Philippians 1:12-30 "Looking for Goodness" Scott Hoezee

A week or so ago while I was clicking my way to a TV program I wanted to watch, I passed over a couple of those religious cable channels and my attention was briefly arrested by what a preacher was proclaiming on one of these stations. He was, of course, encouraging people to come to faith in God, to get right with the Lord, and to then pray to that Lord. Along with that, however, he also pointed out to his viewers that this coming to faith was vital for everyone because, he declared, "God does not even hear the prayer of the unrighteous!" It reminded me immediately of a most unhappy comment made some years ago by the head of a large Baptist denomination: "God does not hear the prayer of a Jew."

But the timing of the televangelist's remark prompted some other thoughts in me, too. Because the day I heard this man announce God's deafness toward anyone not already a believer was very near the September 11 anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks. And so I thought about all those people who prayed so fervently last fall, both those who were caught directly in the teeth of the attacks as well as all those who prayed in subsequent weeks. It seems probable that some of the people who cried out to God from the upper floors of the Trade Center or later at prayer services around the country were folks not accustomed to doing much praying otherwise. At least some of those who prayed like that a year ago were not what we would call upright Christian types who regularly attend church services even when there is no national crisis going on.

So was the man on television right? Did God ignore the prayers of those people? Did God brush those prayers away as though they were so many nettlesome mosquitoes buzzing around the divine ear? Some in the wider Christian community think so. I recently read a lecture by Richard Mouw in which Mouw lamented the reaction of some Christians to the events of 9/11. He cited an article by some Protestant Reformed theologians who indicated we should feel bad about and pray for the Christians who were killed that terrible day. Apparently, however, concern about the unrighteous caught up in it all is not something toward which we need to devote too much energy.

In his recent book, He Shines in All That's Fair, Mouw makes the case for "common grace," or appreciating the goodness of non-Christians. At one point he advances his argument by making an analogy. Mouw suggests that if we feel bad about the suffering and death of non-Christians, then why shouldn't the reverse be also true: why not also celebrate the goodness and acts of heroism in the lives of non-Christians? If there are things to lament in people outside the church, then surely there are things of which to approve now and again, too. When I read this, I found it powerful and compelling. However, the analogy loses all its punch if someone questions the legitimacy of feeling bad about the sufferings of non-Christians. But some do seem to believe that Christians should reserve both their concern for suffering and their praise of goodness mostly for those who are already true believers.

Many of us may find this vaguely troubling. But I also think that seen from a certain angle, Paul's words to the Philippians likewise give us pause to wonder about this. In one sense, Philippians 1:12-30 could be used by a preacher to make the exact same point we made here last Sunday morning. Last week we used Romans 14 to remind us that Christian people should love and welcome one another in the Lord despite the many differences of opinion and practice among us in the church. Instead of letting these less-vital differences drive us apart, Paul suggests we let our common Lord bring us together.

In a way, Philippians 1 is a similar call for unity. Yet here Paul's rhetoric goes well beyond anything he wrote in Romans 14. In fact, it may exceed the bounds of anything he wrote in the entire New Testament. This morning I want us to come to appreciate the radical nature of what Paul wrote here. But more than that, I want us to come to see what basic attitude or disposition may well have undergirded these words so that we can then wonder together if this provides any hint as to how our minds ought to work even yet today.

First of all, a couple of reminders about what the letter to the Philippians is all about. In general, this is probably the friendliest, warmest, least-confrontational Pauline letter we have in the Bible. The church at Philippi obviously occupied a warm spot in Paul's heart. But precisely because he loved those people so much, Paul doesn't waste much time in this opening chapter before he tries to soothe their fears. The Christians in that congregation had heard via the grapevine that Paul had been thrown into prison. As you can well imagine, lots of questions got asked quickly. Why had he been arrested? Had Paul done something wrong? And even if he hadn't done some scandalous or illegal thing, did this mean that Paul's ministry was finished, washed up, sunk? In the last year we've seen what can happen to Christian people when they find out that once-trusted leaders have been found guilty of sordid crimes. The sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has been a tragic reminder of how rank and file Christians can be disillusioned when leaders get into trouble. You wonder why it happened. You wonder what it means for the church's ministry in the future.

