Keep on living the life after death

 Philippians 4:1-14

Is this the first time you’ve heard those names? Euodia and Syntyche?  I mean, they haven’t made the rounds in preschool classrooms or high school graduating classes lately, anyway.  These two women are evidently leaders in the early church. That alone should give us pause. 

Only, if we’ve heard of them at all, that’s not how we think of them. It seems that Euodia and Syntyche have come to represent not early Christian pastors or elders, but catty squabbling, you know, like women can get into.  Most of the time that sermons and commentaries mention them, it’s nearly always speculating what kind of drama was cooking up between them and how badly they must have been arguing for Paul to bring it up in this letter. But the gossip fizzles beyond that, because scholars don’t discern any pressing conflicts in Philippi, and Paul mentions nothing else in the letter itself. But it must have been juicy, right? 

I mean, in the paraphrase we read today there is a whole sentence about Euodia and Syntyche being in an argument and disagreeing, and Paul telling them they’re going to need to work it out. (Ending with a potentially exasperated, Help these women). But that is not in the actual letter of Paul.  Half the translations out there reflect what Paul actually writes, which is, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche: be of the same mind.”  That’s it, that’s the entire sentence. Then he goes on to say to the community, these two women worked alongside me, and now I want you to look after them like you’ve done for me.

We are going to pause dear Euodia and Syntyche here in their contentious reputation, sit them down with Paul’s exhortation, and come back to them in a few minutes. 

I want to paint for you the picture of what these little first century churches and communities were like, and what Paul was trying to do with all his letters to them that have become letters to us.
A couple months ago, some of you were praying for me, when I went, in fear and trembling, to speak about Christianity to a class of high schoolers studying world religions. In my conversation with them, I used a video, made by some theologians and artists from the church Andy and I were with in Switzerland in May. It painted a picture of the early church and described what it was like for Rome to have to deal with this new upstart religion. 

This new movement was turning households and families on their heads. Instead of each person playing their proper societal role, these little bands of believers had women and slaves leading, embraced worthless children at the center of their life, ate all together at the same table, in short, they disrespected the hierarchy and sensible foundations of the whole society that kept order and stability. Their very way of life threatened anarchy against the empire!

Then, when Rome tried to stamp out “The Way” and scatter and destroy its followers with the greatest power it wielded, the power to inflict death, in all the creative and terrible ways of killing that the Romans were famous for, it got even trickier. Because when Christians were put into the arena with the wild dogs, they didn’t run screaming in terror, like normal people, they accepted their death with a strange peace. They were not afraid to die, like death didn’t mean the end of everything for them.  This actually made people start admiring them, instead of mocking them! 

These people claimed to belong to a different kingdom, and they seemed to believe it. They worshipped a God who had made himself weak, who gave up all the godlike powers to became human, and then even died! None of this made any sense. No god, of any peoples or lands the Romans knew of, made itself weak. No god would allow humans to kill it.  And no god who could be killed could be worth following.

Nevertheless, these followers of the Way were steadfast. They could not be controlled by the empire’s rewards, or manipulated by the empire’s threats, and they felt no compulsion or duty to uphold any decency or order that held the realm steady.  They even did not just look after their own; they welcomed in strangers and especially took care of the sick, the poor, prisoners and outcasts. Then, throw them in prison themselves, and they sing, for pete’s sake!

Our bible is filled with letters from Paul to these little communities all over, who are daily living faithfully in another realm, even in the midst of this one. They are real people with real questions and real struggles, losses, and joys, trying to work out how to live in a hostile regime with completely contrary values to the kind of life they’ve been brought into and are now seeking to live out.
And while the people change, and the details change, and the empires change, the calling and the struggle are the same today as they were then. How do we keep on living in the freedom we’ve been given in Christ to remain in our belonging to God and all others, and not fall back into the mindset of the empire?

The purpose of all Paul’s letters, is to remind the people of The Way that nothing is the same because of Jesus.  The cosmos has shifted, reality has broken open, the end is written, and our own lives are now caught up in the life of Christ, lived out in community with one another, in service to the world.  And wow, do we need reminding. 

