Finding our own way home
Philippians 2: 1-8, 12-13
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 27, 2020
Barbara Brown Taylor writes that there are “three distinct seasons of faith…Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again, with the paradoxical promise that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for his sake will wind up finding them again.” (Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, 2006)
The last seven months have been most definitely a season of losing life, and we are aching, longing to find it again. Some of what we’ve lost is vital and tangible, like income, security, livelihood, the familiarity of touch, social ease, the ability to physically gather in grief and in celebration, the sound of many voices praying and singing together. Some of what we’ve lost is more of a sense of knowing: our illusion of control, our faith in institutions and systems that we thought were designed with liberty and justice for all and not just for some; that our plans and the future are not guaranteed and we really are given only one day at a time. And yet for the most part, we’ve been able to afford these losses or at least absorb them with a manageable amount of pain. Therein lies our privilege.
With this letter to the Philippians, Paul was writing from prison to a beloved church some rather deep wisdom, the kind we wish was true and not true at the same time. Even though he was completely stripped of whatever privilege he might’ve possessed as a Roman citizen, it is the most joyful of Paul’s letters. In the words of Wendell Berry, Paul was indeed joyful though he had considered all the facts, and pretty grim facts at that. Paul was likely facing his imminent execution. Looking back over his life, the trajectory of whatever goals he had for his life had careened off whatever course he had charted for himself. And yet that is really all that is to be expected when one encounters Sacred Mystery in one’s flesh and follows the way of love and the desires of the heart—the yearning to be healed and made whole. But Love often has other ideas of what healing and wholeness are made of.
Often the values of the world will tell us we are lost—if we’re not successful by its standards, if we’ve failed, we’re broken—and yet the life of faith says “Give me that and I’ll make something out of it.” The world tells us joy will be elusive, unless we buy this product, lose the weight, get the right job, constantly busy, on our game. We think what makes us happy equates joy. Boston College professor Father Michael Himes, in his work to help students to discern what is a source of joy, adamantly declared, “If you are going to spend a life, for heaven’s sake spend it in a way that gives you joy.” And according to Father Himes, joy is not to be confused with happiness. Whether or not we’re happy is dependent on external factors, what we may experience in our lives on any given day. Joy comes from within, from a sense of genuine rightness of the way one is living one’s life. Not what we are doing, but the way we are living. Another word for it would be authentic or wholeheartedness. Father Himes says that joy is something that propels us to ask questions and can lead us in many different directions. And yet our joy does not always guarantee that we will be happy but we will lead a good life—not only for ourselves but for other people, that they would find their joy.
Paul is in prison. He has a life-giving message but he can’t control how it gets interpreted. He’s spent the last twenty years of his life on the hard road for Jesus. He’s utterly spent. And yet he is joyful. But it’s not enough. Paul implores his readers to make his joy complete: that they would be of the same mind, the same love as Christ. The same mind as the one who described the kingdom of heaven in parables so we could find our own way there. The same love as the one who could’ve put himself first but instead chose to give himself away. The same one whose joy lived in the wholeness and the justice of those the world rejected.
None of us arrives at joy by ourselves. Though it may come from within, it also comes from within a life lived in community. And though life in the Church hasn’t always made me happy, it probably hasn’t made you happy, (in fact sometimes it can be downright painful), it is the community where I have found the most joy. It is the community where I have found people who choose to give themselves away; the community whose joy resides in the wholeness and justice of those the world does not always value; the community in which I have experienced wholeheartedness, what it means to be authentic. True. Real. Love enfleshed.
What I love about this church is that it is a community of diverse individuals in covenant with one another. You may say, “Isn’t that every church?” but no, it’s not. So often community tries to achieve cohesion through uniformity as a result of majority rule, winners and losers, competition. Even though Paul would love his favorite church to believe as he’s taught them, to obey him, he tells them they have to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling; another way of saying that is to speak the truth even though your voice shakes. These beloved friends of his have to find their own way home, remembering that it is God at work within them, that Sacred Mystery of what is good and holy and true known to them in the life and death of Jesus.
The miracle of community is, on our own unique journeys, we travel together and make space for each other as we are, all of us asking our questions, sometimes going in different directions. And we do this not just for ourselves but for all, because our joy is found in the wholeness and justice of others. “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you, you are welcome here.”
We’re all on our way home. Even though sometimes it looks like we’re losing and we’ve lost our way, love has a way of showing up when we least expect it, like it was expecting us all along, and we find our lives again.
We each have our own way and we have each other. Sounds like home to me.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
The last seven months have been most definitely a season of losing life, and we are aching, longing to find it again. Some of what we’ve lost is vital and tangible, like income, security, livelihood, the familiarity of touch, social ease, the ability to physically gather in grief and in celebration, the sound of many voices praying and singing together. Some of what we’ve lost is more of a sense of knowing: our illusion of control, our faith in institutions and systems that we thought were designed with liberty and justice for all and not just for some; that our plans and the future are not guaranteed and we really are given only one day at a time. And yet for the most part, we’ve been able to afford these losses or at least absorb them with a manageable amount of pain. Therein lies our privilege.
With this letter to the Philippians, Paul was writing from prison to a beloved church some rather deep wisdom, the kind we wish was true and not true at the same time. Even though he was completely stripped of whatever privilege he might’ve possessed as a Roman citizen, it is the most joyful of Paul’s letters. In the words of Wendell Berry, Paul was indeed joyful though he had considered all the facts, and pretty grim facts at that. Paul was likely facing his imminent execution. Looking back over his life, the trajectory of whatever goals he had for his life had careened off whatever course he had charted for himself. And yet that is really all that is to be expected when one encounters Sacred Mystery in one’s flesh and follows the way of love and the desires of the heart—the yearning to be healed and made whole. But Love often has other ideas of what healing and wholeness are made of.
Paul is in prison. He has a life-giving message but he can’t control how it gets interpreted. He’s spent the last twenty years of his life on the hard road for Jesus. He’s utterly spent. And yet he is joyful. But it’s not enough. Paul implores his readers to make his joy complete: that they would be of the same mind, the same love as Christ. The same mind as the one who described the kingdom of heaven in parables so we could find our own way there. The same love as the one who could’ve put himself first but instead chose to give himself away. The same one whose joy lived in the wholeness and the justice of those the world rejected.
What I love about this church is that it is a community of diverse individuals in covenant with one another. You may say, “Isn’t that every church?” but no, it’s not. So often community tries to achieve cohesion through uniformity as a result of majority rule, winners and losers, competition. Even though Paul would love his favorite church to believe as he’s taught them, to obey him, he tells them they have to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling; another way of saying that is to speak the truth even though your voice shakes. These beloved friends of his have to find their own way home, remembering that it is God at work within them, that Sacred Mystery of what is good and holy and true known to them in the life and death of Jesus.
The miracle of community is, on our own unique journeys, we travel together and make space for each other as we are, all of us asking our questions, sometimes going in different directions. And we do this not just for ourselves but for all, because our joy is found in the wholeness and justice of others. “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you, you are welcome here.”
We’re all on our way home. Even though sometimes it looks like we’re losing and we’ve lost our way, love has a way of showing up when we least expect it, like it was expecting us all along, and we find our lives again.
We each have our own way and we have each other. Sounds like home to me.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
As the whole earth groans for freedom,
we will find our way through practices of love.
Love that is generous. Love that is bold.
Love that is reciprocal and risky.
Love that does not abandon nor neglect,
but is fulfilled in the joy of giving and receiving.
Seeking liberation for all life,
let us go and live with faith.
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