Fourteenth Sunday in Trinity
Philippians 4:4-13
“Don’t Worry? Be Happy?”
This past week, our nation passed through the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Jim and I were in Colorado Springs for meetings, staying with the Stanleys. When I arose at 8:00, I went into a small office next to my bedroom and used our hostess’ computer to check email. When I arrived at the Yahoo news portal page, there was a headline: “Plane strikes World Trade Center.” I went downstairs and found Jim and our host watching the television. And at that moment I was probably doing what most of you were doing that same morning, wherever you were.
This past week, of course, we not only had the memory of September 11, we had the recent horror in Russia to contemplate. This is what prompted me last night to request that some of you give some thought to prayers for our nation in the coming months. We have been told by those who are supposed to understand these things that it is only a matter of time before terrorists launch another attack on American soil. And the horrors in Russia a couple of weeks ago give a fresh and disturbing example of what may be looming out there.
In God’s providence, the second lesson appointed for today engages this very issue: not terrorism per se, but rather how we are to relate to things like terrorism, what we are to think, how we are to go about our lives, when great suffering or calamity looms out there – terrible things that are potential, but not yet actual; things that are likely to happen but have not happened yet. Paul’s words in Philippians are useful for us in this kind of climate.
It helps us to understand Paul if we recall that when he wrote the words of today’s lesson, he was definitely NOT taking his ease in some Mediterranean resort. Instead, he was writing from prison in Rome. He was separated from his friends. The Roman authorities had brought his church planting mission to a stop. Paul was expecting to be executed at any time. Paul was in a situation where it would be reasonable to feel depression and despair, to experience fear and anxiety, to grieve at what was now lost. Paul, however, was not feeling any of these kinds of things. Instead he wrote to the Philippians what we heard read to us a short while ago.
Let’s look again at Paul’s words. He tells us to do three things: to rejoice in the Lord, to fill our hearts with good things, and to do all those things we have learned through Paul’s teaching and that we have seen in Paul’s example. Let’s take each of these instructions in turn.
First of all, Paul says we are to rejoice in the Lord. Always. Not some of the time, but always. And to be sure we get his point, he repeats himself: “Again, I say, Rejoice! The Lord is at hand!”
Some years ago, an entertainer named Bobby McFerrin performed a song named “Don’t Worry. Be Happy.” From the first time I heard it, I thought it was the most insipid bit of silliness I had ever heard. I googled the lyrics for this song recently, and sure enough – they are every bit as insipid as I ever remembered them. It is as if McFerrin (or whoever wrote that inane song) thinks that being happy is something that results from sheer and mere choice.
Please do not think that THIS is what Paul is talking about when he says, in effect, “Be happy, don’t worry!” That’s about as close to McFerrin that Paul ever gets. Because Paul does what McFerrin never does in that silly song: Paul tells us HOW and WHY we may rejoice, why we SHOULD rejoice, how and why we CAN posesses the peace God which surpasses all understanding.
So, why may we rejoice in the Lord? Why and how can we be gentle? Paul says it is because the Lord is at hand. Most people read these words and suppose that Paul means that the return of the Lord to the earth is immenent, something that is about to happen. And, certainly, it is possible for the phrase “at hand” to signify that something will happen sooner rather than later. Paul says in 1 Timothy, for example, that “the time of my departure is at hand.”
However, there is another sense to the words “at hand” which I think are what we have here – whatever is at hand is something which is immediately present. Jesus, for example, in Gethsemane tells his disciples, “"Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand." In both these cases, “at hand” points to something that is immediately HERE, something already present. Jesus is NOT saying that the time of his betrayal is coming soon. INSTEAD, he means that his betrayal is ALREADY underway. His betrayer isn’t coming soon. Rather, his betrayer is RIGHT OVER THERE.”
If that’s the sense of Paul’s phrase “at hand” here in Philippians, it makes his next words a whole lot more sensible. If the Lord is at hand – if, that is, the Lord Himself is immediately HERE and PRESENT to us, if he is accessible to us right now and not some time in the future, then THAT is the reason we may rejoice. We can stop worrying and instead do what Paul encourages us to do. “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
The key thing here is the confidence that we have that God the Father hears us, that when we pray to Him, as we shall all do shortly, we have right here – at hand for us as much as he was for the Philippians – the Lord Himself, the one with whom we are united, the one in whose name we make our petitions to God the Father, the one through whom we offering our thanksgiving. He is at hand today for us. He is at hand when we join ourselves in petitioning God the Father in a few minutes from now. We know God the Father hears us as much as He hears his own eternal Son, for we are members of His body, and he is at hand with us when we pray. That is why we posess the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. That is why our hearts and minds are guarded, protected, assured, by God’s peace toward us, the same good will that he has toward His own son.
