2023.10.15 | The Power to Bless
“The Power to Bless”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 15, 2023
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, California
Philippians 4:1-9 | Español
My maternal grandmother, Mary Joy Chesick Thomsen, was the smartest person I’ve ever known. Correction: she was the “wisest” person whom I’ve ever known. She was the first person to tell others that she was not that smart. She had her arguments, and they had merit. Examples follow:
She didn’t go to Kindergarten.
She didn’t get to go to High School like she wanted.
She didn’t know how to “work” any of these “modern things.”
I listened to Grandma’s arguments out of respect, but I never agreed with her. Even when I was a smarty-pants teenager or when I was picking up those fancy diplomas. I listened to Grandma, because I knew she knew what she knew. Occasionally she would quietly share her truth, and my sister and I were smart enough to listen. And her lessons have made all the difference in my life--and hopefully others--because I have tried to pass on to others what she has passed on to me.
Someday I intend to collect her proverbs and enter some of them in a little book. My working title is Grandma’s Proverbs. It will be published by a small press—me—and the readership will be small as well. And that’s okay with me, because the audience that I am aiming for from a marketing standard is the “grands” who are my sister’s grandchildren.
One of the most important messages that my Grandma Thomsen ever passed on to me and my sister was more a hope—a teleological vision—than a biblical proverb. This is what she said:
I hope our family will be able to get along.
Grandma trotted out this harbored hope, this collective aspiration, this teleological vision for our people at various times, but most often in times such as those when the dust had settled from one of those rare, knock-down drag-out verbal disputes that my sister and I occasionally had about topics which we couldn’t even remember the next day. So, even way back then, I began to understand why Grandma would say things like this:
I hope our family will be able to get along.
Apart from sisterly spats, Grandma also made these types of pronouncements shortly after she had gotten off telephone conversations that were so long she had to sit them out on her kitchen step stool. I never knew who she was talking with or exactly what the conversations were about, because she was good about discerning just how much of the details that children needed to know about grownups’ problems. The key message was always the same, though. First she would hang up the phone, then pause, and take a deep breath, and then she would say:
I hope our family will be able to get along.
The Apostle Paul was essentially saying the same thing through his message in today’s epistle reading. His “key message” was this:
I hope our church family will be able to get along.
So that you can better comprehend the significance of his message, it is helpful to know more about the first century city of Philippi where this church was built.
II
Philippi was a city composed largely of Gentiles. It was located in Northwest Macedonia, which was then part of the Roman Empire. Today, we refer to this area as Greece.
The Philippian church was the first Gentile congregation that Paul founded. The membership was primarily comprised of Roman military veterans and Italian farmers and their families and associates.
All of the previous congregations that Paul had founded were comprised of Hebrew migrants who had settled down and built houses and communities in Palestine after the Exodus from Egypt. So the Christians in Paul’s other congregations were culturally Jewish. They spoke Hebrew, and they were raised with Jewish values, customs, and religious practices.
The Philippians, by contrast, were cut entirely from a different cloth. This is why to some extent the Church at Philippi was such a miracle, and perhaps why it was Paul’s favorite congregation.
The Church at Philippi was critical to the success of the Christian faith. It was the product, in part, of Paul’s most difficult and dedicated work to that point.
The Philippians, like our most challenging child, forced him to hone his skills for cross-cultural relationship-building with Gentiles. If he had failed in that effort, Christianity would have probably folded tent by the end of the first century CE.
Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians while he was incarcerated in a Roman prison. He addressed it to the entire congregation in that northernmost city, while also calling out the names of a few leaders for particular reasons. For example, Paul called out the names of Timothy and Epaphroditus, his star pupils, and he asked the congregation to accept their leadership and guidance. They were very capable. They were super smart. They were co-valedictorians of their seminary class. But their acceptance by the Philippians was not guaranteed, because they were Jews and the Philippians were Gentiles, and the two did not normally mix.
In addition, Paul acknowledged the important contributions of Euodia, Syntyche, and Clement, and he openly acknowledged that there was conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, and he urged these two women to seek counsel from Clement in settling their differences, and following his example and the example of Christ.
