8
BFF?
Philippians 4:2-9
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
October 15, 2017
Two friends, Paul and Jim, no longer lived in the same place. But when Paul had a business trip to the city where Jim lived, they got together for a drink at a bar and a chance to catch up. As they were walking back to their cars in the same parking deck, a man stepped out of the shadows and demanded that they hand over all of the money they were carrying. Quickly they complied, pulling out their wallets. As Paul pulled out his cash in front of the mugger, Paul turned to Jim, and passed him some money, saying, “by the way, Jim, here is the $20 I owe you.”
What a guy! Friends can sometimes disappoint us. What parent has not had to comfort their children because a friend disappointed them, or even worse, betrayed them. “BFF,” “best friends forever,” the children and their one-time friends had called each other, only to see the friendship break up because of changing peer dynamics or a change of schools. Of course, it is not only children and youth who get hurt by their friends. And few breaches of friendship at any age are a laughing matter.
Do you think Euodia and Syntyche ever called themselves “Best Friends Forever?” Euodia and Syntyche are the two women in the Philippi church who Paul refers to here at the beginning of the fourth chapter of his letter to the Philippians church. When you listen to this passage you cannot help but be reminded “that you are listening to someone else’s mail. Paul and the Philippians knew the nature of the quarrel; we do not.”[1] They knew who Euodia, Syntyche, and Clement were; we do not. In verse 3, Paul refers to a “loyal companion,” as the underlying Greek word is translated in the translation we just heard, but we don’t even know if that Greek word is a common noun or the proper name in Greek of the fellow servant.
There are some things we do know in this passage, things that Paul makes quite clear. This passage offers one of the clearest indications of the leadership role that women played in the early church. Sometime later in the first century of the church’s life, the church would conform to the surrounding culture and push women aside and exclude them from leadership, where they would remain for most of the next two millennia. This was not the case at the beginning, however. In Acts 16, we learn that the church in Philippi began when Paul went to a place of prayer and “spoke to the women who had come together.” (16:13). And, there is also no suggestion in the passage here that these women are serving in some inferior leadership position, reserved just for women.
This we also know: this is no petty argument Euodia and Syntyche are having. Since they are leaders in the congregation, Paul fears the consequences if their dispute remains unresolved. He appeals to the rest of the congregation to work with these women with patience and persistence to resolve whatever it is that is bothering them.
Indeed, in this passage and throughout the letter to the Philippians, Paul frequently uses the Greek words and prefixes for “fellowship,” “with,” and “together.” Paul uses these terms because he wants the Philippians to recognize that their congregation, like the church at large, is meant to be a “community of friends.”[2]
A community of friends. This is who we are meant to be. The Biblical understanding of friendship is different from popular conceptions of friendship, however, whether in Biblical times or now. To be sure, there is considerable overlap and similarity, but there is one major difference.
For the Greeks and Romans of Paul’s day, just as with most people today, friendship is primarily a matter of shared interests, passions, and points of view. We tend to make our friends with those who enjoy doing the same things and think like we do. Those are good things to share, and we need those friendships, those kinds of relationships, in our lives.
But that is not what defines friendship among Christ’s community. The church is a community of friends who might not have the same interests or point of view – perhaps they share only one thing: Jesus Christ. Instead of being linked by what and whom we choose, we are linked by the One who chooses us. And this community of friends is what is most essential because this community is at the center of how God has made us. To be called to by Christ always means to be called to be part of the body of Christ.
A community of friends united by Jesus Christ. In verse 3, Paul talks about Euodia and Syntyche as women who “have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel together with Clement.” In other words, they have worked alongside Paul in a common mission in difficult circumstances.
We are fortunate to live in a society that poses little or no legal persecution for our Christian faith. But there is much in our consumer and permissive culture that is corrosive for our life in Christ. There are so many competing ways to spend our time or money; so many competing definitions of what the “good life” is, that we all need a community of friends united by Jesus Christ to help us follow His way rather than the ways that our culture suggests, rely on His truth rather than the truths that others proclaim, so that we can experience the abundant life that Jesus came to open to us.
Parents in the faith need the help of the Christian community to share the gospel with their children and to model that faith so that their children can claim and live out that faith. But it is not just parents and children who need that supportive community linked by a common mission in Jesus Christ. We all need that example, that support, that reinforcement, of what faith looks like and does, whether we are 8 or 48 or 88, so that we can be faithful Christians not just at home, but in school, at work, and wherever we may find ourselves.
As Gregory Jones, a former seminary dean has written, friendships in the church “challenge the sins we have come to love, affirm the gifts we are afraid to claim, and help us dream dreams we otherwise would not dream.”[3] Like Euodia and Syntyche, we need friends who gently and lovingly, but truthfully, share concerns they may have for us, as when our zeal to do our job well has lead to a workaholicism that is unhealthy for our bodies and our relationships. A friend in Christ will help us see our lives through different lenses.
