December 5, 2021 “Time for Knowledge” – Philippians 1:3-11

Philippians 1:3-11
“Time for Knowledge”
December 5, 2021 – Second Sunday in Advent

This past year, my wife Beth finished a project she started 43 years ago. The year before we were married, inspired by beautiful medieval illuminated manuscripts, Beth took a nicely bound book of blank pages and began to copy texts and poems she loves and then to illuminate the pages around them. Yet along the way of marriage, children, being a pastor’s wife, and teaching college classes, that volume she had begun was boxed up and set aside. There were pages containing text but no illustrations and even a few blank pages.

Yet this year, with more time made available by COVID-19 and less of a teaching load, Beth was again inspired to take colored pencils in hand and complete the work she began. It was also a labor of love, because she hoped to pass the book on to our oldest daughter when we visited her in England two months ago. Beth accomplished that goal, dotted the final “i,” drew the last picture, took photos of every page, and handed the book to Susan when we arrived. She who began a good work was faithful to complete it.

Confidence in that kind of faithfulness on God’s part is what inspired Paul with joy as he began his letter to the church in Philippi. As we’ll focus on next week, this epistle is perhaps the most upbeat of all Paul’s letters. It mentions “joy” in every chapter, a total of sixteen times. The Philippians received a kind, affectionate and thankful greeting from Paul despite the fact that his beginning with the church there was small and hard.

It’s not always easy to coordinate Luke’s chronology of Paul’s church planting with what Paul himself says about it in his letters. Yet in Acts 16 we find Paul making the first Christian contact there in Philippi not with other Jewish people in the synagogue as usual—there was no large Jewish population or synagogue in Philippi—but with a devout Gentile woman who worshipped the true God. Lydia and her household believed in Jesus, were baptized, and became the nucleus of a new church there in the northeast corner of Greece.

Yet Paul and Silas were quickly thrown into jail in Philippi and then asked to leave the city. The jailer and his family also became Christians, but his and Lydia’s households were all there was to a church in Philippi when the apostles were forced to depart. Now as Paul writes to that church a few years later, he is once again in jail, as you can see in verse 7. Paul is in prison, writing to what started as a tiny church in a place where he was also jailed. Yet God has made it possible for him to think of them with thankfulness and joy, and, in verse 6, to be confident that God will complete the work which God began in Philippi.

The first thing I noticed as I began to prepare this text is that, when I came here to Valley Covenant 28 years ago, people here expressed that same kind of confidence Paul felt for Philippi. Like the Philippian church, they had gotten off to a rocky start. After an initial small beginning and a period of about three years, they pretty much started over with the second pastor who stayed much longer. But when he left, shortly after the construction of this building, everything was again in doubt, including the church’s ability to pay the mortgage on the building. Yet over and over, it seemed, those who led our music then would have us repeat the praise song we sang this morning, based on verse 6: “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it…”

In Advent we express our hope for the completion of that which takes longer than the lifetime of any single church community. In our texts today, Malachi looked forward to it as he envisioned a refining and purification of the Jewish people so that their offerings would be pleasing to God. John the Baptist look toward a world that was leveled out, the mountains brought down and the valleys raised up, so that the good news of God might come to everyone. And Zechariah’s song from Luke 1 was about a Savior who would set people free and shine light into all the darkness.

As Paul says there in verse 6, “the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” In Christian theology we often speak of the work of Jesus as already complete. And from one perspective that is true. By dying on the cross and then rising from the dead, Jesus did everything needed to assure our salvation. His sacrifice and new life offers you and me the forgiveness and the transforming power to be saved.

Yet from another perspective the good work begun in Philippi, in Valley Covenant Church, in you and me, is not yet completed. It won’t be finished until “the day of Jesus Christ,” the day He returns again and makes this world fully and completely into His kingdom.

It’s like that chart hanging over there, the one Kim made donations to our Stand in the Gap campaign. It’s at 103% of the goal. According to the chart, the project is complete. We have everything we need to make the planned repairs to our building and to give a tithe of that to people who need help with housing. Yet from another point of view, the project is obviously not finished at all; it really hasn’t even begun. We need to order materials, start lining up contractors, and get ready to start pulling off old siding and windows and replacing them. In that way the project won’t be done until sometime next year.

Likewise, God’s project in us has barely begun. Yes, Jesus has provided everything necessary to see it through to completion. We gather around the Table of His Body and Blood to celebrate and receive again what He donated, what He sacrificed to repair us and make us complete. But the very fact that we will pray a prayer of confession as we come to the Table reminds us that the work in us is not complete. You and I have far to go before we are what Paul desires for the Philippians in verses 10 and 11, “pure and blameless having produced a harvest of righteousness.”

That’s why it might be good to take what Paul says in verse 7 about being in prison as more than just a bit of history about when he wrote this letter. He says, “It is right for me to think this way of you…,” to be thankful for them and joyful about them, being confident that God will finish His work in them. Why is it right? Paul says, “because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.”

