“We Are Just Dying To Live”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Not long ago a friend of mine visited St. John's in Newfoundland. He knew that I would be interested in his story because I myself was there this summer to perform the funeral of the father of one of my very closest friends, and so St. John's was on my mind as well as on his. And he recounted something that he overheard that touched him deeply. It was a simple and an honest and a lovely conversation.
The context of it was that a cruise ship had just arrived in St. John's Harbour, not something that happens every day, a large cruise ship. And had come into the harbour and almost dominating it with its size and with all the people and the passengers who were disembarking and coming into the city. There was some excitement and enthusiasm about it.
And as my friend was leaving the restaurant where he had been dining and was about to pay his bill he overheard a conversation between two of the servers in the restaurant. One of them said to the other, “You know, my dear, I would give anything to be able to set even one foot on that ship.” And other one replied, “Yes, I know and I hear they have a great buffet at the back of that ship, oh, I'd like to see that buffet.” And my friend gave a wry smile and walked away.
And then he thought for a moment, he thought about how in many ways, and this is fascinating, his own values and what he thought was important in life was completely out of sync. He made the comment, “You know, Andrew,” he said, “What I loved about that conversation was the unmitigated joy of just doing something simple.” He said, “Here I am running around in a rat race of accumulation and materialism and more, more, more and yet the joy in something relatively simple was so palpable.” He said, “I just, I just felt I needed to reset my priorities.” I'm not sure” he said “I always find joy in simple things anymore.” They had taught him a lesson and he was learning it.
And, you know, my friend is absolutely true. There are times in our world and in our society when we get so caught up in things that we just lose our perspective altogether and lose our joy. The apostle Paul in today's text from that wonderful passage in Philippians, and I've got to say along with Romans probably my favourite book in the Bible. In this great book of Philippians, Paul is writing to the Philippian Christians and he is saying exactly the same thing. Make sure you reset what's really important for you and I'll tell you what is really important for me.
Paul starts off our passage by just simply making a great declaration, one of the greatest declarations in the history of faith. He says, “For me to live is Christ. For me to live is Christ.” But if you understand the context in which he wrote that it becomes all the more important and it really reaches the heart. Paul was writing to the Philippians probably after AD50 because it was in AD50 that he had helped found this congregation in Philippi. It was one that he loved dearly. He even goes so far to call it, “My joy and my crown,” that's how much he loved those people. And now he is facing a capital charge, he is in the hands of Roman authorities and he knows that he might be executed if the trial does not go well, and it would be the end of all that he had been struggling for and fighting for.
And so the apostle Paul wants to give a word of encouragement to the Philippians. He wants them to know that he is going to remain resolute even in the face of his trials. That even then he hasn't lost his joy, he knows what is important, “For me to live is Christ.”
This passage and in fact the whole of the book of Philippians is one of selfless humility on the part of the apostle Paul. He's not interested in his own fate. He says, “For me to live is Christ, but to die is gain. If it is better that I be taken from you, so be it, but I would rather stay and work with you for the cause of Christ.” Humility, service, caring for the community, not putting himself above the community and making himself a servant of the community, humble, fearless, faithful. You see, more than anything else, Paul wanted the congregation in Philippi, even if he was to depart, to continue to proclaim Christ.
And he thought by his own suffering and his own example he might be able to lead them in that path, that his words of encouragement might give them hope. More than anything else he wanted them to pray for him and to pray for one another and remain firm in the faith. He believed, you see, that at the end of all of this he would be saved. But he also believed that through his suffering others might be saved including the Philippians. And finally, he wanted them to be courageous. He wanted them to be strong. He wanted them to remain resolute and not succumb to the temptations that were around them. For the Philippians as a gentile community were surrounded by a multiplicity of gods, a multiplicity of cults and of idols and Paul just wanted them to focus on Christ. “For me,” he said, “To live is Christ,” what a confession from a man who was facing execution.
But you might be saying, “This is lovely, Paul was great, that was marvellous.” As a result of his ministry to the Philippians, Christianity moved westward and came into Europe and eventually onto our shores and we are here because of it as gentiles on another continent. So there's a link, but is there more? Oh, I think there is. I think, you see, that the apostle Paul if he was standing in a restaurant chatting to you right now would have a few things to say about resetting your values and finding your joy. I think that he would say to you, “My friends, life's trials are transient.”