If they did—and here’s his hope for the two of them—and ultimately the whole Philippian congregation--that they might become living stones—living testaments of the gospel. Yes, Paul hoped that the Gentiles would understand the Church of Jesus Christ to be more than a building. He wanted everyone to experience the Church of Jesus Christ as a people. And so he kept messaging his hope that the Christians in Philippi, particularly the leaders, would all get along.
III
Imagine that—conflict in the Church. Shocking but true.
And what was the conflict about?
The major conflicts in the Philippian church had to do with what social scientists refer to as “rituals of inclusion” and “cultural mores.” Remember that heretofore, all of the converts to the Christian faith had been born and raised within Judaism. The Jewish ritual of inclusion was a bris, and Jewish mores were grounded in Torah.
Imagine further the prospect of requiring all male converts in Philippi to be circumcised and be required to embrace the Law (the Torah) which was written and read in Hebrew. Judaism was not their home culture and Hebrew was not their first language.
In an effort to right the ship, Paul clearly and boldly stated that he valued his religious heritage, AND he called his congregants to embrace the Christian value system, which was based on God’s love and the spiritual practices that Jesus exhibited, rather than the Hebraic law and Jewish rituals.
In addition to acknowledging the “rituals of inclusion” and “cultural mores,” in Philippians 4, he also addressed a conflict between two faith leaders, Euodia and Syntyche. What were these women fighting about?
We don’t know for sure. It could have been any number of things. One senior Senior Pastor colleague of mine from Southern California once quipped at a clergy gathering that we both attended, “You can usually count on the fact that the biggest fuss will be made in a church about the least important things.”
My colleague cited the example of sanctuary carpet color in making his case. We all chuckled.
In my experience of congregations in general, that colleague wasn’t far off with his statement. Nevertheless, I’m happy to report that we’ve handled conflict at Eden pretty well. For example, everyone loved this color of carpet. The more challenging question for us during the campus renovations back in the early years of this milenia was this: pews or chairs? There were valid reasons for both approaches to congregation and choral seating. In the end, you can see that we chose both. But we didn’t get to that decision quickly. There had to be some conversations. We went into “extra innings” on that topic. Pastor Brenda remembers. She was here at the time, serving as moderator of the Church.
Conflict is common in the churches and our faith tradition as a whole, because we are human. And the biggies have led to great rifts from which our denominations have not quickly recovered:
The split between East & West over doctrinal differences spelled out in the Nicene and Apostles creeds
The Protestant Reformation over differing eucharistic theologies and practices
The Anabaptist Reformation over differing baptismal theologies and practices
The splintering of Protestant denominations in the US over whether slavery was an acceptable institution and practice for Christians to participate in
The Vietnam War over whether the US should have gotten militarily involved in that civil war, and whether it was faithful for young men to burn their draft cards
LGBT inclusion, including whether it was faithful to include LGBT people and our loved ones in the church, in church leadership, and whether it was faithful to offer the rite of marriage to same sex couples
Christianity has not yet fully recovered from the first three big fights that I just named. Christianity in the US only got the slavery questions sorted out in the 1980s, and then we tore ourselves apart all over again, over the disputes regarding LGBT inclusion, ordination, and marriage. So perhaps we agree that the Apostle Paul knew what he was talking about when he, like my Grandma Thomsen, fretted about conflict in the church and the great impact that a family feud could have on the life and health of her loved ones.
Similarly, Paul and Grandma knew that people had choices. Moses, to whom the Torah is attributed, understood this principle, too. In chapter 30:19 Moses famously said to the people of Israel:
This day…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.
Moses was fully aware of the consequences of unresolved conflict on the life of a faith tradition. He knew what he knew, just like my Grandma. I think you know, too, the importance of unity amongst our families and within our faith tradition. Moreover, I think that we all know that unity for the sake of unity is not enough. We must plumb the nature of our differences, learn and grow through these exchanges, and strive to listen and act on our better angels.
This is not easy work. Fortunately, we have not been left to our own devices. The apostles have left us with guidance such as Paul did in his letter to the Philippians, in chapter 4, verses 4-9, where he encouraged these fledgling Christians to focus on the joy and practice forbearance with one another. He promised that if and when Christians exhibit these behaviors, we will experience the peace of God and we will become living witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is very good news for all of us. Amen.