Doxology
Philippians 2: 1-13
In your imagination I invite you to travel back in time to the first century, to a prison cell in a Roman guardhouse.
There we see a man, seated on a rough bench, ignoring his bleak surroundings, and writing a letter. By its nature, a letter both witnesses to the distance between the writer and the reader and seeks to bridge that gap.1 For this man, cut off from human society, the gap is especially stark. So the letter writer, Paul, pours onto parchment words to a community of Christians he has come to love. Though he absent from the church in Philippi, Paul longs to be present. His letter is a way of reaching out, getting closer, maintaining contact, exchanging news, offering prayers, and telling them that he is thinking of them and praying for them.
This letter to the Philippians, like all of Paul’s letters, was intended as a communication between himself and a group of Christians – in this case, the church gathered at Philippi – who would read it aloud together when it arrived. Paul never imagined these letters would be published, let alone become Holy Scripture. Because of that there is a kind of intimacy in the letters; they are informal, personal and unguarded.
The focus of this particular letter, and especially the section we have just heard, is about how to handle disagreements within the life of the church. I know you will find this hard to believe, but the Philippians, it seems, did not all agree on everything.
The city of Philippi was located on a major trade route. The residents of Philippi witnessed the daily traffic of commerce, culture and religion between East and West. In Paul’s day it flourished as a Roman colony, an administrative center of the Empire.
In other words, this was a city filled with people who haled from different corners of the earth, spoke different languages, were familiar with different cultural practices concerning things like food, hygiene, music, religion, relations between men and women, and family structures. The Christians gathered at Philippi represented this diversity. As you can imagine, these differences sometimes led to disagreements; and some of the disagreements led to squabbles; and some of the squabbles led to a parting of the ways.
Paul is at pains to encourage the Philippians to hold together. He urges them, despite any differences, to be of one mind in Christ Jesus. And then, without warning, Paul launches into one of the most ancient and beautiful hymns to Christ.
It is as if Paul is saying this: “When the church is at odds, when all else fails: sing a hymn, praise God, perform doxology”. Doxology is defined as an expression of praise to God, especially a short hymn.
What a wonderful idea! Sing together! Praise God! And as you do this you will bring a new perspective to your differences – they will seem much less important.
A recent article published in the Times of London reported on research that suggests that church people more typically fall out over petty disagreements than over important ones.2
I was surprised, appalled, even shocked to read that one of the areas the researchers described as petty was “the content of the sermon”!
Another area cited as petty was, ‘the way the organ is played’! (You’ve been warned!)
Clearly the researchers don’t know anything about what is important and what is petty! Or, let us say, they don’t understand Christians. Or do they?
The fact is that it is not always the big differences – like differences of race or class, or even differences of theology – that create tensions in the life of the church. Human beings being what they are – what we are – don’t always agree on what is petty and what is profound. What may be a petty matter to you, might be all the world to me.
The United Church of Christ likes to describe the way this denomination manages our differences by this proverb: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; and in all things charity. It is such a wonderful proverb … that is, until you try to agree on what constitutes the essentials!
Nevertheless, even if we cannot agree on what is essential, the proverb is clear about this: charity or kindness, no matter what.
The church I served some years ago in Boise, Idaho hired a “Diversity Consultant” to help us navigate the many differences with which we, as individuals and as churches, were faced in a rapidly changing world.
Our Diversity Consultant said that overcoming differences is not about focusing on the big differences or the little differences. Rather, he said, it’s about “Any difference that makes a difference.”
Today, in this city that calls itself the hub of the hub of the universe, we find ourselves in a grand, bubbling, exciting, confusing, confounding cauldron of differences … they range from the silly to the profound: … but, as God is my witness, I will not be the one to say whose differences are petty and whose are profound! At Old South Church, every day and every week, and every month, through Committee meetings and education programs, through Bible study and fellowship groups, through conversations and encounters, we endeavor to navigate an abundance of differences, with charity. It is an extraordinary process to watch and to be a part of.
Today the Christian church around the world is focused on a difference that for a great many people is a difference that makes a difference: how the church regards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. This very Sunday morning, many churches in the Commonwealth are launching a well-organized, well-publicized signature drive for a proposed amendment to the States’ Constitution that, if it were voted in, would ban equal marriage.
Clearly this is a difference that makes a difference! It is a difference that makes a difference because it is in the news nearly every day. It is a difference that makes a difference because of how much pain it causes in people’s lives … including members of this congregation. It is a difference that makes a difference because it is dividing the churches.
Let me hasten to say that our own congregation is among only a handful in the Commonwealth that is on record as supporting equal marriage.
Two weeks ago, just after Hurricane Katrina, Jennifer and I sat around a table with variety of clergy: mainline Protestant ministers, Roman Catholic priests, Mormon elders, Evangelicals pastors, and clergy from the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Ten Point Coalition. To be honest, there aren’t a lot of things we all agree on … those of us in that room can often be found to be fighting on different sides of theological and social divides. We disagree on what constitutes the sacrament of baptism, on whose clergy are really ordained in the succession from St. Peter, on whether women can be ordained, on whether lesbians or gays can be ordained, on how to take communion and what the sacrament means.
This day, however, we agreed to hold our differences aside and to focus our resources, our prayers, our dollars, and our time on the purpose of our meeting: to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. We agreed that we are family … not by our own design, but by God’s design. As they say, you don’t get to choose your family. As family we can fight and disagree. But when someone is in trouble, we can agree to disagree and get on with the business of being in ministry to this broken and battered world.
In his letter to the Philippians Paul insisted that, when differences divide us, our only hope is our common ground, our holy ground, our higher ground: God. God is our center, our creator, our judge, the bridge over which we travel to meet one another.
As we ponder what differences are significant and what are unimportant, Paul offers us a wonderful gift. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.” And remember that our God “highly exalted” Jesus so that at his name “every knee should bend … and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” It is, Paul says, our doxology, our praise, our songs to God and our serenading of God, that unites us above and beyond anything else.
Week after week we gather in this holy space to turn our hearts and our minds, our souls and our bodies to God. Everything here is doxology: the stained glass windows, decorative paint, the chandeliers and organ. We focus all of whom we are on the one big thing that unites us, rather than on the many things that divide us. To turn to God in song, to lift up our voices in joyful praise, to speak to God in the words and silence of prayer, is to engage in doxology; it is, consequently, to practice the unity to which Paul urges us.
You can disagree with Paul on many things … many of us do. But, in the end, his genius and gift to the church down through the ages is the gift of doxology. … doxology, as the act of the creature turning to the Creator in praise, adoration and thanksgiving. If Paul could praise God from his prison cell, surrounded by armed and hostile guards, than surely we can praise God from our circumstances. When all else fails – and it will, because we will fail, simply because we are human and fallible … when all else fails: praise God.
Doxology is the mark of the Christian life. There is a difference that makes a difference.
Therefore, let us sing!
Footnotes
1. Craddock, Fred B. Interpretation: Philippians, John Knox Press, Atlanta, 1985 (p. vii)
2. THE TIMES, “Petty rows hit church attendance” by Ruth Gledhill Thursday, August 25, 2005 (p. 22)
Copyright © 2005, Old South Church and by author.
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