“This Is My Prayer”

Philippians 1:3-11

December 4^th and 7^th, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

Most mornings, the routine at the Fleming house is the same. Usually we wake up, not to the sound of an alarm clock buzzer or someone’s voice on the radio, but to the voice of our two year old, who, when she wakes up calls for her mother. Obviously Susie and I are still asleep when she calls out. Our sleep, at this point, is not that deep and hard to wake you up from it kind of sleep. But we are asleep when Annie Grace’s sweet voice calls out, “Mommy.” I do not mind telling you that hearing our little darling’s voice call out to us usually is pretty special. But not when she calls out before she is supposed to. Susie and I play this game. If you have kids, you probably have played this game to. It is the game where you pretend that you cannot hear your

child calling out to you. And it is the game where you pretend that you are deeply asleep. Annie Grace will wait about a minute before she calls out again. Now that I think about it, she is kind of like a snooze button. If only we could teach her to call out every nine minutes. Wouldn’t that be great? Susie will wipe the sleep away from her eyes and look over at me and say, “Your daughter is awake.” To which I will usually reply, “Yes, and she’s calling for her mother!” I think Susie is secretly training her to call for her father from her morning bed.

The truth is that it is then that we both get up. One of us lifts Annie from her crib and then Annie and I head to the kitchen to prepare her breakfast while Susie jumps into the shower. Now I know that I should not do this. I know that I should be a little more attentive to my daughter in the morning, but once she’s settled, I reach for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I would like to tell you that I read the front page first and get caught up on the world’s happenings, but I do not do that. I do look at the Arkansas section first. I look at the obituary page to make sure that my name is not printed. Then, because everyone needs a little humor to start the day, I turn to the Living Section of the paper to my favorite comic strip, Kudzu. You know Kudzu, the comic strip drawn by Doug Marlette, don’t you? It’s main character is a preacher. I love his name. It is, the Reverend Will B. Done. Some time ago, a friend of mine sent a copy of one of the reverend’s adventures, laminated, I am sure, because he thought that I should keep it. In the comic strip, the reverend is answering some anonymous mail. The letter reads, “Dear Preacher, why did you leave your previous pastorate?” The letter is signed, “Curious.” Now there is nothing that indicates that the Rev. Done is a Methodist who would have been moved because they needed him somewhere else to do a good work. Instead, the preacher writes back, “Dear Curious, Illness.” Then in the final frame, the reverend writes, “I was sick of the congregation.” That could never be said of me and you. Never, not once, would I say those words about you. In fact, if you will listen very carefully, I will lower my voice so that I can tell you a secret. Do not tell any of the other churches that I have served this, but of the three that I have pastored, you are my favorite!

For sure these words could not have been said about Paul and the Philippian Church. In fact, most scholars and commentators agree the church at Philippi was Paul’s favorite. They also believe that Paul, probably was in jail at the time when he wrote these words. His imprisonment probably was not a squabble with the religious authorities. He was not serving a little time waiting for a release. No, he was in the kind of prison where he was awaiting his trial. Probably he was chained to a guard while he wrote these words. Given the circumstances, you would think that Paul’s words would be less than positive. Given the situation, you would think that he would do a little complaining about his imprisonment. I know that I would, but he does not.

