Happy New Year. We begin
again. And Merry Christmas too! Clearly with the hymns we’ve sung this morning
we are still officially in Christmas. Eight maids-a-milking to be exact.
According to the church calendar, Christmas runs until January 5, which I think
is great since Christmas is an exponentially better holiday once you get past December
25. It’s been nice not to having to travel this year—though we did miss time
with our families back east. A number of you were worried about that. You’d ask
what we were doing for Christmas, and we’d reply how we were just staying put.
You’d then assume that meant we had family coming out here, but we’d say nope,
just us. The something like a mild panic would appear across your face. “Can
you have Christmas without family?” And then, uh-oh, “does this mean we should
invite the Reverend over to our house for Christmas?” I understand the panic.
Having the Reverend show up at your house for Christmas dinner is not like
having Santa Claus. You have to be on your best behavior for both of us but at
least Santa brings presents.
Had we traveled to North Carolina
where my family abides, we would have gathered at my grandmother’s house for
some fine, gut-busting southern cooking. The highlight would have been my
grandmother’s roast turkey and cornbread dressing soaked in a sweet lard-enriched
gravy. Like drinking butter only better. You could feel your arteries harden
with every morsel. It’s good eating. As it was we stayed here and as I need me
some roasted something for Christmas to be Christmas, I roasted a goose that I
shot out by the pond here (I’m kidding about that last part). If you’ve ever
roasted a goose you know that it puts off a lot of fat—making for some serious
gravy—just like my grandmother’s. We put out an all call on Facebook and around
the church and delightfully ended up with two other Christmas-orphaned families
at our table. They ate up that goose too—especially the ten-year-old boy who did
his best impression of Tiny Tim. I’m surprised he didn’t sprout feathers given
all the poultry he consumed.
Dawn and I were talking about how
much we enjoyed this entire Christmas season—the gatherings, the beautiful
church services, the lights, even the lack of snow. It was just like North
Carolina. And yet I’m still amazed with how abruptly everything coems to a halt
every December 26. “Joy to the world” and then back to work. Everybody starts
fretting about year end finances and gift returns and getting to all those
things you put off until “after the holidays.” There’s some momentary hope for
a new year—except that you have to make resolutions and try to keep them more
than a week. And of course the Iowa Caucuses are on Tuesday. So much for peace
on earth. Was this what it was like that first Christmas?
Take the shepherds. Did
you ever wonder what happened to them after the herald angels sang and they got
back from the manger? What do you do once you’ve seen a Messiah? Luke tells us
they ran to town and amazed everyone with their report, but afterwards we
presume they went back to their fields to keep watch over their flocks by night
again. There wouldn’t be much action on the Messiah front for another thirty
years. Were they discouraged? Concerned? Worried that they had imagined the
whole thing? Christmas can sometimes be that way. Which is why it’s good that
there’s a verse in the Bible like Philippians 1:6—“the
one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of
Jesus Christ.”
It’s one of the best loved verses of Scripture. I remember receiving
a framed, cross-stitched rendition of Philippians 1:6 many years ago. It
was crafted for me by an old girlfriend as her way (I think) of reminding me
that I had plenty of room for improvement. It’s a great verse for New Year’s Day. January 1st
draws out our deep longing for the future and a commitment to change, to work
harder to make it happen this time or fix it so it won’t happen again. And yet
having tried and failed so many times, most of us refrain from New Year’s resolutions
because we know we can’t keep them. Better to just avoid the disappointment. But
according to Philippians 1:6 you don’t have to try so hard anymore. God’s doing
all the work. He has you covered.
Paul embedded this verse within an
extended salutation wherein he thanks the Philippians for their monetary
support. He describes this support as their sharing or “partnership” in the
gospel, a translation of the Greek word koinonia
which we typically translate as fellowship.
Koinonia means to have all things in
common; it’s where we get words like community and communion. Koinonia was epitomized in the book of Acts
church where no one had any tangible needs because everything was communally
shared. In this way fellowship is connected to stewardship, which we will
emphasize next Sunday. Remember to bear your pledge cards for 2012 to church as
we partner in the gospel once again together as a community. We will give
because God gave to us. He brought us into community with himself as
participants in the gospel of grace and if you have truly experienced grace,
then you know how impossible it is to hoard it. You have to give it away. Paul
prays for the Philippians that their love and grace may overflow more and more.
Grace is what makes the church the church.
The koinonia of Philippians 1 is certainly economic. The life and
mission of the church always requires financial support, therefore God spurs our giving
until his return on “the day of Jesus Christ.” However, for Paul, the only New
Testament author who uses the word koinonia,
partnership or community also goes beyond resource sharing. For Paul any koinonia of material resources derived
from a deeper koinonia of Spirit. In
Galatians, Paul speaks of the right hand of fellowship (koinonia), which we extend to each other whenever we pass the peace.
