From time to time there is a monumental event that changes the conversations of a given community.  Perhaps monumental is a strong word, but it can seem that way.  An elderly couple living their whole life on very little wins the lottery and everyone is talking.  “Did you hear about Will and Fran?”  “Yeah, 127 million dollars.”  “They deserve it more than anyone.  What do you think they’ll do with it?”  “I don’t know,” another says.  Long lost grandchildren come out of the dark trying to reconnect with their grandparents they deemed obsolete until now.  Everybody’s talking.

 

A teenager of a prominent family in the church gets pregnant and people are buzzing.  Did you hear about Jaime?  Poor thing…she’s a sweet girl but not very responsible.  Does she even know who the father is?  I wonder if her parents will raise the baby.  I’m on the board with her dad and he didn’t even mention it at the meeting.  I bet they’re trying to keep it quiet.  You are going to be at church this Sunday aren’t you?  Come Sunday and the church is packed…you’d think it was Easter.  People are buzzing.

There are times when everyone is having the same silent conversation.  A student goes to school with a loaded gun and murders classmates and teachers.  Sunday school lessons and small group Bible study groups put the curriculum on hold…it just doesn’t seem fitting.  Most sit in silence, usually staring at the Christ candle lit and placed in the middle of the circle.  No one really knows what to say.    “How could this happen?” one thinks.  “Why didn’t someone do something to prevent this?” another thinks.  “There can’t be a God in this kind of world,” as another sits in disbelief.  Everyone’s thinking about the same thing.

 

Prestigious college coaches leave for the pros and then pull out of their multi-million dollar contracts only to return to the same college team.  Simon and Garfunkel release yet another “Best of…album”.  A sixty-year old woman gives birth to twins.  Everyone’s talking about it.  “Maybe it’s the end times,” someone says.  “I heard that preacher talk about all of these strange things happening towards the end and I think this is it.”   

Occasionally there are just things that happen that get a community thinking with the same mind…sharing in the same conversation.  That is what is happening in a little church in Philippi.  On Sunday morning the little community gathers and people are talking… “Our minister is in jail.  Paul is in prison.”  Did you hear what they did to him?  Just awful.  Many are in tears.  The activists in the church are already planning the “Free Paul” rallies.  The ornery deacon’s kid is passing around Paul’s mug shot that he cut out of the newspaper.  They knew exactly where the prison was.  We don’t.  They know why he was being held.  We aren’t told.  It wasn’t a lively service, I imagine.  Most were thinking about Paul and the fact that he was not with them.  Many chatted after the service, recalling times they had with Paul.  “I remember when he baptized me…I got water in my nose.”  “When my mother died, Paul was the one who helped me get through it.”  “I remember when Paul stayed up all night with the men’s group roasting the lamb for the all church festival.”  A staff associate added, “He was my mentor.” People told stories like they do at funerals.  Some couldn’t imagine going on without him.

 

I remember holding my grandfather when his wife of fifty-seven years, my grandmother, passed from this life.  He was a small man of fragile body in his final years.  He was a strong man of faith who loved God more than anyone I knew.  Even so, his eyes said it all…his life was buried with her…he didn’t know what to do without her. So it was, for some, with Paul.    

 

Many of the kids in the Philippian church were oblivious to what was going on….they didn’t know any different.  Some, however, were asking their parents about it.  “Why is Pastor Paul in jail, Mommy?”  Some parents tried to explain but there wasn’t really any explanation that made sense.  Paul was as faithful as anyone and yet was facing a great deal of persecution.  It is like trying to explain war to a child.  Or cancer…or poverty…or calculus.  We can try but there is not much sense to make of it. 

Life is hard…unfair…and when we join the Christian ranks, we are usually asking for it to get harder.  When Paul said “to live is Christ” he knew that would mean he would have it rough…he would share in the suffering of Christ.  However, we can easily get skewed in our thinking these days…assuming that a life of faith is an easy life.  David Fairchild, a pastor, said it this way, “We should have instinctively known life would be difficult. We were pulled out of a nice warm place, buck naked, in front of strangers, and probed until we cried. That theme repeats itself for the next several decades.”[1]  Paul knew this about life; about its lack of justice and about the Christians’ call to bear the cross as Jesus did. 

 

Paul is in jail and I’m sure the days were restless.  Paul was a go-getter, traveling everywhere with his work that he was so passionate about.  There were day trips, week long trips, conferences.  He had a number of frequent-sandal miles saved up.  I’m sure his pastoral relations committee asked him to slow down…he might burn out…but he kept going.  Now he’s in jail.  I’m sure he paced back and forth for most of the first week.  There was probably a trench along the wall where he walked back and forth.  He was antsy, asking if he could check his email messages, wondering if there was any news about this person who had been sick or that committee that was meeting to work on the design of the new church building.  I bet it took time for him to realize he would be stuck there for a while.  When that sank in, he decided to write.  Just because I’m away doesn’t mean that the gospel should suffer, he thinks.  So he writes letters.  