So let us look at his words, these eight verses, this morning. After the obligatory greetings that characterize Paul’s letters, he gets into what is also common in all of his letters, the section that we have come to call the thanksgiving. By the way, our letters today are much different than the ones of Paul’s day. I do not do much letter writing anymore. My mother taught me to write thank-you notes and I do that, but I do not do much letter writing. Now I write e-mails. When I did write letters, there was always a greeting. The letters that I write now, to the church, usually say something like this, “Dear John, I hope that this letter finds all well with you.” That is a greeting. Paul offers a greeting in this letter, and then he offers words that we call a thanksgiving. I am not sure that I have ever written a thanksgiving section in one of my letters. But Paul’s letters include thanksgiving sections. In fact, the one that he writes to the Philippian church, Paul is thankful to at least two things. First, he is thankful when he remembers them. Listen again to his words, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.” Perhaps he is sitting in his jail cell and that is what causes him to remember the important people in his life. We all have that tendency, you know, when something life threatening or a major change happens, we are suddenly grateful to those who have helped us along. I think that that is what Paul is doing here, gratefully remembering and being thankful to God for all of the people in the Philippian Church. Then there is the second thing that Paul is thankful for. Paul writes, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.” Then he says this, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ...” The good work, friends, is probably the monetary support that the Philippians gave him for his ministry, for the teaching that he did and the preaching that he did and for his cause of spreading the gospel. I do not want you to miss this, Paul feels strongly about this church and the people in it. In fact, he says two different times and in two different ways. The first time he tries to justify it, as if to say to this church, there are other churches but I feel especially close to you. Listen to how he justifies it, “It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart.” Do you want to see something neat? Because the way that this sentence is constructed, it can also mean, “I hold you in my heart.” You see, it is a mutual holding and a reciprocal love that they have for one another.

By the way friends, it is not always that way. I heard of a preacher who ran into a couple who lived in a town where he once pastored. They were not members of his church, but they were friends. The couple said, “Your former church keeps talking about you and saying how you were a beloved pastor to them.” The preacher could not help it when he said, “That’s funny, I was not beloved to them when I was there!” That is not the way that it was in Philippi. There was a mutual love. Paul has said it once and he says it even stronger when he writes, “God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Jesus Christ.”

So what does this preacher writing from a jail cell, probably in Rome, want, what does he really want and hope for his favorite church? Well, you can read what he wants more than anything else in his prayer for them. Paul writes, “And this is my prayer, that you love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best.” That is the first thing that he asks of God in his prayer. Then he asks this, “...so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.”

Well, you know a prayer like that from the apostle to his favorite church, gets me to thinking about what my prayer for my favorite church would be and what my real hopes for us are. To be honest with you, I am glad that I am not in prison. If I were in prison and were away from you, I would want you to know how proud I am of you and the things that you have done since my arrival a year and a half ago. If I were away, I would want you to know how much I love all of you and this church. I would want you to know how proud I am of the fact that you have given almost $14,000 for mission work this year, including 320 man hours at the Rice Depot. I would want you to know how grateful that I am that we have paid our apportionments in full, which means more mission across the world, and have taken care of our own by teaching them and loving them. I, too, am confident, that God, who began a good work in all of us, will bring it to completion one day. In the meantime, we use the gifts that God has given us. When it came time to pray for you, well, I would probably just use Paul’s first prayer to get your attention. For you see, church, I want your love to overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best. Friends, that is a wonderful prayer. Do not miss the power of it. I want love to overflow in you the same way that coca-cola does when you pop the can and pour it into a glass. You know that experience, don’t you? When it happens, you end up slurping in order to contain it. Church, I do not want you love to be contained! I want your love to be full of knowledge and insight, the kind of knowledge that Paul said was now like looking in a mirror, but one day we will know more fully and see things face to face. Sometimes we make bad mistakes, don’t we? You may know, by now, that I am a country music fan. I keep that quiet, but if you know me you know that. Country music is not so much about old trucks and dead dogs these days. That is the reason that I like it. There is a great line from a song that Toby Keith sings. Listen to its words, “I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.” That is the kind of thing that Paul is talking about here, knowledge, full insight seeing things clearly, so we will know what is best. Our passage tonight ends with these words, “So that in the day of Christ, you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Christ.” Last night, we watched the Little Rock parade from one of church member’s offices downtown. There was a man dressed up in a reindeer’s costume, holding a sign that read, “Jesus Is Coming Soon. Are You Ready?” Annie Grace, of course was with me, and so I asked her is she was ready for Jesus to come. It did my heart good to see her nod her head and then say, “Yes.” My prayer is that you will be ready, too. Preparing for Jesus is so much more than presents and lights. Let us pray.