More than a handshake, the right hand of koinonia
tangibly acknowledges our common bond through the Holy Spirit. In 1
Corinthians, Paul speaks of communion as our koinonia in the body and blood of Jesus. More than bread and wine,
communion tangibly acknowledges our fellowship in Jesus’ death and resurrection:
His dying and rising will be our dying and rising too. No longer fearful of any
condemnation because of our sin, the communion table assures us that we will
rise to feast with Jesus as sure as eating my grandmother’s turkey on Christmas
Eve. God who began his good work in us will get it done.
Specifically described as God’s
good work yet to be completed, Paul’s emphasis is plainly on the future. His
reference is to God’s saving work, which
we all know takes a lifetime. Christians might customarily speak of somebody getting saved, but in reality we’re just
as much people in the process of being
saved. Like Peter who sank when he tried to walk on the open sea, our troubles
and doubts still overwhelm us and drag us down too.
Paul penned Philippians from a
prison cell, with no guarantee of earthly release. Which is why he described
God’s good work as not yet completed. But unlike our own familiarity with
unfinished work, there’s no question that God will not finish what he started. God
operates from the future where the end has already happened. His good work is already a good job to be fully
revealed on the day Christ comes back. His good work is as good as done.
The focus of Christian hope is not on the future but on God for whom the future is present; the focus is not our creaturely
destiny but on the God who destines
us; we no longer worry about the end, but trust in the God who draws us toward his
glorious ends. This is all that really matters, Paul writes. Our hope for a
certain future makes the present immensely livable.
So instead of spending the rest of
your New Year’s Day trying to make resolutions you know that you’ll break, trust
God instead. Practice your resolutions as if they’re already kept. Paul
encourages the Philippians and us to be pure and blameless not because we could
if they tried, but because in Christ we already are. This is true even when we
spectacularly fail because then we get to show what genuine repentance and
resurrection look like. To be Christian is not to be flawless, but honest and
humble and brave and full of grace.
God is the one who began
a good work among us and it is God who will bring it to completion. Christian hope is based on his work in
us, not on ourselves or our own ability. Christian hope fosters no illusions of
human self-improvement. As opposed to optimists who look on the bright side and
deny the effects of evil and sin, Christian hope understands that any real hope cannot found itself upon human
potential or wishful thinking. Christian hope sees the effects of evil and sin
for the tragedies they are, but then translates them into what they really are by the power of the cross. Suffering,
rather than meaningless pain or just desserts, translates into meaningful redemption
and reinforced character. Death, rather than a terrifying end to be feared, becomes
the gateway to life. Christian weaves life’s tragedies into the necessary
pattern of resurrection, pointing toward that day, when by grace, all things will
be made new.
And because God will do this, the
good end is as sure as my grandmother’s turkey on Christmas Eve—even when I’m
not there to enjoy it. Actually it’s even surer than that. The fact is, my
grandmother stopped roasting turkeys a few Christmases ago. After 50-some
Christmases, she turned 80 and decided she was tired frankly of cooking. That
first year without her turkey and dressing was spent at my aunt’s house
feasting on fried chicken wings and cold shrimp and pork sausage balls. I
understood, but I was really disappointed. Christmas just wasn’t the same
without a big bird from the oven. So when Dawn and I got back to Boston, the
first order of business was a trip to the grocery store. I needed me some roasted
something for Christmas to be Christmas.
Since we were still technically in Christmas when we returned, like
today, there was still time. However when I went to the poultry case, all they
stocked were these 20 pound monster turkeys which would have meant 10 pounds of
meat per person (that’s me and Dawn, Violet thinks turkey are fowl—ba-ba-boom).
But turkey was tradition and the grocery store was running a special ($7 off
with my shopping card), so I figured why not? I lugged the bird to the
check-out line and watched to see the discount beep on the screen above the
cash register, you know the one that displays your “savings” once they scan
your card. However the turkey discount never appeared. So I called the
cashier’s attention to this discrepancy and showed her the tag on the turkey,
fully expecting to receive the $7 discount to which I was entitled. She said,
“You know what this means?” Sure, I said, it means I get $7 off my turkey
anyway. “No,” she informed me, “if it’s not
in the scanner it means you get it for
free!” Wow! Merry Christmas! I gave her a high-five and left with a totally
unexpected, unmerited free 20-pound bird just like Scrooge’s gift to the
Cratchets on Christmas morning.
OK, so obviously this is an
experience in search of something to illustrate, so here it is: God who began
His good work among us will carry it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus
as sure as turkey at Christmas however that turkey shows up. Because it is God
who does it, it does get done. But because it is God who does it, it doesn’t always
get done is ways you expect. It gets done through suffering and death, through
tragedies and troubles, through endings that transform into beginnings, through
grace you receive though you never deserve it. God always finishes what he
starts and therefore we confidently hope. Our koinonia in the body and blood of Jesus points to our koinonia in Christ’s death and
resurrection as well as our koinonia
in a free Christmas feast that promises to last into eternity.
No comments:
Post a Comment