Some of his letters, like the letter to the Romans, are treatises, where he’s trying to lay it all out to people he hasn’t yet visited. Several of his letters address specific arguments, issues or problems in the community he is writing to or between himself and them.  This letter before us today is neither. It’s a joyful thank you letter. The main message of the letter to the Philippians is, “Keep on doing what you’re doing.” (as summarized by Matt Skinner, Working Preacher).

It’s amazing, by the way, how much this message helps us in even the smallest of ways. On Thursday I had physical therapy for my bum hip, and my PT told me again how I should be doing the exercise I’ve been doing for two months. She described the a shallow pool of water, and imagining trying to slowly dip first one foot in, and then the other, while holding my core steady. When I demonstrated, she smiled and nodded affirmatively, “Yes! Just like that!” I was astonished how good it felt to hear someone who was guiding me at something say, “Keep doing what you’re doing!” 
 
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says it this way,  
^“2 Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus, who

Then he goes on to quote to them a shared song, a creed that becomes the center of this whole letter; everything he says before or after points to back to this familiar hymn. Scholars believe is perhaps the earliest one in the church – something they all would’ve known and shared. I like to imagine it was taught to him by Ananias and the community in Damascus whom he was intent on destroying but who instead welcomed him in and taught him the faith. It’s a song about Jesus, maybe even an action song that starts high and goes low and goes up high again. If you’ve seen the Odyssey, maybe it was something chanted with pounding stick and sweeping arms. The song says,

though he existed in the form of God,
   he did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.
⁹ Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
¹⁰ so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.
 
This is the core of it all for Paul.  

The mind we have in Christ is this mind; the reality we live in is this reality. The Christians facing down monsters in the arenas were not people of superhuman bravery in the face of death. The people of the Way to whom Paul is writing are not people of superhuman kindness in the face of evil, or superhuman self control in the face of temptation. 

They were people who have already died. Death has no power over us, nor sin, or temptation, nor evil, nor sorrow, nor pain.  All these things are real and we experience them, but they do not define us and cannot destroy us because we face them as those who have died and been risen with Christ into life on the other side of death, on the other side of fear, on the other side of threat.  
We have been given the life of Christ, the mind of Christ, the reality that Jesus lives in and opens up to us- of complete connection to God and one another forever in the love of God given to us by the grace and power of God.  So when the brain tumor comes, the addiction pulls us under, when the terrible longing for a loved one whose life we cannot set right throbs inside us every day, when we feel lost, or afraid, or overwhelmed, we can throw ourselves honestly, completely, without hesitation or pride on the mercy of God, whose will uphold us and carry us through through the arms and words and faces of those who share this way with us.

Which brings me back to Euodia and Syntyche, who’ve been patiently waiting for us to return.  “I urge Euodia,” Paul writes, “I urge Syntyche, be of the same mind in the Lord.” He continues, using a nickname of sorts for the community, “Yes, I ask also, you true yokefellow, help these, who worked closely with me, and also with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

The people of God argue. That is not in question. Paul breaks up plenty of arguments in other letters to other communities, for sure. And maybe he’s doing that here too – there is no reason why that in itself would be a bad thing.  

But the whole letter is urging the whole community to be of the same mind in the Lord, the mind they have been given for their life in Christ, to keep doing what they’re doing, to live in the life-after-death Christ-way of relationship, the Christ-way of seeing the world, the Christ-way of relating to God. 

So, despite centuries of some bible readers largely assuming they were just a couple of gals in a heated spat, it’s possible that the same words mean the same thing when addressed directly to Euodia and Syntyche as they do in the rest of the letter to everyone else, and that these women who have worked closely with Paul, are here being commended to this community, to be welcomed in and cared for, and to share this same mind with them all. 

I kind of loved stumbling into this, because it just goes to show that even when we’re reading the bible, we dear humans often accidentally slip into the mindset of the empire, as though the more real things are the meanness and division, status and power, winning and losing, looking for the bad in the world and each other and having no problem finding it.

Remember, nothing is the same because of Jesus. We are citizens of a different kingdom. No matter how scary, or painful, or desperately sad the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we are not alone, Jesus came into this situation, alongside us, with and for us and brought to life a new reality, and not even death can break the love of God that holds us fast. 

When Paul writes to the Philippians, from his imprisonment under house arrest, Rejoice! Again, I say, rejoice! He’s not just giving pithy advice for getting along or ways to be good people. He’s not just saying, cheer up! Think of good things not bad! Think of happy, not sad! Dig deeper try harder be better!

