SunDec62009
PHILIPPIANS 1:3-11
Two brief snapshots from my week. On Monday, I went to have my MP3 player repaired. The expert who helped me talked so fast, and at a level just enough above my understanding, that I really didn’t get what he was saying. Then, when I got home, I found out that the player was in worse shape than when I took it in. I was not happy.
Then on Wednesday, Mary called to tell me that she had been talking with the doctor’s office on some other business, and that she was able, on the spur of the moment, to set up an appointment for me for that afternoon so I could get a vaccine for H1N1. Well, it’s not as if my days are totally empty and I’m just sitting around waiting for people to make extra appointments for me! So I snapped at her that I couldn’t see how I was going to fit it in, and hung up. Again, not too happy.
Then, to top it all off, I read the passage we just heard from Paul’s letter to a little church in Philippi. And what’s Paul talking about? He’s saying how immensely joyful he is when he thinks about every one of them, how he prays for them and holds them all in his heart and longs for them. He’s thankful for all of them! And me? All I’ve been is insolent and resentful. Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do! At first I just wanted to rule Paul out as some kind of Pollyanna living in la-la land. “That’s not the way real people are,” I wanted to yell at him. “We don’t live in some kind of fairy tale where we always just feel oh-so-good about everyone.”
But then, the more I lived with that passage, the more sobered I began to feel. Had I even given Paul’s words a chance? Had I actually stopped to give thanks for the fact that there’s an expert available in the MP3 store? Had I bothered to realize, that, as a higher risk person, I was going to be immunized relatively early in the season?
Paul has a way of getting his claws into us. He says essentially, “Give thanks for everybody and everything.” It’s as though he’s saying, “It’s easy to be grateful for the people who are nice to you. It’s easy to be thankful for nice parties and good laughs and lots of fun. Here’s the thing, though: I’m grateful for everything.”
You may remember that Paul writes this letter to the Philippians from jail. He’d evidently been imprisoned for something related to his faith. He doesn’t say what it is. And eventually he’s martyred for it. But in this moment, even with the danger that looms over him, he’s grateful—grateful for the friendship of the Philippians, for their help, for their partnership in the gospel.
It’s fair to say, I think, that this sort of stance is not what best describes most of us most of the time. When we’re challenged by matters at work; when we’re sucked down by a persistently difficult economy; when our energy is depleted by a difficult co-worker or child or parent—when we feel as though the world has pushed us under a bus, the last thing we do is say, “Thank you.” We may gripe and complain and feel sorry for ourselves. We may wish that things were different. But we don’t say, “Thank you.”
The thing is: the life that comes to us is the life we have. There is no other. No matter what tribulations come upon us, no matter the accidents and illnesses that slay us, no matter the terrible luck that sometimes stalks us—no matter how putrid the circumstances may seem, the fact is that this is the only life we have, that’s it’s still a life, and that there’s always hope for a new chapter.
In another one of his letters, Paul says to “give thanks in all circumstances” (I Thess. 5:18). I’m so struck by that word “all.” It’s a crucial word for Paul. In the little part of the letter we read this morning, some variation of the word “all” occurs eight times: “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you . . .” (2:3-4). Not just when the team wins; or the biopsy is negative; or the big contract is signed. Not just when so-and-so is nice to me or cooks me a great meal or makes my life easier. Always. All the time. All people.
Now clearly we don’t have to go around thanking people for abusing us or ripping us off. What Paul is getting at here is not so much that I should thank you if you’re cruel to me. That would be fatuous. And I hardly think he’s saying it’s never appropriate to weep or curse our fate or express our frustrations. Those are natural and healthy reactions to the disappointments of life. What I think he is saying is something much more like this: you can sit around and resent all the wrongs that have been done to you. You can rehearse, again and again, how maligned your life is. Or you can say instead: “even in this terrible time, there is something good that can come of it.” An illness may let you reconnect with a family member. A failure may allow you to take stock of where you feel called in life. A marital breakdown may enable you to recommit to each other. Another Browns loss may let you—oh, who are we kidding, there are limits even to gratitude!
The point is that, in every dimension of life, there are ways of expressing our gratitude. One of Federated’s many astute leaders puts it this way, when she thinks about financial matters: a pared down budget, she says—in your family or your business or the church—gives you the opportunity to focus your resources on what’s most important. It gives you a chance to center again. That, I think, is something like what Paul is getting at. Even when things don’t go the way we’d like them to, there are lessons and gifts and blessings in the difficulties.
Corrie ten Boom writes about her arrival in Barracks 28 of the Ravensbruck concentration camp during the Second World War. It was a deplorable place to live, filthy and crowded, surpassing “the unimaginable circumstances [she] had already endured in the custody of [her] Nazi tormentors. Designed to house four hundred people, the dank, dark building now sheltered fourteen hundred desperate women.
“Squeezing through narrow aisles and crawling over rancid bedding, [Corrie and her sister Betsie] finally found their assigned places on one of the large square platforms where groups of prisoners were sandwiched together each night. Hardly had Corrie settled herself in the reeking straw when something bit her leg. It was a flea. The place was infested with them. Added to the many large horrors of the camp, the tiny fleas tipped the scales toward the utterly intolerable. But with much willpower and even greater faith in God’s goodness, Corrie and Betsie, recalling [how crucial it is to be grateful], gave thanks in this dire situation for the simple blessings they could name. Finally, at Betsie’s insistence that God meant them to give thanks in all circumstances and not just pleasant ones, they also gave thanks for the fleas. ‘But this time,’ Corrie writes, ‘I was sure Betsie was wrong.’ Only later did Corrie and Betsie learn that the fleas in Barracks 28 had deterred the guards from entering the women’s sleeping quarters, thus giving the inmates an extra measure of freedom in which to gather for nightly worship services” (quoted in Weavings, July/August, 1997, p. 2).
Communion is God’s gift of a meal to us, no matter whether we’ve “been bad or good,” no matter whether we’ve earned it or not. It’s God’s thank you note to us, God’s declaration of our sacred and eternal worth. And it’s God’s invitation to us to extend the same kind of affection we’ve received from God to everyone we meet. So I say thank you to the technician helping me with my MP3 player. He tried. He did what he could. And I say thank you to Mary for making my appointment for the vaccination. It got me up and moving. It gave me some fresh air. It inoculated me against a serious illness. And I still got done what I had to do this week. And finally I say thank you to all of you—for your seeking and hoping, for your serving and praying, for your partnership in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So thanks be to God for all the permutations of life, and for all the people who fill it with such varied, sometimes confounding, but always astounding, gifts. God has blessed us with “amazing grace.”