How do we connect socially in a time of social distance? Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians in the midst of his own extended time of social isolation. This letter he wrote offers us words of honesty and hope in the midst of our current moment.
SHOW NOTES:
Philippians 1:1-11
Connect with me:
Thanks for listening!
How do we connect socially in a time of social distance? Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians in the midst of his own extended time of social isolation. This letter he wrote offers us words of honesty and hope in the midst of our current moment.
SHOW NOTES:
Philippians 1:1-11
Connect with me:
Thanks for listening!
Note: This transcript is generated using speech recognition software and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
1 (2s):
Hello. And welcome to season two of the love is stronger than fear podcast. I'm your host, Amy Julia Becker, and each week we're going to take a look at current events, AKA the Corona virus. And we're going to consider a small portion of Paul's letter to the Philippians. Paul wrote this letter under adverse circumstances, and he wrote about how to know joy, peace, hope, and love. Not by denying the hardship of the moment, but by knowing God in the midst of that hardship, I hope that reading the Bible in our current moment of uncertainty and turmoil will help us to turn away from fear and toward love.
1 (48s):
Thank you for joining me.
2 (53s):
Well, hello everyone. It is March 23rd as I recorded this and my husband and I have been talking about what day we will look back on and call day one of the coronavirus crisis. I'm not sure what we should count as day one, but I know that each day feels like a long period of time. And each day, our son, William, who is 11 gives us reports. He looks at the state and national data on how many confirmed cases have been counted and how many people have died.
2 (1m 27s):
And the numbers are grim. I think they're going to get grimmer. And here in Connecticut, we are real close to Manhattan. A number of people that we know in love live in Manhattan or in Brooklyn or in the surrounding areas. Um, people are getting sick. There's a crisis on its way. And here in Connecticut, we are feeling that as of today, the non-essential businesses here in Connecticut will all close. Did you know that liquor stores are considered essential, those stay open, but the non essential businesses will close.
2 (1m 58s):
The schools have now been closed for about 10 days. And this is all looking like it's going to go on for a really long time. So we are experiencing an era of what we're now calling social distancing. And we've never done this before. There are some positives, people have picked up on that and are writing about it. And that's especially true for people like me who are not in particular personal danger when it comes to this virus. Thank God. And I mean that sincerely children are not in high risk categories when it comes to this particular virus.
2 (2m 33s):
And so for people like us, we can say, yeah, we've had more family time. We've experienced some simplicity that we don't usually we've made meals together. I see my particular kids demonstrate their particular strengths and gifts Marily has been organizing. So we've got piles of clothing in the hallway that are due to be given away. William has decided it's time to learn how to play the ukulele, which penny was given for Christmas a couple of years ago.
2 (3m 4s):
So that's been kind of fun. And penny has decided that she'd like to do some reports, slide shows. Um, let's see, what was the first one on the first one was on swimming. We got a report on swimming and then yesterday we got a report on summer fashion trends. There has been laughter in our household in this week, and I'm really grateful for that. I'm grateful for where we live. I'm grateful for many things, but I also want to acknowledge that there's a lot, that's negative about this. There is a prevailing sense of loss, and that extends from those who are in true fear of losing health and life.
2 (3m 42s):
But it extends also to the teenagers who are losing a spring sports season, who are losing the prospect of graduating with their class and the ceremony and celebration of walking across a stage and shaking hands and receiving a diploma and a degree in person. There's the loss that adults are feeling, whether that's as coaches or teachers or people who are literally losing jobs, losing income, there are the losses that we experience on a social level, the friends whose birthdays aren't getting celebrated.
2 (4m 17s):
I was thinking about the party we had last year, the afternoon of Easter day, Easter Sunday, and the fact that we would not be able to gather that group of people again this year. And I see the effects of what's so hard about all this. I got an email from a friend who said I got so drunk on Saturday night. I haven't done that since college. I got an email from another friend who said it is Monday morning, and I have already lost my temper with my kids multiple times.
2 (4m 52s):
How are we going to get through this week? People are overeating. People are getting angry. People are using coping mechanisms. It's a hard time. And so here we are in an era, a season that I hope will not extend too long of social distancing. And the question is, how can we enter into that without losing social connection? How can we enter into that without losing ourselves, our relationships, the things that matter most and how can we do that without losing love?