He is saying we’ve died and been raised to new life, so Be filled with joy! I repeat, be filled with joy!  Pour out all our worries and fears to God, and God will hear us and give us peace. Give our precious and limited attention to what is good and beautiful in the world. Let gratitude well up and spill out because Thank you is the language of the real. Keep noticing hope, and recognizing love, lifting up forgiveness and living sacrifice, keep being open to delight and wonder, beauty and awe. Be one in this mindset of resurrected people, that baffles empires and makes no sense to earthly powers.  Help each other keep living here, as the dead who’ve been raised, surrendering our lives to God and giving ourselves to others.
Keep on doing what we’re doing. And the God of peace will be with us.
Amen.

Therefore...

  

Romans 12:1-8

When I was ten years old at summer camp, we could earn points for various activities. My favorites were archery, target shooting and memorizing bible verses. I had no idea then that I would become a preacher, but these verses sounded so much like a booming sermon that I threw open the window of our bunkroom, and shouted them down to passers-by until I had the whole thing perfected in the cadence of an old-timey preacher. I still have them memorized.

“I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world!  I roared out the window, jabbing my finger at the sky. But be transformed! By the renewing of your mind! That you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, and acceptable and perfect!

 

Listen to all the active verbs there! So commanding and directive! All the things we are supposed to be and know and do! Present yourselves a sacrifice to God, do not be conformed to this world, be transformed, Even when the verbs are not technically active, we can make them active by how we hear them: renew your mind, prove the will of God, which by the way, is good and perfect.

 

Even the more gentle version we read today still puts a lot in our hands. Listen to all the active verbs, Use your gifts! (don’t waste them!) Helpers, help! Teachers, teach! Givers, give! Leaders, do a good job leading, and if you’re taking care of others, keep a smile on your face!

 

This striving, active, individual faith that takes it into your own hands and works hard at it may have been what my summer camp was going for, but it’s not what Paul is going for. 

 

All throughout the letter to the Romans, Paul is talking about real life, the Kingdom of God reality, life as God created life to be, life as God is moving everything towards once and for all. He is talking about living no longer in the illusion created by sin that we are apart and against, that belonging is earned and we’re defined by the world’s labels and our own striving, trapped under sin’s ranking, comparing and condemnation. 

He is talking about life in freedom –life where all people are upheld in the belongness of grace, and our identity is secure in God, and God is the primary actor and we are recipients and participants in a life made for joy. This is the life we are given by Christ, in Christ, in fact, in him we have died to anything else and been risen to this new life of belonging, connection and wholeness, so we should be living what is true about us and about God. 

Right before our verses, Paul writes “from God and through God and to God are all things, to God be the glory forever and ever, Amen!” Then our text begins with, “Therefore…”

Because all things are from God and through God and back to God, Therefore, present yourself to God, your whole, living, embodied self.

 

Paul loves run-on sentences where things are all connected back to God. We tend to break those up and lose the thread. Out of curiosity, I spent some time checking the original Greek on all of this, and it turns out that contrary to how we like to hear this, there is only ONE active verb in the whole thing. The one thing we can do and should do, according to Paul, is to offer ourselves to God. 

 

That’s it.  That is the one action we are to do. And it’s no small thing, it’s everything. It’s a sacrifice, Paul says, a holy sacrifice that God finds well-pleasing, or, delightful. (God speaks the same declaration over Jesus at his baptism, “this is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased, in whom I delight). In other words, when we give ourselves to God, our “everyday, ordinary life—our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life” God is delighted, and we are doing what Paul calls our ‘reasonable’ or logical worship. What conveys our gratitude and praise, and honors God as God, is ourselves, given to God.

 

When we do that, then all sorts of things happen that we don’t do. The rest of the passage is filled with things that happen to us, or through us, or for us, except for the next two verbs, which I was thrilled to discover are middle passive. This is a verb form we don’t have in English, so we usually just make it active, which is pretty messed up, because the middle passive means we participate in something we don’t initiate.  So, when we actively present ourselves to God – here I am God, just me, just like I am, that’s all I have to give so I give it all- then the ‘being not conformed’ to this world and the ‘being transformed’ are things God does to us and in us, that we join in. We are not the ones making it happen; we are surrendering our will into the will of God who initiates the work in us, and we participate in that work that God will bring to completion.