He sends one to this little church in Philippi who is concerned about making it while he is gone.  The evangelism team wonders if people will quit coming to the church while he is away.  One mother wonders who will officiate at her daughter’s wedding ceremony.  Another wonders if there will still be a newsletter put out each month.  The elders were wondering who would keep the church members in line that always want to cause trouble.  The stewardship chair was concerned that giving would be down.  Everyone’s talking…Paul is writing.

 

The church received the letter and I imagine they were excited (and a bit frightened) at the sight of it.  The president of the congregation opened it and read it to the Board.  “This is probably worth everyone hearing”, they decide, so she reads it to the people the following weekend in worship. You’ve heard it already.  It was read just a little bit ago but allow me to paraphrase a little. 

 

Friends at Philippi…it’s me Paul.  Quit worrying about me!  I am not the church.  I appreciate your concern and certainly your prayers.  If you are wondering how I am, I am doing fine.  I am alive and for me to be alive is another day I have to honor Christ.  I am ready for anything; however…death does not scare me. There are hard days for sure…times that I go nuts sitting in this cell…times when I am not treated well…times when I would rather just go on to be with Christ in heaven.  But I am convinced that God still has a purpose for me to live…and I am convinced I will share in ministry with you again.  Until then, take me off your mind.  The church is built around a man but that man is not me.  Jesus is the center of the church.  I am in prison…Jesus is not.  Whether I am serving next to you or praying for you from a distance, be the church…be the community of God.  Praise God in worship, serve in the soup kitchens, get involved in study groups, stand side by side striving for justice.  I know some are doubting you can persevere while I’m away but prove them wrong.  Invite your friends to worship, care for those in the hospital, join the church, get involved, give like you have never given before.  Two things are essential to the church:  Jesus Christ and human need.  We are made up of the rich and poor, the married, divorced, single, healthy, sick, all the colors of the human race, old and young, sinful, gifted, courageous, shy, meek, the outspoken and those without a voice, and everything in between.  We are the church.  We have the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but carrying his burden as we carry the burdens of one another.  The church has to be the gospel for all of these people…we are to be such a church. 

 

The president of the congregation then sat down and a conversation was had in silence again.   One by one they looked across the congregation at faces of those who had supported them through difficult times.  There were others that they had seen week in and week out but hadn’t bothered to meet, “Maybe I’ll do that today,” one thought.  There was the man who just got divorced…I wonder how he is doing.  And that woman over there has been really going through some serious health issues…maybe I could help.  Maybe those noisy teenagers are just waiting for me to listen to them.  There were empty spaces in the pews around them too…who was missing that needed to be a part of this community?  While they couldn’t see it before, human need was everywhere and it had never been more obvious.

 

Fred Craddock, a brilliant preacher from our own Disciples tradition, remembers a conference he took part in a number of years ago at Clemson University.  Before he gave his lecture that evening, a young woman from the university stepped up to the microphone to set the tone for the night.  She stepped up with a yellow legal pad full of writing and Fred recalled thinking, “Well, here we go…we’re here all night.”  “Everybody has one sermon,” he said.

 

She was very soft spoken and honestly, he was having trouble hearing her at first.  He strained to hear and it actually sounded as if she was reading in another language.  She was, he decided,…and then another language and another…on and on; language after language.  “I lost count,” he said.  But I caught a little German…there was French…maybe Italian.  He couldn’t be sure.  After saying the same phrase over and over again in sixty or seventy languages she finally offered it in English.  She said, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”  Craddock had prepared this tremendous lecture to offer.  He was going to give them this theological discourse on something “really important”.  But in that moment he realized that all that needed to be said was said.

Craddock recalled seeing a billboard on the way home that night which read, “All you can eat buffet…$5.99” but he couldn’t get out of his head, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”[2]  Human need is everywhere in every language. 

 

Pastor Paul is away.  It is really in his absence that the strength of his ministry is demonstrated.  And while the people of the church are anxious, concerned for him and concerned for their own needs, they get it.  They were caught up in the gossip for a moment.  They were caught up in fear for a time.  But they read Paul’s letter again and they got it.  Paul says, “You have Christ and all of these human needs…you have all you need to be the church.”      

 

I’m not sure what you are thinking this morning…what question is on your mind…what experience has our church talking about the same thing.  I could say, I suppose, but I don’t think I need to.  For whatever we face, whatever comes our way, whomever we see when we look around us in this moment and whomever we don’t see…whatever it is, we have Christ and we have need for one another…we have all we need to be the church, too.

---