Philippians 3:17-4:1 Panzer Liturgical Service
In
1971, I was confirmed in a Methodist church in SC congregation. I went to
youth group with my friends, even attending church semi-regularly when I was in
college… I’ll admit part of our motivation was eating the fancy brunch at the
Clemson House with my meal card if I brought a church bulletin each week. After
college, I settled in nearby Anderson and worked as a blood bank technologist
at the local hospital. I joined a small UMC congregation in a crossroads called
Wild Hog, near Pendleton, and with a group of youth and other volunteers, spent
my summers immersed in the Conference’s youth mission camps.
Eventually,
I heard the call, first as a Lay Speaker, then as a candidate for ordained
ministry. My years at Duke were wonderful, expanding my knowledge and growing
my faith. In 1993, I was ordained as an Elder in the South Carolina Conference.
I thought that might be the most exciting thing that would ever happen to me.
And then I fell in love with this tall, handsome Air Force pilot and life was
never the same. In 1995, we got married with the belief that we could serve God
better together than apart. 27 years later, we still think that's true, but
there have been detours and bumps along the way.
When
we moved to Stuttgart, Germany in 2014, it was our 11th military
move. I am amazed at the places and ways I have been able to serve God and the
church, both thru appointment and as a volunteer. But there was a particularly
difficult period in my life during our third Air Force move. In IL and ND, I
was able to secure appointments, but in NJ, that didn't work out. For the first
time in my adult life, I was not earning a paycheck. I was not a leader in a
congregation. People only knew me as someone's wife, and as great as that is,
it didn't feel like enough.
Sundays
came and I didn't want to go to church. In hindsight, I realize that I was
angry with God and maybe even with my husband that my call to ministry had been
interrupted. And then on one gorgeous September morning, the world went crazy,
and only 90 miles away from our base, the events of 9/11 unfolded before us.
Within
a few minutes, my neighbors and new friends were calling me to ask me questions
of faith. "How could God let this happen?" "What do I tell my
children?" and "Where do we go from here?" When we planned a
neighborhood prayer meeting, they looked to me for guidance. And when that
group turned into a weekly PWOC bible study, I realized that this was my next
call. God hadn't made a mistake at all; it just took a lot longer than I hoped.
It's
easy to get caught in our preconceived notions about the future. Are we going
to the right schools? Have we chosen the right careers? We want the perfect
house in the best neighborhood with the most amazing car sitting in our three-car
garage with our amazing kids and pets by our sides.
None
of these things are wrong, but this part of Paul's letter to the Philippians reminds
us it is actually what people see us doing that speaks volumes
about who we are. We can say that we are Christian, reciting scripture left and
right, but if we are not living out the Good News every day, the power of that
proclamation is lost. Being a Christian is more than just claiming Christ. It's
about becoming more like Christ through actions and works to point to Jesus. Paul's
letter to the Philippians was written to help them stand fast and grow amid a
secularized culture. Here are some things he tells them and us about how to
live an authentic, fruitful faith.
First,
the life of faith is a life of transformation. We have to be willing to
grow into our faith. My roots in the Anglican and Methodist traditions are especially
helpful here. John Wesley claimed to be a Christian long before he had a
personal experience of faith. He served as an Anglican priest in several
places, always exacting a strong amount of discipline on his parishioners, so
much that it got him expelled from the colony of Georgia in North America under
the cover of darkness, leaving his Savannah congregation behind.
But
he did not stay that stubborn and willful. People related to the Wesleyan tradition
celebrate May 24th as Aldersgate Day. In his journal entry from that
night, he claimed his heart was "strangely warmed," grasping the
notion that Jesus didn't just die for the whole world, but for each one of us
individually. That was his turning point. The rest of his ministry was focused
on first helping people turn to Christ, and then growing into their faith by
intentional discipleship.
So,
what is intentional discipleship? If you play a musical instrument, you have to
practice to get better. If you want to be a better cook or a better athlete or
a better parent, you are only able to do that if you keep working to make
progress toward perfection. The same is true for the life of faith. Paul calls
that "pressing on." Choosing Jesus is easy. Living a life of faithful
discipleship is hard. It takes courage. It takes practice. We keep pressing on,
even when we don’t feel like it, even if others work against us, even when
we’re not sure we believe anymore. The good news is this: God still believes in
us.
Second,
we come from traditions that understand the life-long nature that the life of
faith calls us to. The moment of our belief/understanding/acceptance of God and
Jesus is important. But they are not the end of our journey – they are
important but do not define us. The faith journey is ongoing. It is a process. Sanctification
is the process that fine-tunes us for God’s use. It helps us practice the ways
that we put God and others first, considering our own wants later. And it is
ongoing.
Next
week, our Confirmation class will think about what this kind of life might look
like. We will look at spiritual gifts and spiritual disciplines. I often
remember how I rebelled when I figured out what my spiritual gifts were.
Teaching was among them – I didn’t want to be a teacher. Anyone can be a teacher,
I thought (erroneously, of course.) But once I leaned into the gift, in concert
with my spiritual gifts for Faith and Shepherding, I found a joy in my faith
journey that opened up activities and relationships I would have never explored
otherwise.
