Philippians 4:4
“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.”
To say that we are living turbulent times is to be guilty at once of a cliché and an understatement. I don’t need to tell you: Peace—both between people and internal—has seldom seemed so elusive. A divisive political discourse, the threat of nuclear war, explosion of racial tensions. And when we think that the worst possible carnage could not be topped, there is another mass shooting worse than the last. On top of that our incessantly plugged-in culture means that there is no time to think but relentless stimuli, much of it designed to appeal to our basest and angriest instincts.
Then, you don’t need someone from Wisconsin to tell you there are the natural disasters – hurricanes, tropical storms, droughts, wildfires. Add to that the trials of work in a changing economy, the troubles of our children and sometimes our parents – and sometimes at the same time.
Where do we find peace in all of this? Who would have thought that the secrets might be found in a letter written two millennia ago by a Jewish missionary imprisoned in Rome for preaching Messiah Jesus? But indeed, having learned the secret of contentment, both in abasement and in abundance, in hardship and happiness, Paul shares his secrets in the 4th chapter of his letter to the Philippians.
I mention the circumstances of Paul’s letter-writing not merely as a matter of historical interest – as though it were a matter of obligation for a New Testament scholar. Rather, grasping the setting in which Paul writes this letter spares us from certain misinterpretations.
If we understand Paul’s circumstances, the peace of which Paul writes simply cannot be the kind of peace gained in the comfort and luxury of disengagement. It is rather the peace in the midst of a storm. The peace that comes from disengagement – hiding ourselves from the world’s trouble – is not peace at all but avoidance, it’s a pseudo-peace. That is not a peace that passes understanding, but a perfectly understandable peace.
No, the peace we need is nothing less than the peace that comes from the God of peace to us in the very midst of the fray. And this is not a peace simply for our comfort, but the peace that we need for our mission. Let me put it this way: According to this letter, God’s project is establishing a counter-cultural community of counter-intuitive persons, who together shine like stars in the midst of what Paul calls a “crooked and depraved generation.” Thus, our mission as people of the gospel depends on our capacity to resist the dark forces that want us to conform. Rom 12 1-2. The peace we need is not a peace we can make for ourselves, indeed, ultimately it is not even a peace for ourselves, but a peace that the world craves but can find nowhere.
Everything in our epistle reading points to this peace. It is the peace that Euodia and Syntyche must make with each other. It is the peace that comes from knowing God is near, watching over us, vindicating us so that our gentleness can be known to all. It is the peace that comes when in prayer we leave our anxieties in the hands the all-knowing and all-loving God. It is the peace that passes human understanding supplied by the God of peace as our gift to share with the world. It is the peace that comes when our minds are fixed on everything honorable, everything right, everything pure, lovely, and gracious, on anything that is excellent and praiseworthy.
It is also, I will submit, a peace that is cultivated in one particular spiritual discipline: Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!
Yes, I said that the way I meant to. “Rejoicing” is a spiritual discipline. It is a choice. Rejoicing is not ultimately an involuntary reflex springing from happy circumstances.
Do you notice that the Apostle commands rejoicing. But, we should ask, how can you command someone to rejoice? What a strange habit the Bible has of commanding attitudes, and feelings, and things that we thought we could not control!
If the instruction to “rejoice” simply means “be happy,” you cannot command it, and it is a command you cannot obey. If rejoicing is simply an emotion, simply a reflex aroused by happy circumstances, then Paul is talking sheer nonsense. And if we think that “rejoicing” is nothing more or less than a directive to “be happy,” our attempts to obediently rejoice will be nothing more than an attempt to pretend to be happy.
But this is not a charge to be hypocrites. The charge to rejoice is not a charge to feign something unreal but rather to affirm something more real than our circumstances. Joy is not the denial of reality but the embracing of a reality much larger than our current circumstances, a reality much larger than what our senses can access, a truth more true than even our minds can conceive.
In his brilliant but not very often read little commentary on Philippians, Karl Barth puts it this way: “Joy is the Christian’s defiant ‘nevertheless’” When our circumstances do not justify happiness, the larger reality of God’s love working out God’s purposes despite and even through our circumstances, evokes from us an unperturbable joy, a “defiant nevertheless.”
This is why Paul, just a few chapters earlier—and Philippians is Paul’s letter of joy par excellence—could say that his response to his chains as he is being held on capital charges with his very life on the line . . . . his is to “rejoice.” “In this – in these chains, facing this death sentence – I rejoice.” And he tells his readers not only that he is rejoicing, but that, come what may, he will continue to rejoice. Rejoicing is a policy; it’s his pledge, it’s the plan. Death will not destroy his joy and a release from prison will not increase it.
Why? How can he say this? His answer is simply this: If I step out of the myopia of my current circumstances, if I lift my eyes from these chains, this is what I see a whole alternative reality. I see on the other end of my fetters, a Roman imperial police guard – actually a rotating series of them – who are stuck with me. I am imprisoned for the gospel, but for the time being they are imprisoned to the gospel. At what should be the very depths of his despair, Paul sees only that God has given him an inroad to the administrative center of the world’s empire. And they are sending me a series of soldiers for me to evangelize. “I could not have made this plan up. What’s not to like?”
Besides that, Paul goes on, there are Christians now running around Rome, seeing what I am suffering for the gospel, and now they also are becoming bold to preach the gospel. “I could not have made this plan up. What’s not to like?”
Beside all that, whether I live or die, I literally cannot lose. “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” To live is to love and to serve God’s people; but then death is my reward, and actually the better of the two options. And the worst outcome is actually the best outcome.
To rejoice, then, is to know that we are in the hands of loving God and we cannot lose. To rejoice is to know that in the face of circumstances we would not choose for ourselves, God is – often mysteriously and in ways we cannot currently understand – working out plans, grand and marvelous. These are plans that we could have never thought of much less chosen for ourselves, but in which the God of peace advances his kingdom makes us to be numbered with his saints.
So, friends – brothers and sisters – “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.” And the God of peace will keep you in the peace of God, which passes all understanding.
Sermon preached by the Dr. Garwood Anderson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
19th Sunday after Pentecost
15 October 2017