“The Christ Hymn” Phil 2: 1-13

 Twice a month, I gather with brothers and sisters from around the United States to prayerfully read God’s Word together. Over the course of an hour, we read the same passage four times to listen for what God is saying to us, and each other, through a particular passage in a spiritual practice called Lectio Divinia, or Divine reading. 

A few months ago, this particular passage was the one that we focused on together and one of the women said something that that is still with me today. She proclaimed “this is my statement of faith.” This is what I believe about Christ. And I want to live in such a way that reflects Christ’s heart and love with the world. 

That is what the Apostle Paul is trying to get across to the Philippian church. If you joined online last week, you heard about the first chapter in this particular letter, where Paul is so incredibly thankful for this particular church, this group of believers, who are partners in the mission to make Christ known throughout the world. 

But not everything is perfect in the Philippian community. While the church is the vessel that God has chosen to spread the good news of the Kingdom, sometimes we are not very good bearers of that message. We are not always great representatives because of how we act. In the words of Ghandi, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are unlike your Christ.”

That is true even in this Philippian church. Whenever we find Paul writing to a community about a particular value, it is usually because it is lacking. Which is true here as well. While the majority of the believers are unified in purpose, there are two folks (who are named in a later part of this letter) who are causing a distraction. So Paul wants to take this opportunity to remind the church about who it is that they follow and what’s the work they should be about in the world. 

So Paul starts out by telling the people to be united. But untied in what? United in the wonderful reality of who Christ is and what Christ has done. See the church, the body of Christ, friends, it is not about us. It is about our head, our Lord, the one who we seek to proclaim - Jesus Christ. Paul wants to lift Christ up above all others - especially at this moment in time when he is imprisioned and facing possible execution. If these are his last words to the Philippians, he is going to make them count. And for him those final words are this “In Christ Alone”. 

However, Paul also realizes that these are easy words to proclaim with our lips, but much harder to claim with our hearts and even harder still to live into with our lives. So he has to take the Philippians back to the beginning. Reminding them what it looks like to live as Christ’s representatives in the world - as those makes by love and joy. As those who do not put themselves and their ambitions above others. 

And then Paul tells them why. This may be the what and the how - but the why behind our living is this - all of those characteristics are the very essence of God. 

This particular statement of faith found in Philippians is often referred to as “The Christ Hymn” and is thought to be one of the oldest pieces of writing in the New Testament. It clearly states for the earliest believes who Christ is and then is followed by a call for us to live in a similar manner in the world. 

Easier said than done. 

If it was easy, we would all be about the work of reflecting Christ in the world with what we say and do. But all too often our ego, our “me”-ness, it gets in the way. We are quick to want to make our way and will known, and much slower to become focused on the needs, pains and hopes of others. 

The call that Paul is giving to the Philippians is to be imitators of Christ. But I fear that we don’t really know how to do that today. To imitate someone to strive to live like a person that we look up to. But often we fail because we are trying to make ourselves into them. Perhaps a better way to think about being an imitator of Christ is to be one who adopts a Christ-like attitude so that people see Christ in us. 

When we adopt a Christ like attitude, we seek to serve other people first. And not just serve those that we like. We pour ourselves out. We do not do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. And we are humble at our very core. 

The problem is that often it is easier to recognize that we should have these characteristics than to actually practice them. Take humility for example. Its easy to recognize that Christ was humble, to the point of giving away his life on the cross. Its easy to realize that we also should be humble, but often that is not our first, or even fiftieth, response. 

And yet. And yet, when we choose to be humble. When we choose to adopt the attitude of Christ Jesus, it allows us to have the opportunity to reflect Christ in the world. An every day example - I was talking recently with someone about folks in stores. Not the workers, but the shoppers, and how rare it is anyone to see someone who is kind. Who says “thank you”. Who speaks with kindness. Who is patient. It’s so rare that it catches us off-guard when we see it. Or catches other off-guard when we live into it. 

