We have to be some of the luckiest people who have ever walked the face of the earth. We live in a country that is consistently ranked at, or near the top of studies on the best place in the world to live. The World Economic Forum recently picked Germany and then Canada as the best places to live. Another study by the Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit ranked three Canadian cities, Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary, among the top five cities in the world to live.
We are among the luckiest people. We have a decent lifestyle, the rule of law, we enjoy peace, healthcare, stability and tolerance. We live in a great liberal experiment in which multi-culturalism is championed. Generally, people mix well in our country and are respectful of others. In terms of religion, we may or may not have faith but we are quite open to the thoughts and practices of others. The average Canadian is quite willing to enjoy and find out more about Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali, as well as Christmas, whether he/she has personal faith.
It is important to recognise, however, that the freedoms we enjoy have not been enjoyed by most who have walked this earth. Last Sunday I suggested prayer for Pastor Hyeon Soo Lim of Mississauga who has been imprisoned in North Korea. According to China’s official news agency, Lim faced death but was given life imprisonment because he took responsibility and freely admitted he disseminated forbidden religious views. Most places in the world are not like Canada.
If we allow our minds to drift back in time to the Mediterranean world and ancient Judaea and ancient Rome, we will find that tolerance for alternative religious views was not a prized factor in those cultures either. Life was, in fact, probably a little closer to what we have been hearing about recently in ISIS controlled Syria and Iraq. The Romans, from time to time, attempted to impose emperor worship. Some, mostly Christians and Jews, refused and lost their lives for not making the appropriate sacrifices. In Jerusalem and elsewhere, Jewish religious leaders were not tolerant of Christian ideas. Christianity posed a threat and one of nascent Christianity’s greatest perceived threats was the man we call the apostle Paul. Last week we focussed on his imprisonment, today we want to think about the nature of his imprisonment. Paul, like Pastor Lim, was facing his own demise, the death penalty. It was because proclaiming alternate religious views could lead to death that he did not want a trial in Jerusalem, he felt the outcome was certain. As a Roman citizen, he had the right to appeal to the emperor and was shipped off to Rome in the early A.D. 60s to await trial.
The emotions of facing death in prison were set out for us twenty years ago in the film, Dead Man Walking. Try to place yourself in that position for a moment. In the film, there were appeals to reduce the sentence to life imprisonment. The appeals gave a glimmer of hope but the predominant feeling revolved around the original sentence. Pending death coloured everything. Think of the stress, the anxiety, the waiting, the not knowing what way an appeal would go.
Paul was waiting under threat of death as well. Unfortunately, we have no idea what the outcome was. Our knowledge of Paul ends abruptly with his imprisonment and Acts 28. Personally, I have wondered whether he was caught up in the persecution of Christians under the emperor Nero. You may remember the words, “As Rome burned, Nero fiddled.” Nero took a lot of heat politically for the great fire c. A.D. 64. He had to put the blame somewhere to deflect criticism and he chose the Christians. The violence done to Christians on account of this astonished even many Romans. Roman writers indicate that much of the populous felt sorry for the Christians because they were treated so horribly.
But our story is prior to this. Paul was still in prison with a charge over his head that could lead to capital punishment. He had already waited in Caesarea for two plus years. Now he is in Rome and I have often wondered how much Paul knew about emperor Nero as he waited. The pressure of it all; think of the pressure. We could forgive Paul if emotion got the better of him and his letters were full of gloom and lament. But instead we see an incredible faith and an incredible assurance that goes way beyond anything that the average human would feel.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul is a caring pastor who encourages the believers to love one another and be found blameless in the day of the Lord. He reveals that he is less concerned about himself and more concerned that the word about Christ keep spreading. In our passage today the faith that is reflected is astonishing. Instead of anxiety and woe, Paul says that he rejoices “for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.” “Your prayers and the help of the Spirit will turn out for my deliverance.”
The first thing we note about Paul’s astonishing faith relates to his understanding of prayer and the Spirit of God. One of the things I hear from clergy and Christians these days is about their struggle with prayer. As human beings we are activists, we love to do, we undertake hard work, we expend energy to accomplish things. Prayer seems much more passive and many people feel that if they are inside praying, nothing is going to get done. But perhaps we need to expand our view of God, of what God can do, and of what prayer accomplishes. Pope Francis said recently that prayer “opens a door to the Lord.” It carries our thoughts and feelings into his purview. Even if our theology says that God is omniscient, all-knowing, the Word reveals that God hears the prayers of his people and that God acts on the prayers of his people. Not to the extent that our prayers control God; but God can, if he chooses, influence situations in ways that human actions alone cannot. God hears our prayers.
One thing that I have been praying for, for a long time now, is our congregation and its spiritual and Christian life. On Wednesday night I was chatting with someone who had just attended a relatively new small group that has developed for parents of the choir school children. We got into this deep conversation about what God was doing. I came away for the conversation and it suddenly struck me that God is indeed up to something at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. It struck me that whereas a few years ago, we had a couple of groups, we now have seven small groups meeting at various times for spiritual growth, learning, and prayer. We have a Men’s group, a Women's group, a group that developed from the Alpha course a couple of years ago, a Bethel Bible group, a group for some of our staff people to pray for the church and congregation. We have the choir school parents’ group, the Labyrinth group (which meets today) and an eighth group for young adults may begin shortly. God seems to be up to something at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, as individuals develop the spiritual aspects of their lives, and this is besides all the great acts of service we find here; things like the Foodbank, the Refugee and Grants committees, and a host of other things related to the care of our community with pastoral care, Stephen Ministry, and Elders; and then the care that many give the house of God that we have been entrusted with. On Wednesday, it struck me that God is working and answering prayer. People are growing and learning and praying and serving the church and God’s kingdom.
