“Positive Thoughts”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 9, 2011
This past week I was lining up outside the desk at Loblaws here on St. Clair, to purchase a light lunch and in front of me there was a lady who had the largest cookies that I have ever seen in my life. They were pumpkin coloured - bright orange - filled with cream and glazed on top, and she had a stack of them. I must admit they got my attention and as she was paying for them, the clerk who is there most days, and an extremely friendly person who is always willing to give you a smile and to make a kind reference to you, said to this woman as she was buying them - and the woman, I must admit, looked a little irritable and frazzled at the time - she said, “I hope that you're going to enjoy these for Thanksgiving.”
The woman replied, “What I want for Thanksgiving, is some P and Q” and then she grabbed the cookies, stuffed them in a bag, put them in her trolley, turned around frazzled, collided with an advertisement for Boost Juices and went out the door, banging both pillars at the same time - that's how frazzled she was - and went out into the parking lot.
At that moment I said a prayer, “Lord, I pray her car is not next to mine in the parking lot.” Thank God, he heard me! She was frazzled, to put it mildly. I thought, can you imagine what it would be like to be at her dining table on Thanksgiving day.
I thought about it; I know that her own circumstances at home were unique to her. I'm sure that she had her own problems and trials, but I must admit, in years of ministry, there have been very few moments in our culture and in our history when I have observed people as frazzled as they are today.
I know that ten years ago, the world was on the edge of its seat and was uncertain after the events of 9/11, but somehow in our culture today, people are ill at ease. They're ill at ease to a large extent because of the economic climate and the situation that we face. It seems as if the world is almost powerless to deal with the problems that are before us.
Even when you look at many of the great political and economic theorists from Hyek to Keynes, to Marcusa, to Milton Friedman, it seems that many of the models that have historically been used to deal with situations such as this, seem almost redundant. We're into something new and there is a cloud of uncertainty that drills its way down into the lives of ordinary people, whether it is their pension plan, their investments, their job security or unemployment, let alone what is going on in Europe and the almost inconceivable idea that a European country or countries could find themselves bankrupt.
People are lining the streets, wanting to assert their own rights, which were totally applicable in a time when there was money, finding themselves at a complete loss, because their world as they know it, is coming to an end. There is really a sense of being ill at ease amongst our own people, amongst you.
For example, I was reading Macleans last week and in the magazine was the heading, “What's the use of saving?” How many ultra-low interest rates have punished savers, rewarded spenders and now might be smothering any hopes of a recovery? Very dark.
Maybe this is hyperbole as the media often is, but nevertheless, it has a cumulative effect on people in the sense of powerlessness, that comes from dealing with some of these things, infuses a society and becomes part of our psyche.
I love a story that I read by Verna Chambers, who writes books for children and Christian faith; the Kingdom of Children, she called one of her books. She tells an anecdote of one day when she got up after having been given a T-shirt. She puts it on in the morning and it says, “Be nice to me, I've had a hard day.”
Her son looks at it and says, “Mum, how can you tell so early in the morning?”
A lot of people think they've already had a hard day, before they've put their slippers on, never mind at the end of the day. Sometimes a cloud, a societal cloud, can rest on people's minds and hearts. So I ask myself this question: on this Thanksgiving, what precisely does the Christian faith have to say to such a world? What is it that is redemptive, transformative and hopeful from the Gospel that we love so dearly, that can have a positive effect in such a world?
Our text from Philippians is the final one of four over the last four weeks in the lectionary, where the Apostle Paul is talking positively about the faith. But he talks positively by beginning negatively. Remember I said a couple of weeks ago, Paul wrote this while facing a capital charge in prison and he's writing to a congregation that has been generous and loyal and loving towards him.
He also realizes - and this is evidenced in our text today - that there are divisions within that particular church. Clearly, there were followers who'd been with Paul in the promotion of the Gospel in Philippi, Euodia and Syntyche, who are quarrelling and not agreeing with one another. And Paul, as he did earlier in the book of Philippians says, “I want you to be of the same mind; I want you to have the same attitude, namely an attitude of the humility of Christ.”
Clearly the Philippian church was upset by this conflict. Some have speculated that it was a conflict on whether you had to become a Christian by becoming, first of all, a Jew, if you were a Gentile. Others suggested that it was a personal conflict between two individuals or groups, but it really doesn't matter, because it's Paul's response to this that is so positive and so powerful. He recognizes that there is a need, but he does it not by dwelling on it, but by getting the people to dwell on Christ.
