Back to School Blessing: Giraffe

 Every year my congregation blesses the students and teachers returning to school.  They receive a blessing buddy to carry with them (or display in their classrooms). This year's was a giraffe.

 Past years' blessings (eg, Camel, Hedgehog, Penguin, Octopus, etc) can be found here.

Every giraffe’s spots are unique, no two patterns are ever the same. Giraffe spots darken and become more distinct as they age. They do not make this happen; it just is.   You are you. Nobody else can be you, and you can’t be anybody else. We love watching you be you.  We thank God for making you just the way you are!    Simply by living, eating, and breathing with their heads in the trees and their feet on the ground, giraffes help pollinate the world around them.    God made your life to be a blessing to the world around you.  We love to celebrate all the ways you join in making life wonderful.    When they are born, baby giraffes drop six feet into this world and crash onto the hard ground. Soon after, they stand up on their new, spindly legs, and they are fed, cared for, and encouraged.    There will be shocks and bumps this year.  You will have pain.  That is just part of being alive. You are not alone. We will help you stand.  We will be with you through whatever comes.   Giraffes have been given natural compression socks to help blood circulate throughout their nearly 20-foot-tall bodies. Their spots are chock full of special, tiny blood vessels that release heat to keep them cool. Their 19 inch long, powerful tongues grasp leaves and branches to easily strip off leaves. Their muscular legs and flexible knees make them fast, joyful runners (over 30 miles per hour!), power their forceful back kicks when lions come at their heels, and gently lower them in the splits all the way down to drink water. Their huge hearts weigh 24 lbs, and their long, flexible necks reach high up food, bend freely for scuffling and playing with other young giraffes, and raise their heads for a wide, far-reaching ‘giraffe’s eye view’ of the world.   God made you capable and adaptable. God gives you what you need.  This year may you explore your gifts, test your skills, and grow your abilities.  May your heart get bigger.  And from time to time, we will remind you to look up and all around, to remember the wider picture, and see your place in God’s great big world.   Giraffes are intelligent and watchful, and while to us they appear quiet, they actually communicate with each other at a frequency difficult for the human ear to pick up.    We never know everything that is going on with other people;  there is always more to discover about each other.  This year, may you see each person with love and kindness,  even if you can’t understand them.   No giraffe lives alone. They navigate the world together, learn and play together, look after each other’s young, and grieve when one of their own dies. But even though they’re tight with their friends, they also like to hang out at the watering hole and share shade with other gentle animals who are very different than them.    This year, may you find your people and love all people.  And may the love of Jesus live in and through you.    Blessings as you begin another school year!  God is holding you, and so are we.  Amen!

The Life of the Reconciled

Matthew 18:15-20

There is a particular kind of video that brings a of gleeful pleasure to watch. It flies across social media, picking up likes and building momentum, and giving that jolt of satisfaction to its viewers that makes you want to pump your fist and say Yes! Or lean back with a hearty Ha! 

It’s the video where somebody gets what’s comin’ to them.  When the arrogant, unkind, thoughtless, or insensitive person gets put in their place, wow, is that satisfying! 

Justice. Is. served!

If there is something to be said for us in this day and age, it is that we’re down for some righteous retribution! We love us a good shunning! And it’s not that hard to do. We can collectively punish a despicable person or shut down a bad business with just the tipity-tap of our fingers on a little screen. 
This happens on the personal front – delete, block, erase – and on the international front—line em’ up, hit send, and the drone does the rest. 

They came at you?? Don’t let that stand. End them. 
Someone hurts you? Bye, bye! Move on. They’re not worth it. No longer your problem. Put the nail in their coffin - make them fodder for the frenzy, grist for the mill. Did you hear what he did? Did I tell you what she said? Can you believe it!
 
We even have word for it, a phrase that didn’t exist before our lifetime. We call it “canceling.”  We can cancel a person. Figuratively wipe someone out, erase them. Make them as though they are not here, were never here, as though they do not matter. They get what they deserve, and we got to dish it out. Sweet Justice. 
 
 So today’s scripture feels like it comes from another time, a different place. And it does. It comes from a different realm altogether, actually. It comes from the Kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, justice looks different than we’d like it to.
 
Jesus’ view of justice doesn’t satisfy our thirst for retaliation. It demands suffering and co-humanity. God’s justice reinforces our belonging to each other instead of ending it.  
 
