A Hometown called Heaven

 May 22 2022

Philippians 1:8-30

I have been a country boy all my life which now that you know that, probably helps explain why I am the way I am. Our home seems to be part of the neighboring housing allotment but in reality we live on the back corner of the farm. I guess you could say we are pretending to be suburban when we are in fact really pretty rural after all. Now, my children are all grown and have their own homes. Elizabeth lives in Dover and Sarah and Matt share a home they bought in New Phila. I am very proud that they have been able to purchase their own homes but what concerns me the most is that they don’t really have any frame of reference for living in town. There are a lot of things that Jennifer and I do where we live that just might not be appropriate where our kids live. We can let our grass grow until it looks like a pasture field but in town they may not care for that. We have a clothesline in our backyard but these aren’t always a welcome sight within city limits. Our place can sometimes be described as organized chaos but when you have neighbors close by such a thing might not be a great idea. The bottom line is that there are different standards that are followed depending on where you live and as a Dad, I need to keep reminding my kids of that.

I was thinking about how where we live makes a difference on what we do because in the letter Paul wrote to the church at Philippi from his prison cell in Rome, this same idea is found throughout his letter. Paul, of course, is not saying that the people of Philippi should act different because of living there instead of, say, Rome. No, where Paul is saying that they should consider that they now live is in the hometown of heaven.. Most of us all have a place that we consider to be our hometown, the place even if we move we always want to return to because that is where our heart is. This is what I believe Paul has in mind as he pens this letter to the little church at Philippi. this is very much what has happened with the coming of Jesus. The town square of this hometown called heaven is where the highway of heaven intersects with common roads of earth. Jesus is this way that has come and crossed our path and now where this has happened we have a new place where we find our heart longs to be. There, where others have turned onto the narrow way of Jesus and found themselves in this little piece of heaven flourishing here on earth, this Paul tells us, this is where we are to call home, where we are citizens of this most heavenly of places on earth. This strangely enough is how Paul speaks of the church in his letter to Philippi.

This understanding of the church being our hometown of heaven here on earth that Paul writes about is only found here in the letter to the Philippians. Elsewhere, Paul writes of the church as being a body, such as in the twelfth chapter of Romans, the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians and the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Sometimes, Paul describes the church as being the new Temple as he does in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians and he even writes of the church being a field in which he labors to bring about a harvest as he does in the third chapter of First Corinthians. But here in this letter to the church at Philippi, Paul uses this idea of the church being a city, a hometown of heaven, you might say, which is very unusual. What is also very unusual about this letter is that it is one of the most joy filled letters that Paul has ever written. What makes this fact even more unusual is that the joy found in this letter is found in the midst of Paul writing about the suffering that he endures in prison and the suffering that he expects the church of Philippi to shoulder as well. The question then that lurks in the background of this letter is just what is the connection between having heaven as our hometown and our ability to endure suffering with joy?

Another important aspect of this letter to the church of Philippi is that it dispels the myth that Christianity is about an private relationship with Jesus. Yes, our relationship with Jesus is personal, but it is not private, something we do all on our own. No, our relationship with Jesus always happens together, with other followers of Jesus. None of us go it alone. This is what Paul reminds his readers when he begins his letter saying that he thanked God in all of his remembrance of them, always in every prayer of his because they filled his prayer with joy because of their partnership with Paul in the gospel from the very first day they had met. The Greek word for partnership, “koininia”, is a word that means much more than being just partners as if Paul and this church were in business together. No, koininia conveys meanings of fellowship, communion and intimacy.We hear these meanings in what is written in the first chapter of the first letter of John where John writes, “…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you so that you too may have fellowship, koininia, with us, and indeed our fellowship, koininia, is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” When we speak of fellowship, we mean much more than a time of coffee and cookies with some chit-chat. No, what the Bible is referring to is this intimate, intermingling of lives as is found between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the life of God which has been from all eternity, this is what the death and resurrection of Jesus has opened up to us and this is the life which the Holy Spirit has pulled us into so that this communion is not only between us and God but this intimacy and love is to be between all who are drawn into this life of God. This is what Paul speaks of when he tells his readers that they are all united with him in the sharing of the grace of God. This grace is Jesus Christ and what he has done on our behalf, he is the very center of our unity.

