God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. My sermon is Paul, Pink and Prayer, and my focus is
Philippians. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I
rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”[1] Now that our feet are
within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit
enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we
pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
At our most recent
Pittsburgh Pastoral Conference, Pastor David Fleming cited a few words from the
famous English author, philosopher, Christian apologist and critic, G.K.
Chesterton. Chesterton once wrote about the abounding vitality of children who
want things repeated and unchanged. “They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the
grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are
not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to
exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to
the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic
necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy
separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has
the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our
Father is younger than we.”
Now, the only
person I know who figured out a way of dealing with a small child who asked her
parents to play again The Wheels on the Bus is my brother,
John. Back in the day when cars had cassette players, he created a cassette
with a continual loop for my niece, Simone. It played her favorite songs over
and over again. That said, the word “again” was one of Paul’s favorite
words as well. Today, I again make three points, three P’s: Paul,
Pink and Prayer. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, the Advent wreath’s Pink
candle and Prayer.
The
Philippian community was the first church Paul founded in Europe.
It stood behind Paul’s work by financially supporting his mission. Paul wrote
in chapter four, “No church entered into partnership with me in
giving and receiving, except you. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my
needs once and again.”[2]
In short,
Philippians is a letter of friendship.[3] Positive expressions of quiet joy
pervade the letter: “I hold you in my heart. … I yearn for you with
all the affection of Christ Jesus. … I am glad and rejoice with you all;
likewise, you should be glad and rejoice with me. … My brothers, whom I love
and long for, my joy and my crown.”[4]
Reading
Philippians in English, we do not grasp fully the emotion that underpinned
Paul’s message. To appreciate the force of his language, we must understand how
the topic of friendship fascinated the Greeks. They defined friendship simply
as fellowship, and agreed that friends hold all things in common, including
material and spiritual goods. Friendship was a form of equality, and the
spiritual unity between friends was so close that you considered your friend
“another self.”
As their pastor
and friend, what prompted Paul to address his friends so warmly? Chapter one
tells us that the Philippian Christians experienced considerable antagonism
from their fellow citizens. That prompted Paul to write, “Let your
manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and
see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in one spirit, with
one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened
in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their
destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted
to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also
suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict … that I still have.”[5]
Paul
urged the Philippian Christians to close ranks and find a deeper unity through
unselfishness. At the same time, reflecting on his own
fate in prison, he offered them the image of suffering on behalf of the gospel.
As friends, they shared mutually in a suffering that deepened their friendship.[6]
Paul knew if
Christians were to persevere despite pressure and persecution, they had to pray
to God. Paul advised his friends to pray, which would strengthen the community
and their resolve to endure suffering from their neighbors. That is why Paul
wrote, “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be known to God.” Prayer strengthened the
Christian community.
In another letter,
Paul encouraged Christians to give thanks in all circumstances,
but not necessarily for all circumstances.
Paul never instructed Christians to rejoice, pray and give thanks for
the evil that confronts the church. That would be akin to us giving
thanks for the smallest sin or a nuclear holocaust. Sin is not God’s will.
However, if Christians in 1st century Philippi gave thanks to
God for salvation through Christ, He would strengthen them to endure difficult
circumstances. In short, Paul proposed a simple answer: rejoice, pray and give
thanks. And now, our second point, the Advent wreath’s pink candle.
Gaudete! Rejoice! Gaudete is
Latin for rejoice and refers to the importance of Christian joy in the midst of
a penitential season, the message of Paul’s letter. Like Lent, Advent is a
penitential season.
The tradition of
Advent candles originated in Germany. A pink candle surrounded by three purple
or blue ones symbolizes joy amidst penitential waiting. Today,
we light the pink candle because it is based on the joy in our epistle.[7]
We use different
colors to teach and symbolize various feasts and seasons, and to evoke
emotions. For example, white symbolizes light and purity. We use white during
the seasons of Christmas and Easter. Red expresses the fire of the Holy Spirit
and the blood of the Passion and martyrdom. We use red on Pentecost, Palm
Sunday and Reformation Sunday. Green is the symbolic color of hope and
serenity. We use green on the Sundays after Epiphany and Pentecost. Again,
violet recalls penance. Black is the somber color used for Good Friday and
funerals, in some churches. Pink or rose, which has never enjoyed frequent use,
serves as a reminder, by using an unusual color, that we are halfway through a
penitential season.[8]
Color effectively
expresses the specific character of the mysteries of our faith and gives a
sense of the Christian's passage through the course of the liturgical year. If
that makes no sense, imagine a white funeral suit, a black wedding gown or the Steelers
in orange and brown.
Lighting a pink
candle during a penitential season symbolizes Christian joy even when we do
penance or suffer persecution. We rejoice in the midst of penance or suffering
because we know that in spite of trouble or persecution, we prayerfully thank
God for His gift of salvation. So, pink
reminds us to rejoice, pray and give thanks.
Our third point,
prayer. There is a lot to say about prayer. Martin Luther himself said much
about it. In his Large Catechism, he wrote, “That we may
know what and how to pray, our Lord Christ himself taught us both the way and
the words.”[9]
Luther
confessed praying was more difficult than preaching.
