More Than a Mug
Philippians 4:4-9
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, 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. As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.
Sermon
Earlier this fall, in our six-week study on the Bible, we learned about the different genres that are found in the Bible. There’s lots and lots of poetry in the Bible (like the big Book of Psalms); there are historical narratives telling about King David’s conquests; there are ancient speeches and even grand cosmologies. The reason I belabor the point is pretty simple: if we read poetry like a science textbook, or prophecy like a fortune cookie, our faith will develop some weird, wounding artifacts inside it. There’s one prominent leader in the creationism movement who built this bizarre replica Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky. Genre really matters.
But I didn’t mention that there’s a kind of genre American Christians have invented. And this is going to sound like a joke, but I promise it’s not. This genre that we’ve invented and put all over our Bibles is this: the travel-mug genre. This is the genre of Bible verses that we laminate and put on our travel mugs, or print on a laptop case, or have it written in flowing scripts across a canvas tote bag. Don’t get me wrong: it’s really important to have those verses close to heart. Keep those travel mugs, use those tote bags, and remind yourself every day of what God is speaking to you through scripture. Today’s text is often one of those travel-mug verses — it’s comforting, well-loved, and always relevant to our lives.
But we also want to proceed with caution. No one puts hard truths or Jesus’ condemnations of religious hypocrites on kids’ lunchboxes. The Bible is deep-rooted, far-reaching, and living text through the power of the Spirit. It afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted, and was sacredly forged through God’s work inside the complexity of human life. Today’s text is no different; it is not some shallow assurance of prayer, or some flattened, stale, Instagrammable nicety. This passage—especially when it says “do not be anxious about anything”—is a teaching for our darkest days. It’s full of depth, and hope, and planted in the fertile soil of the Spirit.
“The Bible is a deep-rooted, far-reaching, and living text through the power of the Spirit.”
This epistle and today’s passage were written in the confines of a situation that at face value was hopeless and fearful. Paul penned these words while sitting in the slums of a Roman prison — the very place that peace seemed impossible. As evil and punitive as our contemporary prisons are, the prisons of the Roman Empire were otherworldly. They were closely associated with the conceptions of the land of the dead. For early Christians, they were understood as places for the living dead — prisons were theologically linked to hell and subterranean evil. And still, even there, Paul insists that God had not abandoned us to fear — a scandalous claim of divine nearness and peace. Like American prisons, they were designed for anything but rehabilitation; they were places of anguished waiting. Paul is sitting and living in a hell, scrawling these letters to a community in discordant fear.
Alongside of this otherworldly hell, Paul is writing while awaiting news of his legal fate: will he be sentenced to death? At any moment, he might learn of how excruciating his future may be. With this constant, looming shadow, this letter was sent to a community that was similarly at risk of legal, economic, and social destruction. The odds are not in their favor. We can’t help but hear Paul’s words as darkly naive. How dare he say, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” How dare he say, “Do not be anxious about anything,” and offer prayers of thanksgiving! Perhaps this is exactly the point: the peace of God that enters through true community is sparked in even the darkest, most anxious confines of our lives. Even here, even in the pits of anxiety and impending doom, God refuses to let fear have the final word, and rescues us through the power of belonging.
Paul has penned words that are anything but easy, and anything but a simple assurance of prayer. These are not mere travel-mug verses, but words of an epistle and letter written to a community that is further in the grave than out of it. These are words to be wrestled with in a life-or-death match; the stakes are that high.
“For early Christians, [prisons] were understood as places for the living dead — prisons were theologically linked to hell and subterranean evil. And still, even there, Paul insists that God had not abandoned us to fear — a scandalous claim of divine nearness and peace.”
Because we know the genre of this passage—an epistle, a pastoral letter—we also know it wasn’t written to an individual, but rather to a community. Though it is a great reminder personally, it can’t be ripped out of its communal context and intention. This isn’t saying, “you, Michael,” or “you, Paulette,” don’t be anxious about anything, though that certainly might be implied. Instead, it’s saying, “You all: the community of Philippi! Don’t be anxious as a community.” Or “You all: the community of Philippi! You are near to the heart and mind of the risen Lord!” This isn’t a personal Bible devotion, but a communal, corporate plea. In the face of despair, and hopelessness, and pain, and terror about your bodily and legal safety, you will experience the nearness of God as one community. And when Paul writes that, “the peace of God… will be with you all,” he isn’t conveying that God will one day or in some indeterminate amount of time later give you peace. Instead, the verbs he use convey that when the Philippians practice a shared life, they encounter the Spirit. It is more causal than it is predictive — live as one community, because that is how and where God shows up.
This isn’t a command to stamp out your own anxieties. It isn’t a claim that if you’re anxious you need to somehow pray it away or be more faithful. This isn’t a statement that mental illness is a moral deficiency.
If anything, Paul’s words today are a rebuke of over-personalizing and over-individualizing faith. Instead, Paul might be telling us that if we ever want to find the peace of God, we have to do it with one another — Our liberation in God is bound up in one another’s.
…
I think one of the best illustrations of these verses comes from the natural world; from dolphins, actually.
Dolphins are an absolutely wild species. They are extremely intelligent and extremely social. They form connections with one another and form pods — essentially little underwater herds or families of dolphins.
When dolphins form pods—these little communities—they don’t do so for life. Instead, these pods are very porous. Dolphins come and go freely, they enter into the pod and form new social bonds, forming this beautiful interplay of belonging and connection. Before we go any further, that’s a great vision of what this church can be: part of a living web of connection, where we and our neighbors freely enter into our community and can freely depart into new ones.
But that isn’t the best part, the part that really illustrates today’s passage. It’s actually this: when dolphins are injured or sick, they can lose their abilities and capacities to swim. They can’t do the things they need to do, and they can’t keep pace with their pod. When this occurs, there are two things that happen.
The first is that the pod slows down to the lowest common denominator. That injured or limited dolphin sets the pace; no one is left behind. Secondly, and perhaps the most remarkable, members of the pod physically lift the injured dolphin to the surface to breathe. They collectively flex their muscles and collective abilities to lift that injured dolphin above the surface so that it can survive and breathe.
“If anything, Paul’s words today are a rebuke of over-personalizing and over-individualizing faith. Instead, Paul might be telling us that if we ever want to find the peace of God, we have to do it with one another — Our liberation in God is bound up in one another’s.”
Paul writes that in doing the things he taught them—in living as one community of Jesus Christ—the peace of God will be with them. God lifts us in our anxieties, and lifts the entire community in the midst of its anxieties, through a common life with one another. We become more like dolphins and less like lemmings, and with the Spirit’s help, we are able to lift each other into rescue and peace. Despite their failures and conflicts, in the Philippian’s common life of prayer and worship and mutual aid, the otherworldly peace of God was with them; they were lifted into the presence of the risen Christ.
Sometimes when we say we lift prayers up, we might think of smoke signals into heaven with our concerns wafting up to God. But in light of this passage, I think it might be a little different: maybe in lifting up prayer, we are actually lifting each other up as one community. Maybe all of us as a corporate body are ourselves lifted into the heavens, close to the presence of God. Maybe we become like dolphins, surfacing as a collective body to breathe in faith. Maybe we realize that hell is far less hellish, and anxieties are far less anxious when we rejoice, and pray, and worship, and learn, and love with one another, as one people, and one pod, assured that we will meet God as a great, beloved community.
Sources
Jane Lancaster Patterson, “Commentary on Philippians 4:1-9” WorkingPreacher.org, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-28/commentary-on-philippians-41-9-6