It is out of this understanding of deep fellowship that Paul prays for this church of Philippi. Paul wants this church to not become satisfied with where they are at, never acting as if they had somehow arrived. Paul understood that the Holy Spirit is working continually to bring about the future perfection of God’s creation that will someday be a reality at the end of days. This is the perfection that he is bringing about within the church today. This is what Paul understood and he aligns his prayer with this work of the Holy Spirit. Paul first, prays that the love of the church of Philippi will abound, overflow, pour out in amazing abundance. This is what one would expect when one knows that our fellowship is in the life of God so therefore the very love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Then, Paul continues that they also increase in knowledge and all discernment. This discernment is the ability to perceive the right ethical understanding. We get a fuller idea of what Paul is getting at from the sixth chapter of the book of Hebrews where we are told that those who are mature spiritually have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. The importance of being able to make the distinction between good and evil is as we find in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, that in the end all that is evil will be destroyed so that only the good will remain. So, Paul desires that his church know what is good, what is it that will remain because in this way they will be able to approve of the things which are essential, the things that matter, so that in the bright light of the day of Christ’s return, it will be apparent that they are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through our fellowship with Jesus.

So, much like Paul’s other letter’s, he sets the tone of the whole letter right at the very beginning. His desire is that his church be known as the most loving place in town, a place where love spills out and runs down and is gushing forth like water from a fire hydrant. Yet, he also wants his church to be able to make right choices, to know what is good and what is evil and keep on choosing the good because in the end, when the light of Christ ends our night and we stand there in the full brightness of that glorious day, what will be clear is that we have made right choices, that we have a righteous life which results from our fellowship with Christ. Now, this seems pretty straightforward, but where we run into trouble is when trouble runs into us, where we are called to suffer on account of our faith. Think about what is described in the book of Hebrews, the tenth chapter, where we read about those who followed Jesus, how they endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction. These were people who joyfully accepted the plundering of their property. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for us in this situation to decide what is good and what is evil? It is easy to believe that in situations like these that we would harbor a lot of hatred and resentment in our hearts, desiring revenge or retaliation on those who would harm us in such a way, but then could we really say that such actions are good or righteous? Could we really say that such feelings and actions are the result of our fellowship with Jesus who himself endured such reproach and affliction, yet was willing to accept the very sentence of death all for us. You see, when we stop and consider what we may be called on to endure for our faith it becomes much more clear as to why Paul prays for this church at Philippi to be able to choose between the evil and the good, so that in their lives that which will be worthy of eternal glory is what they will pursue.

What we are left with, then, is how can we be people who choose the good, whether we find ourselves living on the sunny side of the street or whether we find ourselves under extreme duress?When we say that we are participants in grace this automatically eliminates thoughts that we are going to be able to choose the good no matter what just by gritting our teeth and mustering up all the strength that we might possess. No, it is obvious that God is going to have to be there along side of us to get us through whatever we are facing. This is what Paul tells us is his answer as we hear in the nineteenth verse of this first chapter of Philippians. There we hear Paul ask the devoted disciples of the church of Philippi that he desired that they pray for him, asking that the Spirit of Jesus Christ might help Paul use his situation for, in his words, his deliverance. Now, when we have been thinking about making right and righteous choices, choosing the good over evil, then when Paul asks for deliverance it is not hard to hear that phrase from what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into hard testing but deliver us from evil”. Paul is asking the church to pray that the Holy Spirit, will, not just help but rather richly supply, lavishly pouring out upon Paul all that is needed for him to display the goodness of God in his life. What is surprising is that Paul, of all people, would have to ask others to pray for the Holy Spirit to be abundantly  present in his life, because I mean, he is Paul, after all.  Perhaps though, what Paul also needed is to know that there were those with whom he was in close fellowship with him pleading on his behalf for in them the very pleading of the Holy Spirit, whose groans are too deep for words, can be heard in the voices of friends.

