Last Thursday, Connor McDavid, who’s a hockey player you may have heard of, was asked a question about who he thought should be the captain of Team Canada, and he said that without a doubt, it should be Sidney Crosby. In his opinion, it’s a no-brainer.i
Now to someone He was who is not a hockey fan, this might seem strange because Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby don’t play on the same team, they don’t live in the same city, they don’t even reside in the same country.
But for someone who knows a little bit more about hockey, it makes perfect sense, because there is a bond between these two that goes deeper than the teams on which they play or the cities or countries in which they live. You see, both of them are Canadians and they’re probably both going to be playing on Team Canada during the Four Nations Cup, which will happen in February of next year.
In the same way, there is a deeper bond between people who follow Jesus Christ. We could be attending different churches, we could be part of different denominations, we could be part of different cultures and speak different languages. We could live in different countries or even on the other side of the world. And yet, we’re all connected in very important and special ways. But do we really live with full awareness of the connection that we have with our fellow Christians, or do we just treat other Christians like one human might treat another human being? Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about this morning. And to help us, as we do that, we’re going to be looking at Philippians 1:1-11.
Paul’s Letter to the Christians in Philippi
This is part of Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Philippi. Now, Philippi was a prosperous Roman colony and it ruins are located in the present-day Macedonia and Thrace region of Greece. It’s probably the first place in Europe where Paul preached the Gospel. He stopped there on his second missionary journey, and then he visited a couple more times after that. Paul started a Christian church in Philippi and now he’s writing to the Christians in that church to encourage them because they are facing persecution and going through difficult times.
Paul himself is in a difficult spot because he is in jail. We’re not exactly sure where, but he probably wrote this letter to the Philippians when he was under house arrest in Rome. Not only does he want to encourage them, he also wants to thank them, because these Christians in Philippi have been praying for and supporting Paul throughout his missionary journeys and even during his time of imprisonment.
Paul does something we might perhaps consider unusual in this letter because he doesn’t just teach or write about good theology, he demonstrates it. And he demonstrates good theology by doing some very important things in our passage. First of all, he tells the Philippians that he remembers them in his prayers to God with thankfulness and joy. He also tells them that he longs for them with the affection of Jesus Christ, and he prays that they will be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from through Jesus Christ.
The Triangle-shaped Life
Maybe you notice a theme here? Paul is living what we could call a triangle-shaped life (us, God & other people). Paul’s life has been transformed by the forgiveness, love and grace that he has received from Jesus Christ, and then as a result of what God has done for him, Paul’s primary relationship is now with God. And Paul relates to God with faith, reliance and trust. Also, in response to what God has done for him, Paul relates to his fellow Christians with unconditional love and with all the blessings that God has poured into his life.
Paul wants for the Philippians the things that God has already given him and he’s loving them with God’s love. He is also looking to God to give the Philippians everything they need, all the strength, courage, love, knowledge, wisdom, and endurance. And Paul is trusting that God will do that.
And the Philippians are also living a triangle-shaped life. Their lives have also been transformed by the forgiveness, love and grace they have received by Jesus.
And they respond to Jesus’ love by loving Paul: lifting him up in their prayers to God and providing for his support, even while he is in jail and even though they are facing difficulties of their own.
The Key to the Triangle-shaped Life: koinonia
Now, the key to this triangle-shaped life is a word found in our passage in the phrase “partnership in the Gospel.” The Greek word behind our English word “partnership” is koinonia. It’s translated here as “partnership” and it’s also translated in other places as “fellowship,” but it means much more than the way we tend to use those terms in everyday language today.
At its core, koinonia means ‘a sharing of something in common’ and there are several different aspects to this common sharing. It could be a sharing of common circumstances or resources. It can be a sharing of common work or mission. It can be a sharing of common relationships, like we have in a family.
We already live in a koinonia, whether we know Jesus or not, because as sinful, broken human beings, we all share in the sin that we carry around in our bodies, in the death that we are all headed towards, and in the condemnation before God that our sins bring upon us.
