No Pain, No Gain

My working title for this sermon was, "For Christ's Sake!" I was even tempted to put that out on our sign, but decided against it. I don't think I've been here long enough to get away with a sermon title like this around here. Another note about the sermon: I thought it was okay at best, kinda all over the place and not really saying much. I didn't have much time to prepare this week as I was very busy. However, a couple people have mentioned that they think it was my best sermon since arriving in July. And, I later discovered that I inadvertently hit on the discussion topics of both adult Sunday schools on Sunday, neither of which was studying this text (Phil. 1:21-30). Just another example of the Holy Spirit working in and through my preaching to touch people's lives. Good thing I'm not in charge when I preach.

Also, I'm almost positive no one picked up on my Shakespeare's Hamlet reference. As a preacher with an English degree, this makes me weep -- just a little -- on the inside.

Before I begin, I want to mention that over the next four weeks, I’ll be preaching from Philippians. The lectionary gives us four weeks of Philippians this fall, spending one week on each of the four chapters. So permit me to make some introductory remarks on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and on my sermons over the next few weeks, and then we will dive in to the passage of Philippians that I just read.

As some of you may know, Paul wrote this letter to the church in Philippi while he was imprisoned. Paul was arrested in Jerusalem because he was accused of allowing a Gentile to enter the temple, thus desecrating a holy place for the Jewish people. Thankfully, the Roman authorities rescued him and threw him into prison in Rome, probably saving his life. Some Jews were actually plotting against his life while he was sitting in prison writing this letter to the Philippians.

The church in Philippi is, like all the Christian communities in Paul’s time, a young church. He is writing this young community of believers for the purpose of encouragement. He wants to encourage them to live joyfully in Christ and to stand firm in their faith no matter what obstacles or opponents try to get in their way. He instructs the church in Philippi about what it means to belong to God. His instruction centers on exercises of belonging, a way of living out the gospel in joyful togetherness as a way of honoring the God to whom these people belong.

For this reason, we will spend the next several weeks meditating on exercises in belonging. We’ll learn what God has in store for us in Paul’s words to the church in Philippi. We’ll discover that God desires that we become a true community, belonging to God, living in joy, standing firm in the midst of suffering, and capable of doing “All things through Christ who strengthens us” (as written in Philippians 4:13).

Paul opens his letter in prison, and when we reach the beginning of today’s text it seems as if he is thinking out loud about his current situation. People want me dead. I’m in prison and could die here. Is it better that I die or that I continue to live in prison? This is a Paul seriously considering what is better for him: life or death. To be or not to be, that is Paul’s question.

On the one hand, Paul is in prison, so he’s unable to do much to advance the gospel message. Of course being in prison can’t be any fun for Paul. In such a situation anyone may consider whether death is a less painful option at this point. And if that’s not bad enough, he has people out there vowing to kill him. For Paul, death seems mighty appealing, because then he would be with Christ for eternity.

On the other hand, Paul’s imprisonment is having the opposite effect his opponents hoped it’d have. The spread of the gospel is being advanced by news of Paul’s imprisonment. The early Christians are rallying together in support of their brother Paul. Thus, Paul sees his imprisonment as beneficial, so his death may hinder the spread of the gospel. What to do? Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (i.e. to let his opponents get the best of him), or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?

Paul determines that as much as death appeals to him, his suffering in prison is advancing the very gospel message his opponents were trying to silence. His pain is Christ’s gain, so to speak. And suddenly, suffering in prison isn’t so bad for Paul, because he considers the greater purpose of the spreading of the gospel to be worth remaining in a situation of suffering. And Paul wasn’t the last to do this. A man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up against the Nazis and Hitler when few Christians did in the 30’s and 40’s in Germany. And for trying to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer ended up in jail. But rather than get discouraged, he wrote letters from prison – letters that ultimately advanced the gospel message. In fact, these letters are still read today, and they are letters full of wisdom, and hope, and promise despite the painful situation from which they came. They are letters that still advance the gospel message.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was wrongly imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement. And many southern clergy, even his allies, thought he had hindered the liberating gospel message found at the heart of the civil rights movement. But he wrote a letter to these clergy, letting them know that his presence in jail was helping the cause and was true to the gospel. Again, this is a letter immortalized in history – a letter that is still able to speak to us today just as it did almost a half century ago.

Paul, Bonhoeffer, and King – all men who changed the course of history while sitting in prison. All men who refused to take the easy way out, instead taking the lemon of imprisonment and suffering and turning it into lemonade.

All these men were imprisoned because they had angered authorities. Paul was thrown into prison because he was accused of being too “open” at the temple. Why should just anyone be allowed to enter this holy place? Why should just anyone be allowed to approach God? Some people just don’t deserve it. That’s the excuse we give when we only allow our own to participate in the life of the church.