He offered advice on where to pray[10], how to deal with
distraction[11],
how to overcome the temptation to skip prayer[12], and how to deal with
feeling unworthy, which, he urged, we must overcome.
Luther reminded
pastors to encourage people to pray as Christ and the apostles prayed. He
wrote, “It is our duty to pray because of God’s command. They are
delusional who say, ‘Why should I pray? Who knows whether God pays attention to
my prayer?’”[13] To
such people, Luther said, “We have God’s promise that He will hear us.”[14]
To quote
Luther, “People who are experienced in spiritual matters have said that
no labor is comparable to the labor of praying. To pray is not to recite a
number of psalms or to roar in churches…but to have serious thoughts by which
the soul establishes a fellowship between him who prays and him who hears the
prayer and determines with certainty that although we are miserable sinners,
God will be gracious, mitigate the punishments, and answer our petitions.”[15]
God answers our
petitions. … Now, my friends, tell me the difference between what Martin Luther
believed in his heart and what you believe in yours? Does God answer every
petition? Do I have the confidence to tell my children and grandchildren that
God answers petitions? What do I mean when I say God answers petitions?
To say, “God
answers my petitions,” means I reflect deeply on my relationship with God. In
Luther’s words, it is to have serious thoughts by which the soul
establishes a fellowship between him who prays and him who hears the prayer. I
must reflect deeply on my relationship with each Person of our Triune God.
Is my relationship
authentic? Are my petitions as authentic as those in the Psalms? Read Psalm 5,
43 or 51. Is my spirit like Jesus’ when he taught us to ask for daily bread?
Read Matthew 6 and Luke 11.
When I surrender
absolutely to God the Father and His will – as Jesus did – not only at the hour
of my impending death but throughout my life, I know He will provide my daily
bread and every other worldly need.[16] When I surrender
unconditionally to God and his incomprehensibility – which I can do only in
faith, hope and love – all my petitions are answered.[17] On the other hand,
if my prayer is not imbued with the spirit of Jesus’ words – Let your
will be done, not mine – then it is not prayer at all, but a
projection of a vital need into a void, or an attempt to influence God to
execute senseless magic.
An authentic
relationship with God does not mean I am free of needs and anxieties. However,
when I place myself before God in prayer, for what do I ask?[18] Daily bread? Health?
Love? Success? Strength? Trust? Gratitude? Protection from evil and abuse?
Whatever the
outcome of my prayer, do I give thanks to God in the circumstances I find
myself? If I am pressured and persecuted for my faith, do I still thank God for
the gift of salvation through Christ? …
Given the rancor
that touches family and community, do I pray in the spirit of the Psalmist who
begged God, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me.”?[19]
I close with a
story that I have told before, but I am going to repeat it again for the
back-story of this song has affected people’s lives because it touches on
rejoicing, prayer and thanksgiving. In 1967, Bob Thiele and George Weiss wrote
a political song to calm our fears from the violence of the race riots that
spread across a hundred cities from Newark to Los Angeles. They wrote it with
one man in mind, and hoped his grandfatherly image would convey the song's
message. In 1968, the song made it to #116 on the US pop chart, selling 1,000
records, but reached #1 in the UK, making Louis Armstrong the oldest male to
top the UK Singles Chart, at sixty-six years and ten months old.[20] The song? What
a Wonderful World.
Armstrong's appeal
transcended race, but since the ‘50s, he was accused of subserviently providing
entertainment for white America. Naturally, Armstrong disagreed.
As he introduced a
live performance of the song, Satchmo stated, “Some of you young folks
been saying to me: ‘Hey, Pops - what do you mean, What
a Wonderful World? How about all them wars, …, you call them wonderful?’”
“But
how about listening to old Pops for a minute? Seems to me it ain't the world
that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a
wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance.”[21]
Of course,
Armstrong was speaking of love. Love comes in every color of the rainbow and
fills the heart of every person created by God.
As we await the
coming of Christ, take time today to reflect upon the joy that pink and all the
colors of the rainbow evoke. Think about Paul’s passage: “Rejoice in
the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. … In everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.” Finally,
petition God to create in you a clean heart and a right spirit. When you do,
may the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] Psalm
122.
[2] Philippians
4:15-16.
[3] Luke
Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press
(2010), 325ff.
[4] Philippians
1:7; 1:8; 2:18; 4:1
[5] Philippians
1:27-30.
[6] Brendan
Byrne, The Letter to the Philippians, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall (1990), 793.
[7] LCMS
Website – FAQs – Worship/ Congregational Life – Church Year
[8] http://www.ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/ZLITUR61.HTM
[9] Book
of Concord, Page 441.
[10] Ewald
M. Plass, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active
Christian. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (1959), 1082.
[11] Plass,
1083.
[12] Plass,
1084.
[13] Ibid.
[14]
Plass, 1075.
[15] Plass,
1088.
[16] Karl
Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality. New
York: Crossroad (1986), 88.
[17] Ibid.
[18]
Rahner, 89.
[19] Psalm
51:10.
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Wonderful_World
[21] Smashed
Hits: How political is What A Wonderful World?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16118157.
