i hear a voice calling - calling out for me

...these shackles i've made in an attempt to be free

A sermon from Philippians

There are days when faith comes as easy as a spring sunrise. Things go the way they ought to. Everything just falls into place…

The trouble, though, is those days are fewer and further apart than the other days. The days when faith does not come easy. Whatsoever… 

Too often, right when we wake up, what faith we’ve managed to cobble together is already threatening to break apart. We have to gather our faith up. We try to hold it together. We do what we can to get through our days with our faith in one piece. Intact. 

As my favorite musician quips, “We need faith for the same reason it’s so hard to find.”

That’s the trouble. It isn’t easy to keep up the faith, is it?

We hear the pastor drone on, how God is a God of love. After a short hour we have to leave. We have to live most of our lives out there, in the real-world. 

The headlines of terror and tragedy to reckon with. The memo the company is being downsized and jobs cut, while the management, who drove the company in the ground, is getting a million-dollar parachute. Another letter from the bill-collector sitting on the kitchen table. The message from the doctor’s office on the answering machine, asking we call back right away. The child who won’t return our calls. The uncle, who can’t seem to put away the bottle or make a single decision to improve their life. 

There’s all that, and more. Isn’t there?

The jagged edges of our lives that run up against our faith, and make little tears. The things that make you wonder if the pastor with the pearly white teeth and tie, tied perfectly, has a grip on this world the rest of us have to live in. The nights when the sleep won’t come, and the thought races across your head before you can shoo it away; where in the heck is God.

It’s hard to believe anyone is in control. It isn’t easy to trust that life is anything other than a series of random events. 

There are days when faith comes quickly, without trouble. Too often, though, it takes all we have to keep our faith in one piece. 

Not that we’re innocent, either. We all know we’re a part of the problem.
There are the things we’ve done. Things we know we shouldn’t have. After the deed was committed, nothing happened. We got away with it scotch-free. We’ve seen our own good and bad deeds alike, go unpunished. Unrewarded. 

It’s easier to trust chance more than God. It’s hard not to just put away our mangled faith, and take up hard-faced skepticism.

You could cross the street after going to church, only to get mown over by an out of control car. Or, you could skip church, get brunch, and find a fifty dollar bill in your booth. 

There isn’t much we’re positive about these days… There’s that saying, the only thing we’re certain of, is that nothing is certain… 

We’ve ended up in the the world we believed; happenstance, random, unsure. 

Apparently God is indifferent about it all, anyway.

Well, in the epistle Paul gives voice to a trust it’s hard not to smirk at. Paul’s letter sounds far too naive for modern cynics, like us. 

Paul never had to live with a 24-hour news cycle, after all. Apparently Paul never had to reckon with the facts of life the way the rest of us must.

Of course, not a word of our assumptions are true…

We know perfectly well, not all of Paul’s letter are so cheery. We know, too, that Paul wrote this letter from prison.

These words of thanks, of confidence, of joy are expressed while Paul sits in jail.

Here he was, just trying to spread the Gospel, and all he has to show for it is his trouble. Serving God hasn’t landed him a promotion, but rather in the clink. 

Paul wasn’t naive. Paul had to face these same hard facts of life the rest of us do. Paul knew how hard it is to keep up the faith. The way it takes everything we have just to keep our trust from being ripped to shreds. How often, even that isn’t enough…

There, kept from his sisters and brothers at First Lutheran in Philippi, Paul knew the isolation of doubt. The way, worries make us feel alone. 

Sitting there in prison, Paul wrestled with the same doubts we have. In fact, at one point in this letter, he confides he isn’t even sure of his own fate anymore.

And yet. 

And yet, despite his present circumstance, his own uncertainty; he insists that there is something he is confident of. He’s confident the one who began a good work among the Philippians will bring it to completion. He’s confident in the day of Jesus Christ.

Sitting there in prison, Paul throws faith itself in the face of his uncertainty. Alone in his cell, Paul throws confidence itself in the face of his confinement. 

In the center of this letter, Paul quotes a hymn he sung. The one that gave him the words to overcome his doubt there in the slammer. 

He sang, “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be explored, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself / and became obedient to the point of death- even death on the cross.”

Singing that old hymn, Paul is reminded these trials and tribulations aren’t evidence against God. Rather, they are part and parcel to the life of faith. 

He kept singing. The second verse goes, “Therefore God also highly exalted him / and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus / every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the father.”

Singing that old hymn again, Paul hears the trials and tribulations of life are the very things God has overcome in Jesus. Jesus’ life wasn’t one of success, but suffering. - Of coming to these places that mangle our faith, and doing a new thing.

There, by himself. Paul dares to say, even the walls of his cell aren’t enough to detain him. The fellowship he share with the Philippians is stronger. There, unsure of his own fate. Paul has the audacity to say he’s sure of the destiny of the Philippians.’

In the battle between faith and doubt; faith won out. Just barely. And that’s the thing; we worry our faith isn’t strong enough. And it probably isn’t. The faith that we posses, though, isn’t our’s. It’s a gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Reading this letter we look over Paul’s shoulder and see for ourselves that the gift of faith is made of fabric that is stronger than we worry. 

Advent is the season where we wait. And waiting is hard. Not because we’re impatient. Although we are. Waiting is hard, because it isn’t easy to believe there’s anything worth waiting for. It isn’t easy to trust Christ will come and bring everything to completion along with him. 

In Advent, we wait. Whether we like it or not; we wait. Truthfully, much of our life is spent waiting. In Advent, we at least admit it. And that’s confronting. 

We wait. While we sit there, we wind up bringing those things that make it hard to wait, to God. We wait. One way or another, we all end up bringing our tattered faith to God. We beg God to mend the cuts. We wait. While we wait we find, to our own surprise, our faith is stronger than we ever gave it credit for.  

In Advent we wait. And while we do, Paul’s confidence is proved. 

“I am confident of this,” Paul said, “that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion.”

Wait. Your faith will be made complete. 

When you look back, you will see for yourself. Paul was right.

God kept faith intact. The things that threatened to tear it apart, turned out to be impotent in the face of the one humbled himself. The one who God also highly exalted.

Amidst the swirling doubt and chaos, Paul dared to shout, “I am confident of this.” In the end, the storm ended. Didn’t it? And yet, Paul’s words remain… 

Wait. Wait on the Lord.