But Jesus has taken us out of that community, that fellowship, that common sharing, and brought us into a new community, a new koinonia, a new fellowship. It’s the fellowship or partnership of the redeemed, and Jesus did that by living a perfect human life for us, and by going to the cross to pay the full cost of forgiveness for all our sins. And then on the third day that followed, Jesus rose from the dead to declare victory over sin, death, and the devil for us, and to bring us into the family of God as one of His beloved, adopted children. That’s the new community in which we now live, the family of God. Through Jesus, you are a beloved, forgiven child of God.
In this new fellowship, we have a new set of shared circumstances, a new shared work, and a new set of shared relationships. And the foundation of this new fellowship is a shared relationship with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because what Jesus has done has brought us into fellowship with the community of the Father, Son, and Spirit. We’re now joined to that divine community through Jesus, and everything we have as followers of Jesus flows from this relationship.
Our sharing in the divine fellowship of God forms the basis, the foundation, of our fellowship with our fellow Christians. Through our relationship with God, we receive all the love, compassion and grace that we need to love our fellow Christians, even the ones that are hard to love, like the person in the mirror that see every morning when we wash our face. Sometimes that the hardest person for us to love.
God gives us all the love, compassion and grace that we need to love our fellow Christians, and then we can love other people without any expectation of receiving any love back from them in return, because God has generously already given us all the love that we need.
We can generously give of ourselves and our resources to others because we know that God generously provides for all of our needs. We don’t need to hold back in giving our life to others because we know that we have a much greater, more abundant life in Jesus which will last forever.
Now, in this new fellowship with God and our fellow Christians, we have a whole new set of shared circumstances. We have righteousness, purity, and holiness from Jesus. With our fellow believers, we share in the forgiveness, grace, and love that God gives to all His children. We also share in the gift of the Holy Spirit, who lives within us to guide, empower, and enlighten us.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful pictures of that new community, that new koinonia, that new communion, we have is when we gather on Sundays to receive the body and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There, we are nourished by His great gift to us, and we’re in fellowship or communion with Him, and we are also in fellowship or communion with each other.
As we live with others in this new community, we also have a new work, a shared work, that we contribute to. This is the partnership in the Gospel that Paul had with the Philippian Christians. They contributed financially to support Paul in his work of sharing the Gospel throughout Asia and Europe. We do the same thing as we support the ministry work that we do together in this church. We also support ministry and mission work beyond this church, for example, by supporting the work of Lutheran Church Canada and the work they are doing both in Canada and around the world. We support groups such as the BC Mission Boat, Camp Luther, and the Langley Food Bank through the tithe our congregation gives. We also have fellowship, or koinonia, with the Christians in the First Nations communities where we send teams. The presence of our team in their community, even if only for a few days, supports them in their faith as they live in that community 24/7/365.
An Unexpected Source of Awe
Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California – Berkeley, and author of a book called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, concludes, based on research, that experiencing awe helps us to be kinder, friendlier, and less self-centered. He has put together a list of what he calls “eight wonders of life” that tend to inspire awe in us. On that list are things you would expect, like beautiful works of art, whether music or paintings, beautiful scenery such as a mountain or a sunset, and even those profound moments in life when a new family member is born or when a loved one dies.ii
But what is unexpected on his list, and is actually at the top of it, is the awe people experience when they witness others doing beautiful acts of morality, often in sacrificial ways. As Christians, we are familiar with this. Perhaps the most profound example of moral beauty in human history is Jesus Christ, who laid down His life on the cross, not because of His sin, but to save us.
Dear friend, when you rely on God as the source of all you need and then abundantly share with others all that God has given to you, you can be the kind of person that inspires awe in others as God works in and through you.
That awe can then become an opportunity for us to share with others the wonderful gift that Jesus has given to us: fellowship with God, fellowship with each other, fellowship in God’s mission, and fellowship in God’s blessings. Amen.
Farewell to Shadowlands 