You see, Paul knew that when he was writing to the Philippians his letter would be universal, he knew that. He knew others would read it not only after that congregation had read it; he probably knew that it would be read for other times.
And so it's his conversation to us, to Timothy Eaton and to those who are listening today. He knows that we face trials, God knows we face them. We face them in so many ways in our lives. We face them because sometimes they're self-inflicted by our own foolishness or our own sinfulness or our own avarice. Sometimes we face trials because of the animosity and the hatred of others. Sometimes we face trials because we're just simply human and mortal and we live in a fallible world. Sometimes we face trials over which we have no control by the force of nature or by the hatred of groups of people. There are many reasons why we face trials inwardly and outwardly, from above and from below we face them.
But the apostle Paul knew that even though the Philippians were facing trials themselves they must hold onto his own belief, his own conviction that these things ultimately cannot and will not bring down the faithful. That no matter how strong they are they don't win in the end. “For me to live is Christ,” he says, “To die is gain. I know that these things will pass away.”
I was reading a marvellous piece by the daughter of a very famous Rabbi from the United Kingdom. And in this biography of the rabbi, a rabbi that David McMaster knows of as well, his name was Rabbi Hugo Gryn. And for those of us who were brought up in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, Hugo Gryn was a personality on the radio and sometimes on television. He would speak about morals and society and education and life. He was a marvellous man. He was born in the Eastern Carpathians on the border between the Ukraine and Slovakia. It was an area that was in a sense not that well known, but of a Jewish community in the Carpathians Hugo Gryn arose.
Born in 1930 he and his family had to endure the persecution of the Nazis. And when Czechoslovakia was overrun and Jews were rounded up Hugo Gryn's family was taken off to the death camps. His daughter in writing the biography of her father recounts one particular moment that influenced Gryn's life for all the years to come and helped him make the decision to become a rabbi and it was this.
That when the family was in Auschwitz many of them were starved and were only given food in portions and morsels, and one day the family was given to eat a lump of margarine, margarine. But the time and the season was Hanukkah and Gryn's father was absolutely adamant that that particular piece of margarine should be used not to eat but to be a candle of light in a time of darkness. And when he turned it into the candle the family were furious. Hugo, the young boy, was angry. The mother was angry. Everyone was upset. They were hungry, they were dying. And Hugo Gryn's father said to them the following words according to this biography, he said, “It has been said that the human being can live three weeks without food, but can only live three minutes without hope.”
Hugo Gryn said it was that conviction of the hope of faith even though his father and family with the exception of his mother and he died in Auschwitz, it was that conviction and the power of hope even in the midst of the trials of life that was to fundamentally influence everything that he would believe in from that day on. And Hugo Gryn worked for understanding and interfaith relations and the propagation of faith profoundly until his death. Why? Because he knew that the Hanukkah light was the light of hope.
Paul, Paul understood this. But for Paul it was greater than just a light, greater than just a candle, greater than just even a memory of what God had done in saving people in the past, it was Christ, it was Christ. And Paul knew that if the Philippian Christians and every Christian that has followed ever since, including ourselves, would believe what he said when he declared, “For me to live is Christ,” he knew that all of life's trials are put in their proper perspective, they're transient, they don't win in the end.
Paul, if he was talking to you in a restaurant in St. John's, Newfoundland would come up to you and he would also say, “You know, life's trials are much better handled with prayer and with community.”
When I was New York this summer I was flicking through a magazine and, as I sometimes do with radar on as a preacher sometimes has, I thought, “Ooh, there's a story.” It's a story about two artists who were in a church. And as they were in this church they were assigned the job of finishing a painting, a mural on the wall. And so the two of them went up the scaffold and they worked away and they were near the completion of this painting.
The young artist, who was very carried away with his own ability, decided to stand back on the platform and look up and see what a magnificent job they'd done. And he edged further backwards and further backwards - you know where this going, don't you - until he got to the very edge of the scaffolding. The older, more mature artist was scared for him. He saw that this young man was going to fall over the edge, but he also knew that if he shouted to him he might scare him and topple him over backwards and he would fall to his death. So instead he picked up a can of paint and he threw it at the painting. The young artist lurched forward in anger, “What are you doing? Are you trying to destroy things? What on earth are you up to?” And the older artist said, “What I'm up to is saving you, I'm saving you for you were about to fall to your death.”
