Getting the word out.
Philippians
Scriptural Sermons
New Testament: Philippians
Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called Recessional. The point of the poem is that after a recessional - after an assembly hall or sanctuary or chamber empties at the close of a service, those who attended should remember what took place there. It contains the famous words, “Lest we forget!” Those words have become a call to remember the men and women of the military who made the supreme sacrifice; and this is apt, but the poem has broader application. It is the Sunday after Easter. We have recently remembered the culmination of the life of Jesus Christ. His was the most remarkable life that has ever been lived. He grew to manhood in utter obscurity, a carpenter in a remote region. Then seemingly out of the blue, a distant relation of his named John took up a strange calling. He became a baptist. He began to proclaim, and proclaim with great urgency, that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and that the people must be baptized and washed free of their sin in order to prepare for it. Curious and bemused, Jesus made his way to John. John straightaway baptized him. Jesus had no inkling as to what would follow. He never presumed to hold any vocation except that of carpenter. But upon his baptism the heavens opened and the spirit descended upon him. It imparted to him that he now had a new vocation - to make a vicarious atonement for human sin through his death. Imagine how that must have been for him. He was a human being, like you and like me. He could, I suppose, have laid claim to some kind of divine advantage, but he relinquished that claim. Per the apostle Paul, “Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Yes, he was a human being, like you and like me. And to accept that impartation. But accept it he did. He must have thought of Abraham and Moses and David. They too accepted impartations. In wonder, he must have realized that he was now in their company. And so, like them, he went forward by faith -- by faith and faith alone. And if a vocation to die was not hard enough, everyone around him made it harder. The devil himself tempted him. “Your mind played tricks on you. You need not die. Your death will accomplish nothing!” His disciples, to say the least, offered him no support, with their bickering and cluelessness and faltering, hoping all along that they had hit the jackpot. They were little better than his enemies. At least his enemies were declared enemies, as opposed to friends who proved to be no friends at all. There was but one nameless woman who loved him with poignancy and pathos; who comprehended his vocation. Weeping, she anointed his body in anticipation of his burial. This is why she meant so much to him. She was the only one. And then, before he knew it, in a matter of months, his death was squarely before him. He made his way to Jerusalem. He knew he would not survive a trip to Jerusalem, the hub of his enemies. And he didn’t. His demise was a travesty, from his betrayal by the deluded Judas, to his disciples’ cowardice, to the kangaroo court that tried and condemned him, to the Roman authorities who with insensate and wanton cruelty crucified him. He evinced as much courage as he could, but this only evinced his vulnerability. Because there is no courage without vulnerability. They are two sides of the same coin. But he held fast to his faith in the impartation he received at his baptism. He died in faith that his death was a vicarious atonement for human sin. And it was. It is the Sunday after Easter. We have just celebrated his resurrection on the third day -- his vindication, wherein he knew that his death was indeed a vicarious atonement for human sin, and all humankind would be the beneficiaries. And the atonement was so complete that it would confer not just reconciliation with God, but eternal life with God. Lest we forget! Such a forgetting would be a terrible thing. Worse than that. It would be a relapse into sin. You probably were taught somewhere along the line about the sins of commission and the sins of omission. The sins of commission are the things you do that you shouldn’t. These are the obvious sins. The sins of omissions are the things you don’t do that you should. These are the less obvious sins. Because they consist of things that you don’t do. They consist of nothing. They consist of a lacking. They consist of inaction. They consist of indifference. To forget is a sin of omission. It is a thing you don’t do that you should, which is to remember. And why is this so important? Because to forget is not only rank ingratitude. It too results in the diminishment of your Christian convictions, your Christian character, and your Christian integrity. It results in the diminishment of who you were created and redeemed to be. It results in the diminishment of what you were created and redeemed to do. To forget. It may seem like a venial thing. We forget where we put our keys. We forget why we walked into a room. We forget where we left our phones. But we dare not forget him. That is no venial thing. Lest we forget. Amen.
Last week a friend of mine asked me to watch her five year old twins while she underwent a medical procedure. In truth, I was delighted. Now that my children are getting older, I miss being around young children. I miss them, and I miss their world. And these twins are cuties. Even their names are cute – Harry and Mary. While I was waiting for them to arrive, I prepared my children's favorite lunch when they were about five - macaroni and cheese with apple smiles on the side. I had dug out their Little Tykes picnic table and Dora the Explorer place mats, and I beamed with enthusiasm at how perfect everything was as I served up their lunch. “Why did Harry get more mac ‘n cheese than me?” Mary asked. “Harry didn’t get more than you,” I insisted. “I gave you both the exact same amount.” “I can tell Harry has more,” Mary maintained. To put an end to the matter, I gave Mary another spoonful. “Now Mary has more mac ‘n cheese than me,” Harry objected. “She does not!” I again insisted. “I’m counting my apple smiles,” Harry said. “I think Mary has more.” “Now just a minute…” I said, in a tone that conveyed that I had had about enough. But before I could continue, I found them finally in agreement “Why are you so strict?” they both lamented. “Enough complaining!” I declared. At least Mary and Harry have an excuse. They’re five years old. What excuse can be made for adults when they complain along similar lines? No matter what happens or doesn’t happen, they are never satisfied. No matter what happens or doesn’t happen, they always manage to construe it in a negative light. Whatever it is, why ever it is, wherever it is, whoever it is, they always find a word of criticism. You may be familiar with complainers such as these, and if you are, you know your reaction to them. When you see them heading in your direction, you assume an attitude of resignation. You know what’s going to come out of them, and there’s no way to prevent it. There’s no way to treat it either. You don’t want to enable or patronize them, because then they go on and on. You don’t want to take them on, because nothing