 

This might sound small, but it’s kind of a big deal.  We are both passive and active at the same time in our not conforming to the realities of this age, and in the being transformed by God, who renews our minds to become more and more able to discern what God is doing in the world, which is, Paul tells us, the good and the delightful, bringing wholeness and completion to world. We begin to see that happening around us. We start to notice what we didn’t notice before. We are being changed, pulled out of the lies and deception that would pit us against each other, center ourselves in the narrative, or let fear or force dictate reality, and we’re pulled instead into God’s relentless and subversive work of healing the world that moves through us to all the others we already belong to in a life made for joy and fullness.

 

Years ago, I got all excited learning about Meister Eckhart and ended up introducing you to a phrase from a quote by James Finley teaching about Eckhart. (For the thousandth time, I apologize,) he says, “Lovers cannot make their moments of oceanic oneness happen, they can only assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by love. The poet cannot make the poem come, the poet can only assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to the poem arriving. The healer cannot bring the healing, the healer can only assume the inner stance of least resistance to healing coming through them.”  

 

Actively surrendering our will to the will of God is assuming the inner stance of least resistance to the Holy Spirit; it's this middle voice verb of attentive readiness for what God wants to do in and through us.  Like poets, and healers, and lovers, and artists, and musicians, and friends, we get to participate in the things we can’t make happen, and marvel at the beauty we end up sharing in. 

 

This is all by God’s grace, not because we’ve somehow earned it, or deserve any more or less involvement or attention than anyone else. God gives to each person grace for the life they’re to live—even Paul’s own telling us this, he says, is by the grace of God. 

 

Then he goes on to say we don’t need to reach our minds above and beyond what is a fit for us. There is an echo here of the Psalmist in 131, “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not concern myself with matters too great or too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child.” And in Psalm 46, “Cease striving and know that I am God.”

Paul says our minds, rather, have been made for sound judgment, and God gives each person the measure of faith we need for the calling we have, (i.e., It’s all very reasonable. Quit overcomplicating it).  We’re one body in Christ, he says, like a human body with many parts that don’t all have the same function but instead work together. And we have gifts, given by grace, differently to each of us.

 

And here is where it gets even cooler with the Greek grammar: everything from here on out is passive, even though we driven, active, moderns who go, go, go, do, do, do, and can’t stop won’t stop don’t translate it that way. 

So, Paul starts listing gifts – prophesy, is in proportion to faith. Service? He does not say, then serve! Teachers? Teach! Do the things! No, he says, in effect, if the gift is service, then you are an instrument of service, if the gift is teaching, the teaching comes through you, if the gift is encouraging, then you are a conduit of encouragement, if the gift is giving, then generosity fills you and spills over, if leading, then you have diligence, if you’re showing mercy, then cheerfulness lives in you.

 

Each action happens not by determined striving, setting your mind to it, trying to be a decent person or good Christian, but because who you are is made already to participate with God’s action moving through you in this particular way, and it will come out in ministering to others.

Can you hear the freedom? The life? The holy sacrifice of ourselves that becomes worship and gratitude to God? Can you see why God finds this everyone-living-who've-they've-been-made-to-be-and-so-working-cooperatively-together utterly delightful?

 

Each person is both entirely unique and entirely connected to everyone else. We are all essential. We are urged to participate with what God has already done for us all, by who God has already made us to be.

 

Last weekend, on our day retreat, we played Poetry for Neanderthals, a fun, ridiculous game that makes you speak only in single syllable words, which turns out to be really, really hard, and sound very, very funny. But in order to play the game you need to get what a single syllable word is. And all of a sudden, there is Wendy, so naturally teaching the group how to hear the syllables, clapping words with her hands and giving us examples that we clapped with her, and the teaching just flowed from her. She didn’t have to put her mind to striving to be teacherly and take up the teaching task, it just happened because she was connected to the rest of us, and the gifts she’s been given by the grace of God poured out of her into the group, bringing everyone in and uniting us in understanding.  

Likewise, Edie, when her friend left the room, went to check on him and make sure he was ok. Compassion and care just happened--her body stood up and out she went. 

