9 October 2011
Philippians 4: 1 – 9

The lectionary reading for today is full of Paul’s most eloquent and memorable sayings.

  “Whatsoever things are true …  The peace of God which passes understanding…  In nothing be anxious….”  etc.

It is rewarding for us moderns to remember the circumstances under which Paul wrote this letter, and it is terribly relevant to today’s situation in the United States of America.

Philippi was a small city some several miles inland, in Macedonia. Paul founded the church during one of his earliest European adventures. The city was named after Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.  It was founded on the very site of the famous Roman battle won by Julius Caesar’s avengers.  After Paul, it fades from history.

When Paul and Barnabas began their missionary journeys, they always went to the local synagogue in order to present the Gospel of Jesus to the Jews first.  There being no synagogue in Philippi, Paul found the Jews gathering on the riverbank, so went there to present his message.

We should note that Paul and Barnabas, on their earliest missionary journeys, followed a structured plan in each city they came to.  They would go to the chief city of each district, in the Empire, where they established an organized church.  They always offered their Gospel first to the Jews, thus remembering the claims of Israel.  Their churches were always a combination of Jews and Gentiles, and Jew and Gentile were considered as equals in each community.  The Mosaic law was not considered mandatory.  Everywhere they went they carried their story of Jesus life, teaching, death, and resurrection. They instructed their converts in the duties of the new community, and laid the foundation for a subsequent Christian life.  They spoke and taught in everyday street language Greek, koine.

From the earliest expansion of Christianity into Judea by the original apostles and disciples of Jesus, there developed the office of Elder.  This soon became synonymous with “ruling elder”. This leadership was chosen by the community itself, and was responsible for administrative oversight and the teaching of the doctrines governing the life of the community.  These elders were never charged with priestly functions, it being regarded as secondary to the oversight of the elders.  This was an important development, springing from the fact that the Jewish communities  --to which the early disciples and Paul and Barnabas subsequently went to spread the Gospel--  were organized in synagogues …   namely, as the name suggests, places where people “came together” to be “taught” doctrine, and be supported in their faith. The temple was in Jerusalem, and it was the place where a male, priestly caste had sacrificed animals to Jehovah for centuries.

It is little wonder, then, that we read of so many women in Paul’s Epistles, and the Book of Acts, for women often were elected ruling elders of their congregation.  It took no time at all for the Christian community to challenge the subjugation of women in the common life of the cities, where the new communities of believers had been planted.

The Bible, like secular history, was written by men.  And we have to look deeply into the Scriptures if we want to learn more about the way the early Christians really lived.  The fact that Paul mentions so many women in his epistles is a sure sign that they held leadership roles in then early Church.  It was not until three centuries later, when Constantine the Great embraced the Christian religion, that is to say  -when the Culture embraced the new Religion--   that women began to be silenced. By this time, Christianity had gone from a small sect, to the official religion of empire.  And therefore took on the sexism of the prevailing culture.  (We learn from secular sources that in the Third Century Bishop Priscilla ruled her diocese...).

In his letter to the Christian community in Philippi, Paul takes great pains, through eloquent and graceful language, to urge the healing of a rift between two leaders of the congregation, both of whom are women.  Paul is in prison, and sends his trusted young assistant, Timothy, to Philippi, with this Epistle urging the two factions of the Philippians to be reconciled to each other.  The rift must have been deep and hurtful to the common life of the community.  The issue between them was the perfectibility of the individual Christian, and Paul  --knowing well the human condition--  urges that “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are beautiful …. think on these things….  In nothing be anxious….”

The issue dividing the congregation at Philippi was typical of the struggles of the early churches, to find a consensus with regard to daily Christian living.  The fact that women played such an important role in these early congregations is illustrated by the fact that circumcision was almost immediately dropped as a requirement for individuals in the community.  Other issues needing resolution were the Mosaic dietary law, observance of the Sabbath, and other traditions taken over from previous Jewish practices.