2 (5m 26s):
So today we're going to look at the book of Philippians. I mentioned last week that the book of Philippians was written by the apostle Paul Paul was the most prolific evangelist. He wrote a lot. Evangelist means the person who's spreading the good news, who is spreading the good news about Jesus. And really he was charged as a Jewish man with taking the words that he received about who Jesus was, the revelation he received about who Jesus was and spreading really to the entire known world throughout the Roman empire.
2 (6m 1s):
So it was Paul's job to say, Hey, God's good news is for everyone. God's love is for everyone. God's welcome is for everyone, not just for the Jewish people, but for everyone, for the people who are also called Gentiles, those who are outside of Judaism. And he founded a church, uh, in a place called Philippi. And after he founded that church, he wrote them a letter. And that's the letter we have now called the letter to the Philippians.
2 (6m 31s):
And we're going to look at the first section of that letter here today. Paul is writing from prison and that seems so pertinent to me because he literally is not just socially distanced, but socially isolated. He is cut off from people and he, nevertheless is finding ways to connect. And the ways that he is connecting are through communication, writing this letter, expressing himself and also through prayer.
2 (7m 3s):
So the goal today in exploring this together in this book of Philippians is for us to stay connected, to stay connected, to God's purpose for our lives, to stay connected to each other and to stay connected so that we can participate in an ongoing work of love that doesn't end and will not fail. So I'm going to read this passage as we go. But before we get to that, there are three aspects of prayer that come up as a prayer as a way of connection.
2 (7m 36s):
And it's prayer for yourself, prayer for other people and prayer from other people. If you have a Bible, you might want to open it. We're going to look at Philippians chapter one. You can find it in the table of contents. You can find it online@biblegateway.com. I'm using the N R S V new revised standard version of the Bible. When I read and I'm going to read just verses one and two of Philippians chapter one, and it reads Paul and Timothy servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ, Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.
2 (8m 27s):
I read this salutation, this welcome that Paul extends at the beginning of his letter as an opportunity and an invitation to stop and take care of ourselves to stop and pray for ourselves for our own needs, grace to you and peace. That is what Paul is bestowing a blessing upon the Philippians to whom he's writing, but it's also what need to receive and what we need to pray for ourselves.
2 (8m 59s):
I have been so struck in this past week again, by how much we need grace right now, grace is undeserved favor. Grace is when I know I don't deserve it. You love me anyway, you forgive me anyway. When I don't live up to my own standards, when I don't live up to God's standards, when I don't live up to other people's standards to know that I'm still okay, that's receiving grace. So for all of you right now who are thinking, Oh my gosh, I don't know when my kids last ate vegetables for all of you who are thinking that you have used the iPad or the television instead of actively parenting your children.
2 (9m 40s):
And you're beating yourself up about it for all of you who are worried, because you did drink the extra glass of wine or you didn't exercise, and you just haven't gotten it together on that front. Yet, for those of you who know that you snapped at your kid, your spouse, your friend, your mom here is an opportunity to extend grace, to bring yourself back and to pray for God's grace to wash over you. So that's the first thing.
2 (10m 12s):
We have freedom to mess this up because of the grace of God who continues to love us, to care for us and to set us back on our feet so that we can walk in love for ourselves and for other people going forward. Paul's second blessing or prayer here is for peace. And we certainly need peace. We need peace in our nation. We need peace in our own souls and in our household. And I've actually recorded an audio appendix.
2 (10m 44s):
It's going to come out at the same time as this podcast. So if you subscribe, you'll receive both this and a bonus audio appendix, it's just a short five to seven minute meditation that takes you through a way to pray daily for peace. And hopefully that piece will again carry you through the day. So begin with prayer for yourself, connecting to your own need for grace and for peace.
2 (11m 15s):
And then we move on in this letter that Paul's writing and I'm going to read verses three through eight. Paul writes, I thank my God every time I remember you constantly praying with joy and every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing and the gospel from the first day, until now, I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus.
