Paul's chains rattled as
he shifted in place. He looked across the room at Timothy, pausing
to remember. Paul was sandwiched – chained to – a pair of
guards, who tried their best to tune him out, but who didn't seem to
be doing a very good job of it. “Remember, Timothy?” asked the
apostle. Timothy looked over at the parchment in the hands of the
scribe – they'd just barely started the second sentence – and
knew this might take a while. But it was Paul, after all. So they
remembered. They remembered that march into Philippi for the very
first time, getting the lay of the land in a city with no synagogue.
They remembered finding the place of prayer by the river, and sharing
the good news with Lydia and the other Jewish women gathered there.
And they recalled the season of ministry that came next – having
taken up a place in Lydia's house, how daily they used to go out and
mingle in the marketplace, walk the streets, strike up conversations
with people and point to good news. Here and there, someone would
take an interest, enough to take that leap, to take that dunk in the
river in the Holy Name. And then they'd tell that person to meet
them at Lydia's place the next Sunday morning – and they could meet
the others, and begin celebrating together the Jesus who'd become
their Savior and their Lord.
Of course, it was a
challenge most times to get all this done, with a python-spirit in a
slave-girl screaming behind them, “These men are servants of the
Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation!” It was
not the most helpful advertisement, given the source – designed to
confuse and bewilder rather than impress. They dodged her when they
could, but eventually Paul had gotten so fed up that he exorcised
Apollo from the girl's soul, set her free – and, from the
slave-owners' perspective, broke their most valued asset. No wonder
they'd hauled Paul and Silas to court – just Paul and Silas, as
Timothy and Luke, the team's newest member at the time, had been
evangelizing elsewhere in town, helped by the fledgling members of
the church just planted. Well, Paul and Silas were accused of
causing a disturbance, of being unpatriotic, of being subversives –
so, after a hasty beating by hot-headed Roman patriots deeply
offended by anything that sounded un-Roman, they were thrown into
jail while their case was considered.
Of course, it was all for
the best – that's how the warden and his family found salvation,
and how the gospel began to work on the prisoners caught up in Paul
and Silas' hymns! In the dead of night, after the earthquake, the
warden had taken them to his house, had listened attentively to good
news, had gotten him and his house baptized, had shared a meal with
them. In the morning, when the magistrates ordered their release,
they secured a public apology to hold up the new church's reputation,
and visited with the whole church at Lydia's before leaving town.
They'd left Luke behind to help. Paul remembered how eager the
church had been, even after seeing the bruises and cuts all over him
and Silas – eagerness to take up the baton and run with it. The
warden promptly shared the gospel with those prisoners, announcing
the meaning of all those beautiful hymns. Lydia kept sharing good
news with other merchants. The rest found ways to carry on the
mission, even as Paul had been whisked off to Amphipolis, Apollonia,
and Thessalonica (Acts 16:11-40).
Ever since, the church
had run with that baton. They'd been evangelizing and baptizing and
discipling, and it had grown them over the past nine years from a
single cluster meeting in Lydia's house to a whole network of
churches in houses all over Philippi, each with a pastor and his
assistants, the overseers and their deacons (Philippians 1:1). And
these churches had been praying for their neighbors, praying for
their church, praying for Paul's continued work daily throughout the
years. They'd been taking up regular collections and sending
messengers to bring the proceeds to Paul wherever he was on mission –
more than Paul needed, since he'd learned contentment, but an
undeniable help and a fragrant offering to God (Philippians 4:15-18).
The road had not been easy – they met with plenty of local
hostility, and were suffering much like Paul was – but in the midst
of that, they'd sent their leading pastor to go help Paul in Rome and
carry their latest gift! And so when Paul looked back on all this,
from the very start of his mission there to the present day, Paul was
joyful, even while under Roman house arrest. He thanked God every
time he thought of the Philippian churches, he prayed for them every
time he prayed, he missed them like family, loved them affectionately
in Christ, was confident of the consistent growth he saw in them
(Philippians 1:3-4, 6-8). And why all that? Because they had
established with him a full-fledged
“partnership in the gospel from the first day until now”
(Philippians 1:5)
And that's the key phrase
right there. What did it mean to Paul for them to have a
“partnership in the gospel”?
