For the first half of
this week, I was blessed with some time away while on Newton Presbytery’s
annual clergy retreat. It was held once
again at the Stella Maris Retreat Center in Long Branch. This was my second such retreat and among
the many benefits of being there is the hospitality offered by the Roman
Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.
Having felt some spiritual renewal thanks in part to the ministry of this
order, I returned home and wasn’t at all surprised to find myself reading an
inspirational news report about a nun in another location.
Her name is Sister
Margaret Geary and she faithfully resides in Baltimore. One day earlier this year, while all of her
sisters were away for a convention, this 85 year entered an elevator at the
convent. Once the doors shut on the
cramped space, and before it moved even a millimeter in the shaft, the elevator
promptly broke down. There wasn’t any
way for her to pry the doors open. Fortunately,
she had a cell phone with her.
Unfortunately, she could not get a signal. Predictable, right? Although
the phone proved to be of no help, she also had with her some water, some
celery sticks, and some cough drops. Equipped with these simple provisions, she
settled in for what turned out to be four trapped nights.
How would you, dear
brothers and sisters in Christ, handle being in this situation? And would your faith have helped you endure
it?
The water, celery
sticks and cough drops were not Sister Margaret’s only provisions. She possessed another essential provision
that helped her survive – prayer.
Prayer not only helped her endure this ordeal … it also transformed
it. Through prayer, she began to
consider the crisis a “gift” she found herself rejoicing in. In an interview with CNN, this is what she
had to say – “It was either panic or pray.
I believe that God’s presence was my strength and my joy. I felt God’s presence immediately.”
So rather than
struggle against circumstances beyond her control, she reoriented herself in
the Lord. She experienced God guarding
her heart and mind. She considered the
crisis an opportunity for spiritual growth.
She experienced a deliverance from despair long before she was
physically rescued. She rejoiced!
“Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice … the
Lord is near … do not worry … in everything bring your requests to God … and
the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”
Sister Margaret’s
faith-filled experience beautifully highlights these magnificent words of the
Apostle Paul, words found in verses 4-7 of our lesson this morning. Paul penned them to his cherished friends
in the Philippian church. What was his overall
purpose for writing this emotional letter?
He wanted to strongly encourage the Philippian church to be a community exhibiting
joyful trust in the Lord at all times, through all circumstances.
This exhortation to
rejoice, to fully trust that God is good and on guard for us, is not some
saccharin spiritual sentiment. The substance of these words is not at all
artificially manufactured and overly sweet.
They were not proclaimed to falsely flavor any unpleasant, painful,
bitter experiences. That wasn’t Paul’s
style. He was not one to write from
the perspective of some sideline consultant.
You may recall from
study of this Bible book and from sermons in recent weeks, Paul wrote this
letter from a Roman prison cell in the midst of a grave time of trial and to
people whom he very much knew and loved.
He wrote hope-filled words as a potent witness to the power and peace of
Christ. He was practicing what he
preached. And his example followed the
example of our Lord’s centering prayer in the Garden of Gethsamene.
Paul’s spirituality is
far from false and flimsy. It is firmly grounded
in concrete relationships, complex realities, and above all in Christ Jesus.
When we fully believe
in the power and peace of Christ, in that which guides and guards our lives
without fail, our hearts and minds are opened to joy. The rejoicing Paul preached about does not
exist in isolation. As part of a
grounded spirituality, this joy is steadily companioned by such realities as
pain and fear.
Reflecting on this, on
Paul’s truly faithful view of joy, a colleague in Australia has written this question,
“Why do we leave joy to those who compose songs which make happiness sound like
pastry and conjure a false image of a ‘victorious’ life of constant highs?”[i]
Happiness like pastry
makes me chuckle, but it also makes the point, again, that Christian rejoicing
is not just a light, fluffy sweet kind of glee. It’s the glee firmly, radically grounded
in the trust that Jesus has experienced the depths of all human despair, that
Jesus is present with us through every moment of our lives, and that in Jesus,
God guards our hearts and minds. The presence
of Christ is our constant cause for deep, resolute joy. As William Barclay wonderfully affirms, “The
Christian can never lose joy because [the Christian] can never lose Christ.”[ii]
“Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice … the Lord is near … do not worry
… in everything bring your requests to God … and the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding will
guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”
Can you recall a time
in your life when you felt trapped?
Mentally or physically? A time
when you felt locked in, locked up, looking for hope? Did you pray to the God of your
protection? Did you rejoice in what our
Lord has done for you and experience release?
There are all sorts of
circumstances that can drive us to experience a tension between panic and
prayer, between resigning and rejoicing. When experienced without a grounded
spirituality, panic triggers feelings and behaviors of despair, isolation, and
various degrees of self-destruction. But panic balanced with the kind of
grounded spirituality modeled by Christ and by the Apostle Paul, the kind
rooted in deep prayer that trusts in the constant presence of our good and
guarding God, can indeed lead to a tremendous sense of calm in any time of anxious
uncertainty.
This grounded
spirituality is nurtured through Christian community. Personal discipline is never quite enough
to sustain it, for each of us is not called be just one part of Christ but to
be part of the whole body of Christ put together in God’s grace. In our lesson this morning, we should not
overlook the fact that Paul gives a concrete example of God guarding hearts and
minds through community.
While in prison, Paul had
received a report about a conflict between two women leaders of the church in
Philippi (and how wonderful that Paul names and credits them with being
co-workers of the Gospel). We aren’t
told what the tension was between Euodia and Syntyche. We are only told that they were not “of the
same mind” in the Lord. In this deeply loving letter, Paul does not
reprimand these two friends for acting unfaithfully. He does not discredit their leadership
because they were experiencing a disagreement. Instead, he urges them to reconcile with
the help of their church family. This
urging is not a demand, which, given Paul’s apostolic authority he well could
have made. His urging is instead gentle
consolation and encouragement for this interpersonal and therefore communal
crisis. It pairs up beautifully with the
call for gentleness Paul gives during his exhortation for everyone to always
rejoice in the Lord. God guards our hearts and minds through
gentle, loving, firmly grounded and fully joyful community. I so rejoice every time FPC exhibits this
good news!
“Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice … the
Lord is near … do not worry … in everything bring your requests to God … and
the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.” Amen.
[ii]
The Daily Study Bible Series, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians,
and Thessalonians, p.75
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