On the positive side, our lives can be transformed when others point out to us gifts they see in us that we have not seen yet. Or when these holy friends help us find new hope and strength so that we can be lifted out of our ruts and see a future that we have been unable to yet envision on our own.
But it is not just support that the church offers. The language that Paul uses to describe working alongside others in Philippi is the same kind of language might be used to refer to a sports team engaged in competition, or a band of soldiers fighting side by side against advancing troops, or a medical team in an emergency room working together in a race against time to save someone’s life.
Deep down, we do not mind giving up our free time, energy, and money if it means working with a team for an important cause. Indeed, that is what athletes miss when they retire and soldiers or emergency personnel miss when they leave their missions behind. And in Christ, we are given the greatest missions and causes of all. That is why youth workcamps, Honduras water installations, and disaster relief mission trips are so fulfilling – and so much fun – and why people keep giving up their vacations to sleep on cots or air mattresses for a week. Because we are not just hanging out with a community of friends linked to Jesus Christ. We are also on a mission together, doing His work, and making the lives of others a little better in some way.
The church is a community of friends linked by more than our common interests and opinions. We don’t come to a gathering of Jesus’ family expecting to find people who all think or vote like we do, or share our hobbies and passions, or have the same temperaments that we do. No, we come here to meet Jesus, and to learn to love others as Christ loves us.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, the church will never be an “ideal” community according to some vision we may have in our heads. Every congregation is always a “real” community made up of real people. Believe it or not, there are imperfect people here making mistakes and saying things they shouldn’t say. There are people here with foibles and quirks that may sometimes irritate us – just as we have them. How else are we going to learn how to forgive unless we have been wronged? How else are we going to experience grace, unless we experience people showing grace to our quirks and mistakes? How else are we going to learn to love others as Christ loves us, if we do not spend time around people who can be as hard to love as we are?
And that leads us to a word that Paul uses here that is one of the most important virtues or qualities to have for living and working with imperfect people. The Greek word Paul uses in verse 5, “epieikes,” can be translated a number of ways: “gentleness,” that is relating to others without harshness or coercion, as Paul relates to the women leaders in Philippi. Or it can mean “forbearance,” which means “accepting others in all their differences and shortcomings, and being prepared to forgive them.” It can also mean “kindness,” which means showing concern and mercy towards others, or “patience,” that gives others time and refuses to force change or a premature resolution.[4]
This is how we are to treat others – with gentleness, forbearance, kindness, and patience. And without the impatience or arrogance or envy which sap community. We are “to have the same mind as Jesus” and treat others as Jesus Christ has treated us. Of course, we will not always do that, but that is ok too. We are a community of friends united by Jesus Christ, which means we are called to cover each other with grace.
There is one final thing to be said about this community of friends, one that distinguishes it from most other communities and circles of friends. We go the distance with each other here. That is why Paul cannot wipe his hands clean and forget about Euodia and Syntyche. And it is why he enlists the whole congregation to help them work things out.
A colleague recently shared the story of a much beloved chaplain, Bill Arthur. He apparently was a man who exemplified the forbearance that Paul writes of here in Philippians 4. He needed it with a friend who had a hard time keeping friendships. One thing would be said or not said, resentments would fester, and this man would move on, either feeling mad about what someone else did, or guilty about what he did. One day, this friend did something that made Bill mad, but Bill wouldn’t let it end there. Instead, Bill told him, “You’re not walking away from me. I might be really angry with you right now, but I’m sticking around, and so are you.” And so they did. They’ve been friends now for over 30 years.[5]
As someone once said, there many people who have heard our best stories. But our best friends are those who have lived them with us. This what it really means to be a true BFF, to be a community of friends for each other. We are willing to live through each other’s stories, the fun and joyful ones, and the difficult and sad ones.
In Stations of the Heart, Duke preaching professor Richard LIscher writes of his son Adam’s heroic and faithful struggle with brain cancer as a young adult and a new father. Near the end for his son, Lischer writes of going to lunch with a friend of faith. “I could be comfortable with Maurice not only because he was an old friend,” he writes, but because when Adam was diagnosed he had promised me, “I will go with you in this, as far as I am able.”[6]
May we always find people here “who will go with us as far as they are able.” And may we never forget that there is One here who has always promised, “Lo, I will be with you to the end of the age.” All the way to the end. Always. Amen.
[1] Fred B. Craddock, Philippians, Interpretaton Bible Commentaries (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 70.
[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, “Making Connections: The Material Expression of Friendship in the New Testament,” Interpretation, April 2004, 163.
[3] https://www.faithandleadership.com/l-gregory-jones-discovering-hope-through-holy-friendships.
[4] Daniel L. Migliore, Philippians and Philemon, Belief Theological Commentary Series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 157.
[5] https://www.faithandleadership.com/christi-o-brown-holy-friendships.
[6] Richard Lischer, Stations of the Heart (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 179.