Paul, it seems, had an even greater sense that God was at work in his world and that through prayer God would enter into situations in life, even his. He is potentially facing death, and in the midst of a very stressful situation, Paul has faith. He says that he rejoices for he knows that through the people’s prayers and God’s help he would be delivered. Sometimes, I think, we need to step up the faith we have. We need to expand our faith, expand our views of what God can do and the value of prayer in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
But there’s an even greater note of Paul’s faith when we think about how he understood his own deliverance. He goes two ways on this. The more likely view, he thinks, involves his physical freedom. Paul suspects that through prayers and the help of God he will have physical deliverance. He believes that the Philippian Christians are not yet strong in faith and thinks that God will deliver him in order to help and guide them further in their Christian lives. He states that “to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.” But it is the other possibility related to his deliverance that really speaks to the strength of his faith. It is incredible! Let me quote him at some length. He says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that … with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” This is why Paul writes and appears to be doing so well while imprisoned and facing death. This is why he writes of “rejoicing” in Christ. Paul has no fear of death. It wasn’t that he did not value his own life or want to live. He had witnessed the risen Christ and he knew there was something else beyond this life. People talk about Paul’s Damascus Road experience. Whatever happened there had to be so astounding, so real, so vivid that it drove out fear and changed his life. This is the message and the power of Christianity. Again, sometimes I think that we need to step up our faith. We need to expand our faith. It can make a tremendous difference in how we live.
Last weekend, I went to see the Oscar nominated film, Brooklyn, about a young Irish woman who emigrates from the town of Enniscorthy in southeast Ireland to Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s. I was moved by a scene in which Eilis, played by Saoirse Ronan, was sitting before Father Flood, a family friend. She has just found out that her beloved sister, Rose, who remained in Ireland, has died of an undisclosed illness. She sits sobbing, the tears are running down her cheeks as she cries that she will never see her beautiful sister again. Father Flood enters into the conversation and says, “Now Eilis, you know that I am going to tell you that that’s not true. You will see her. A time will come when you will be re-united with your father, your sister, and your mother when she gets there. There is much more to life than this,” and he goes on to talk about eternity in Christ. Father Flood had the same assurance and trust that Paul had and offered hope to young Eilis.
Last week, Jean and I were talking about some of the pastoral concerns and visits we had. Jean was speaking about one person who was in palliative care. He expressed that he was not being treated well in the hospice he was in. He was afraid, afraid of his illness, afraid of dying. He was alone, and afraid of dying alone. Jean said that she had to come back with a word of encouragement. “Oh, but you are not alone.” She said. “Christ is with you. Remember your faith, Christ is with you in life. Christ is with you in death. Christ is with you in life beyond death.” The man thought for a moment and then said, “You have given me life and hope,” and not long after he passed into the next world. We are not alone.
Wilma is the mother of a woman in our congregation. She grew up in a family of faith and never let go of it throughout her life. In her early years, she felt a call to ministry but ignored it and worked instead and married and brought up two daughters. She continued to want to make a difference in the lives of others, however, and when the opportunity arose in retirement to do a short-term mission project in Latvia, she took it. She spent a number of months there and when she was leaving several people associated with the ministry placement came up to her and told her that her that her strong faith had made a difference for them. She was so pleased that she was able to serve God even if it was later in life.
I had a distant acquaintance with Wilma through Facebook. We had a few mutual friends and we became Fb friends. A few times there was some joking about her daughter and discussions about our mutual friends. Among the things that got me about Wilma were her faith and her prayer life. She hasn’t been that well over the last couple of years, but she was able to pray and she let me know that she was praying for me and my family. One time in particular I remember asking her to pray for a family member and she greatly encouraged me.
Wilma’s health took a turn for the worse in late November. Her daughter called me on January 2nd and has allowed me to tell her story. In sadness, she shared the diagnosis of bone marrow cancer. She said that her Mom was fed up with hospitals and treatment, and was determined that she was going to embrace the next step on her journey. She said this, “Mom just told us that she really, really wants to go home. She wants to be with Jesus, to see Jesus. She isn’t a bit sad. She told her brother, ‘My bags are packed and I’m going home.’” Seventeen days later, her other daughter wrote on Facebook, “All Mom wanted was to go Home to see Jesus and she's there now.” I was reminded of a passage in the Chronicles of Narnia, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life.” What did Paul write, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
That kind of faith makes a massive difference in how we approach and live our lives. It made a massive difference in how Paul approached prison and the threat of death. It is the real stuff of Christianity. Unfortunately many are questioning it these days. Christians, clergy, professors in our theological schools are questioning. Paul may have foreseen this kind of thing when he questioned, “the wisdom of the world.” Christianity, however, did not spread because of a light faith. It did not spread because it was a faith that was palatable to everyone. It spread because it was a radical faith, in a radical God, who engaged the world in a radical way. It grew because the real stuff of Christianity was extraordinary and the promise that nothing would ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Our United Church Creed echoes some of the words that Jean said to the man in palliative care: “We are not alone, we live in God's world… We trust in God… In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone.”
April 9, 1945 - The 39-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose faith had led him to act against Hitler, faced the death penalty. He spent only two days at Flossenburg death camp. The day before his execution, he gave a last sermon and shared God's saving message with the other prisoners in his cell. The next day, he walked calmly to the gallows. The camp doctor who watched the execution would later write his observations: "Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
It is my hope that we never face such things, but it is also my hope that we have a faith that infects every element of our lives and gives us hope no matter what life bring us. It is my hope that, like Paul, we may rejoice in all things.