When the young artist realised the passion of that man he wept. Why? Because sometimes as happens in our lives trials are like the paint being thrown against the wall, it might appear that they're there to harm us and to damage us and to break us down and to destroy us, but there are times when someone is there to save us and to restore us that there can be hope.
The apostle Paul pleaded for the Philippian community, not to just focus on themselves but on others, not to be focused on their own salvation alone, but on the proclamation of the gospel and the propagation of the faith. He knew that the community of faith was needed if it was going to spread the good news. And even though the trials that he faced and even the trials that they might face they could get through together if they had each other's prayers and there was a spirit of love within the community.
You see, that particular church had been very generous to Paul; it had sent him, even when he was in prison, a friend called Epaphroditus. And Epaphroditus was there to bring him support and good news and offer his encouragement from the Philippian church. It appeared to be the only church that had done something that gracious. And Paul sent Epaphroditus back, he knew he didn't need him, he probably feared for Epaphroditus if he were to stay if the charge was found on him and sustained. And so Epaphroditus returns to Philippi. But in his heart Paul knew someone had loved him, he knew someone had cared for him; he knew someone had nurtured him and I think that is the thing that kept Paul going.
But now in his letter he is wanting them to know everything that he had known. He wanted them to believe everything that he believed. That in the end, in the end they needed one another and they needed their prayers and then they could withstand the trial that was to come. And he's writing this to you, he is speaking to you. He is speaking it to the faithful wherever they might be, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” So why not join together in that prayerful belief?
There's a last thing that Paul would say to us and he would say it very loudly and very clearly. And that is that the trials of life can also produce within us faith. You know, we like to think, do we not, at times that really our prayers should be all about removing all the trials in our lives, removing all the problems. Come on, God, eliminate it all, sort it all out, clean out the decks. Make it good. Fair enough, there's a time to do that, but there is also a time in which when we face trials and their temptations that we need to pray not to succumb to those trials, not to succumb to them, not to lose faith in the midst of them.
The Apostle Paul's love for those Philippians was so strong that this is what he wanted for them. That even though they were being put through the test they would come through it and their faith would be stronger. Over and again in this passage and in the whole of the beginning of the book of Philippians he says, “May this turn out for your redemption, for your salvation. May you at the end be restored by the power of Christ, may you have this hope and this joy in your life no matter what.” Because Paul knew that even in those trials something good could come of it.
I think and a lot of scholars seem to affirm that Paul was very much influenced by the book of Job. And the book of Job is the story, as all of you know, of a man who lost everything, who struggled with the advice and counsel of friends and finally was restored with everything at the end, a really, really amazing story of faith. But there's one moment in it in chapter 13 and I think this is echoed in Paul's words when Job says the following and I quote, “Though he may slay me yet will I hope in him, I will surely defend my ways to his face, indeed this might turn out for my deliverance for no godless man would dare come after him.” Job knew that in the end if he had faith God would save him.
There's an incredible moment in the writing of Hudson Taylor who was one of the great missionaries to China. And many of the small home churches that are now spreading up all over China have many of their origins in his work. He had a great love for China and for missions. And there was one moment when he was inviting a potential missionary over to his home, a young Chinese man, who was going to bear witness to Christ in China.
And they were having tea one afternoon. And he was trying to say to this young missionary, “You know, you're going to have some hard times, it's not all going to be beer and skittles, it will be tough, be tough out there.” And then all of a sudden in the middle of having the tea Hudson Taylor just slammed his fist down on the table and the tea started to spurt out of the cups. And the young missionary says, “What are you doing that for? What's wrong?” And Hudson Taylor said, “There's nothing wrong, I just want you to remember,” he said, “I just want you to remember this moment, and that is when the woes of hardship and trials pound down upon you just like the tea pouring out of the cup, it's only then that you know exactly what's inside you. It's only then that you know what's exactly inside you.” Only when one faces difficulties and trials does one really, really know how strong one's faith is.
And Paul was saying to the Philippians, “I want you to know what I believe, that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” And what I want for you is to have that kind of faith as the church moves forward and that in the end, just like Hugo Gryn, you will have hope. What a great conversation we've just had with the apostle Paul. Amen.