September 18 - Proper 20, Year A (RCL)
A few years ago
I had the privilege
of visiting Rome.
We were there for the consecration of a bishop for the American Episcopal Churches in Europe,
but in between the celebrations,
there was time for some tourist stuff.
We did the usual - the Vatican, Colosseum, forum, catacombs,
but when I’d read some guidebooks in advance, I’d come across one less known place, called Tre Fontane - Three Fountains.
It was outside the city
and by the time I’d caught the train, a bus, and then walked through
some fairly run down and dilapidated areas.
I was beginning to wonder
if I had made a mistake.
But finally I came to it: a huge arched gateway
planted around with eucalyptus,
Tre Fontane Abbey,
and inside the Church of St. Paul of Three Fountains.
Legend has it
that it was in this place
that the apostle Paul
was beheaded -
ad when his head was severed from his body
it bounced three times.
and at each place it landed
a spring came up, a fountain.
The sprinces are still there,
watering the lush gardens
but what stands out even more in my memory,
apart from the truly awful tasting eucalyptus liqueur,
was a room,
dug in under the church,
off a kind of sacristy.
It had the dank smell of a cave
and mars on the tiny wedge of a window,
and tradition has it
that this is where the apostle Pail was held
when he was imprisoned
in Rome.
For the last few months
our second reading has come from the Paul’s letter to the Romans.
It’s one of the more complex books in the New Testament,
a kind of distillation of everything the apostle thinks is important,
and an attempt to answer
his own most complex
theological
questions.
Now we change gear a bit.
The author - as far as we know, it’s Paul again -
the author has a different purpose.
This is less of a theological treatise
and more personal;
it wrestles not so much with big theological wustions
as with the ordianry lives
of people who follow Jesus.
But there’s also a sense of urgency to it.
Paul the apostle is writing it
from a prison cell,
perhaps that very same cell
that is under the church at Tre Fontane.
Paul doesn’t know
what will happen to him;
this might be the last time
that he can communicate with the church in Philippi.
And the Philippians are especially precious to Paul, because they
were his first converts in Europe,
the first ones
as he travelled west across the Mediterranean
from his Middle Eastern
home
to hear and respond to the gospel.
It’s a kind of farewell message, written with the help of his younger friend Timothy,
the best of his advice
written to people who will likely have to find their own way as followers
of Christ.
And so he begins his letter with a long prayer
giving thanks for them,
and assuring them of his confidence
that even without him around
their faith is strong and secure
because God
is faithful,
and won’t
let them down.
It’s not until Paul has finished giving thanks for the Philippians
and encouraging them - after twenty verses, nearly a quarter of his letter -
it’s not until then
that he finally turns
to his own situation - not looking for pity
but preparing them for the possibility
of his death.
And he begins this section with those worlds that are both well known
and perplexing:
“For me, living is Christ
and dying
is gain.”
Most of us
can’t imagine thinking
that dying
would be gain.
Not unless
you are suicidal, and even then
I suspect the feeling is more about dying being less a loss.
Or perhaps if your body were failing so much
that it had become a prison
or your brain had begun to disintegrate
and you were facing the possibility of a future
where the essence of you
had essentially gone
and your family were left caring
for an empty shell.
But for Paul, none of these are true.
He isn’t young, at least for his time,
likely in his late forties or early fifties,
but nor was he unusually old.
He seems to have some sort of physical problem -
a thorn in his side, he calls it -
but it isn’t enough
to get in his way when it comes to traveling the world,
preaching and teaching.
It is’t a sense of his own frailty that leads him to say that dying
is gain,
nor
that he has given up hope,
though you could understand that
when he’s been in prison on and off for years
and there seems to be no end in sight.
But he is still convinced
that he has work to do
even in prison.
No, what makes him say
that dying would be gain
is his confidence in the grace of God,
the grace of God that means
that when he dies,
he fully expects to be with Christ
in the new life of the resurrection.
But living, he says,
living is Christ also.
Because the paradox of our faith
is that although in death
we enter the greater presence of Christ,
here on earth
we know Christ’s presence too, through his Spirit.
and so, Paul explains,
to live is to be in the presence of Christ
and Christ has given him
work to do.
But then Paul turns his focus
back on the Philippians.
“Live your lives,” he says,
“live your lives
in a manner worthy
of Christ.”
Live your lives
so that when I hear news of you
I’ll be encouraged.
Live your lives, and take over the work that I can’t do
stuck here in prison.
Live your lives
so I’ll be proud of you.
Live your lives
because it’s cost me everything
to share this gospel with you.
Live up to me
as I try
to live up
to Christ.
Because that’s the foundation of it all,
the foundation of Paul’s theology,
the foundation
of his life.
Christ.
Christ, who gave up everything for our sake.
Who died on a cross, ridiculed and in agony.
Just so we
might be forgiven, might have a chance at new life.
This last week
we have heard once again
the stories of the heroes
of 9/11.
Of police and firefighters
who raced into buildings to escort people to safety.
Of workers
who called out to their friends and led them through thick smoke
to the safety of stairwells.
Of passengers on a plane
who knew they were likely to die
and spent their last minutes
trying to make sure
that others, on the ground, wouldn’t die with them.
And for us who survived
there has the desire to remember them
to remember them
and make sure
that they did not
die in vain.
And that’s what Paul is sayoing to the Philippians.
“I’m stuck here in prison. Don’t let my life be in vain.”
And although he says it more clearly in other places, but I think it is implied here as well.
Christ lived and died for you. Don’t let his life and death
be in vain.
It reminds me of that traditional Good Friday hymn.
There is a green hill far away,
outside a city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified
who died to save us all.
We may not know, we cannot tell,
what pains he had to bear,
but we believe it was for us
he hung and suffered there.
He died that we might be forgiven,
he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by his precious blood.
There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin,
he only could unlock the gate
of heaven and let us in.
O dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too,
and trust in his redeeming blood,
and try his works to do.
What was true for the Philippians
is true for us too.
Paul calls us,
Christ calls us,
to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
And this is where the hymn falls short.
Because I suspect when we hear it say that Christ died to make us good,
and that we’re to try his works to do,
we tend to think
that living our lives
worthy of Christ
is about being good.
But that’s not it at all! Being a follower of Christ
is not about being good, if what we mean by good
is being well mannered, kind, generous, and all those other nice things.
What Paul is talking about is, in his own words,
striving for the gospel.
Striving, making an effort, doing all we can, pulling out all the stops
for the sake of the gospel.
Telling the story of Jesus
telling it to our friends, our neighbors, our families,
our children, our grandchildren, other people in this parish,
sharing Christ's words
about love and mercy and justice,
sharing his actions
feeing the poor and healing the sick
and challenging those
who get in the way of others welfare.
Even if it costs us, in time, in money.
Strive for the gospel.
Because living
is Christ,
and Christ himself
lived and died
for us.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010