Jesus is talking here to the disciples. To the people whose lives are oriented toward God through Christ. They’re the ones brought into Christ’s life and purposes in the world. All these centuries later, we are a part of that same community. By coming together like we do, and being church like we are, we acknowledge that we belong not to ourselves but to God, and we declare that we exist not for ourselves but for the world. 
 
And this is such a powerful calling, Jesus says, it’s as though we stand between heaven and earth, bridging eternity and time, living in time for love.  We are incognito agents of the eternal Kingdom of God right here in our very own neighborhoods and families, on our streets, in our schools, at work; we are here with and for our fellow human beings. 

To live between worlds like this, to be brought into this work of Christ, is to stand in people’s pain and suffering and watch right here for the presence and action of God. And it is to simultaneously stand with God, and watch the life of the world with compassion that longs for its wholeness and healing. 

It’s to be a channel of communication; we speak to God about the brokenness and aching here and God listens to us, and we listen to God about God’s love and promise, sorrow and hope for the world, and we speak that into the world. We call this two-way communication ‘prayer.’ 

And when two or three of us are gathered, God is right here with us and we acknowledge and welcome God’s presence. We call that gathering together with God ‘worship’.

And when our hearts are in unison, what we say and do in the name of Jesus is as though Jesus himself were here doing and saying those things – and in fact, he is. We call that participation in Jesus’s work ‘ministry.’  

We are people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving and speaking and working. 
 
So then, how could there be a place for building up resentment, letting division fester, cutting each other off? When righteous indignation says, You hurt me, I will never trust you again, have we forgotten who is our Lord? Have we made ourselves above reproach? 
Christ alone is the righteous one.

And the righteous system meant to dispense justice killed him. 

Who do you think you are? You think you’re a prophet? The promised Messiah?  You think you’re the king of the Jews? You’re over.  

The word of God made flesh who dwelt among us was erased by the world he came to save. His voice was silenced, his body broken, his existence ended by righteous retribution. Taking all human injustice and injury into himself, Jesus gets canceled.
 
We serve a crucified God. Our Lord is one on the cross who has been canceled. 

And so, we are the community of the canceled. Anyone canceled is brought in. We are the community of the failed, the community of the humbled. Here we are all unrighteous. And we are all in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  Now we are given Jesus’s life, made righteous through him. 

Where the world delights in retribution and severs ties easily, Jesus frees us for love, and binds us together as those already canceled, already dead, who no longer need to enact our own justice, or prove our own worthiness, or earn our own life.  

So, we can be in this together, this strange life shaped by communion, humbleness, honesty, forgiveness. Here we live toward each other in humility, as those who confess our unrighteousness. Here we accept the gift that meets us in one another, and let the justice of Jesus, who bears our brokenness, uphold us always in our belonging.  
 
Of course we will disagree. We have different experiences and perspectives; thanks be to God! And we will hurt each other by accident, or even sometimes on purpose, because we’re human beings. But we don’t get to cut off from one another. We didn’t make this bond in the first place; it’s not ours to break. This is not a self-chosen club of the like-minded, compatible and upright! This is Christ’s body, broken and given for the world, to reconcile the whole world to God.

So, when there is a conflict between us, we are bound to work it out, Jesus says. In fact, the places of sin toward each other become the very grounds for grace! Our impossibility is where the Holy Spirit does what we can’t do. 
 
When someone hurts you, Jesus says, say something to them directly and in private, uphold their dignity and allow them to own their actions and apologize. And if they don’t share your desire to clear the barrier between you, bring a mutual support and try again, and if that fails, bring it to the whole community for help. Do not give up on each other. 

Because this grace, this love, can only be known in community. It is not found in right-ness or strength, and it couldn’t be further from getting the upper hand or enacting revenge. 

The justice of Jesus is all people upheld in their belonging to God and each other. 
 
Here is how you share in me, Jesus calls us, go sacramentally, as broken for one another, a gift to each other in your humility and forgiveness. Where the world avoids discomfort and ends the relationship, be honest about pain, and humble about mistakes, and forgive generously. Here is where Christ meet us with new life, with justice that restores us into the belonging of God to one another.  And here is how it works, reconciliation is the very shape of our life together, because it's the action of Jesus in the world. And if you confess, you will find new life here, but if that disgusts you, it will send you running. If you cannot receive this gift, it will feel like a curse. 

Which brings us to this line- if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.
 
