In the epistle for Trinity 16 in Year A, Philippians 1.21-end, we turn from the practical application at the end of Romans back to Paul’s more usual style, using dense and challenging language which nonetheless communicates an extraordinary passion for life.
Paul draws on a wide range of language, from the civic to the military to the athletic, in order to communicate both his concerns for his readers and the way that they should think about life. This leads on naturally to the reflection in the next chapter on the pattern of life Jesus has left for us—but Paul’s also models this in his own attitude. His concerns is always turned outward, to Jesus and to the Philippians, that they might know the reality of God’s love for them.
The Grove booklet on community rule of life can be found here.
The gospel reading is Matthew 20.1-16. The written commentary for that can be found here,
and the video discussion is here.
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To complement this, as it happens, there is a new teaching series on Ligonier site on Philippians entitled ‘My Joy and Crown’. Only the first talk, entitled, ‘A Joy and Crown Congregation’ is payment free. It sets the scene.
https://www.ligonier.org/posts/my-joy-and-crown-new-teaching-series-from-sinclair-ferguson
Of the latter verses of the passage,
“…. In nothing be terrified by your enemies”
This passage reminds me of In Memoriam: 118
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
…..But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he types this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown’d with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly….
In the full stanza, Tennyson compares the making of a human soul and character to forging iron:
Idle ore Useless, raw metal in the dark earth.
Iron dug from central gloom: Life brought forth into the real world.
Heated hot with burning fears / Dipt in baths of hissing tears / Batter’d with the shocks of doom: The painful trials, sorrows, and hardships of existence.
Just as raw iron must be heated, quenched in water, and hammered on an anvil to become a strong, useful tool, a person must go through suffering and hard times to develop a noble, resilient character. Adversity gives human existence shape, purpose, and value.
The shocks of doom that often assail our Church[s] and the baths of tears we may be often plunged into are but precious trials of faith that we can score off;
Oswald Chambers used the analogy of the cricket batsman facing relentless fast bowling
saying “We must learn to score from those things that come against us”.
To coin Paul’s sporting metaphors, we might say, The “bat of faith”
and our exertions are our only means of defence and attack to bring forth Gold as Peter says.
If we “take heed how we build” [The church even] i.e. with gold,
Then faith in God is indeed precious gold to Him. Shalom