a follower of Christ. We say in this congregation that we are a high commitment church and that when each of us makes promises in joining the church that we will follow Christ and uphold God’s work with PRAYERS, PRESENCE, GIFTS AND SERVICE, that we want each of us to follow through and not just mouth some empty phrases. And this congregation has become a role model and a teaching church for others in our denomination.

We heard good feedback from the visiting ministers who were here last weekend to learn about what we are doing that works for us. It was a good learning time for all of us mutually and one of the learnings for those persons was about how well it works here to ask each other for our deepest and best for God. The way we have responded to those expectations has been admirable.

The biblical background for that request to move beyond being spectators and consumers to becoming disciples and followers of Christ is so evident in these verses from Paul. I am first of all, he says, a servant of Jesus Christ and he wants for us the privilege of being servants also even when that asks a great deal of us because it also promises the best kind of life we can imagine. Amen.

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