In a Way of Fear way of reading of this line, which lifts up righteous indignation, and glorifies payback, we assume this means excommunicate them. Some mid 20^th century bible translations even actually say that. Cut them off. Cut them out and don’t give it another thought - they’re dead to you. They’re not worthy of your attention. Cancel them. Ghost them and move on.
 
But that is actually the opposite of what this means. 

Because who was Jesus always in trouble for hanging out with?  Who did he come for?

Jesus says so himself, “I did not come for the righteous, but for sinners”! Sinners, outcasts, Gentiles and tax collectors, misfits and ne’er-do-wells were his favorite—Matthew himself was a tax-collector. 

It’s just that for Gentiles and tax collectors, belonging to God and others is not their lens. Their answer to “What is a good life and how do I live it?” is not spoken in the language of prayer, worship and ministry. They did not center their lives on obedience to God or loving their neighbor as they love themselves. They specifically do not see themselves as servants of God, people called to lay down their lives for others. 
 
‘Tax collector’ and ‘Gentile’ here is shorthand for people who are not bound by up in a covenant life of promise with the God of Israel revealed in Christ. They are either living overtly, even corruptly, for their own gain, or they are casually oblivious to the deeper reality in which we are all held in God. They do not share the identity, calling and mission of a canceled Lord. Nevertheless, they are human beings; they belong to God and they belong to us. Just like us, they are in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  
 
So, Jesus says: if someone among you refuses to be reconciled, refuses to be reconnected, acknowledge that you are no longer living inside the same reality together. They no longer desire to share in the sacrifice and vulnerability of being shaped by and for love by the grace of God. So you must no longer expect them to participate in the work of staying connected in humility or being joined in mutual community anymore. You do not expect them to see the world as you do, and you now longer attempt to live in the same kind of shared life that you once expected to share.  
 
But you do not cancel them, you don’t write them off.  They are not ‘dead to you.’  They remain, as they have always been, a beloved child of God. Only now, rather than a conscious bearer of grace with you for others, they’ve become one pursued by God, one specifically for whom Jesus came.

Jesus is not saying to abandon the one who refuses to be reconciled. Jesus is telling us respect them as our fellow human being and expect no reciprocation from them. Instead of a fellow minister, an agent in God’s Kingdom, someone who, with you, is working with Christ for the reconciliation of the world, they are now those to whom we are sent. They are the ones we are meant to eat with at table, to listen to, to stand up for, to stand alongside, to show compassion toward. 

Their repentance is the Holy Spirit’s work to do.  Awakening in them awareness of their belonging to God and all others is God’s responsibility, not ours. 
 
This is not easy to hear for those of us shaped by empire and ego.  

It’s no wonder the very next part of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples is Peter asking how many times we’re expected to forgive someone who’s done us wrong. (Spoiler, Peter suggests a nice big number and Jesus responds with, essentially, Nope, you forgive infinity times). 
 
We are the community of the canceled,  the people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving, and speaking, and working. We live between eternity and time, here, in time, for love.  

It works differently here. Having nothing to prove, and nothing to earn, and nothing to lose, having already died and been resurrected into Christ, we are free to live in the love from which we came, the love to which we will return, as recipients of reconciliation and agents of the eternal Kingdom of God. 

So we receive each other as gift, stand by each other in suffering, and remember together that God’s grace is always at work in us, and through us God’s grace pours into the world. 

The power of the Spirit of Christ does this.
Amen.

The things we all need to hear

St. James the Just 

(Presided over the Council of Jerusalem around 50 CE, 

where his concluding decision shaped how Gentile Christians related to Mosaic law).

 James 1:27-2:8, 2:14-17

Can you imagine growing up with Jesus as your brother? I mean, your literal, hand-me-down clothes, share the bathroom, which of us is Grandma’s favorite, brother?
On our journey through the bible, we’ve been spending the past couple of months in the letters of Paul. Today we are reading a letter, or epistle, of James.** The brother of Jesus. One of the earliest pieces of scripture we have. James was Jesus’s actual brother. 

So, Jesus’s brother, James, or as modern people like to call him, Jesus’s “half-brother”, wrote this letter. But he was not a disciple of Jesus before he died. After Jesus’s resurrection is when James became a follower of The Way, and eventually the well-known and respected leader of the first church ever, in Jerusalem.