Bonhoeffer was trying to kill Hitler to save millions of Jews. And that, of course, was a threat to the Nazi regime. Someone motivated by love was thrown into prison in order to quell the resistance. However, it only provided inspiration.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was put in prison for too much love as well. He was too “open minded” like Paul, and fought for justice like Bonhoeffer. King thought all people were worthy of basic rights and of God’s love, and was willing to be imprisoned to make sure this gospel message was advanced.

Sometimes I hear Christians proclaim a gospel message that leads to life getting easier. If you are bogged down with the problems and crises of life, it’s because you haven’t met Christ yet. Come to church and all those problems will vanish. Your life is infinitely easier once you give it to Christ. This is an all-too-familiar message in our culture today – that coming to church is a one stop cure-all place. I’m not sure I believe that. I think most of us can speak to the fact that much of the time, life’s problems do not go away when we attend church, or when we read Scripture, or when we pray. We find that Christ does not always wipe away our problems once we choose to believe in him. Instead, these practices of connecting with God through prayer, study, and worship lift us up and give us the strength to deal with whatever issues come our way.

In fact, sometimes life even gets harder when we become Christians. We see people like this imprisoned trio living lives guided by the gospel, yet pain and suffering outweigh the benefits. Maybe what we learn from these people, then, is that if you’re not making waves – if you’re not risking imprisonment due to loving people “too much” – you’re not really living out the gospel.
Christ calls us to love everyone, no matter what. Christ calls us to fight for justice in the world. Christ calls us to fight against authority or against the norm sometimes. Christ calls us to stand firm in our faith, as Paul says. We are called to let our faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ rule our life. And sometimes this means gently rebuking someone who makes a hateful or prejudicial comment, even if it’s unintentional. Sometimes this means being honest about getting too much change at te supermarket, when keeping quiet means we get a little undeserved “gift”. Sometimes this means sacrificing a few inches in the size of our TV screen so that someone else can get their daily bread.

A movie that I love is A League of Their Own. It’s a movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, started when the Major Leagues had many of their stars overseas fighting in World War II. Near the end of the movie, the star of the league is leaving her team just before the championship series. And her manager asks her why she’s leaving. She says she’s going home because “It just got too hard.” The manager’s response is, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it.”

It’s the same with being a Christian. Living the gospel is supposed to be hard, as evidenced by Paul, Bonhoeffer, and MLK Jr. That’s why not everyone does it. It is hard sometimes. It does require sacrifice, and it doesn’t excuse us from tough times in our life. But it isn’t too hard. Anyone can do it if they are firm enough in their faith, Paul tells the Philippians.

The Philippians are a young community facing their own opposition as Paul writes this letter. We know they are facing opposition from within as well as from without, but that’s about all we know. Paul does not elaborate here what kind of opposition they meet, only that it’s there. And it seems like Paul is anticipating the response that may come to opposition. Opposition may make the Philippians want to give up, just as his own opposition threw him in jail and made him want to give up. But he encourages them that belonging to Christ’s church is not something to give up on at the first sign of trouble. Belonging to our church is not something to give up on because there’s a little opposition here and there. Remember, it’s the opposition out there that wants us to fail, that wants us to prove that this Christianity thing is a bunch of baloney.
Paul encourages the Philippians – don’t give up, he seems to be saying. Stand firm in your faith – TOGETHER. This is what is means, in Paul’s eyes, to be a member of the Christian community. Alone it is hard to stand firm in our face in the midst of opposition, but together we can stand firm. If we bind together with cords that cannot be broken, then we are able to stand firm in the faith. And being together in community is what God created us for.
In college, I was a psychology minor. One class that I took was on developmental psychology, studying how infants, children, and adolescents develop mentally. During the class we studied a few case studies of severe child abuse, where children were isolated from human contact for years. In all these instances, there was little to no relations with humans whatsoever for 5, 7, sometimes 13 years. When this occurs, the child is permanently disabled in a lot of ways. The longer the child goes without being in communion with other people, the worse it is. In the worst cases, something seemingly simple to us, like speaking sentences, is no longer a skill able to be taught.

These tragic case studies show the need for human interaction. They show how badly we need community in order to develop. And our faith is the same way – we need community, or our development is stunted. We just can’t do it alone. God created us to be in community, standing firm in our faith against all opposition. God calls us to love together and grow together as we seek to be Christ’s disciples.

Of course, we’ll meet opposition, and we’ll meet growing pains, both individually and as a community. And when we begin to wonder why we are wasting our time doing something that seems so difficult, we can remember that it’s all worth it because of why we’re doing it: FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! We’re doing what we do in order to advance the gospel, just as Paul is advancing the gospel from behind prison bars. Yes, we’re able to face opposition and stand firm, just as Paul did and just as he encourages the Philippians and us to do. We’re able to face opposition because we know that opposition is often used by God as a tool to spread the gospel message. We’re able to face opposition because we know that God has our back, and that our brothers and sisters in Christ have our back. This is why we belong to this Christian community – because together we can better stand firm in our faith, lifting each other up and supporting each other in the midst of our suffering. This is why we are members of Christ’s church. May it be so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the midst of all opposition that we meet. Amen.