What would it look like for us to have this attitude of Christ that spills over into our actions and causes people to stop and wonder why in the world we are doing what we are doing. Not so we can lift high our own name, rather so we can be a reflection of Christ out in the world. 

This adoption of a Christ-like attitude, it is an ongoing, life-long process that we choose when we follow Jesus Christ. Paul is telling the Philippian church that some of them have lost the way, so they need a reminder, a re-orientation to Christ like living so they do not become a distraction from the Kingdom mission and vision. 

Friends, we, too, spend a lot of time being distracted, and yes, at some times, even being a distraction. How many of you have heard stories about churches that are marked more by fighting than by grace? Or places where people are not treated in ways that are marked by Kingdom values? 

All faith communities are one step away from becoming like this. If the Philippians, this community that Paul praises as being so committed to the Gospel, can become distracted, so can we. So we need to keep the course, keep making the decision to put on the attitude of Christ until it becomes so ingrained in us, that we shine the light of Christ into the world. 

Does that mean it will be easy? No. Does that mean that it won’t be costly? Absolutely not. For Paul, it cost him his life. For the Philippians, it cost them their own wants and desires. For us, it may cost us our wealth and worldly power. But it is the way we choose when we take on the name of Christ. Let us live, not for our own sake, but for the sake of Jesus - the one we love and imitate. Amen. 

“Partnership in the Gospel” Phil 1: 1-18

 I am fascinated by the way that the English language works. We often say one thing, especially in our culture, but mean something else. Take for example the phrase “I’m thankful for you.” We say that but we may mean “I’m thankful that you did this thing for me” instead of “I’m so thankful that you exist!”

When Paul proclaims that he is thankful for the Philippian church, he means the later. He isn’t just thankful for something that they have done for him. Rather he is thankful that they exist, just because they are who they are. And who they are, connects in purpose and mission with who Paul is. 

Paul, in his letter writing career, keeps reaching out to churches that he has had the opportunity to connect with, to minister to in person, but whom he can no longer be with face to face. And because each of those church communities is different, the letters that he writes are different - they are personal to them. 

For example, the Corinthian letters are written to a church in distress, a time of trial, where they do not seem to be emerging through onto the other side. So Paul’s letter comes across more stern to them, than say a Thesseolian church, where things are going well and people are generously sharing their faith in Christ. 

But of all of the joyous letters Paul writes, Philippians is the most intimate. When he is writing to this church, you can tell that he has a deep and enduring relationship with this particular group of believers. To the point where he is willing to share his heartache and tribulation with them.

Because things are not rosy for Paul at this point in time. He is imprisioned and has endured a lot for the name of Jesus Christ and proclaiming the Gospel. He doesn’t know for sure how his life is going to end, but he knows that the end may be close. 

Yet, he is praising God. Thanking God for his brothers and sisters in the faith. 

Paul starts this part of his letter by saying that he thanks God every times he remembers them. Now remembering can be a tricky thing. Have you ever had the experience of talking with people about an event - an event that you were all at - only to find that their version of the story doesn’t sound anything like yours? In fact, you start to doubt whether you were even there with them at all?

We aren’t talking about that type of remembering. This is not reminiscing. This memory that Paul is talking about is how this faith community is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He isn’t praising God for some good or cheery memory from the past. He is praising God for who they are.

And who the Philippians are is partners in the Gospel.  

And because of this - Paul deeply cares for them and considers them to be friends. 

Some of you know that for the past several years I have been working towards a doctorate in ministry, which I was awarded earlier this month. Part of that process was a year long journey of studying a particular topic - and guess what my topic was - spiritual friendships. Or at least that was part of it. 

All too often we make friends based on shared interests. You like baseball? I like baseball, let’s be friends. Or shared experiences. You work at the same place I do? Let’s be friends. But spiritual friendships are different. They are places where we have a shared mission - to be shaped and used by God. We encourage each other along that path and hold each other accountable.

