St. Luke's Episcopal Church

To know Christ and to make Christ known

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Sermon:  St. Luke’s / Prescott

The Rev. Mark Moline

Sunday December 6th & 13th, 2009

Title:  “Our Love Confirms the Gospel”

 

Part 1 (12/6)

 

In today’s second reading we find St. Paul about as warm and cuddly as Paul could possibly be.  In fact, he had many loving friends in the Church at Philippi who personally held him in very high regard.  They loved him and he loved them.   So following the salutation, he wrote in this letter to them, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.  And this is my prayer that your love may overflow.  You hold me in your hearts and I hold you in my heart.  For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.”

 

Paul knew what it takes to make a great congregation.  He knew they were a great church there at Philippi because they honored Christ’s great commandments to love God and love one another.  They even loved Paul.  The sometimes difficult-to-love Paul who actually was no stranger to love and wrote to the church at Corinth, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all knowledge, and I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing!  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  Love, Paul writes, does not insist on its own way.

 

The church at Philippi was a great congregation because it was a loving congregation.  The church at St. Luke’s / Prescott is a great congregation because it is a loving congregation.  I really enjoyed visiting St. Luke’s last week while I was on vacation, sitting in the back of the church, watching you all.  Back there I was relaxed and I listened and I thought and I saw love.

 

At first I reflected upon how different we all are.  How many different theologies, philosophies, world views, opinions, feelings, mind-sets, ways of thinking, outlooks, understandings, unique life experiences, and different interpretations are represented here in this one congregation?  Then I saw all that difference meld together, as together in love and in unity we stood and recited the creed and remembered the broken body.  I was reminded that we tolerate one another’s differences, not because it is the politically correct thing to do, not even because it’s the nice polite thing to do, but because the love of Christ dwells within us and among us, and in his love, Christ commanded us to love one another.

 

As a loving congregation we’ve been through a lot just these past several weeks.  I think it all began when our Wednesday evening Bible study invited the local Jewish Rabbi to teach Holy Scripture.  He spoke for one hour answering our questions.  We dismissed and only a couple of folks who had to leave, left and the rest of us remained for a second full hour listening to the rabbi.

 

Why would we sit for two hours and listen to a person of the Jewish faith teach God’s word here in our church?  Because he respected and honored our faith, respected our sincerity, and seemed to love us.  And because we respected and honored his different faith, we respected his knowledge and we loved him.  By the end of the evening, he hadn’t converted to Christianity and none of us had converted to Judaism.  But we left feeling that we had a little better understanding of the Old Testament and perhaps had a little larger view of our God, and we left that evening sensing we had a new friend.

 

Then shortly following, on a Saturday evening after our Eucharist service, we met with an invited delegation from the Phoenix chapter of integrity, a priest and two lay people from the Cathedral.  We spent a couple of hours discussing the church as a safe place for those who are different from many.  We grappled with the question of just how welcoming and non-threatening St. Luke’s is to those with diverse lifestyles.  But the answer was not to be found in our words or even our applied logic during that meeting, rather the answer to that question was and is to be found in our love, that is Christ’s love in us.

 

In a matter of days, that meeting was followed by the loss of our brother in Christ Jim McChesney.  Jim was just confirmed here during our recent St. Luke’s Day celebration.  Jim was quite an accomplished gentleman, but he left no next-of-kin.  He had no living relatives.  We were his family for the last two years of his life.  During the funeral the Chapel was full; full not only of his brothers and sisters, but also full of the love of Christ.

 

Three very different events with few parallels, but three happenings which all shared the common denominator of Christ’s love lived out in this congregation.  There were others events, like the wonderful interfaith community Thanksgiving worship service held at the Methodist Church, but so well attended by those from St. Luke’s. Others like the care of the pauper’s cemetery based upon love for those who are unknown to us, who lived their lives in a different time.  Other happenings like the ongoing love of our choir for its director during difficult times.  I could go on and on, for like the Church at Philippi, we are a great congregation because we are a loving congregation.  Without love we are nothing.

 

This letter to the Philippians opens with an obvious theme of love.  But our assigned lectionary reading is woefully inadequate for Paul’s opening lines actually present a double theme.  Love, yes indeed, but like hand in glove, for Paul, love inter-acts with what he best described as, “the defense and confirmation of the Gospel.”  It is a mighty Gospel that mysteriously displays its own power in the very face of difference, external weakness, suffering and controversy.

 

What does our love for one another have to do with the defense of the Gospel?  Well, that is another sermon, which I’ll preach next week as we take a little closer look into the mirror of Paul’s love letter to the Philippians.  So your obvious homework assignment is to read, mark and inwardly digest the complete, but brief first Chapter of Philippians.  In the meantime, “Let us walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us.”

