Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
October 12, 2008
The Rev. Charles Henrickson
“Reasons to Rejoice, in Whatever Situation” (Philippians 4:4-13)
Maybe you saw the story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this weekend, “Worrying
makes things worse.” It begins like this: “If there’s one word you heard more
than any other to describe the mood of the economy last week, it was: fear.
Fear was in the faces of traders on newspaper front pages and cable TV. Fear
was quantified in the hefty drops in stock markets each day, in the 18 percent
plunge the Dow Jones industrial average took between 8 a.m. Monday and 3 p.m.
Friday. And all week, fear threatened to spread like a virus, beyond the stock
markets and even the credit markets into the lives of business owners and
middle-class Americans worried about their jobs, their savings and their
companies. . . .”
The story goes on to refer to something called, “The Fear Index,” which tracks
the use of words such as “fear,” “panic,” and “anxiety” in the financial press.
And right now fear is at the highest level in the 26 years the index has been
recording such data. “All that bad news,” the article observes, “magnifies
people’s anxiety.”
Well, in the face of all that fear and anxiety, here comes St. Paul this
morning, cheerfully calling: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say,
Rejoice.” “Do not be anxious about anything,” he tells us. And Paul says of
himself, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”
Come on! What is with you, man? Haven’t you read the news? How can you tell
us to rejoice? What are you, Paul, some sort of Mr. Happy Face, an unrealistic
optimist with your head firmly stuck in the clouds? Hel-lo! This is the worst
economic crisis in the history of mankind, haven’t you heard? How dare you
tell us to rejoice and not be anxious and be content?
Hey, maybe Paul was secretly a Buddhist or a Stoic. You know, both the pagan
Asian Buddhists and the pagan Greek Stoics had a philosophy about not getting
too upset about things. Maybe Paul is just practicing their philosophy and
tuning reality out.
No, as we get into this a little further, we will see that Paul is not just an
unrealistic optimist, nor a Buddhist mystic, nor a Stoic philosopher. Paul’s
encouragements to us to rejoice and not be anxious and be content run much
deeper than any of that. Rather, in our text today from Philippians 4, St.
Paul gives us “Reasons to Rejoice, in Whatever Situation.”
He starts out: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” And
right there we have the key to it all. Did you catch it? Rejoice “in the
Lord.” That’s it! “In the Lord,” which is the key to all of Paul’s theology,
or, as he puts it elsewhere, “in Christ.” For in Christ Jesus our Lord, we are
able to rejoice, we have cause for rejoicing, in any and every situation. Paul
is writing to Christians here. He would not, and could not, say this to people
who do not know Christ. But we do know the Lord Jesus, we are connected to
Christ by faith through the gospel and the sacraments. And to us Christians,
St. Paul is confident to make his appeal: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I
will say, Rejoice.”
Rejoice in the Lord “always,” that is, in all circumstances. It doesn’t matter
what the economy is doing, whether boom or bust. Your rejoicing doesn’t depend
on the economy. It doesn’t matter who gets elected, Obama or McCain, the
Democrats or the Republicans. Your rejoicing doesn’t depend on politics. Your
rejoicing does depend on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the same, yesterday,
today, and forever. That is why Paul can tell you, “Rejoice in the Lord
always.”
It all depends on who the Lord is, and what he has done for you, and what he
will do for you. This Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God,
who came from heaven and took on our flesh and took on our woes and sorrows and
sins. He yielded his life, willingly, to those who beat him and mocked him and
nailed him to a cross, so that he could suffer and die for your sins, in your
place, taking the wrath of God you deserved and letting it fall on him. The
“Fear Index” would have gone through the roof as he approached that cross, but
still Christ went forward, so strong his love to save us.
There was no other way to do it. It took Christ’s holy precious blood, shed on
the cross, to pay for your sins and the sins of the world. Think of all the
bad mortgages, all the overextended loans that are not going to be repaid, and
bundle them all up, roll them into a ball, and it would not even begin to
approach to mountain of debt, sky-high--literally, to the heavens--that our
sins mount up to in the sight of God. You couldn’t pay it off in a million
years. There is no manmade bailout package that would work. Only God can
erase our debt, and it took the death of his only Son to accomplish it.
