Sermons

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Together
August 29, 1999
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Philippians 4:10-20

You have to know that, whether you love them or hate them… I spend a lot of time on sermons. I read a lot, I pray, I talk to people, I think. I take the preaching of God’s word to be incredibly serious. Perhaps this will help you understand my bewilderment over what I am about to tell you.

On Friday at 5 pm I had a sermon for you entitled “Upside Down and Backwards.” It’s listed in your bulletin. I was trying to look back through Paul’s life and connect it with this last part of Philippians. It was about 20 minutes long. But something happened about 5:30 pm on Friday. I no longer had a sermon for you. It became very, very clear…that I was not supposed to give you that sermon. Not for you…not today.

That scared me. I like being prepared. It was 5:30 pm on Friday. And I realized that I had been working on a sermon that I wanted to preach, rather than listening for what God had for us this morning. And so…I invite you to sort of come along with me and see what the Lord is doing. Let’s read our text together.

Philippians 4:10-20

The word for this morning, I believe…has to do with Being Together as Ministers.

First…we get to be together. This morning you woke up, got ready, got in the car and drove over to Bethany…and right now you sit next to a couple hundred people, many who believe that God acted in the most unique, gracious, saving way ever seen… in Jesus, the Christ. You sit in the community of faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German which Greg talked about, wrote this:

“It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing.”

That was certainly the case for the Apostle Paul. Paul sat under house arrest in Rome, writing to his beloved community in Philippi…and after he is all done teaching them, exhorting them and pastoring them…he writes a little more and just says, “Thank You. Thank you for not forgetting me, for being my partner, for being such an encouragement to me in ministry.”

The Philippians had been Paul’s most faithful supporters, financially and otherwise…and he never forgot that. But for some reason beyond their control, there had been a lag, a delay in their communication with Paul. And when it finally comes, it makes Paul joyful:

“…you have renewed your concern for me.”

Renewed may be too tame a translation here, actually. It made Paul want to burst…their concern has blossomed, like a flower bursting into bloom, practically leaping out of the ground. It made Paul’s heart sing.

Minnesota, as you know, has some very long winters. Some very, very long winters. It seems as though about March spring ought to come, but it doesn’t. And certainly in April the snow should go away…but it doesn’t. And absolutely by the first of May it HAS to…but it doesn’t necessarily. And when you live there, you start practically begging for the snow to leave, the sand they sprinkle on the streets to leave, for some color to appear. You wonder if you will ever see the sun again.

And then sometime in May…or Lord forbid, June, it finally hits. Actually it bursts into bloom with color everywhere, seemingly in just one or two days, and from out of nowhere.

That’s the kind of renewing that Paul has experienced. He was starting to wonder what on earth had happened to his family, his community in Philippi. Had they forgotten him? Were they mad? Had they fallen prey to some strange belief, and left the faith? And then he finds that their concern has burst back into his life. It made Paul joyful.

Why does it make Paul rejoice? Was he like a college kid, waiting for that envelope from home? Did he need the money, or clothes, or food, or parchments, or whatever gifts arrived? No…Paul says his needs have been taken care of (or at least he’s learned that his joy is not dependent on his outward circumstances…he’s content.) But the Philippians’ gift means their love for him, their belief in his ministry is firm…they are putting their money where their faith was…they are rallying around him, supporting him in his missionary work of telling people about God’s love and presence in the world in Jesus Christ.

Folks, we need to think carefully about this. Paul is not the only missionary or minister of the gospel. In fact, this room is full of you. Someday the Church is going to quit thinking of ministers as only ordained, institutional positions. Someday we’re going to quit thinking of missionaries as people who go overseas. Maybe you’ve never thought of yourself as a missionary or a minister…but you ARE the primary carriers of the love of Jesus. Not Billy Graham. Not some other evangelist. Not me. You. You are a missionary to a neighborhood, to an office, a company, a family. And we need to think about how we support and encourage one another in these ministries.

One thing the Philippians did for Paul…was to send a real, live person to be with him. Epaphroditus. We met Epaphroditus back in Chapter 2. We don’t know a lot about him…but he came IN PERSON from Philippi…both to deliver the support, but also to BE a support. There is nothing to compare with the encouragement of having somebody come alongside you, know exactly what you’re doing, where you’re struggling. The ministry of presence, of incarnation, of flesh and blood. Bonhoeffer wrote

“The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.”

I will never forget being about 5 or 6 years into my business career, and having a mentor of mine drop by my office in Fremont. We had talked about the challenges of ministry in a business setting. And he wanted a tour, wanted to know what I did, wanted to meet a few of the people I worked with. He wanted to really understand how he could pray for me. That meant so much to me…just to know there was somebody who had seen it, who was thinking about me, praying for me each day.

Many of you are ministers in business. You have great opportunities to live out faith in Jesus there. I confess to being a little jealous. I have found that in my years in business I had opportunities to connect with people that I will never have again.