 

 

 

Part 2 (12/13)

 

This morning I’m going to jump the lectionary rails which call for us to skip from last week’s opening lines of Paul’s jailhouse letter to the Philippians, to skip from that very loaded introduction all the way to the fourth chapter.  To do that, to do as the lectionary suggests requires us to miss out on too much.  As I mentioned last week Paul opens this letter with a two-fold closely inter-related theme.  It is an amazing theme that links our love for one another with our believer’s defense and confirmation of the gospel.  Last week we considered only Paul’s theme of love, and then our fifteen minutes were up before we could ask ourselves the rather obvious question, “What in the world, does love have to do with defending, and I think even more importantly, confirming the Gospel?”  We hear so much about defending the faith, what about confirming it?

 

Paul wrote to his loved ones in the Philippian church, “You hold me in your hearts, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel. “  Defense and Confirmation.  Perhaps, just perhaps, one reason that love can, at times, seem so alien to our apologetics and to our evangelism is that we can get so caught up in defending the Gospel, fighting the good fight, that we neglect to confirm it.  I think Paul suggests we need to do both.  Paul identifies defense and confirmation separately, but joins the two in relationship with our love for one another and our love for God.  Here the word “defense” comes from the Greek “apologia,” meaning “to answer,” but the word “confirmation” comes from “bebaiossei” meaning “to establish.” 

 

We defend the gospel, that is, we answer those who attack it with our words based upon our thinking and our faith, but we confirm it with our love.  It’s show & tell time – we tell them about Christ in our words, and then we show them Christ in our love.  As St. Francis put it, “Proclaim the Gospel of Christ to everyone; use words if you must.”  Indeed they will know we are Christian’s by our love, never by our words alone. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all knowledge, and I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing!

 

We now find ourselves deep in the season of Advent – “little lent,” a season to prepare for Christmas.  No, obviously not the money-grubbing Christmas of Jolly Old St. Nick according to Madison Avenue, but the Christmas of the Holy incarnation of God, the precious baby Jesus.  Now is the time of the year, now and during lent and Holy week, now is the season for those who feel so threatened by the Gospel they once again come out of the woodwork to disparage the Gospel, to belittle it, mock it and scorn it and ridicule those who of us who celebrate it.  It happens every year, year after year.  So our minds and hearts turn to defending the gospel, and in so doing, the church can take-on a “bunker” mentality and miss the spirit of Christmas, that Holy Spirit – capital H – capital S.  That spirit that is love for as John writes, our God is love.

 

Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps if we just confirmed the Gospel more, we might not have to defend it quite so much?  Sort of like, “The best defense is a good offense.”  You see, our antagonists know words and wit, but they don’t know love.  Oh how they take pleasure in a good duel with words and concepts – their choice of weapons.  But to truly love them in Christ is to disarm them.  Sheep that do battle with wolves almost always lose.  Those who let their shepherd deal with the wolves fair far better.  Our shepherd is God, Our shepherd is love.

 

We who champion the Gospel often sell it short by setting out to defend it as though we were defending the story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree.  That is a good little moral story that proclaims the truth that our first President was an honest person from childhood.  It really doesn’t matter if he actually cut down a tree.  We dare not approach the gospel in that spiritually shallow frame of mind and heart.  Now I’m not arguing for a literal interpretation of Holy Scripture; I’m arguing for a real interpretation, for the gospel is far more than just a good little moral story that proclaims the truth.  It is the truth – He is the truth.  The Gospel, in and of itself, has remarkable and even mysterious power that is often most compelling in the very face of external weakness, suffering, challenge, controversy and difference.  That’s when the Gospel is the strongest; the persecuted church has always been stronger than the comfortable church.

Did you read what Paul writes here?  “Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, others from goodwill.  Others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition.  What does it matter?  Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.”  I don’t believe the gospel was ever proclaimed quite so powerfully, as it was by that hateful crowd gathered at the foot of the cross for the express purpose of mocking Christ.  The penitent thief and the Captain of the guard were listening.  “You, who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!”  He would rebuild the temple in three days?  “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!”  He’s the son of God?  “He saved others; he cannot save himself!”  He saved others?  “If He is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross now!”  He is the King of Israel?  “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for He said, I am God’s Son!”  He claimed to be God’s Son? 

They heard the crowd, but they saw the love of Christ in his suffering and sacrifice.  In that love, there on the cross, He confirmed the gospel. The thief and the Centurion alike believed Christ more than they believed that hateful crowd.  As Paul wrote, “Christ is proclaimed in every way.”  The penitent thief had come to the cross himself mocking Christ, saw Christ’s love, heard the gospel proclaimed even in the crowd’s mocking, and he believed.  Likewise, the Captain of the Guard heard, and upon Christ’s death said, “Truly this was God’s Son.”

This Advent – this Christmas let us resolve to spend more time, attention and energy confirming the gospel by our love for one another, than we do worrying about those who spend their time, attention and energy attacking something they claim they don’t even believe in the first place.

You know Christ is just too real for the critics to ignore.  Rest assured those who claim they don’t believe will once again direct their attention toward Christ this Christmas.  Now, if those who do believe will just focus their attention upon him, then Christ will be the rightful centerpiece of Christ’s Mass. 

“Christ will be proclaimed in every way.  Like St. Paul, “In that I rejoice!”  Let us confirm that which we proclaim.  Let us pause a little this year to let our love catch up with our words. …