And that's why, after having mentioned this conflict, he then moves into the positive. “Rejoice,” he said, “in the Lord always and be not anxious.” For the Apostle Paul, there is no question that his conviction that the people, no matter what they face, should rejoice and not be anxious is based on one thing: the Lord is near.
Some have speculated that his reasoning for this was that the Christ would return again sometime soon, maybe even in his lifetime. Although by the time he writes Philippians, that's probably not the foremost thing on his mind. Others have suggested that he simply believed that the Spirit of Christ was with the believers… was present with them through the power of the Spirit.
It really doesn't matter; it doesn't matter whether you interpret this spatially or temporally. The fact is, Paul makes his affirmation that the Lord is near and because the Lord is near, the people need to be anxious.
In the early 1930s, when the world was facing a real cataclysm, particularly in Europe, the very well-known theologian Karl Barth who some of you have heard about, who was, I think in many ways, the definitive theologian of the 20th century, wrote from Switzerland to his friends in Germany. The Weimar Republic had come to an end, Hitler was rising to power, there was a spirit of anti-Semitism, the drum-beats of war were clearly a distant sound, but they were getting closer.
And Karl Barth's instruction to the Christians was to do the following: “You must now do theology as if nothing is happening.” He's a theologian, that's why he says, do theology. But what he meant by that was, focus on the Word of God; think about the Word of God as if nothing is happening. He wasn't suggesting passivity or burying one's head in the sand. It's just that sometimes, to regain a sense of perspective, one needs to think about God and not just think about the problems that beset us.
The Lord, he said, is near. That is Paul's great dictum; the Lord is near. It's not as if nothing is happening in our world; a great deal is happening, a lot of which is very uncertain, but at a time like this, the people of God need to remember the Lord is near.
At the heart of much anxiety in the world is a sense of powerlessness. When people cannot effect the changes that they want, when they cannot influence things that are taking place, when there is a movement that is stronger or greater than they are, they feel powerless and then they feel anxious. Paul knew that in the Philippian church. It was paralyzed by its conflict and it didn't know its way out and in the midst of that, Paul understood that their powerlessness ultimately must lead to a trust in the presence of God, or else there was no way out. Thought the antidote to their anxiety was their affirmation that God is near and the Lord is near and that, I believe, is an immutable truth and that is a power that is transformed.
But Paul goes on: he says, “I also want you to pray with thanksgiving.” Paul is an intercessor between an anxious age and the Word of God. He wants the people to experience the power of God and he brings that before an anxious people and he does that by offering prayer.
Throughout the book of Philippians, he urges them to pray, but he also affirms that he is praying for them. Prayer for Paul is a two-way street. It is both for the people and it is by the people and he urges them to, with prayer and supplication, make their requests known to God. In other words, be willing to make that statement.
He's also an interlocutor; he is speaking to both sides. He is speaking to God and he is speaking to the people. He is speaking to God by confirming his faith in God's presence; he is speaking to the people by affirming God's presence. And for the Apostle Paul, this spirit of prayer, this act of faith, is for them the source of their rejoicing and the source of the reduction of their anxiety.
It is fascinating that the word “thanksgiving” in this particular text, is in Greek - and I don't do this often, but it's a powerful word - eucharistia, from where we get the word eucharist, or communion. For the Apostle Paul, thanksgiving is eucharistia - it is thanksgiving for the well-being that comes from the presence of God. It's not just being thankful; it is thanksgiving that is based on the presence of God.
I think it's fair enough to say that people who give little or no thought to God and to faith can derive a great deal of benefit from thanksgiving. I don't doubt that. I think people who struggle with their lives, but who do not necessarily have faith, can be thankful for what they've got.
They can do a comparative analogy between what is happening in other parts of the world and how wonderful things are for us in our great country, for most of our people, not all of them. We can look at the beauty of our land and be thankful. One can come and eat a great meal, enjoy it, be grateful for it, celebrate it, have friends and family around to enjoy it and it can be thanksgiving. Anyone can have that, but people of faith have something much more on which to chew. And what they have that's more, is what Paul is implying with pray with thanksgiving. It is the recognition that our prayers have already been answered.