Paul’s letters were, for the most part, written to specific communities with specific circumstances, certain people, particular scenarios. This letter is not written to a specific community. It is written to all the churches scattered around the Roman Empire. And it is not about one thing, it’s kind of about all the things. It’s a mashup of Jesus’s teachings and wisdom sayings, filled with pithy lines like the Book of Proverbs, gut punch truths and direct statements that you can’t help but remember, because they catch you off guard and call you out.
Such as:
Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Faith without works is dead.

Testing your faith produces endurance.

Every generous act of giving and every good gift is from God.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. 

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This ought not be.

A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 

Let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no. 

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

The wisdom nuggets James drops throughout this letter instruct, and remind, and hope to inspire and direct a wide but intimate audience, a scattered community united in calling and purpose to guide them in this new life they’re now living.  It’s like the first pope’s first encyclical. 

I spent some time this week just imagining this community. We already heard with Paul’s letters how their way of living undermined the whole structure of society, how they cared not just for the people who looked out for them but especially for those who could not. Women and slaves were leaders, children were valued, and they were a strange group of people not afraid of death who refused to be silenced or stopped in this way of love by the empire’s rewards or punishments.  

But I got pretty caught up on this being written by Jesus’ brother. And he and Paul knew each other! Paul visited James in Jerusalem, sat with him on councils, mentions him in his letter to the Galatians. Then I wondered if Paul knew Jesus’ whole family. Surely, he knew Mary, who was also a leader in the church. And while there is no historical record, sacred tradition holds that as Mary’s death approached, Paul and other disciples and church leaders gathered in Jerusalem, where undoubtedly James convened a blessing for his mother, their mother, our mother.

I won’t digress further here into my meandering wonderings about the childhood family dynamics or sibling rivalries in the household of these brothers James and Jesus (Ya'akov and Yeshua), or what elements of big brother’s origin story details were discussed with the other children, only to note that we are not told any of these things because they are not the point. Jesus had an ordinary life in an ordinary family, and that is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about God becoming human. 

All we have of God is what God has revealed to us of Godself, by coming, embodied, in Jesus Christ. And all we have of Jesus Christ is what those who knew him or knew of him wrote to each other about him, or passed on in oral tradition until someone wrote it down for the rest of us. 

Except that’s not all we have, because Jesus did not stay dead like ordinary humans. So the life he lives that cannot die is now our life, and the connection he shares with the Father that cannot be broken is now our connection, and the way he loved all people as siblings, each one a beloved child of God, is now our way, of loving, of being.  The risen Jesus lives now in and through us; we are part of his life that cannot die, caught up in grace, released from whatever might try to trap us in shame, or anger, or isolation, and held in this belonging to God and all others. The real reality of God’s eternal love brought to fulfillment in Christ is our origin, our destination, and our path.

Therefore, as Paul would say. Because that is the truth, live like it’s true. Here’s James’s therefore: Quit adopting the mindset of the world. Care for those who need help. What good is it if you say ‘I have faith in God’ but don’t help the people around you?’ They belong to God and so they belong to you, there is no faith in God apart from our neighbor! What good is it to say ‘go in peace and be warm and fed’ but give them no food or shelter? Jesus didn’t come to us in nice thoughts and kind wishes; he came in hunger and need and was fed and cared for by those he came to.  And how is it living in the real reality to decide some people are better or more worthy than others because of their outward appearance? When you forget that the poor have a special place in the God’s kingdom and kiss up to the rich instead, what fear, insecurity, or lies is your life really being guided by?

Nobody likes to feel scolded. (Martin Luther was not a fan of this letter). But there is some extra punch, I feel, to James’ words, because he is not writing them right to a certain community or situation. These messages are not directed at a certain group especially busy with bad behaviors. This letter is sent all throughout the Roman empire, church to church, house to house, family to family, wherever the people of the Way are gathered, these words apply. They are for all followers of the Way to hear.

When we read directives, we like to look around at who most needs to hear the message, then nod along and decide it pertains to those other Christians over there.  I may not be perfect all this, at least I’m not as bad as they are.

So, there is something both heartbreaking and deeply comforting to know that these specific mindsets and behaviors James is addressing are universal struggles. He is dealing with pitfalls shared by all Christians living in empire, starting with the very first church, and including us right now. No partiality or prejudice; this is wisdom every one of us needs to hear. 