On the one hand, it meant that they were co-owners, co-recipients,
co-sharers of something. They had been given the gift – yes, the
gift – of being able to suffer for Jesus, “engaged in
the same conflict you saw I had and now hear that I still have”
(Philippians 1:29-30). When the crockpot of suffering for Jesus was
hauled to the table, they brought their plates to the line, same as
Paul. They accepted a portion, doled out from the same pot, of those
very flavors. But the same fellowship-meal line was the line for
grace, an even bigger pot! And having accepted their spoonfuls of
suffering, they all shared in the grace that God poured over: “You
are all partakers with me of grace”
(Philippians 1:7), Paul mentions. They all eat from the same pots.
They eat together. They aren't concerned to customize their dishes
to their own tastes. They all want what Paul's having. And they
want to eat it together, pain and grace alike. They want to go
through it together. Our Christian lives are not about pursuing our
own paths, focusing on our own spiritual stomachs. Our Christian
lives are about the experiences we share,
the things we participate in together,
the sustenance we draw from a common pot.
The
language Paul's using here – 'partnership'
– suggests the picture, though, of a business partnership. That's
the picture Paul presents. He says that all the Philippian churches
have formed a business partnership with him, in the gospel business,
the Jesus business. In the Roman world, a business partnership was a
contract between a group of people, who all had to trust each other
and all had to contribute somehow. There could be no heritable
membership, nothing automatic; a partner had to be welcomed in by the
whole partnership to join. But once in, each partner contributed,
each partner kept faith. And for Paul, the gospel had become a
family business for the Philippians and him. Each contributed
prayers, each contributed their own witness, each contributed as able
to the financial support of the work Paul did and the work Philippi's
local church leaders did. And as a church network, they'd gone above
and beyond in lending Epaphroditus to shore up Paul's work-from-home
gospel ministry in Rome. It was a business partnership in the gospel
business, and they kept the faith. And the Apostle Paul was mighty
pleased, was downright tickled pink, to be in business with the likes
of them.
Would
he say the same about us, I wonder? What would it take for us to
meet the measure of the Philippian standard? We, as a church, are
called to participate in such a business partnership in the gospel
business – we have affiliate franchises in other churches, but here
in our neck of the woods, it falls to us to go into the gospel
business, the good news business. And I wonder if sometimes we
aren't so bogged down by the bad news of the world that we lose sight
of the hope we're called to deliver. Or perhaps sometimes we try to
be free-riders – either hoard the product to ourselves, or hold
back the investments we could be making, not just of funding but
(more importantly) of prayer and encouragement and labor! But when
it comes to a partnership in the gospel, each of us would have to
contribute, each of us would have to keep faith, each of us would
have to set our heart on bringing a profit of hearts to Jesus – and
not just the hearts of individuals, but the hearts of communities and
cultures. When we were baptized, we signed a contract to do just
that. What would a church like that look like, a church of fully
engaged business partners in the gospel, sharing our resources and
abilities to the enterprise, each totally invested in the gospel and
in its delivery throughout our neighborhood? Over the following
months – as we reflect on Paul's letter to the Philippians, a
letter from a political prisoner to a deeply politicized city –
we'll consider how to pursue the good news business in a chaotic and
politicized culture. Because even when the world is as it is, the
good news of Jesus is in business.
I
propose we launch just such a business partnership, as it were – a
partnership in the good news business, right here, right now. I
propose we each recognize ourselves as having more to invest than we
realize. And I suggest that the benefits we'll receive, our treasure
stored up in heaven, will have a rate of return on investment that
more than justifies it all. For Christ has died, Christ is risen,
Christ will come again with crowns in hand. And until then, we
proclaim these truths in one other form of gospel partnership –
that of dinner partners, fellow-diners at the Table of the Lord.
Paul says elsewhere, “The
cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a partnership in the blood
of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a partnership in the
body of Christ? … Are not those who eat the sacrifices
participants,”
partners, “in
the altar?”
(1 Corinthians 10:16, 18). We are partners indeed – every time we
sit down to this meal, every time we receive Christ in the flesh and
blood, every time our plates are filled from the same holy altar,
every time we pile high the brokenness and bloodshed of Jesus,
smothered with grace. We are called to deliver life-changing good
news. Let's begin by remembering how it tastes.
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