will come of the confrontation. You don’t want to avoid them, because then you feel guilty. And so, you wait for your first opening, and you beat a hasty retreat. And why is it that these complainers complain as they do? My surmise is that it’s an attitude they’ve come to assume over the years, an attitude of least resistance because they have taken a course of least resistance. For some reason or another they haven’t developed sufficient self-identity to act in life -- because self-identity is indeed the necessary prior for action -- so life acts upon them. And not in the way they think it should. Life doesn’t bestow upon them much regard or favor. It doesn’t grant them much notice or acknowledgment. It doesn’t afford them much buffer or protection. And so they blame life. It’s ironic, as self-absorbed as complainers are, they never blame themselves. They blame life. Life is unfair to them. This is why I think that complainers complain as they do. It is because they’ve assumed the attitude that life is unfair to them. And their attitude is all encompassing. It allows for no exceptions. Not even for God. Why should God be an exception, after all? He started the whole train wreck in motion. Jonah is a case in point. The Lord called Jonah to be his prophet, to proclaim to the Assyrians that the Lord would punish them for their wickedness. But Jonah felt put upon by the Lord’s call. And so he boarded the next ship heading the opposite direction of Assyria. But the Lord refused to let him get away with it. He hurled a mighty storm at the ship and when the mariners cast a lot to see who was responsible for its cause, it fell on Jonah. And so they had no choice but to throw him overboard, lest they all perish. The Lord then appointed a large fish to swallow him and spit him back up on dry ground, and he gave him one last chance to proclaim to the Assyrians that he would punish them for their wickedness. Realizing that he had no choice, Jonah heeded his call. He cried out to the Assyrians, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And an amazing thing happened. The Assyrians repented of their wickedness. Even the king of Assyria himself covered himself in sackcloth and sat himself down in an ash heap. And so the Lord changed his mind about punishing them. For Jonah, this was cause for complaint. If the Lord called him to declare to the Assyrians they would be punished, they should be punished. Why should they escape punishment just because they were sorry all of a sudden? Jonah made all that effort against his will, and it turned out to be for nothing. Life was unfair to him. And so he complained, “I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Now let’s take a few steps back here. The Lord’s universal mercy was for Jonah cause for complaint? This just shows how far complainers will go, how very skewed their perspectives become. Jonah could just as well have been thrilled by the whole affair. The Lord called him as a prophet -- fantastic, here was a real destiny to fulfill, a real purpose to enact. The Assyrians repented -- fantastic, his fellow human beings saw the light and escaped destruction. The Lord is a Lord of universal mercy -- fantastic, then maybe the Lord will show mercy upon him. And after all, the whole purpose of the Lord’s call to Jonah to proclaim to the Assyrians that the Lord would punish them for their wickedness was to bring them to repentance so that they would escape punishment. But to Jonah it was cause for complaint. Or take Jesus’ parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. God, Jesus taught, is like a landowner who sought to hire laborers for his vineyard. He went to the marketplace first thing in the morning and took all that were waiting there to be hired. At noon he returned and again took all that were waiting there to be hired. And at five he returned and once again took all that were waiting there to be hired. At the end of the day he paid them all a like amount. Like Jonah, for the laborers who had worked the longest this was cause for complaint. The last hired had last worked only an hour. Why should latecomers receive the same payment? They should receive a fraction of what they did. Life was unfair to them. And so they complained, “You have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” Again let’s take a few steps back here. God’s equal generosity to latecomers was for the laborers cause for complaint? It again shows just how far these complainers will go, how skewed their perspectives become. They could just have well been thrilled by the whole affair. They had labored long in the vineyard -- fantastic, how much more productive would be their harvest. There were ever increasing hires -- fantastic, the overall yield then would be even greater. God is equally generous to latecomers -- fantastic, then it’s never too late for others to experience the generosity that they had been experiencing all along. But to the laborers it was cause for complaint. Yes, everything and everyone, including God, falls victim to the attitude of complainers that life is unfair to them, and this is not good for anyone – not for the victims of complainers, certainly, but not for complainers either. It’s not good for anyone to assume the attitude that life is unfair to them and then to wallow in jealousy, and dissatisfaction, and resentment. We were meant for better things. And God himself is expressly clear on the matter. We’ve no cause for complaint. None of us. No cause whatsoever. But why; why specifically? I began by saying that complainers haven’t sufficient self-identity to act in life, and so life acts upon them. But indeed God had given us sufficient self- identity to act in life. We are Christians. We know of a fact, therefore, that we are created by the love of God, redeemed by the love of his Son, and sustained by the love of his Spirit. We know of a fact, therefore, that every human being in this world is a child of God. We know of a fact, therefore, that God is a God of justice, of equality, of freedom, of mercy, of forgiveness. We know of a fact, therefore, that God is a God of action. And lastly, we know of a fact all the work that needs to be done in this world. We are Christians. We have sufficient self-identity to act in life. And when we do, when we as Christians act in life, we will discover by God’s own design and dispensation that we have no cause for complaint, that life is not unfair to us. We will discover that life is liberating. It is empowering. It is purposeful. It is rewarding. It is because we will have discovered it is filled with God’s grace. Consider the apostle Paul. In this morning’s epistle lesson Paul finds himself imprisoned. And Roman prisons make our prisons look like the Four Seasons. And listen to what he has to say. “I will continue to rejoice…If I am to live that means fruitful labor for me, though I do not know which to prefer. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. …” It’s all good, Paul says -- whether I remain in prison or whether I am executed – it’s all good. And we can begin to count it all joy too. We need only remember the one for whom we are named, and act on his behalf. Amen.
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