The problem is all too often we try to make spiritual friendships conform to the ways of the world. You go the same church as me? Let’s be friends. When really, Christ is invited us to be so much more. To be partners in the Kingdom mission together. 

That is what Paul has with this Philippian church. And because of that he is able to both encourage them to keep up the mission and challenge them as well. Part of Paul’s prayer is that they would be pure and blameless before Christ. A tall order. Often when we think about blameless we either immediately assume that it is impossible, because we equate it with human perfection, or we start to compare ourselves to others and play the blame game. You know what I’m talking about. The “I’m not to blame as much as you” or “I’m not as bad as you” comparison game. 

But that isn’t what Paul is talking about. He is offering this as a prayer. Telling this church he deeply care about that this is what God has laid on his heart to pray for them - not because they are already there, but because it is who God is calling them to be, through God’s grace.

This entire partnership that Paul is talking about hinges not solely on the Philippians, but on God’s grace. God’s grace that lead them. God’s grace that sustains them. And God’s grace that will carry them into the future. It was the grace of God that allowed them to have this powerful friendship with Paul and it is God’s grace that will allow them to work for the mission of God, until they day that they are called home. 

Do you have this type of partner in your life? Do you have these type of friends?

If your answer is “no” be not dismayed. For we don’t often talk about a theology of friendship - though it is certainly biblical. Nor do we really unpack what it means to be joint partners in the Gospel. 

Maybe now is the time to pray to God, that God lead you to this type of friend. Maybe you will be surprised and it will be someone you already know. Or someone that god is inviting you yo go more deeply with in the name of Christ. Or maybe it is a whole new person or group of people that God will bring across your path. 

But these type of friendships, they are transformative - both for us and the world. They model what it looks like to love with the love of our Savior as we grow in knowledge of our Lord. 

May God bless us with spiritual friendships. Friendships that we thank God for - because of who that person is and how God has invited us to be partners for the sake of the Gospel message. Amen. 

“Paul and Silas” Acts 16: 16-34

 Have you ever had a moment when reading Scripture when you find yourself thinking - wow, I wish this person would have said something different or that they would have done something a different way. I confess, I have those feelings when it comes to this passage of scripture in Acts 16. 

Paul and his companions are on a missionary journey throughout different regions of Asia. They are heading towards Troas, and one night Paul has this powerful vision. A man from Macedonia is pleading with him, crying out “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul wakes up, packs his things, and everyone heads a new direction - to Macedonia.

They have already been in the region for several days. They were heading into a place to pray when this female slave - possessed by a spirit of divination - starts a different pleading. Only her cry is, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”

Now this is the part of the story where I really wish that Paul would have acted differently. After several days of this behavior - crying out and following Paul and his companions, Paul doesn’t speak to the girl. Instead he talks right past her, mostly out of annoyance at the Spirit within her. And yes, he did free her from possession by the Spirit, but he didn’t free her from being a slave to man. 

I wanted better from Paul. 

And yet, even if in my humanness I wished for more - more freedom, more compassion. I wanted this young women’s exploration to end. But Paul himself couldn’t have handled a whole lot more, because as often happens with Paul, chaos erupts. He finds that the girls owner is dragging him before the authorities - not to make a property complaint (such as he took away the spirit from the girl I own that I was using to make money off of her), but instead saying that Paul and Silas are politically subversive - living in a way that is throwing the city into an uproar. 

So the magistrates find them guilty - have them beaten and thrown into prison, with an order to guard them carefully. Who knows what they will do. Who knows what uproar they will cause next. 

And the chaos continues. For as Paul and Silas, still wounded from their beating, are singing hymns and praying to God, all the human restraints against them are broken free by a violent earthquake. The doors are opened, their shackles freed. 

And the guard, awakened by the noise and the shaking, thinks that he has failed at his post, failed at his duty, so he prepares to kill himself. But Paul stops him by calling out that they are still there. 