Paul next sets before us a second thing that we may do to avoid anxiety, worry, and despair: it is nothing all that radical, of course; it’s advice that even unbelievers are smart enough to follow from time to time. to fill our hearts with good things. “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.”
Here, at last, is something which might indeed require an act of will on our part. And, if we are weak in following Paul’s instruction here, by all means we must go back to the first thing he said to do – to make our prayers to God. In fact, our prayer should be this: that we would find grace to do as Paul says to do here – to fill our hearts with good things.
It goes without saying that part of following his advice is to AVOID filling our hearts with FALSE things, with IGNOBLE things, with unjust, or impure, or UGLY things, to avoid things of bad report, to turn away from vice and from things that are not praiseworthy. But the best way to avoid all this is to fill your hearts with what Paul recommends.
The world is a very mixed bag. It has a lot of the stuff Paul recommends that we meditate on and a lot of stuff that will cause us to worry. One of these – the stuff that causes worry – comes to us all the time whether we like it or not. We can’t pretend that these things do not exist. And, so we must bring our worrisome things to the Lord and make our petitions. In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, we make our requests known to God.
The other things – the good things – these we must go after for ourselves. We seek them out, we fill ourselves with them, and meditate on such things.
The last thing Paul tells the Philippians and tells us as well is this: Imitate me.
It’s a fairly common instruction by Paul to Christians. In 1 Corinthains 4 Paul wrote, “15For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you, imitate me.” (I Cor. 4:16) Later in the same epistle, Paul wrote, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. (1 Cor. 11:1). The author of Hebrews gives the same instruction: "imitage those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Heb. 6:12). And the Apostle John, at the close of the Apostolic era is giving the same advice: “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.” (3 John 1:11) And, so here in Philippians, Paul says again, “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Paul goes on to show them what he means by his own example. “But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again.” You see, these words are occasioned by a gift which the Philippians had sent to Paul by one of their own members, a man named Epaphroditus. Paul candidly acknowledges his gratitude and his joy in receiving this gift, and he just as candidly says that he has learned in whatever state he is to be content. Whether abased or abounding, whether full or hungry, whether needy or abounding in riches, Paul says he has learned to be content. He does all these things through Christ who strengthens him. The point: here’s an example from my own present circumstances, as I write to you from a Roman prison: Imitate me.
In preparing this message, I ran across the comments of a Pastor named Larry Thompson who at one time served a church in Oklahoma City. He recounted that one member of his congregation was a widow named Stella Powers who lived in what he called a shack near the Baptist Mission Center. One Sunday, Pastor Thompson says, this widow came to worship, walked up to him and gave him her check book. She told him to write out one check for $10,000 and another for $3,000. Pastor Thompson explains what happened next this way:
“I personally thought she was getting to an age where she failed to understand reality. She insisted and told me to give the 10K to the budget and the 3K to missions. Mrs. Powers related to me that her brother whom she had not seen in 35 years passed away and left her $13,000. I encouraged her to keep some of the funds for her personal living and needs. She looked at me and said, ‘Young Pastor Larry, I promised the Lord long ago, “I’ll do Your work and You do my worrying. We have both kept our end of the bargain.’ ”
Surely here is a believer who is anxious for nothing. Surely here is one who was well exercised in prayers and supplications, with thanksgiving, as she made her requests known to God her Father, through his Son Jesus Christ. For her, as well as for all of us, Jesus Christ was always at hand. Here was a woman who habitually took the things that she had learned and received and heard and saw in Paul – and, no doubt, in other godly Christians – and she did them. And her gift showed how much the God of peace was with her.
May this same God of peace, who raised from the dead our Saviour Jesus Christ, bestow upon us the same peace he gave to this widow and to countless saints before her all the way back to the Apostle Paul. Let us be imitators of them all, as they are imitators of Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
