My Beloved

Philippians 2:1-13 

Open your heart as I share this brief, beautiful story involving two people, a park bench, some Twinkies, and some soda.

It’s a story about the day a young boy living in a big city decided he wanted to meet God. He figured it would be a long trip to get to where he could meet the Almighty. So he grabbed a suitcase and packed it with sustenance for the anticipated long journey -- a few Twinkies and a six-pack of root beer. It turns out he paused at a neighborhood park only about three blocks from his home. There he saw an elderly woman seated on a bench, staring at some pigeons. Since it was early afternoon, he figured it was about time for a snack. So he sat next to her. Then he sensed she might be hungry. So he opened his suitcase and offered her a Twinkie. She accepted and gave him back a warm, radiant smile. The smile was so beautiful, he wanted to see it again. So he offered her a root beer. Again, she paid him with her kind appearance. They didn’t really talk. They just spet time being together. Before long, it began growing dark. The boy decided he’d journeyed enough for the day and that it was time to return home. Before he did, he offered the woman a big hug. She gladly accepted and reciprocated the loving, unifying gesture.

As he passed through the front door of his home, the boy’s mother was surprised by the look elation on his face. So she asked what he’d been up to. He replied, “I had lunch with God, and you know what? She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

 Meanwhile, the elderly woman had returned home as well. Her husband noted her joyful aura and questioned what she’d been doing. Her reply? “I ate Twinkies in the park with God, and you know, he’s much younger than I expected!”

 This lovely story trumpets a spiritual truth … we believe we’ve met God when we believe we’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying presence. God may or may not look like what we’ve imagined. Yet we trust we’ve been in God’s presence because we’ve been encountered by something dressed in joyful acceptance and caring companionship. In this story, trust in this truth manifest itself in the simple, humble acts of sharing in a makeshift communion during an intergenerational pause to life’s hustle and bustle.

 There was a time when the Apostle Paul thought he knew exactly what it meant to share an encounter with God. Back when he was known as Saul the Pharisee, he taught that there were strict rules and regulations for such moments. It was, if you’ll recall our Old Testament teachings, rather legalistic. Failure to conform was why he targeted and persecuted a radical sect claiming to directly know the true Messiah of Israel. It wasn’t until that very Messiah personally met up with him one day, in a life-transforming experience of unifying love, that Saul became Paul. His understanding of encounters with God forever changed that day. Paul’s faith journey continued, but he was a changed child of God. He had emptied himself of hatred towards those he was persecuting, emptied himself of self-righteous swagger and of self-promoting ambition. His journey forward was in faithful imitation of the tremendous humility and radical obedience and other-focused selflessness of Christ.

 We know how very much Paul went on to do in and for our Lord. Our New Testament bears witness to it all. Beyond the Book of Acts, it does so in the form of letters he wrote to congregations he had varying degrees of influence in founding. What we have in this morning’s lesson is a letter to the Christian church in ancient Philippi. It is widely considered to be his most personal letter, based on biblical evidence that he and congregation had a very precious relationship (Acts 16:12-40).

 He wrote this letter during what to us might seem to have been a very “empty” and anxious time in his life. He was in prison. He was without a doubt well aware the risk of execution for his advocating the loving, unifying Gospel of Christ against the carnivorous world powers of his time. We might think being in that situation would have been a time of emptiness in the form of wallowing in self-pity, fearing the possible horror of his impending death, and such.

Yet for Paul, that was a time to reinforce the immeasurable joy of serving and trusting in salvation through Christ alone. It was another occasion for him to remind his good friends in Philippi to trust in and indeed rejoice in the Lord despite suffering. He exhorted them to work out all church conflicts with the same humility and self-emptying Jesus exhibited during his time of trial. Arrogant in-fighting and unity endangering unloving attitudes were not to come about as a result of his crisis, or any crisis they had stirring amongst themselves. And so he wrote a very tender appeal, speaking from his holy transformed heart, saying “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

He reinforced this message with one particular word. It’s a small but wonderfully weighty word that I find anchors this passage. The word is right there in Philippians 2, verse 12. It appears right after the words I just read and after quoting an ancient hymn about the example and final glory of the Lord. Paul addressed the entire church family as his “beloved.”

The word “beloved” that Paul used is similar to and I believe rooted in a Greek word that commonly describes Christ’s love – agape. Agape means love, but it means more than being warm and neighborly. Specifically, it means love that is radically unconditional, always reciprocating, and voluntarily self-sacrificing. It’s the kind of unifying, sacrificial love that can well up in the trenches of warfare. Being in beloved community is how we honor the truth that the “story of Christ moves from separation to solidarity, and from difference to likeness, as Christ moves into the most despairing depths of human existence.”

How are you being beloved before God? In the great hustle and bustle of this world, where loneliness and endless, anxious searching for God are ever present, how do you remain mindful of the joyful, unifying love and ultimate glory of our Lord? How are you heralding it? Exhibiting it?

Your answer to this is personally your own. However, know that when Paul exhorted the Philippian Christians to work out their own salvation, he was not teaching that this is a private matter. In Christ, matters of salvation are always and forever about community, about being Christ’s Body. He was not advocating individual self-promotion in preparation for life beyond this world. He was heralding the power of church unity for the glory of the Lord in the here and now and for forever.

How are we, then, as a congregation, being Christ’s beloved? How are we helping one another to be of the same mind and the same love that was in Jesus? How do we help one another to be humble and obedient before God in this world that promotes sinful personal conquests in so many ways? Please, as you see one another in the days and weeks and months to come, share your responses together … keeping in mind the mind of Christ.

 When it comes to Bible translations, I mostly reply on the New Revised Standard Version that is in your pews. But it’s also quite good a good practice to read other interpretations. I find reading this morning’s lesson from Eugene Peterson’s THE MESSAGE is wonderfully inspirational. The teaching is the same as we’ve been discussing, but the language is just a bit more frank. So open your hearts to hear it as I conclude my privileged time in the pulpit this morning.

“If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.”

Go find a spot in the middle of it all. Pop open some soda pop and break bread with a Twinkie. Selflessly make smiles happen. Believe you’ve met God because you’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying welcome. Amen.