James is warning us about falling back into a way of living that fractures us, from each other, from God, and from our true humanity that finds its wholeness when we are living with and for each other. We’ve called these two paradigms the way of God and the way of fear. One is true and brings freedom, the other is a very persuasive lie that enslaves. So, James sends to everyone a letter that can already guess what our temptations will be, because they’re his too, they’re all of ours. Believing and living these lies is not new to us. This is sin – back to the beginning, human beings turning from the source of life and love and and trying to somehow acquire on our own, over and against each other, what is already given—and can only be given as a gift—from the source of all life. And this lie is fed to us every day by the empire.

We need reminding that we don’t strive to advance in some board game of life or faith, stepping on others on our way up.  We are transformed from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the energy that flows between the God who is so wholly other than us that our imaginations cannot even begin to reach toward, and the incarnate Son, God’s own self-revelation on earth, God’s act of reaching out to us and saying, Here is who I am. This is me. I am for you.

We have been claimed by this God for this holy, ordinary life. This God, who is for us, has made us for God and for one another. This life of belonging is a life of presence and of participation. It’s a life of mistakes that are confessed to those we’re here for, and hurt that is forgiven by those we’re here with, and (as our own Marty Christensen used to say) we are here to take care of each other. In this reality, the real reality, those of us who are right now most in need are who we are most here for.  

It has meant so much to E and B (a family in our congregation going through some very challenging medical circumstances) to have us praying for them. And we are. Every day we are praying. And also, the more I say to E, we are praying for you, the more it feels like words without actions, Be well! Take care! Thoughts and prayers! A few of you shared this week how sad it felt to eat the meals you’d prepared for them and were unable to deliver. And I keep on reiterating, we are here for you, whatever you need, and being unable to really provide anything, because they’re living in such suspended liminality at the moment that what they most need is our prayers, so we keep praying. And thank God we are able to do that, both that they are letting us do that, by sharing what’s going on and not holding back, and also that God gives us this way to participate in what God doing. Prayer is an act of obedience and trust, and, as James reminds us, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

But last night I prayed for some way to do something. And I was immediately reminded that the gathered church breaks bread together and we serve one another communion, and this is one way we practice receiving and living in this real reality, sharing each other’s place and being remembered into our belonging and our calling.  So last night I reached out to E and offered to bring communion to them after worship. Pastor Lisa and me, more people from church, just one of us, none of us, whatever would feel right to them. She checked with B and came back saying B said he would love to have communion with whoever of us wants to come. 

So later today we will put action to our words and be the prayer we’ve been praying. Here now, with you, for B.  And even though it means only a few of us can go in the ICU, and we can’t end pain or bring relief or hope, we can be with and for them, and this is how we see and know God who is with and for us in Jesus. 

We can pretend life’s long, pretend it’s easy, deny the suffering, act like we don’t need each other, choose not to see each other, hide from other people’s pain, prop up the powerful, ignore those in need, and make our lives all about ourselves, but all that pretending won’t change what’s real. 

This life is short, and it’s hard, and it’s filled with suffering, and everyone dies, and in Jesus Christ God is here, with and for us, belonging us to God and one another, siblings, all, in this human family. And inside and underneath it all we’re held in God’s love that cannot be stopped by our selfishness, altered by our fear, dampened by our suffering, broken by our pain, or ended by our death. This love is our origin and destination, and it is our path—we are here to take care of each other.  So let’s live what’s real. 

Amen.

______________________

**Here is a fun bit of biblical trivia I just learned this week: In Hebrew James was Ya'akov and Jesus was Yeshua. So, they could’ve been called Jacob and Joshua, but technically, Jacob is actually the same name as James and Joshua is the same name as Jesus. It’s just how they evolved through Greek, Latin and English.  And weirdly, wherever the name is used in the Old Testament English bibles have translated it Jacob, and in the New Testament it is translated to James, just to keep straight who is who among all our bible characters, even though Greek calls them all Iacobos.  

Here are the Linguistic Progressions Broken Down: 
JAMES: Ya'akov (Heb/Aramic) = Iakobos (Gr) = Iamobos (Lat) = Iames (Eng, pre-1500s) = James (Eng, post-1500s, after "I" and "J" became separate letters).
JESUS: Yeshua (Heb/Aramic) = Iēsous (Gr, because lacks "sh" sound and needs 's' masculine ending) = Iesus (Lat) = Jesus (Eng. post 1500s when "I" and "J" differentiated).

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.