I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday October 1 as part of our exploration of Paul's letter to the Philippians. The text is Philippians 2:12-18; read it here.
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Do all things without murmuring and arguing,
so that you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
in which you shine like stars in the world.
Reading this text, it’s easy to arrive at the notion
that Paul, writing to the church in Philippi,
must think that Christians have some special knowledge.
A special key:
something that the rest of the world doesn’t have, but badly needs.
If we’re the stars, in the a crooked and perverse generation,
that must mean that “everybody else”
is pretty crooked and perverse.
Pretty wicked and in need of correcting.
And we better get out there and help them get things right.
It’s a dangerous notion,
but a common one.
Probably a big part of the reason
that Christians have such a bad rap these days.
But here’s the good news.
I don’t think it’s actually what Paul is saying.
Let’s start with a quick word study of the Greek that Paul’s writing in.
First, the word translated “crooked.”
The Greek is skolios.
It’s related, of course, to the word “scoliosis,”
(you remember those screenings, right?)
a condition in which something that,
when healthy,
is straight,
curves out of alignment,
to the detriment of the entire body.
The second word, translated, “perverse”
is in Greek diastepho,
which literally means “distort.”
The connotations of the word
are of something being turned aside,
turned down the wrong path.
So we have these two words,
both having to do with something that’s straight
being twisted into a shape that’s somehow wrong or unhealthy,
turned in a direction that’s not the right way to go.
All of this really resonates with me.
As a musician, I used to spend a lot of time
tending to my posture and my breathing.
Over years of practice,
I learned what it feels like
when my shoulders are back and relaxed,
when my spine is in alignment and my head is balanced on top of it.
When everything’s line up, the rest of my body falls into place,
and suddenly I can breathe.
It feels the same to me with spiritual practice --
that when the structures of my practice are in place --
enough sleep,
healthy food,
consistent space to think and reflect,
consistent time to pray,
there’s a sense of spiritual alignment that I experience
that makes me feel strong and connected.
And then there’s other times.
When that sense of alignment breaks down
and I find, usually without even realizing it,
that things are starting to get crooked.
It happens gradually --
first the eating well goes,
and then the praying,
and then the sleeping,
until I’m spiritually twisted into a shape that’s not healthy,
and I start heading down paths
that aren’t going to be fruitful for me.
St. Augustine gave us a word for it.
In latin, incurvatus in se:
“curved in on oneself.”
We’re human.
And we have this natural penchant
to turn inward.
And when we’re like that -- stuck in a position of spiritual scoliosis,
all we can see is ourselves.
We forget that it’s not actually us that is the center of the universe.
It’s something much bigger.
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...In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
in which you shine like stars in the world.
Or, we might say,
...In the midst of a twisted and distorted generation,
in which you shine like stars in the world.
The last piece of our word study is that word,
“stars.”
It’s a beautiful image, and again,
just a little more complicated then we might first imagine.
The word translated as “stars,”
is kosmos.
Kosmos --
Which means not only the stars
but the entire heavens,
the constellations,
and even more than this --
the entire world --
the way that our universe is ordered.
The word kosmos is often used to refer to the way
cities and governments are ordered.
It speaks of a pattern and structure
that defeats chaos:
that keeps the planets on the their courses
and the stars on their paths --
That keeps the entire universe,
and us too,
aligned.
So taking all of this into account,
what is Paul saying to us?
Maybe something like,
You’re living in the midst of a world
that is twisted and crooked
and headed the wrong way.
I need you to shine like the stars in the night sky --
I need you to run on the paths of the heavenly spheres --
to fall into an orbit that is aligned and true.
I need you to live not by the the rules of the earth,
which are deformed and mis-shapen,
but by the rules of the heavens,
which are perfectly ordered
and mathematically patterned.
Celestial.
I need you to live like the stars
while you exist here in the world.
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There’s a premise that Paul’s working off of,
and it comes up again and again in this letter --
it’s sort of woven into the fabric of the whole thing.
The premise is that
Jesus brought a new world to birth
right in the middle of this one.
That when God took on flesh
and came to live among us in the form of Jesus,
God made it possible
to live by an entirely different set of rules.
God made it possible
to eschew the twisted and crooked systems we live by,
To reject the economy of scarcity in which we are steeped,
and instead to live like the stars.
To live a life that it ordered by God.
a life ordered by abundance.
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Last night,
I moved to Brooklyn.
Okay, so my stuff is actually still on the Upper West Side,
but last night I spent my first night in my new place.
I spent it primarily scrubbing the bathroom floors.
And then I spent it lying on the bare floor of my empty apartment
in exhaustion.
But then, I took a walk in my new neighborhood.
I walked down my new block,
noticing the ways that every corner,
every nook and cranny
told a story.
At the end of my block there’s a run-down little corner store.
The front end looks pretty gritty,
with some lively business being done right outside the store,
in addition to inside it.
The back yard of the store, though, is visible to the street,
and someone’s planted a little plot back there,
where they’re growing squash and cabbage, it looks like.
I wondered about the shop owner --
if he or she lives above the store.
I wondered who tends the vegetable garden.
And I wondered about the customers.
What’s on their mind as they come to pick up milk and eggs on the way home.
How they found their way to this corner of the world,
to this corner of Brooklyn.
What do they see as the “crooked” places in their neighborhood?
The places that have become distorted and veered off on the wrong path?
And where are the places that shine like stars?
Where are the places that reflect the order of the heavens?
There are a lot of stories for me to hear.
A lot of shopkeepers for me to talk to.
It’s too much listening for one pastor to do, actually,
and so we’re all going to do it together.
Beginning in January,
after our governance system is launched
and after we celebrate my installation and the blessing of this community,
I would like to embark on a “season of listening,”
in which every congregant at St. Lydia’s
will be engaged in listening to the stories
of this neighborhood,
and the stories of the entire city.
We have spent three years now
ordering our communal life --
learning how to worship together and how to love one another.
Learning how to reject an economy of scarcity
and live in God’s economy of abundance
where there is enough for everyone.
And now it’s time to move into a deeper, more rooted relationship
with the neighborhood and the city around us.
And that starts with listening.
So in January,
each of you will be invited
to start doing one-on-ones with folks in this neighborhood
or folks in your neighborhood.
I want to talk to the shopkeepers.
You might want to talk to school principals,
or sanitation workers,
or the guy who owns the bar on your block.
We’ll all get trained, and then we’ll all start listening.
And with all that listening under our belts,
I think that we’ll begin to feel the nudge of the Holy Spirit,
moving us to realign the world.
I don’t know what it’s going to look like,
but I have faith that God has a plan for us
to make straight what is crooked.
To re-train what has grown distorted.
To etch out a orbit that echoes the heavenly spheres
so that we might create a little bit of space,
a little bit of room
in this neighborhood
and in the city
for everyone to stretch
and stand up straight
and breathe.
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We share the sermon at St. Lydia’s. And so I invite you to reflect in silence and then, if you feel moved, to share a story that’s been sparked for you by the text.
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