Wesley’s
vision of “pressing on” went by the name Christian Perfection. This did not mean
that we are expected to live perfectly. We all make mistakes and bad choices. But
we are supposed to be going toward perfection. That doesn’t mean never
breaking the rules. We should be trying to get better as we move forward in
faith, living for Christ. It does mean we take seriously Jesus’ command to love
God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as
ourselves (Mark 12:28-31). Pressing on is about growing in faith so that we can
become "whole" - and more fully the people that God created us to be.[i]
The
third way Paul challenges the Philippians is to meet people where they are,
not where we want them to be. The Gentile converts in Philippi were being
required to follow Jewish dietary laws, of which Paul was highly critical (See
Acts 15). Instead of placing an extraordinary burden on those around us, he
calls us to be imitators of him and Christ in our relationships with those
around us. Sometimes this means hanging out with people and in places that make
us uncomfortable.
My
work with families and youth in some of the most impoverished communities in SC
taught me that God is most real and present in those places, and even more so
to the helpers than to those being helped. Think about how must trust it takes
to invite teenagers, ministers, adult volunteers with power tools to come and
work on your home. It also takes a lot of faith to go into a community very
different from your own and experience God in the relationships you can build
there, but only if you press into uncomfortable, God-filled places.
I
last preached on this passage in February of 2016 at the church where I was
confirmed and raised as a young person. At that time, Germany had received over
750,000 persons as the war raged in Syria. Resources were taxed, and many folks
had difficulty assimilating into the uber-structured society. But the German
community kept surprising us at their willingness to help these families and
individuals make new lives and homes here. Many churches chose to take a “friendship”
approach to ministry with their new neighbors, not a salvation approach. And even
in the first year, many churches reported ongoing conversations with unchurched
migrants asking how to have a relationship with Christ, responding to the gift
of hospitality freely offered.[ii]
Six
years later, we have a new exodus in Europe, again because of war. Once again, families
will be moving into our communities to make new, sometimes permanent, lives. In
our village newspaper this week, we had an appeal to homeowners to make houses,
apartments, and even rooms available for short and long-term use by citizens of
Ukraine. They also left with only what they could carry in their hands and on
their backs. But many of them also bring with them their Christian identity, as
Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. They will be seeking Christian
community, and once again, we will be asked to offer them the gift of
friendship, as we seek to be and see Christ in the world.
We
are never too far from redemption. God is waiting for us, even seeking us, to
follow him down the road. He is not only waiting for us to turn to him like a
father sitting by the door after a long absence, but God is actively pursuing
us and present with us along the road – like on the road to Emmaus (Luke
24:13-35). When we look through his eyes at the world around us, we see all the
ways that we can be the hands and feet and voice of Christ's love in the world.[iii]
Our
biggest challenges will often be the work of building bridges when it feels
safer to build up walls. Our citizenship in the Kingdom of God doesn’t just ask
us but requires us to build bridges when it feels
more natural to put up walls. Paul reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize,
press on, and stand firm in Christ... if that isn't a lifetime's work, I don't
know what is.
Paul gives concrete advice to the Philippians as the letter closes:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
[ii] http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/how-a-church-overcomes-hostility-to-christianity, also http://www.umc.org/how-we-serve/german-bishop-on-migrants-meet-people-not-problems and http://www.umc.org/how-we-serve/united-methodists-in-germany-welcome-refugees
[iii] Joseph Yoo, WHEN YOU REALLY WANT TO WEAR A MASK TO CHURCH, Ministry Matters, 2/15/2016 (http://www.ministrymatters.com/)
[iv] Robb McCoy, Pulpit Fiction Podcast, https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent2c/#Philippians3=
I take my identity documentation very seriously.
For the last 27 years, I have carried a card identifying me as a dependent of a
member of the US Armed Forces. On any given day, I may be asked to show this
card between 3 and 8 times, depending on where I am going and what services I
require. I have a US and a European driver's license. And because I live
outside the boundary of US borders, on most days I travel with my US passport
and my SOFA card (Status of Forces Agreement). The first one gives me
permission to live in Germany as a sponsored foreign resident. The second
allows me to travel outside of German, where I hopefully broaden my
understanding of the world.
But however important my US
citizenship and documentation are, they say anything about what kind of person
I am. Even the things I say about myself paint only a partial picture. More
than anything, people know me by the way I behave, and whether the things I say
about who I am match the way I live.
To build up our spiritual gifts, we practice our faith
in many different ways. Among those activities were bible study, enthusiastic
worship, personal prayer and devotion time, Christian conversation, and service
to those in need. We are also called to be accountable to one another. John
Wesley never meant to start a new church or denomination, but asked his
parishioners to join Class Meetings as a way to keep humble and keep active in
the faith. He believed that our willingness to confess our shortcomings is just
as important (or maybe even more so) as our willingness to proclaim Jesus as
our Lord and Savior. As we develop Christian friendships and share both our
joys and our failings, we are able to see how and where God is calling us to
live and serve. Sometimes others see things in us we cannot see.
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