Which it did! Christ’s resurrection victory on Easter morning makes that
plain. The debt is cancelled, paid off in full. Death, the wages of sin, is
stripped of its power. This is what Christ has won for you! You share in the
Lord’s life and salvation and eternal life! You are baptized into Christ and
connected to him. Therefore, come what may--and it usually does--it is not
far-fetched or unrealistic for St. Paul to tell us Christians: “Rejoice in the
Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” Really, it is quite realistic, and
the reason is simple: It’s rejoicing “in the Lord.”
Through this same risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, we now have access to
God, who hears our prayers as our kind and loving heavenly Father. This is how
Jesus taught his disciples to regard God, isn’t it? “Your Father in heaven,”
he kept telling them, “cares for you even more than he cares for the birds of
the air or the flowers of the field. He knows what you need. Will he not give
you food and clothing and shelter? Yes, he will. Ask, seek, and knock. Come
to your Father and call on him in prayer.” And St. Paul here in Philippians
says pretty much the same thing: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be
made known to God.”
Here then is another reason to rejoice, in whatever situation: God hears our
prayers. When anxiety comes calling, turn it over to God. Call on me, God
says: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall
glorify me.” “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything. . . .”
Anything and everything! Your health concerns, your financial concerns your
loneliness, your sadness--about anything, in everything. Do not be anxious,
but rather take it to the Lord in prayer. God wants you to come to him with
your anxieties.
And here is the promise, here is the answer to anxiety: “And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.” The peace of God. That is the peace that God himself made with
us when Christ ended the hostility in his body on the cross. The peace of God
is objectively true. It is, it exists. God has declared this peace between
heaven and earth on the basis of what Christ has done. Therefore it is sure
and certain, you can count on it.
And so this peace of God will do a much better job of putting your heart at
peace than your own understanding will. “The peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You may
try to talk yourself into a state of peace, you may try to calm your fears and
anxieties on the basis of human reason--rational arguments, for example, that
the economy is going to get better, that the news is not as bad as they’re
making it out to be. And that may work to a certain extent. It’s probably not
as bad as the media is portraying. But that’s trying to guard your heart and
mind on the basis of your own understanding. I’m reminded of my confirmation
verse, from Proverbs 5: “Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not
unto thine own understanding.” Your own understanding won’t always work.
Sometimes, some situations are really bad--the devastating loss of a loved one,
a terminal
illness, a financial catastrophe--and you can’t figure your way out of them.
That’s when you need the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guarding
your heart and your mind.
This election season we hear a lot about “battleground states.” Well, you have
two “battleground states” right inside you: your heart and your mind. Your
heart is a battleground, the battle being fought between faith and fear, to see
which will prevail. Your mind also--your state of mind is a battleground state
between peace and anxiety. What will keep your heart and mind safely in the
faith and peace column? Nothing but the peace of God, which will stand guard
over these twin battlegrounds of heart and mind. The peace of God will guard
you; the God of peace will be with you. More reasons to rejoice!
Finally, there is this matter of being content. St. Paul writes: “I have
learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” Keep in mind, as Paul
writes this, he is in prison! That’s a situation in which it might be hard to
be content! And beyond that, he’s talking about his financial situation,
whether he’s doing well or enduring hardship. He goes on to say: “I know how
to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I
have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can
do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Dear friends, contentment is a great gift from God. Greed, acquisitiveness,
can eat you up. It strikes both rich and poor. If you’re poor, you want to be
rich; if you’re rich, you want to be richer. There’s no end in sight--that’s
the way it is with greed and covetousness. But contentment--ah, contentment!
Then it doesn’t matter so much whether you’re blessed with abundance or are
scraping by. You can manage either way, and you set your sights on where true
riches lie, where your true treasure is kept for you, safe and sound in heaven.
No one can take that away from you, no matter how much the stock market may
drop. And nothing else can compare with that, no matter how much your
portfolio may prosper. This is the secret to being content in any and every
situation, namely, knowing where your real treasure lies.
“Reasons to Rejoice, in Whatever Situation.” You have them, you have them in
abundance, just like St. Paul and the Philippians did. Haven’t you heard the
news? The good news, I mean! The good news, the gospel, of your Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. In him, in the Lord, you have the peace of God won for
you on the cross. In Christ, in the Lord, you have access to a heavenly Father
who loves you and cares for you from day to day. In Christ, in the Lord, you
have the riches of heaven stored up for you for that day when Christ returns.
Yes, dear Christians, you and I have a whole gospel full of “Reasons to
Rejoice”!
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus.
Charles Henrickson
4749 Melissa Jo Ln
St. Louis, MO 63128
(314) 845-8811 (home)
(314) 779-8108 (cell)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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