A synthesized Sermon shared at Odawara Lutheran Church, Odawara, Kanagawa, Japan and Nagoya All Saints International Congregation, from two different but similar sermons I preached. Based on Philippians 1:21-30
Is the Apostle Paul writing from the clarity that ending can bring? According to The Atlantic, a US magazine, a study was done of more than 3,000 professional soccer games.[1] It revealed that 23 percent of goals came in the final 15 minutes of the 90-minute match. The end of the game has a focusing effect, motivating players to summon their strength for a final push. Another study looked at hospice workers and other end-of-life professionals. For these people, exposure to death causes them to “live in the present, cultivate a spiritual life and reflect deeply on the continuity of life.” Endings are important.
In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul offers a perspective on the end of life. “For to me,” he says, “living is Christ and dying is gain” (1:21). He knows that his ongoing life on earth means “fruitful labor” for the Philippians and for him, but at the same time he admits of his “desire is to depart and be with Christ” (vv. 22-24).
Are those words, are they written close to his death, a prisoner on death row, using remarkably positive language to describe his situation? “I want you to know,” he writes earlier in this chapter, “that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ” (vv. 12-13). It seems that at least part of him wants his life on earth to end, so that he can be with Christ and share his resurrection life. Are these words written with the clarity that impeding death may bring or is there a deeper theological meaning that Paul is trying to teach?
As you may or may not know, there is some lively Biblical scholarship regarding Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, this letter to the Philippians. Scholars consider Philippians without a doubt to be an authentic work of the apostle Paul; that does not mean, however, that all the debate about the circumstances of its writing have ceased. The reason I bring it to your attention is that there is an ongoing debate over our portion today.
Tradition has it that the letter was written close to his death. However recent scholarship around the literary integrity of the book, challenges the traditional location and date of its composition. A close reading of the book suggests that Philippians is not one letter but two. In that view, chapters 3 and 4 were sent first, followed by chapters 1 and 2, then compiled into one later. That would mean given the usual chronology of Paul’s life and ministry, that would place these letters of Philippians sometime around 54-55 AD rather than about a decade later during his imprisonment in Rome and subsequent death.
I will not get into all the details about this scholarship, whether Philippians is a single letter or a composite of two letter, other than to direct you to the most obvious question. There is a sudden shift in tone found in 3:1, where Paul goes from “finally” encouraging the Philippians to “rejoice in the Lord” to telling them how it was not “irksome” to keep writing to them about the same things. The first two chapters had been filled with thanksgiving, and much of the next two chapters detail problems of divisions within the church.
I suspect we will never know, if it was one letter or two, but how does that scholarly debate impact us? Let me return to my original question; should we interpret Paul through the clarity that impending death can bring? Or were those words written a decade earlier without his impending death in mind? And if it is the second, what did Paul have in mind?
I am wondering then if the second question is true that Paul’s words should be seen through something else found in the first two chapters --- through the sufferings. “Paul’s own afflictions,” writes Professor Morna Hooker, are not described in a negative way. Instead, they “are seen as an opportunity for the gospel: People talk about his case; therefore, they learn about the Christian faith, and other Christians are encouraged to make a similar stand.”[2]
Remember, Saul later Paul of Tarsus went from holding the cloaks of those stoning St. Stephens, to blindness on the road and then new sight. He experienced the cold shoulder of the first disciples who only knew Paul as a persecutor of the early church. Paul experienced shipwrecks and imprisonment and hostile communities plus all the things we could summarize if we had his daily diary, the cold nights and inclement weather on the road. Professor Hooker continues, “The amazing fact that oppression leads to growth reflects the paradox that lies at the heart of the gospel — namely, that God’s power is revealed through the weakness of the cross and that victory comes through apparent defeat.”[3]
Paul wants us to live in a manner worthy of the gospel, aware of the defeat it can bring, reflective of the grace and love of Jesus Christ. By doing so, for Paul we become stronger and more focused, standing firm in one spirit, and striving side by side with one mind. Such strength and unity do not often happen in good times. In fact, it usually happens in challenging times. Live your life “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” Paul writes, “so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel” (v. 27).
Paul reminds the Philippians that God “has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well — since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had” (vv. 29-30). For most of us, the privilege of believing in Christ is easy to accept, and we are happy to receive the gift of forgiveness and new life. But “suffering for him as well”? That is a bit tougher to swallow.
For Paul, however, believing and suffering go together. Perhaps not surprisingly, we tend to be prejudiced, narrow regarding suffering without realizing it placing it solely in either thinking “no one knows the trouble I have seen” or thankful suffering has passed us by. Yet, just think of the vast definitions of suffering illustrated in the Bible.
- Creation suffers (Genesis 1-3)
- Suffering can be mysterious. (Job)
- Grief can cause suffering. (The death of Lazarus)
- Suffering can come from being a victim. (Exodus)
- We can experience empathic suffering, as we walk with others who suffer. (Old Testament prophets)
Those are just a few. There is no one kind of suffering, one better than another. There is no one form of suffering that is truer to the meaning of suffering. Rather, while it is true that Christ died for us, the Apostle Paul is reminding us in today’s passage --- and perhaps to himself --- that it is also true that Christians die into this fullness of Christ. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul asks the Romans (6:3). “We suffer with him,” he says, “so that we may also be glorified with him” (8:17).
Did Paul write these words in his cell as he waited death? Or a decade earlier? Regardless Paul is describing the challenge for us all as we live out our faith as the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. The apostle Paul while happy to serve the Christ in this life, understood that with faith comes the clearness that suffering can bring. An understanding that we will depart and be with Christ which provides strength and clarity --- and comfort --- throughout this life. At the same time, we live in, with and through not only the joys of life in Christ in thanksgiving but within the variety of “sufferings” that this life can bring. Amen.
[1] Healy, Ben. “The Science of Getting Over It.” The Atlantic, November 2019, www.theatlantic.com.
[2] Hooker, Morna D. “The Letter to the Philippians.” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 2000), 492.
[3] Ibid.