Surely something of that must have crossed the minds of the good folks in Philippi. So Paul quickly tells them two reassuring facts; first, he is in jail for one reason only: he loves Jesus and the authorities don't! Secondly, however, there is even so a nugget of good news: what has happened to Paul, as bad as it looks, has had the ironic effect of advancing the cause of the gospel, not stalling it!

The authorities arrested Paul to shut him up. But not only did they fail to muzzle Paul, a number of other people found so much inspiration in Paul's arrest that they suddenly found the courage to start preaching themselves! Good things were happening. But starting in verse 15, Paul freely admits that some of this goodness had a bit of tarnish on it. There were some people who didn't much like Paul--they envied his success and fame, they secretly wished they could make a name for themselves and were tired of living in Paul's shadow. And so some of these pompous and vaguely misguided folks used the occasion of Paul's being taken out of circulation as their chance to grab the limelight for themselves.

Years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. was in seminary, he was already well-known as a great and powerful preacher. Congregations loved it when Seminarian King came to preach. Of course, King's seminary classmates had a slightly different view of things! What was so great about him?! Shucks, weren't they all good preachers? The envy that ripped into the hearts of these classmates was never more flagrantly evident than on one occasion. One week King preached a wonderful sermon at a church in Montgomery, Alabama. The sermon's title was "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life." A couple of weeks later a classmate of King's was scheduled to preach at this same church. So he mounted that pulpit in Montgomery and delivered his own sermon, "The Four Dimensions of a Complete Life"!

"Some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry" Paul wrote a long time ago. Indeed! But the people to whom Paul refers in Philippians 1 are not just these one-upmanship folks. Those people at least were clearly Christians, albeit a tad obvious in their struggles with various vices. But in verse 17 Paul writes about some others whose core Christian commitment could well be called into question. There were some who were out to mock Paul. They talked about the gospel, parroted Paul's style of rhetoric, and caricatured the ways Paul behaved when delivering fiery sermons. But they did all this, Paul says, with complete insincerity. They weren't serious. They were looking not to whip up some converts but only to stir up trouble. They were a little like the playground bully who gets laughs by walking behind the kid with cerebral palsy, imitating his ungainly gait.

And it is precisely at this juncture that you expect Paul's righteous indignation to flame forth. As Paul amply demonstrates in other parts of the New Testament, he could cut loose in holy wrath with the best of them! The entire epistle to the Galatians bears witness to the fact that Paul was not above a rhetorical scorched earth policy if that's what it took to get people's attention. When people proclaimed a false gospel, Paul had very little patience.

So in Philippians 1, after he has pointed out envy-driven ministers who were trying to out-preach Paul and after unmasking even these miserable pretenders whose only goal seems to be trouble-making, you do indeed expect Paul to thunder forth in Mount Sinai-fashion, letting loose a thunderbolt or two of condemnation. Who could blame him?

But that's why verse 18 quite properly slams us all into the back of our pews this morning. Against all odds and expectations Paul writes, "But what does it matter?" By their own hostile examples of intolerance, people throughout history have answered Paul's question. What does it matter? Well it matters a very great deal!! Let's strive to keep everything pure, holy, unstained, and above board, shall we? Let us unmask hypocrites, the envious, the proud, and the mockers among us and then consign them to the spiritual status of unholiness they so richly deserve!

That kind of attitude characterizes much of church history, but it is not in the least what Philippians 1 is all about. Somehow Paul has achieved a focus in life--a focus on Christ--that allows him to say the radical thing, "What does it matter?" Paul loves the gospel and even more than that, he loves the Christ of the gospel. He is so in love with Jesus that the only decent reason he can find to hang around this earthly life is that he might just be able to help Jesus a little more. That aside, however, dying and going to be with Jesus in the kingdom sounded just splendid to Paul.

In other words, Philippians 1 leaves no doubt about Paul's ardor for all things spiritual and proper and good and Christ-like. Yet still Paul was able to look at ill-motivated and even downright dirty folks and find it possible to locate something good, something redeeming. Those whose motivations were mixed, and even those whose motivations were singularly lousy, were just possibly even so doing something that might get the name of Jesus out there a little bit more. Insofar as that was true, well, Paul at least was going to look for the good instead of only lashing out at and damning the bad.