2 (11m 47s):
It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart for all of you in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel for God is my witness. How I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. Again, we get this sense that, uh, Paul just loves the Philippians and that he is longing for them.
2 (12m 18s):
He is isolated. He is alone. He is at a distance and he cares for them and it is connecting to them through prayer and through writing these words that he begins to feel joy and gratitude. And so we see here what it looks like to pray for other people, but also what it looks like to receive prayer from other people. Let me zoom out a minute and just talk about what prayer is.
2 (12m 48s):
I think when I was younger, I saw prayer as a pretty static action. And what I mean by that is you might kneel, or you might sit, or you might lie in bed, but saying your prayers, whether that was going back to the Lord's prayer or just talking to God, it was a opportunity to express in a very concrete way, needs cares for other people, confession, praise towards God. And then I had kids and that really messed up my daily prayer time.
2 (13m 22s):
And so prayer became something that was more integrated into my everyday life, where here and there throughout the day, I would pray, but it still was something that I was doing with words. When I thought about it, often with my eyes closed, I still pray that way. I still need that. Actually I would say in my relationship with God, but over the past couple of years, I've recognized the fact that prayer is much more than deliberate words, spoken to God. Prayer is a posture of the heart and it's anything that is done in God's presence.
2 (13m 58s):
So we can read the Bible prayerfully, which is to say inviting God's presence to our reading of the Bible. And we can read the Bible academically, where that's not what we're inviting at all. We're just interested in what it has to say to us from an academic or intellectual perspective. We can care for another person in God's presence, or we can do that apart from God. It's pretty much true of everything we do. And so prayer can be something that carries us through every day, because we were constantly returning to the presence of God.
2 (14m 35s):
And it may or may not involve words, but here we get some prayers that are expressed through words. And so that's what we're looking at. And we see that Paul says he is constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for the Philippians. So that is the first thing here. We see practice of Thanksgiving, of letting people know also his Thanksgiving. I've been hearing about people in different cities across the world who are coming together, even though they can't actually come together, but coming out on balconies and singing or clapping in Rome, they've been getting out on their balconies at eight o'clock at night and cheering for the healthcare workers as a way of collectively expressing gratitude.
2 (15m 22s):
Prayer is a way that we can name and express our gratitude for whatever there is to give thanks for today. And then just, I apologize here. We can let people know. I have been grateful for people that I didn't even know I was grateful for. And during the midst of this crisis, and one of my intentions, I don't always do it, but one of my intentions is to tell people that, to tell someone every day I'm grateful for you. And here's why, so that's something we can all practice is just the actual thinking through who or what am I grateful for and then expressing it and connecting it to that person.
2 (16m 2s):
The second thing we see here is just the fact that prayer connects us to other people from afar, even for those, for whatever reason that we can't express ourselves to, or for those, certainly we can't be physically present with prayer as a way to be present with that person. A number of years ago, my grandmother was really sick and we were very close and we were going away on vacation. And I knew that she had cancer and we thought she had a couple of months to live.
2 (16m 35s):
And I knew she'd taken a downturn, but it didn't cross my mind as we went away on vacation that she might die while we were gone. I talked to her as we drove to the airport and we had a cogent conversation. And a couple of days later, we were on vacation and my sister called and she said, I think he might want to try to come home. And I took about a day to think about it, which was about a day too long, because there was a snow storm on the East coast. And so I couldn't come home and I was so distraught.
2 (17m 9s):
I was far away on vacation and I didn't want to be there. I just wanted to be with my grandmother. I wanted to hold her hand one more time. I wanted to pray with her one more time. And it struck me while I was there, that I could pray for her, that I could be with her through prayer, because I believed that this very God who would hear my prayer was also present to her. I did call on the phone and I asked that they, um, my dad put the phone up to her ear so that she could hear my prayer even as she was in and out of consciousness, but even more so realized that the practice of prayer, if I actually believe that there is a God who hears me, he is a way to connect with those from whom we are distanced or isolated.
2 (18m 2s):
So prayer gives us an opportunity to practice Thanksgiving and to let people know about it. But it also gives us a way to connect to other people, even when we can't be physically present with them and to care for them in that way. The other thing we see about prayer in this passage is that it's not just about praying for yourself or praying for other people, but it's also about receiving what I love here is that even though Paul is the leader, he's the one who started this church. He also expresses his need for the Philippians.