And if you have been away for a while, or have something difficult going on in your life, chances are you’ve heard from Kay. Because she is attuned to people and interested in others, and she won’t let you fall through the cracks. 

Jen’s creativity starts flowing for the next hands-on worship project right after this service ends, and she often sparks ideas for me just by sharing her own ideas. 

When Pat fires up the grill, or Kristen drops a line of poetry on us, we’re glimpsing their unique souls, participating with God in the good, delighting God and the rest of us too. And I would venture to guess that no other church has an empty ‘pet chaplain’ job waiting to be filled--we simply named what was already happening through Joyce.

 

All these gifts are not about improving a religious club or even just strengthening our relationships with each other here.  We are each part of the Body of Christ--God’s embodied interaction in the world. God’s life is happening through every person in this room out there in the world in our ordinary, everyday, walking around lives. That’s what it is to be Christ’s Church. But being church together, we get to see it up close in one another, practice and encourage each other in it. And sometimes we recognize in someone else the gifts they may not yet see in themselves. We get to grow together as one body deeper and deeper in the life of Christ for the world. 

 

From God, through God and back to God it all flows. Therefore, the most logical way we can worship God is to present our peculiar, particular selves to God, and God happens to find that delightful. Freeing us and transforming us to recognize and join God in bringing life and wholeness in the world, God makes it so we participate by being who are, with and for each other. 

 

Amen.

To Remain Human

 

(This is why LNPC is doing a digital fast.)

To Remain Human

by Brian Lewis

The nervous system

was never designed

to carry the grief

of an entire planet

Yet here we are

A child starving

crosses our screen

between weather reports

and advertisements

Forests burn beside stock prices

Wars arrive

in the same hand

that holds photographs

of our grandchildren

And somewhere inside us

something ancient

keeps trying

to respond

This is the exhaustion

few know how to name

Not simply stress

Not simply fear

But the unbearable collision

between the human heart

and the scale

of modern awareness

We were meant

to know the sorrow

of the village

Now we are asked

to metabolize

the suffering

of civilizations

And many are drowning

Some in rage

Some in distraction

Some in endless performance

Some in irony so thick

it becomes a shield

against feeling anything real

Others quietly disappear

inside themselves

their spirits dimming

beneath the constant demand

to remain informed

productive

available

certain

The world keeps shouting

Choose a side

Move faster

Consume more

Outrage harder

Win

But the soul

does not speak

in that language

The soul speaks

through silence

through grief

through awe

through the sudden trembling

that arrives

when one human being

finally feels

the reality

of another

This is why

so many people

stand at the edge

of breakdown

Not because they are weak

But because they are porous

Because somewhere beneath

the armor

their humanity

is still functioning

And perhaps

that is what must now

be protected

Not merely ecosystems

Not merely institutions

But the fragile interior capacities

that allow human beings

to remain human

inside an age

that profits from fragmentation

To remain tender

without collapsing

To remain informed

without becoming consumed

To remain compassionate

without surrendering discernment

To stand before suffering

without turning away 

and yet also

without allowing suffering

to transform the heart

into stone

This is harder

than revolution

Harder than ideology

Harder than certainty

Because it asks something

few civilizations

have ever learned to cultivate

strength

without cruelty

Perhaps this is why

small acts matter so much now

A hand on a shoulder

A teacher

who notices the silent child

A man planting trees

whose shade

he will never live to sit beneath

A woman refusing

to let cynicism

be mistaken for wisdom

These are not small things

They are the architecture

of psychological survival

The architecture

of repair

And maybe the future

will not ultimately be decided

by those

who accumulated the most power 

but by those

who learned

how to carry immense complexity

without surrendering

their capacity

for love

Because civilizations do not die

only from invasion

or collapse

They also die

when people can no longer feel

one another

When exhaustion

becomes identity

When distraction

becomes culture

When tenderness

becomes embarrassment

When the human nervous system

finally says

enough

But I do not believe

that ending

is inevitable

I think there are still people

quietly rebuilding

the interior world

Still people

teaching children wonder

Still people

protecting beauty

Still people

who understand

that compassion

is not sentiment

It is infrastructure

And perhaps

the task before us now

is not merely

to save the world 

but to become

the kind of people

capable

of inhabiting it together.