That reveals a lot about Paul's heart. And it challenges us, too. I don't know about you, but I don't find it too terribly difficult to find disagreeable things in society. If you want to find things to rail against, criticize, and upbraid, that's not hard. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Turn on the TV, open a newspaper, just pretend to read the newspaper while really listening in on what your co-workers are saying in the cafeteria during lunch: in all these ways you can find myriad things in life that are wrong, that are out of sync with what we believe as Christians. If it's negativity we're looking for, it's everywhere.

But Paul had the ability to find something hopeful--indeed, he had the ability to find something in which to rejoice--even in the midst of his being in prison. As he looked through the bars of his cell window, he saw those who mocked him, who were trying to outdo him, and yet he kept an eye out for something good. It's something of a miracle he pulled this off at all, yet by the Spirit of God he did it. And just maybe we are to do this, too.

Of course, it needs to be made clear that looking for goodness in life does not mean there may no longer be such a thing as discernment. In his book on common grace, Richard Mouw also takes pains to make clear that when looking for something good shared by believers and non-believers alike, we need to be cautious about not playing into wishy-washy notions of tolerance and the "anything goes" mentality of the postmodern world. We need to possess the paradoxical combination of being both fully able to make distinctions between what is moral and immoral and at the same time be able to see and appreciate what's good in life despite all the bad that is also so glaringly on display around us.

We don't lose our ability to assess evil things nor do we lose our ability to speak out in decrying injustice or in pointing out grave theological errors. Remember, the same apostle Paul who wrote, "But what does it matter?" also wagged a bony finger in the faces of his readers in other places in the New Testament. As in so many other areas of the faith, this is a case of not either-or but of both-and. The difficulty we may face, however, is that the more you know about what's right and proper and orthodox, the stronger you may feel the temptation to spend a lot of time criticizing everything you know is wrong, improper, or unorthodox.

Paul is a good example of someone who could look for the good even in the midst of a whole lot of bad stuff. But Paul is not the only example, and perhaps not the premiere example, either. For that we look to Jesus. In the past I have used the analogy of music to make this point. If you know as relatively little about music as I do, then you could probably listen to five different recordings of a Mozart symphony and not detect a whole lot of difference among those versions. But if you were a music major who studied this for four years at a university, you'd be able to detect many nuances of difference between one rendition of the Jupiter symphony and another. But if Mozart himself could listen, he as the composer would be by far the most likely to pick up on every dropped note, each altered phrase, each variation between one performance and another.

Similarly with life in this world: if you know just a little about God's design for life, then as you observe the world around you, you'd now and again detect the moral equivalent of someone singing off-key or dropping a note. If you were a trained theological ethicist, you'd likely be able to detect far more discordant moral notes. But suppose you are the Son of God, the composer of the entire symphony of creation. Wouldn't you then be in the prime position to hear every wrong note? Jesus was in that position and yet despite that, his ministry was not characterized by negativity, by incessant tirades against the clueless sinners around him, or by nit-picking critiques of his disciples or anyone else.

Instead Jesus, like Paul, seemed able to look for goodness, for signs of hope, and this enabled him to eat with sinners and tax collectors and yet not be some boorish dinner guest whose conversation was laced with nothing but moral lectures and rebukes. He was able to rub shoulders with people in the marketplace and converse with a Samaritan woman at a well and although he knew better than anyone the problems in these people's lives, he found a level of common ground, of common good on which to build something positive.

As that well-known hymn reminds us, "For not with swords' loud clashing or roll of stirring drums--with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes." It seems that Paul's example and our Lord's example may teach us that looking for goodness--and then rejoicing when we see it and wherever we see it--is the better way to approach this world. We don't fail to notice what is wrong or unhappy in life, and we don't fail to address those things if we can. But even this stems from our core desire to love all people, pray for them, and look for traces of God's goodness that may be in them whether they know it or not. As Paul will say directly in Philippians 4: "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy: think about those things. And the peace of God will be with you." Maybe that peace will even spread out to those around us, too, when we make looking for goodness a part of our discipleship. Amen.