All of this was used by God for the glory of God to save the jailer that day. 

One girl, saved from a spirit. One jailer, saved from misplaced priorities. Which leads us to ask - what do we need saved from this day?

I am not nieve enough to think that you are entering into worship today without living the last six and a half days of your life. Some of you have faced heartache. Others have had to make hard decisions. Still others have burdens that are so heavy that they are physically weighing you down. Some of you have dealt with family issues or health concerns. We come into worship with all of the pressures of our week weighing on our hearts and minds. 

And yet, we come. We have come to worship, yes to be connected to one another and to to connect deeply with God, but also because this time shapes us and clarifies our values. Because that is what is at the heart of this text. That we all have things that we value - that we place our emphasis on - that are not of God. That don’t draw us closer to God or replace God in our lives. 

It is so easy to see that in the first part of this text about the young woman. The men who own her, who are exploiting her, they need saved from how they treat people. Saved from the fact that they were willing to keep this girl possessed by an evil spirit in order to make them money. Saved from the fact that they were not loving their neighbor as themselves. 

And they seem to miss that opportunity, at least in the text as it is before us this day. 

But the jailer, what he needs saved from makes us a bit more uncomfortable in our culture. Because he needs saved from the fact that his primary source of meaning is his profession. Now I can hear the objections - but Pastor Michelle, we need to work. Sure. But we do not need to let it hold us captive to the point where we put it above God. 

This man’s identity was so tied with his occupation that he was about to take his own life because he felt that he had failed his job. Failed at what he was told to do. Not by God, but by man. 

Occupations can be good - they can give us an opportunity to live out our gifts and talents in a way that honor God - but they should never replace God as being first in our hearts and lives. 

And when looked at through that lens - isn’t it funny that the ones who are most free in this story are Paul and Silas - even when they are in prison. Because there identidy and value - friends, it rests in God. No matter where they are and not matter what happens to them. 

I think one of the most dangerous places to be is when we are asked “what do you need saved from?” And we try to sidestep the answer by simply saying “I’m alright.” That’s like saying, “I’m good-enough for the time being, thank you very much” or “I can make do on my own.”

Friends, we all have things that hold our hearts bondage. That can destroy us if they are left uncheck. Things that we need to be shaken free from and which hold us captive. 

But too many of us don’t want to admit that and like to hide under the guise of being “alright” or “good enough.”

Here’s the thing, friends. Salvation is not a program for self-improvement. It is not something that we can work hard enough to bring about on our own. It takes an act of surrender - to surrender our lives to God, including what is holding us in bondage. Even if we may not be able to point to or name what that may be. 

It takes allowing God to search us and speak to us, calling us to new life. It requires allowing us to confess that our life isn’t all about us - its about connecting us to this much larger story of God. And its about actually allowing our lives to bear witness to that in the world. 

So let’s take the first step today. Let’s be in prayer, asking God to reveal to us that which is holding our hearts back from him - even if it looks like a good thing on the surface. Let’s actually surrender that to God and watch what our God can and will do. Amen. 

“Paul’s Conversion” Acts 9: 1-19

 The first sermon I ever preached was during my junior year of college. One of my professors asked if I would go to a small, country church who was without a pastor at the time and preach, just for one Sunday. I agreed. The entire church service was less than 20 minutes long, and I think the sermon I preached was nine, on this particular text from the book of Acts. 

I always think about that experience when this particular text comes up. Because in some ways it seems so simple to preach - Jesus showed up in Paul’s life, he had a powerful experience, and then was sent to spread the Good News to the gentiles. But when we make this text too simplistic, we miss how it may be speaking to us here and now today. 

Saul was a man who lived in fear. He was afraid of what the teachings of Jesus would do to the people he loved - the Jewish people. He was so afraid that what Jesus and his disciples were teaching was incorrect and would lead people astray that he would do absolutely anything to stop the message from going forth. Including watching a follower of Jesus, Stephen, he stones. Including threatening followers of the Way, whom we would call Christians. Including going to the high priest and asking for letters allowing him to take followers of Jesus as prisoners. 