2 (18m 36s):
We see that they share in God's grace with him. We also see that he says, you hold me in your heart. This is verse seven. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. It's clear that the Philippians have actually sent Paul money and they've done this because they know that when he's alone in jail, he will not be fed.
2 (19m 10s):
They are sending money so that he can survive. They are in a mutual and reciprocal relationship of care for one another. And they are carrying one another's burdens. This is another thing we can do in prayer. We can carry one another's burdens. There are people right now who are in a place, and there will be people in the months ahead who are in a place where they can't pray. They can't reach out to God. They're just feeling wounded and broken and isolated and alone, but we can do that for them.
2 (19m 45s):
And if you are in that place, if you're in a place of isolation and despair, you can ask other people to do that for you. And I remember when our daughter, penny was born, some of you know that penny is 14 now, and she has down syndrome and she's doing really well. But when she was first born, it just felt so raw and vulnerable and hard that I really felt incapable of praying. At the same time, I felt as though the spirit of God gave me permission to not pray and ask other people, rely on other people to carry that burden for me to carry the burden of prayer and to do that on my behalf.
2 (20m 30s):
So we can ask other people to pray for us and to help us whether that's sending money, telling people, Hey, I just need some support right now. I need you to run some errands for me. I need you to pray for me. I need you to care for me. So we see that that is happening in this letter. Well, so we pray for ourselves. We pray for other people. We get prayer from other people and all of this leads to action. Whether it's writing notes, to express our gratitude, making a phone call, setting up a zoom meeting, or even sending or asking for some financial assistance.
2 (21m 7s):
And then we get to verses nine through 11, the end of this passage. And this is a beautiful and very specific prayer where Paul says, this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight, to help you to determine what is best. So that in the day of Christ, you may be pure and blameless having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
2 (21m 39s):
So here he is praying for love and for love that motivates action. And here's why I want to end this with a little meditation on the nature of love. Right now we can distance ourselves from other people out of a motivation of fear, right? We can be afraid of illness and we can be afraid of death. We going to be afraid of suffering. We're going to be afraid of contamination. And again, as I mentioned, last week, fear leads us to hide.
2 (22m 10s):
It often leads to shame and guilt and division, but we also can distance ourselves because we're motivated by love. We can be motivated by a love of life, a love of the life that God has given us. And recognizing that in separating ourselves from one another, we are honoring the lives that God has given us. We can be motivated by a love of ourselves by a desire to take care of ourselves and our family. And we can be motivated by a love of other people and especially the vulnerable again, for people in my position, I'm 42 years old, I've got three young children.
2 (22m 51s):
We are not particularly vulnerable ourselves, but it is out of love for other people that we are doing everything we can to cut ourselves off from contact that is physical with other people. Right now love can motivate our social distance instead of fear. And that will make all the difference in our willingness to care for other people in the days and weeks and months to come. There's much more to be said about love here. And I just want to point out that love is paired with knowledge.
2 (23m 24s):
They are not divorced from one another that love and knowledge go hand in hand, and that it is love. Understanding the love of God that gives us full insight and helps us to determine what is best when we start making decisions about what is best out of fear that will not help us. But when we make decisions about what is best out of the love of God, that is what we need. So that's my prayer for myself and for you is that our love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help us determine what is best for ourselves, for our families, but also for our local communities and our nations in this season of social distancing, let's stay connected and let's do that by beginning to receive grace and peace and love.
2 (24m 21s):
Let's do that by connecting to other people through prayer and through action. And let's do that by continuing to grow in the love and knowledge of God. Again, if you can
1 (24m 34s):
Go to the audio appendix, there'll be a short prayer, meditation and instruction for you on how to practice receiving God's peace and letting go of your worries. And I will be back next week. I hope you have enjoyed being here today. I know I've loved being with you. Thanks again for tuning in to the love is stronger than fear podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more resources at my website, Amy, Julia, becker.com.
1 (25m 8s):
And if you found today's episode helpful, please share it with friends and take a minute to rate and review it wherever you find your podcasts. See you next week.