Paul is confident that what God started in the Philippians will be fulfilled because he knows it is all a matter of grace. They share in grace with him, even as he is confined, perhaps in house arrest in Rome. The missionary who brought them the good news of Jesus is in jail. If what he started is going to be finished, it will only be by grace, not by human effort alone. And the way to recognize that is to share God’s grace with each other not only in joy but in trials, caring for and remembering those who are literally in prison and in places in life that are like prison.

That canticle from Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, says more than once that God came to set His people free. The Philippians, Paul wrote, held him in their hearts even while he was in jail, waiting for the Lord to set him free. They shared in the grace of Jesus Christ even across the physical and social distance of his incarceration. As he acknowledges at the end of the letter, they sent him financial help. That sharing between the Philippians and Paul is an example for us now that the grace of Jesus is meant to bring people together in help to each other in all the struggles and trials of life.

Which is why we are giving part of our repair project to people currently without places to live. It is why one of the ways to be a true St. Nicholas is to offer a gift to someone in need in our community or elsewhere in the world. Gifts through Covenant World Relief in our Covenant Cares catalog or the World Relief catalog of aid donations or to children and families through India Partners or through the Eugene Mission or other fine agencies here in our community are all ways to share in grace with someone who may feel like he or she is in prison. And some of those we serve will be like a man I met in our parking lot this week, fresh out of prison and trying to find his way.

In verse 8, Paul points to that which is to move us forward in letting the Lord complete His work in us. He declares, “For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.” That compassion, the love of Jesus, is what motivates Paul to write letters from prison instead of just stewing in his own misery. And that same sort of compassionate love is what he wants for the Philippians. Just as we heard him say to the Thessalonians last week, it is love, in verse 9, which is his prayer for the church in Philippi, “that your love may overflow more and more…” But then Paul adds something you might not expect, “…with knowledge and full insight…”

Your heart may be full of compassion and love. You may be more than ready to share in grace with someone in need. But you don’t know how to go about it. All that list of good causes, even the Christian ones, can be daunting and confusing. One of you called Beth this past week, asking, “Is this really a good organization to which to give?” And on top of all that, we all are painfully aware of how difficult it can be sometimes to know how to love someone, maybe someone who doesn’t even seem to want to be loved.

So Paul prays for Christian love to overflow with knowledge and insight. Why? “…to help you determine what is best…” In all our attempts to show love and compassion, some information and understanding will add a lot. When it’s time for love, it is also a time for knowledge.

That’s why in our compassionate desire to show love in response to the pain of Black people and others last year, some of us in Valley Covenant spent time reading books and watching videos and then discussing them. We wanted to add informed knowledge to the empathy and love we were feeling for mothers who lose sons to police actions or for children seeking asylum at our southern border or for women and children in places like Haiti or Afghanistan trying to escape danger and violence. We desperately want to do something, but we need to know what is best to do.

Even in our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ from other ethnicities and cultures, our love needs some knowledge, some understanding. Sara Shin in her book Beyond Colorblind explains that it’s not enough just to say that color or race doesn’t matter to you, that you treat everyone the same. The reality is that, speaking generally, if you try to relate, in a meeting for instance, to Black people the same way you relate to Asian people, you will very likely offend someone or leave someone out of the discussion.

Spending time to understand and get to know something about people of a different color or ethnic background will teach you that you may have to relate to, speak to, and treat some people differently in order to love them, in order to truly respect who they are, in order to share in the grace of Jesus with them.

A couple of months ago the executive minister of Covenant ministry, the person who is pastor to all Covenant pastors, announced that he would not seek a second term in his position when elections are held again in June. I’ve had the privilege to serve on a resource paper writing team with that man. Lance is an African-American and fine Christian leader. But something was clearly wrong for him in his position. Then this past week, Lance sent a letter to us all saying he is not even going to finish his term, but is resigning as of January.

I do not know exactly what happened, but the letter cited racism and other divisions in the Covenant. As a Christian body deeply committed to being multi-ethnic and wishing to reflect the kingdom of God, we’ve tried hard to welcome people of color into places of leadership, but there are apparently still things about that which we do not understand, which we do not know. Paul was praying for us too, that our “love may overflow more and more with knowledge and insight,” to help us determine what is best. We clearly do not yet know what is best.

So last week I said it is a time for love. To that, this week, I add that it is a time also for knowledge. True love will want to know and understand those we are trying to love. True love will diligently inform itself and seek out what is best for those we love instead of just what might make us feel good in doing or simply be convenient. True love will want to be more like God’s love, which is not mere compassion but is genuine knowledge of each and every person He loves.

Once again, Zechariah sang to the baby who became John the Baptist that he would “give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” The love is the heart of it, God’s grace and forgiveness. Yet that love goes out into the world when there is knowledge and understanding, when you and I take up that mission given to John. Let us try by the grace of Jesus Christ both to love and to know those around us. Then we will be much more able to discern what is best. Then, when Jesus arrives again as He surely will, we will see that “harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

Amen.