What the Holy Spirit brought into Paul’s life, what he needed most at the time of his greatest suffering was an overwhelming experience of the faithfulness of heaven. Paul, like us, needed to know that the faithfulness of God which had ahold of him was what anchored his life, not his meager attempt at faith as if he had the stamina to relentlessly hold on to God. Paul, earlier in this first chapter, spoke of how there were two groups of people who preached Christ. The first group did so from envy and rivalry. The second group though preached Christ from a desire to please God, from a heart of love. This desire to please God is to preach Christ from a stance of faith, of trusting that what God has in store for us in the future is worth more than anything this world has to offer. This was the way Paul understood his life. This is why when he pondered his death he was truly torn between remaining here to continue in his fruitful labor or to go on home. For Paul, to die is gain because the most valuable possession is to be possessed by heaven, to be fully at home there, to know and experience the faithfulness and security there. The reason that Paul knew that the best is yet to come is that he had tasted that future right here in the present. This is what Paul always said about the Holy Spirit, that his presence is the sampler platter of the heavenly banquet. You know if a small portion is mouth-watering then the all-you-can-eat buffet is just going to be out of this world.

You see, when you understand Paul’s mindset, then you begin to know what Paul means when he tells the church at Philippi that they were to have one aim, to let their manner of life be worthy of the gospel. Here we must stop and just say that the translators have really missed the point in this sentence. It is easy to understand why because what Paul has written here is somewhat confusing unless you see this sentence in light of his whole argument. The phrase, “let your manner of life be” is  how the translators describe the Greek word politeuomai, which is derived from another Greek word, polis. Polis is the Greek word for city and we still hear this in names like Indianapolis, which literally means city of Indians or Annapolis, which means Anne’s city, named after Princess Anne.  So, what Paul is saying here is that his readers have to do one thing and that is to remember that they are citizens of a city, that their hometown is heaven here on earth, and to live faithful to this fact. What Paul is implying by stating it like he does is that here in this little church in Philippi, this is in fact a city of heaven, an eternal outpost, a hometown where our hearts are at home with Christ. The question that only they could answer is just what was it worth for them to live in this place, where they could perceive and experience the very love and goodness of heaven? What was it worth to them that on no account of their own, they were now able to have the God who created the entire universe and themselves, to have this God, close by to them, walking alongside them, speaking for them, bringing them into the realm of his truth? This is the good news, the kingdom of God had come on earth as it is in heaven and they got to experience this through the God they knew as the Spirit of Jesus Christ.What exactly then is having this experience, this assurance, this joy found in the presence of the God who rejoices over us, just what is this worth? This is what Paul is asking his readers because when they understood the value of their experience with the God who loved them then this is what should determine how their actions, every time they made a decision. If being a citizen of this heavenly city is worth everything to them, then they should defend this life with their life.  You can hear the defensive pose Paul is staying should be their posture, standing firm in the Spirit, side by side because of the faithfulness of this kingdom. When the faithfulness of heaven has so gripped them, and unified them into one unstoppable force this is how they can face what ever tries to frighten them. This is how the city is kept safe from the marauding armies of fear, anxiety and worry which threaten to tear it apart. In this way, by allowing heaven to so overwhelm and take ahold of our life, this is how we can suffer for Christ. When we realize the greatness and richness of heaven, what is here on earth pales in comparison. When we know heaven as our hometown then it becomes, oh, so much easier to make decisions for good and not evil. This is what Paul knew all so well, it was how he endured his suffering here on earth because his life was held secure in heaven. We have to ask ourselves then, just what is it worth to us to be able to have a foretaste of heaven here to day? What is it worth to be able because of Christ to walk with God, the Holy Spirit, to be filled with his love, to be held fast to his heart? Just what is this worth to you? Once you know that answer then go and live knowing within your heart that where your hometown is, is heaven. Amen