We aren’t told why Saul was particularly passionate about delivering these letters to Damascus, but we are told that as he went along the road a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell blind to the ground as a voice cried out to him with a powerful question - “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Saul probably wouldn’t have classified what he was doing as persecution. He thought it was protecting. Protecting the faith that he loved. But this experience, it changed Saul. Once Jesus came to him and identified himself as Lord, he gave very specific instructions for Saul to get up and go to the city to do what Jesus asks of him. 

Only when he went to get up, he realized that he couldn’t see, even with his eyes open. So someone had to take him by the hand and lead him step by step the rest of the way to Damascus. 

A powerful story of Paul’s conversion, which went on to propel him on his missionary journeys. Only I think at times we miss the point - this was Paul’s conversation experience. This is how Jesus chose to come and speak to him and change his heart. Luke, the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts is not trying to say that this is what our conversation experience has to look like. Not at all. 

Yet, somewhere along the line we have tricked ourselves into believing such. That our conversion experience needs to look like someone else’s. Look like Paul’s. Or the disciples. Or even the person sitting next to us in the pew. But that isn’t how Jesus works, friends. Jesus comes to each of us in unique ways that speak to our hearts and change us. 

I was teaching a Bible Study once about evangelism - the act of sharing our faith - when this woman who I knew to be a strong believer started to question whether she was saved since her conversion experience didn’t look like other people’s she knew. Was she saved if she knew that she loved Jesus and Jesus loved her? Was she saved if she didn’t have a moment where Jesus struck her blind?

To which I answered - yes with all of the confidence in the world, because that is part of my own conversion story with Jesus. I grew up in the church. In fact, I wasn’t with you last week because I was at my home church celebrating their 150th anniversary. It was in that church that I learned about the love of Jesus. Some of my earliest memories are from Sunday school. It was in that church that I learned what it meant to seek first the Kingdom of God and serve Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It was in that church that my call to pastoral ministry was nurtured and they sent me forth to preach the word of the Lord. 

And yet, I did not have one absolutely profound moment that I would describe as a conversion experience. Instead, it was continually growing with God. Now there were plenty of moments where I know that Jesus was shaping me, and I can look back and see his hand of grace, but my conversion was continual, not like Saul’s. 

When I shared that with this particular woman, she visibly relaxed and was able to sink into the knowledge that she is not alone. 

And let’s be honest, she isn’t alone. I think she was able to voice aloud what many people harbor in their hearts - the fear that they aren’t good enough. That their conversion experience wasn’t good enough or authentic enough or like Saul’s enough to “count.” 

But friends, that is simply not true. 

Saul, renamed Paul by God, does not share the story of his conversion again and again in order to say that everyone’s experience needs to be like his. Or that they should compare their faith story to his. Instead, he is saying God can work even through me so I know that God can work in your life too!

And God does! But sometimes we get so blinded by comparisons that we miss what God is calling us to. God may not call you to be a missionary like Paul or he may. God may not call you to be a pastor like me, or he may. But God will call you to bear witness to his name. Who are you being called to bear witness to, my friends?

It is time to set aside the inferiority that the devil uses to trick us into believing that we are not good enough because we aren’t Saul. Or don’t have the same faith journey as someone else. It is time to set aside the childish ways of comparison and step fully into who God is calling you to be. 

I have a friend whose favorite phrase is “but God”. It’s her shorthand for saying “were it not for God” and “but God transformed this situation” and “God made a way.” A whole lot packed into two short words. “But God” transformed Saul’s life. “But God” transformed your life. “But God” calls even you to be part of the work of the Kingdom. “But God” is not done with you yet. 

So let us celebrate how God has worked and is working in each of our lives and live today for the sake of the Kingdom. Amen.