From its inception the early Church has been an arena in which, --in addition to its spiritual content--   social and political questions have been settled.   As the Church spread throughout the Empire, these struggles within the Church affected the common life of the early Christians and spilled over into the life of the community at large.

Religious institutions in this nation have served a variety of interests:  preservation of ethnic traditions, helping people of different heritage become assimilated into one culture, focus on the individual needs of members, helping to build community, etc.  Some religious institutions see themselves as limited to serving individual needs; others see themselves as serving a religiously based social purpose.  The complexity of functions served by religious institutions in our society offer a richness without which America would be the poorer.

One result of this diversity is an absence of a widely accepted definition of the place that religion plays in the overall structure of our common life.  Some interpret the First Amendment as proscribing any purposeful relationship between religion and public life.  Religious congregations are seen as no more than private organizations seeking their own interests in a competitive environment, no different from private clubs.

In contrast to this view is another tradition, the Reformed tradition, which maintains a public purpose for religious  bodies.  Since the beginning of the American experiment, Protestant denominations have been centers which generate public life.  At their most faithful, they have answered neither to the needs of government nor to the needs of commerce and industry.  But rather to a vision for humanity that both transcends and informs contemporary life.  They are, at their best, free associations rooted in the experience of the people, and the faith, committed to the betterment of the whole human condition.  These communities of faith help set the moral standards of the wider society, and undergirded that society with the faith that freedom takes:  the responsibility of each citizen to the commonweal, and the commonweal to each citizen.  In an earlier America, the purpose of liberty and the practice of freedom were not to effect regime change in some foreign land, but rather to create a public arena in which citizens could band together to forge a commonwealth.

Over the years, religious denominations  -- Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish-- have played their public role with various degrees of faithfulness.  In past generations, they founded  orphanages, settlement houses, and helped to create the public education system, and hospitals, the bedrock of our healthcare system.  Recall St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian, Lutheran Hospital, and Mt. Sinai.   They invented and built institutions of higher learning that had religious origins –such familiar and prestigious names as Oberlin, Kenyon, Haverford, Macalester, and Wheaton, to name only a few.

Recent events of the “Arab Spring” remind us of the coercive power of state repression against the will of the people, and public power that can be wielded by religiously motivated and aroused citizens.  It was this principle that informed the framers of our democratic politics:  the authority of the people, exercised in terms of constitutional principles, is the basis for the conduct of government.  Religious institutions today are challenged to a particular vocation: our cities and small towns, and rural areas, dramatize the tensions within our society;  great disparities between wealth and poverty, racial, ethnic and religious tension, the shrinking ability of governments to assist people in need, particularly children, the homeless, and the mentally ill.  The crisis of urban education, the growing pervasiveness of drugs, the threat of AIDS, the mounting evidence of structural connections between factors of race, poverty, unemployment, and disease, the worsening assault on the environment, the use of prisons as warehouses  --these conditions threaten not only the communities in which they abound, but the vitality of the democratic process itself.  Decreasing opportunities for significant portions of the population can only fracture the integrity of our public life, setting off a war of all against all.

 “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have sent you.  And pray for it.  For in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  This advice to the exiled Jews in the sixth century BCE by the prophet Jeremiah serves as well for us in the Twenty-First century, CE.  Religious institutions for which the Hebrew and Christian scriptures provide direction, have a particular vocation:  to address the needs of the poor and the outcast, not only for their sakes, but for the welfare and well-being of the common life of us all.

In pursuit of this goal, our faith will of necessity rub up against some deeply held assumptions in both government and corporate life.  For example, the assumption that all public life is the responsibility of governments is one of questionable historical validity.   Democratic governments depend upon a vigorous public, but have limited capacities for producing publics.  From the perspective of corporations, the idea of the citizen as little more than a consumer in a competitive market dominates the prevailing culture.  Easily forgotten is the principle articulated by Adam Smith, that  “the value of markets is not to meet the demands of individuals, but rather to serve the common good.”  The common good is the goal of a democratic society.

And the common good is the public vocation of any church.

Amen.