Philippians 1:1-11
Tonight’s Evening of Worship and Celebration began with your district executive council reading and discussing Philippians, chapter 1.
Things happen when God’s Word comes to us.
Something happened at this executive council meeting.
Saint John’s pastor, Brian McGee, suggested that we have an event to worshipfully celebrate the partnership we have as congregations of the North American Lutheran Church in southwest Ohio.
We loved the idea!
And, in good church fashion, the person who had the idea was delegated with executing the idea. So here we are.
We have a lot to celebrate.
We began our life as a district, under Pastor Dan Powell’s leadership, by gathering about 90 to 100 representatives from our congregations to prayerfully discern what God was calling us to do as a district over our first few years. The results are reflected even in the line items of our district budget.
We have an annual youth retreat for the young people of our congregations. (The next one’s happening on April 17, 18, and 19, 2020.)
We have events to strengthen the lives of our congregations, like the retreat for all congregational church councils happening on January 11 of next year.
We’ve had events on discipleship too.
Your pastors get together every other month around God’s Word, sharing and praying. I feel blessed to be part of this district.
Which leads us to today and back to the first chapter of the apostle Paul’s letter to the first-century Christians in the Greek city of Phillippi. It was written in about 60 AD and, at the time, Paul was thought to be imprisoned in Ephesus.
In those days, government authorities who held prisoners didn’t provide food for the internees. Prisoners were locked away, unable to do anything that might bring them some money to buy food. Philippian Christians sent one of their members a distance of about 250 miles, to take money to Paul so that the apostle could eat.
And so, Paul’s letter is filled with thankfulness to the Phillippian Christians for their growing faith in Jesus and for their partnership with him and with the whole Church in the gospel.
If you have a Bible close at hand, take a look at where Paul specifically mentions that in the passage of Scripture just read to us by Pastor Hohulin. Philippians 1:3-5: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…”
The word translated here as partnership is, in the Greek language in which Paul and the other New Testament writers wrote, is κοινωνίᾳ. It’s usually translated as fellowship, which we in the Church usually use to describe get togethers over food. (Or ice cream sundaes.)
This kind of koinonia is good for Christians to enjoy together. As King David writes in Psalm 133:1, “How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity!” The mission of the Church--being and making disciples of Jesus Christ--is facilitated by the unity of the Church strengthened by fellowship.
But the word koinonia was originally used of business partnerships. Business partnerships happen when partners realize that they need to work together to accomplish what they can’t accomplish separately. Business partnerships entail shared risks, shared work, shared accountability, shared results, and, in really good partnerships, shared joy in fulfillment.
It’s this aspect of our koinonia as congregations in the Southwest Ohio Mission District, this partnership in the Gospel, as well as our fellowship as fellow believers, that we’re celebrating today.
Our partnership in the gospel differs from business partnerships in three ways, I think. I want to talk about those three ways briefly now.
The first way is that the aim of this partnership isn’t to make a profit, but to make disciples. “Go and make disciples of all nations.” This is the purpose Jesus has given you and me in the Great Commission. Our partnership--our unity--in the Gospel is rooted in Christ Himself. Disciples reflect Christ and share Christ.
In some church bodies today, unity is less about being united with Christ and His saving gospel than it is about unity around a set of social and political propositions. True Christian unity is built around the Gospel Word of new and everlasting life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Period.
There are other partnerships in the world and they can be useful. But our partnership is about working together and helping one another in making disciples of Jesus.
What God is teaching us in our North American Lutheran Church and here in southwestern Ohio is that, to make disciples, we need to be disciples, people who are being daily transformed by the Gospel Word through the reading of Scripture, hearing the Word preached, taught and shared among friends, and receiving that Word in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
Our partnership reflects Christ living in and among us.
The second way our partnership in the Gospel differs from other partnerships is that it’s created, not by us, but by the Holy Spirit.
Faith in a crucified and risen Savior isn’t something a human being dreamed up. It’s so outrageous to imagine that the God of all creation, saddened that our sin would only bring us death and wanting to save us from ourselves, would take the dramatic step of becoming one of us, lead a sinless life, die on a cross to take the punishment for sin we deserve, and rise from the dead to give forgiveness and new life to all who repent and believe in Him. A love that deep, that pure, that saving, is beyond human imagination.
Our capacity to believe this good news comes from God. In Ephesians 2:8, we’re told, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…”
Martin Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed says, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith…”
The operating question in most human partnerships--even in many marriages and families--is, “What’s in it for me?” The operating question in the partnership in the Gospel given to us by the Holy Spirit, is, “How can we follow Christ individually, as congregations, and as congregations bound together?”
That we even care about this question is a sure sign that the Holy Spirit has created an outrageous faith in Christ’s outrageous Gospel within and among us.
Finally, our partnership in the Gospel allows us to affirm both the ways we are different and the ways we are the same.
Some partnerships demand uniformity.
When I worked fast food in high school, a representative from the company that sold my boss his franchise, came by to make sure that we were using the same hamburgers as everyone else, the same milkshake mix with the same quantity of mix and water as everyone else, the same coffee and french fries as everyone else, and so on.
In our congregations, we’re encouraged to use our different gifts and different passions for the good of the one mission we’re on as people of “one faith, one Lord, one Baptism.”
The same is true of our varied congregations: We have different styles of worship, different favorite hymns and praise songs, different pastoral styles. We all have unique contributions to make to the mission of being and making disciples.
Lutherans have always seen such diversity within our unity as a sign of strength. Article VII of The Augsburg Confession, a foundational statement of faith for Lutherans, says: “For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions...or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere.”
Tonight we celebrate our partnership in the Gospel, that we are people with a common Lord, a common faith, and a common mission. In that partnership, God may call us to new joint ventures of faith. (I have one such new venture in mind that I’ve been praying over and will share soon.)
But for now, let’s celebrate who God has called us to be together...and, in a short time, share in some fellowship together over those ice cream sundaes. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I also serve as dean of the Southwest Ohio Mission District, North American Lutheran Church, in which capacity I was asked to share this message.]
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