So often we go into our prayers assuming that now, from this moment on, God will continue to work now that we have invoked his name. For Paul there was this profound sense that prayers are already answers by God. Often we go into our prayers with a sense of insecurity and we feel that we're threatened in some ways and that's why we pray. Paul would understand that the security that they have has been guarded by the presence of Christ.
Paul would understand that the problems in the world are both temporary and temporal and that God still, in the end, is good. And he knew that this God guards and protects our hearts and our minds. And so thanksgiving is not - and I want to say this emphatically - it's not about just us being grateful; it's us recognizing how God has been graceful.
It's not about us and our thanksgiving; it is about God and God's grace and it is in that we rejoice and it is in that that we find our peace.
Paul goes on and he seems to switch gears here; this is a strange part of the book of Philippians, and he says the following… and I want to read again from Philippians. “Finally beloved,” he says, “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Paul, you see - to use an over-used term - often thought that thanksgiving was also about thanks living, that there were practical things that people of faith needed to do to give themselves a rudder in a rudderless world, to give themselves a sense of God's profound love in the midst of the chaos. And that is to think about the things that are from God.
Some have speculated that Paul's passage here borrowed very heavily on some pagan ideas and virtues, but they were also virtues when you read them, that work their way through the Old Testament; the just, the excellent, the commendable, the pure, the pleasing - these are words that resonate in Hebrew as well as in Greek. But even more, Paul sees in these words, the very embodiment of Christ. He sees that whatever these things are, keep on learning and receiving them and the God of peace will be with you. Whatever is just, whatever is commendable, whatever is right.
Victor Shepherd, the Canadian theologian, once said that there are more than two ways to reason. We tend to think of reasoning as being either inductive or deductive but there is more; there is also imaginative reasoning. There is the reasoning of the mind that thinks on higher things, that influences our thoughts; the pure, the just, the commendable, the excellent, the righteous, the honourable. These are things in which the Christian should cast their mind.
Why? Because so often we fill our minds with all the things that we find from Macleans magazine and we think that is the only reasonable way we can understand the world around us. But if that is the case, there is no imagination, no transformation, no hope. That which is hopeful comes from that which is pure and just and commendable and excellent and right, because it comes from God.
This Thanksgiving, we need to focus on those things and our lives can bear witness to them, to people who are genuinely frazzled and anxious.
This summer, when I was in New York City, Marial and I spent almost an entire day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park. And I went, actually, with one specific thing in mind, something that I always wanted to see and had known was there. And way back, at the very back of the museum, there is this incredible section of European art and there's one painting in there that is on its own on a wall. And I was relieved to see that having walked a long way around Central Park, there was a bench that I could sit in front of. My artificial hip was reminding me at that moment that I am mortal.
And I sat there and I stared at this painting and I must have been there more than 20 minutes. Marial liked it, but then moved on to look at the paintings of others, like Vermeer and Renoir. I was riveted to Rembrandt's self-portrait. I'd always wanted to see it, because if you can say you love an artist, I love Rembrandt. I love him, because he was a Christian, because in many ways, he was the Reformation's Caravaggio, he was able to depict marvellous scenes from the Old Testament and Christ's life. But whenever he did a portrait, it was as if he was going into the heart and the soul of the people that he painted; not just an outward and expression, but an inward examination… marvellous.
There were some who had suggested that this self-portrait at the end of his life, when he was an older man, was actually during his declining period, when in fact he was losing his skill and his touch. And I thought when I saw that painting, the exact opposite was true; here was a man who painted this incredible self-portrait and in it, you get to look into his soul.
I stared at his eyes and I know that the scholars say that his eyes are sad, his eyes are old and he's in declining years. The more I gazed at them, the more I saw a peace about them. The more I looked at those eyes, I saw a hope, that the very same man who painted the prodigal son and its return, the same one who depicted the humility of Jesus so in keeping with the book of Philippians, knew somehow at the end of his life, that there was someone who was near and who was for him. And as I got away from that painting, I cried.
I know that we take into all our readings and paintings and music, a sense of ourselves, but somehow I left that knowing that that was something of Paul, something of Philippians in those eyes, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” the Lord is near and no matter how frazzled you might be, have thanksgiving in your heart. Amen.