This letter is classic Paul-talk about Hope and Transformation, but  there are a couple of things that make both those themes just a little ironic. First – this Church he’s writing to, in the city of Philippi, was one of Paul’s most beloved churches, you might even say that is was Paul’s most successful church among all the churches he planted during his missionary journeys. 

I had a wonderful class on Paul in seminary which delved into a lot of the detail of Paul’s letters and the nuance of his word choices and sentence structure.  We learned more intimately about his relationship with the Churches he started – how we could interpret the back-story of each one in the letters he wrote to them.   

You can do this, too. Read any of Paul’s letters – see what he is telling them to either start or stop doing and you will get a pretty good picture of what was going on. In many cases, he wrote to churches after he’d been there and got them started, in response to terrible reports of what they were doing that was harmful to each other and to people in their community and therefore – harmful to the message of God’s love in Christ.  Some of what these congregations were doing was truly scandalous – just go back and read First or Second Corinthians with a close eye. 

But the Philippian Church – this was Paul’s beloved congregation.  They seemed to get the message of the gospel right away and had embraced their new life and mission as Christians with enthusiasm, love and generosity.  They manifested the spirit of Christ that Paul was preaching almost as if it was second nature to them, and therefore they brought Paul, personally, a great deal of joy.   

And yet – even they, whom we might classify as the Model Congregation, had ended up facing situations that threatened their life and ministry, “enemies of the cross” Paul calls them.  Even they had found themselves a recipient of one of Paul’s famous letters to encourage them to find their way back to Christ, back to their Christian life in community with one another and in ministry to the people around them. 

Paul tells them to “stand firm in the Lord” by looking to their citizenship in heaven, to God’s spiritual reality as opposed to the world’s physical reality.  Remember where your hope comes from, Paul says, fix your eyes there, look to the model of Christ and you will be transformed.  

This sounds like the scriptural foundation for a design principal of the Mission Study – Appreciative Inquiry – looking to positive statements of what we hope to achieve, where we hope to go, of how we intend to emerge into the future of our next period of ministry with a New Pastor.  One of the statements about  future in Appreciative Inquiry is “what we focus on becomes our reality.”  

Isn’t this what Paul is saying to his beloved Philippians?  But there’s a little more to it than that – this isn’t simply a case of Mind over Matter – of thinking positive to get through a difficult time.  If we read it carefully – Paul is not telling them to Focus on the Hope that faith in Christ brings – he is telling them to Re-Focus on the Hope they have already been given in Christ.  

In other words, the future they need to focus on is what they already have in Christ.  They have lost that focus through their inner conflict, through the stressful situations that have occurred.  Now, those conflicts and stressors have taken over the focus of their thoughts and have become their new reality, their main identity. In order to emerge and transform, they must re-focus and set the Hope and Joy of Christ back into the center of their vision so that they can move forward once again.  

“Stand firm in the Lord.” (vs. 1) Remember where your hope comes from, Paul says, fix your eyes there, look to the model of Christ and you will be transformed.  

This idea of focusing, or rather re-focusing on the hope of our faith, is part of the rhythm of life for the Church.  We see it in the seasons of every year – the expectant hope of Christmas during Advent, the eternal hope of Easter’s resurrection during Lent, the anticipated hope of God’s Spirit in the days leading up to Pentecost.  Seasons of faith that move in sync with the seasons of the natural world and the seasons of human life. 

There is a similar rhythm in the seasons of our Church life overtime as the Church is influenced by the world, seeks to be relevant to peoples’ lives, and encounters inevitable change. I see this most pointedly in my work as an Interim Pastor.  Interim Pastors, for better or worse, represent a new season in a Church’s life – weather or not that season was expected or even wanted.   

I see it as an opportunity to follow Paul’s advice in his letter to the Philippians, an opportunity, or better a reminder, to re-focus on the source of our hope, our faith in Christ, which points us to the future. This re-focusing was at the core of the mission study, a time to look at all aspects of this congregation’s life, past present and future, through the lens of faith.   

What we found was that this congregation’s vision of what it means to be faithful over time has continued to be grounded in what our consultant, Todd, named our pillars: Music and Worship, Pastoral Leadership, Ministries of Compassion both inside and outside our walls, Ministries with Children, Youth, and Families. All within the framework of striving to be truly open and welcoming to all people and inspired by the Hope of our Faith in Christ.  

The only way to keep moving forward is to re-focus then stay focused on the Hope we have always had in Christ. At least, that’s what Paul would say to us.  And he would know, because the second irony about his own words to re-focus on the hope we have in Christ, is where he was when he wrote them.   

Paul’s letter to this beloved congregation was written during a long prison sentence, in the stark conditions of a Roman jail. Worse than that, Paul had every reason to believe that this prison sentence would end with his death, which it did. This passionate evangelist for Christ, whose ministry took the new Christian Church into the world, and whose letters of encouragement make up a fourth of our New Testament, this person who we might classify as the most successful disciple of Jesus in the early Church, had to end his days alone, in the harsh conditions of a jail cell, and the looming prospect of execution. 

And yet, he is the one who says, 4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  

No matter what successes may lie in the past, there always seem to be new challenges right around the corner and knocking at our front door. As people of faith and as a community of faith, we need to continually return to the source of our faith so that we can be re-shaped and re-formed by Christ.  

We need Paul to write us a letter, to remind us that what we are truly looking for, we already have and that when we remember what we already have in Christ, we are certain to find what Christ wants for us now and in the future.  On this momentous day, when the Pastor Nominating Committee is elected, may we all continue to look to the future we already have in Christ, focusing and re-focusing on the hope that is ours for eternity. 

8Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 

Amen.