I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Yonkers, NY on the 2nd Sunday in Advent, 4 December 1994, and based on part of the Epistle for the day: Philippians 1:9-11

Grace, mercy and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ:

These next few weeks are a time of year when many peoples’ heads and hearts turn in the same direction. They turn towards home. The holiday gongs and Christmas carols that play over the store loudspeakers encourage us to head “home for the holidays. They try to evoke warm memories of more innocent times in our own lives when–as boys and girls–we just knew things would turn out okay; memories of times when our families surrounded us with freshly baked cookies, sparkling decorations, undeserved presents, lovely smells, and–most of all–love. This may well be, for some of us, an idealized, Norman Rockwell kind of picture of Christmases past. But it’s the one that sells. It’s the one that we’ve come to think we want, and would like to think we had.

A lot of the love expressed at this time of year is this mushy, moist-eyed, lump-in-your-throat kind of love. It’s the love of the Frank Capra film, and the Hallmark greeting card. It’s also the kind of love that keeps us from experiencing the full power and purpose of God’s love.

St. Paul writes to the Philippians, and to us, that his prayer is that we may experience God’s love, may live in God’s love, and may let God’s love flow through us to others. Let’s see today what the real point of love is. It’s not to make us feel all warm and fuzzy. The real point of love is to be an ethical motivation and empowerment. How does this happen?

We have to start with Paul’s prayer. He prays for the Philippians regularly. Here he lets them in on the content of his prayer, what it is he says when he prays for them. It’s a prayer of a pastor for his congregation. The core of Paul’s prayer is that love will grow deeper and richer and stronger among his readers every day.

There isn’t room among us who follow Christ for a wavering love that melts away at the first appearance of opposition or rejection. The love among us is to grow stronger every day. It will deepen our knowledge of the Gospel’s real meaning. It will give us the insight into what we should be doing as Christian men and women in this sin-filled world.

This deepened knowledge and insight has, according to Paul’s prayer, two purposes: that we make the best choices possible and that we become the best people possible.

There’s only one place that such a love can arise. There’s only one source for this sort of life-changing, life-giving love. It’s not in decorations and cards. It’s not in presents and cookies. The only source of this love is in the heart of God.

When God looked out over His creation years ago and saw that it was very good, His heart overflowed with love for His creatures. When the chief among those creatures, Adam and Eve, decided to go their own way, God’s love continued to spill over onto them. His love sustained the world and its inhabitants until the time was right for God to send His own dear Son into the world to be conceived in the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. At that crucial point in history, at that crossroads of time, God’s love for humanity found its fullest expression ever in the way Jesus was born, lived, died, and came back to life.

Now that you and I and everyone else in the world have had our sins washed away by the sacrifice of Jesus, humanity can respond with the kinds of thoughts, words, and deeds which God wants. Now that this salvation is ours by Baptism, we, as individuals, can respond with these actions.

When Paul prays that our “love may abound more and more” (v. 9) he does not limit that love in any way. He prays that the Philippians may more and more start to be people who are characterized by love. He wants them, he wants us, to be people who are known by the richness and depth of the love that we show.

One might wonder, and rightly so, how we will be able to display such a bountiful love. Where do we start?

Paul’s prayer continues immediately to include that our love be directed and formed by knowledge. The word he uses here indicates a deeper, fuller knowledge than usual. It is a richer level of understanding than mere acquaintance. Teachers often sense this kind of thing in the classroom. We see some students who know all the right answers, but still don’t seem to ‘get it.’ We also see others who really click with the subject matter, who show in many different ways that what they are getting out of class is more than a mere head knowledge.

Paul is praying for this deeper level of knowledge about spiritual matters. It’s an advanced knowledge, showing a deeper appreciation of Gospel truths, and a deeper awareness of ways in which the Gospel applies to every situation in life. This knowledge keeps our love from being so yielding that truth doesn’t matter, so soft that all focus is lost.

There’s more that Paul prays for. There’s still another way in which he believes our love should be directed and controlled. He prays for the ability to discern between right and wrong. He prays for insight in moral matters. Paul’s prayer is that the Philippians, and we, have a wide-ranging ability to perceive the right path among the many conflicting and confusing options open to us.

Lest you think that controlled love is weakened love, lest you think that love which is guided by knowledge and discernment is less powerful and overwhelming, think of the way a stream gains power when it is channeled. When the power of water is directed and focused, it does more work more effectively than any amount of slow, dissipated, meandering water can do. A similar thing happens with our love.

Water, when focused, works harder and accomplishes more. It shoots to a third floor window and extinguishes a fire; it turns a huge turbine and generates electricity; it washes cars; it carves rock. The love that God plants in our hearts works with similar power when it is focused through knowledge and discernment. This love extinguishes conflict, it generates peace, it washes away disputes, it chisels away hardened hearts.

Paul’s prayer is that love will be focused for two reasons: that we “might know how to make the best choices possible and … might be the best people possible. ” (Hawthorne, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 43)

His words are that we would “be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.” (NIV) He is clearly building on what came just before this. We know that when we have knowledge and insight, we will have the ability to discern what is right. In today’s world many of the hard choices that face us don’t seem to be between good and evil.

Many times, those are the easier choices. The hard ones often seem to be between two good things, each of which might harm someone. God’s love flowing through us will guide us to discerning the best choice possible.

There are three complimentary ways Paul sees open for us to become the best people we can be: that we become pure, that we become blameless for the day of Christ, and that we be filled with the fruit of righteousness. These three clearly work together. They are clearly also gifts from God, things we cannot accomplish on our own.

When, by God’s grace, we become pure, our lives can be examined by the strong light of the mid-day sun. There is nothing hidden or ugly in our lives. When we are blameless, we have reached the point where we no longer set traps for people around us to catch them in sin. When we are filled with the fruit of righteousness, all that is honorable, all that is true, all that is just, all these things are the results of our actions, our decisions, and our way of living.

We are only able to be people like this because the love of God is channeled through us. It appeared in Bethlehem. It is here now. The point of this love is that we be the people God designed us to be, living the way He wants us to live.

We will not in this lifetime fully escape to clutches of sin on us. We will not become wholly pure. We won’t become completely blameless. And we won’t bear only the fruits of righteousness. That’s part of our unfortunate inheritance as humans.

At the same time, however, God’s Spirit constantly works in us growing us into the people He wants us to be. God’s Spirit fills us with His love. God’s Spirit sees to it that the love we have grows in knowledge and depth of insight. God’s Spirit helps us develop the ability to discern what is right.

With these His gifts and under His guidance, you and I are engaged in the re-enactment of John the Baptizer’s task. John was called to prepare the way of the Lord. He was to make the rough places plain, smoothing out hill and valley, clearing a straight path. John came proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is quite the same task that you and I have before us. This channeled and directed love that flows through us, prepares us, prepares those around us, prepares the whole world, for the coming of Jesus in His glory at the end of the world, what St. Paul calls “the day of Christ.”

That day is approaching. We need to prepare for it with all the fervor, with all the excitement and eagerness that we bring when we prepare for the Christmas season. Above the mixed up noise of the world, you and I are called to listen and act when the prophet shouts out “Prepare the way of the Lord!” We are called to let the love of Christ grow and flower in our hearts. AMEN.

May the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

S.D.G.

note: very much of the above interpretation of these verses comes from the commentary on Philippians by Gerald F. Hawthorne, vol. 43, in the Word Biblical Commentary series.