Now that I’m a pastor, I’ll get in some conversations…and when they find out I’m a pastor, a little light switches off in their eyes. “Oh, you’re a pastor. That’s your job to talk about God. You get paid to do that.”

But not you. You have opportunity to live and talk your faith…solely because that’s who you are, and what is important to you. The same is true in neighborhoods, or school settings. But we need to be in this TOGETHER. We need people who know what we’re doing, how to pray for us.

“…It was good of you to share in my troubles.”

Paul’s supporters took some risks to share in those troubles. Sending their hard-earned resources…halfway across the Mediterranean with an individual. Who knew if it make it, if Paul was still alive, if their messenger would make it safely? And even if he did…it would be months before they would hear about what was going on. If we’re going to be TOGETHER in ministry…we’ll have to be willing to take risks.

I will never forget…what a homegroup of ours did to us…and for us…ten years ago. We had young kids, I was working a lot of hours, God had called us to a house ministry of having some different people live in our house with us, and we were basically overwhelmed with life. And we decided we just would have to drop out of our home group, it was too much.

We were on a fall retreat with the group, and broke the news to them… “we love you, but we just can’t be with you right now.” The group all nodded their heads, and listened. And then later on that day, the group sat us down and said, “We’ve heard you. We agree, you life is crazy right now, you’re doing too much. And the one thing you need is people to love you and walk beside you and be Jesus with you...so we're not letting you quit!"” And they were serious!

At first I was kind of taken back...who were they to tell me what I could or couldn't’ do? But you see…rarely had I experienced that kind of support and love, that would speak into our lives, that would take the risk of offending…to care for us, to support us in ministry.

The Philippians saw and experienced the Holy Spirit working through Paul’s ministry…both among them, and in other parts of the world, and encouraged it. The Holy Spirit is at work all over…in many ways here in our community at Bethany. We have a hard time keeping up!

But I just want to mention one place I have seen the Spirit working. Wednesday Nights. I have only the newcomers perspective, of course. If you came around here on Wednesday Nights, I think you would share my feeling that says: “Something is going on here. The Holy Spirit is doing something.”

On any given Wednesday afternoon, there are people lined up at the Food Bank. And then at 6 pm, there is a community dinner…free, and open to all. Staffed by people giving their time to cook, clean or talk…Some from Bethany, some from other churches, some friends or friends of friends. After dinner there is a worship time, or a Bible Study. Some of those who come live in our neighborhood, some come off the streets or out of shelters.

In and of itself, the providing of a good meal and a safe place is a wonderful thing. And I don’t want to discount that. But there’s something more going on, friends. Something that God is in. There is a community that has emerged, and is emerging. A community of people who know each other and are known. People who feel ownership in the meal. People for whom this may be one of very few safe places to come in their lives. People who recognize each other, are learning names. People very different from each other. A different community, by and large, than the one that meets here on Sunday mornings.

And this emerging community raises all sorts of questions that have been and must be sorted out…about leadership, funding, facilities, volunteers, the integration of that community and this one…the future.

Some of these are difficult questions. But you know what? God is in it. The Holy Spirit is blowing in a fresh way here…and that is wonderfully exciting. And it’s unknown and scary. I’ve seen something like this before, and I know what some of the temptations will be: It will be to build walls instead of bridges, to carve out little mini-kingdoms, to criticize…but the call of the Spirit will be to encourage, to support, to come alongside…to be together…as ministers, as missionaries.

We know that Paul prayed for the Philippians. And we can assume that their support of him included prayer as well. And I honestly believe that praying for each other is the greatest support and encouragement we can be for one another. To pray with and for each other, to ask God to bless, protect, and grow.

I’m just reading a book called “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by an inner-city pastor named Jim Cymbala. It’s about the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. Twenty-five years ago, this place had 20 people, was in the heart of the inner city, and those 20 people and a part-time pastor had absolutely no idea where to go or what to do. Now it’s 6,000 or 7,000 people. And I was so glad to read that…this church broke every rule on “how to grow a church.”

I’ve read books, been to seminars and tried things in Minneapolis, where we were trying to facilitate church renewal. And these people in Brooklyn broke every single principle of church growth. But they did one thing. They prayed. On Tuesday nights. On Friday nights, a group started praying at 11 pm and prayed through the night. On Sundays. They prayed for their church, for each other, for people with various addictions, for the new ministries that began to spring up. They prayed for God’s Holy Spirit to come as fresh wind, fresh fire…and God showed up. And is still showing up.

Paul was not a lone ranger. He needed help, and companionship, resources, encouragement and love. He was discouraged at times. He needed the Philippians. We need each other. Especially when the needs of our workplace, our neighborhoods, our families seem too much, when we feel like we’re barely surviving let alone ministering. It is then, Bonhoeffer says, that

“the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself.”

Then it is that we get the privilege of encouraging, supporting, coming alongside, risking, partnering…meeting one another, “as bringers of the message of salvation.” And whatever the needs, Paul says…they are nowhere close to the size of the resources.

“My God will meet all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus.”

To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.