Virtuous Peace

Virtuous Peace

Are any of y’all familiar with the phrase “We are what we repeatedly do?” Famously misattributed to Aristotle, this phrase is still a near-perfect distillation of his concept of Virtue ethics, and, paired with the second half of the phrase, “excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit,” is most often seen, not in treatises of moral philosophy, but, in my experience, on the social medias of people who are eager to let you know how well they’re doing in this life. These are folks who want to make it known that they fought and clawed and got all the private jet rides, every bit of physical fitness, all the money and trappings, all the STUFF, on the virtues of their own power and ability, and, for them, success and excellence has become a habit.

Now, just because I personally find that a little cringey and something I don’t like, does not mean those are bad folk or even that they’re, necessarily, doing anything wrong; my purpose in sharing that quote and some of the places it shows up most often is to demonstrate, in some small way, how distorted, for the Christian, virtue can get.

We’ve spent the last few weeks, at some level or another, in the letter to the Philippians, right? Typically when we’re dealing with one of Paul’s letters, we get to see a little bit of drama. Something has gone wrong in a community and Paul is writing back to the them to correct something, out of love and a desire for reconciliation. But Philippians is a little bit different. Yes, they had their problems, we see that in our reading today, Eudoia and Syntyche, two women about whom NOTHING but their names are known, are fighting about something, and Paul encourages them to find common cause and remember who they are to each other. But other than that, Paul is writing this letter out of an overflowing sense of Joy, out of real love for these people, because he misses them. They don’t have the fear and lethargy that plagued the Thessalonican churches or the wild factionalism and rampant immorality that beset the Corinthians; all tolled, the Philippian church was actually doing pretty well!

Paul’s writing to them to tell them that he misses them, he thinks the world of them, and to encourage them in the good work that they’ve already been up to. Not a whole of correction, just a whole lot of exhortation. That’s where we’re at this morning. Here at the end of the letter, Paul is wrapping up and saying some of the most important things he can put on paper for a people that he loves, and what does he tell them?

He tells them to Stand Firm in the faith,  encourages them to Remember who they are to one another and not to let the little things destroy the community that God has brought together. He tells them to Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, and finally, PURSUE THE VIRTUES.

“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable.” True, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable. “If there is any EXCELLENCE and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” That word, excellence, can also be translated as “Virtuous.” If there is anything VIRTUOUS, or worthy of praise, think about these things, “keep on doing them.”

In the Zoom Book Club that’s been meeting for the last few weeks on Tuesday nights, we’ve been talking a lot about virtues, clearly a very interesting and popular topic for our modern world. But we’ve talked about what some of them are, what makes a virtue, a virtue, and how we practice virtuousness. [I will grow tired of saying the word “virtue” over and over again, so bear with me.] We’ve talked through the cardinal virtues: Temperance, Courage, Justice, Prudence, and what the author of one of the books we’ve read has called the theological virtues:  Hope, Faith, Love. We’ve struggled to define what a virtue is, because there has been a difficulty in our modern age to agree upon a set moral standard, which, truly, is neither here nor there, as my own personal working definition of a virtue is simply, “a verb worth pursuing,” or a “verb worth doing.”

The big idea about virtue ethics, this set of ethics first set down on paper by our good friend Aristotle, the thing that makes it different from a ethical framework that says “if the ends are noble, then the actions taken to meet that end are reasonable,” or one that says “this is the set of rules and standards and we have to act accordingly,”; the thing that’s different is that in the scheme of virtue ethics, we do the right things because we want to become people who do the right things. “We are what we repeatedly do.” We repeatedly act as people who have courage and we become people who have courage. We continually act in faith toward a faithless world, and we become faithful people. Over and over and we act in a loving way as we walk through this life, and we become loving people. This is the whole concept of virtue ethics, and it’s what Paul is handing us on a silver platter this morning, but with the  smallest of twists.

Instead of seeing a virtue for its own sake, a good deed as its own reward, Paul is telling us that if and when we practice this way of virtuous living, this way of living excellently in the world, pursuing a true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable way of walking through this life, we don’t just end up as true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable people. Of course, we will end up that way, that’s the entire thesis of virtue, but in addition to that, “the God of peace will be with you.” “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in the knowledge and love of Christ.”

Peace. This is the promise of God for his people today. Acting in a Christlike way, pursuing Christ-like virtues, pursuing the fruits of the spirit of God, somehow, someway brings us peace. And we know that! We feel it, somewhere behind our chest and we know it somewhere behind our face, that acting like this is true, because it is true, changes the way we approach the world! It changes us and who we are, at a core level. It takes what is not natural and makes it habitual, and it takes what is habitual and makes it natural, and it takes what is natural and makes it fundamental to who we are.

The God that died so that we might live did not go to the grave and come back just to make us better people, or to give us an example to follow. He died and came back to give us the chance to become NEW people, to become fundamentally different people, to take dead people and bring us back to life, to make us new and to grant to us the life eternal that is his alone to freely give. From Isaiah this morning, “the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.”

Peace. Abundant, overflowing, generous peace that alone is the Lord’s. The peace that passes all understanding. The peace that makes NO sense, the peace that isn’t logical or rational, but is somehow above all that, the peace that’s somehow, someway REAL. The peace that we instinctively and intuitively know when we’ve walked with the Risen Christ.

This peace, the greek is eirēnē, is not simply a lack of conflict, or a zen attitude when everything goes wrong. That’s part of it, sure, but the closer definitional meaning here, is something like a “harmony that makes and keeps things safe and prosperous.” Peace as a harmony that makes and keeps things safe and prosperous, for all. A peace that makes life safe, safe and prosperous for every person living in the war zone that has become the holy land; safe for every state-fair goer. A Peace that makes sure that everyone in East Fort Worth has enough to eat. Think about how that squares with our own internal definitions of peace, what peace does and should mean to us.

I think, hidden here at the end of Philippians, at the end of a list of virtues that will bring us to it, is the call for us to follow the God of peace, the God who made peace, to follow in making and keeping peace, a harmony that makes and keeps things safe and prosperous, for all.

Safe and Prosperous for all. Now, yes sure, this is about money, or can be about money, it is stewardship season after all, and I did use the word prosperous not 30 seconds ago, but the reality of the situation is that this is about so much more than money, or time or talent, or anything else. This is about the ways that we live our lives, pursing virtues that help us become people that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable; a people of peace. We have the opportunity, given to us by God, to become a people of peace, a people who make peace in a chaotic world that thrives on its lack. That is the call for every Christian in this passage.

By living a life that lets our “gentleness be known to everyone,” by living a life of virtue, we join in the work of God, already inaugurated, in shaping this world into something that it’s not, but something it could be. A world of peace, where, as Isaiah said, “the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people will be taken away from all the earth…and it will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God.” This is our God.

The God who would live and die as one of us to bring us back to himself, and would rise from the grave in the promise of a new life, a new world, for every one of us. This is our God. By becoming what we repeatedly do, pursuing a life of peace and virtue, witnessing to a world of peace, we make the claim that this is our God. By living a life that states, unequivocally, with our time, our talent, our treasure, our families, our work, our hobbies, our communities, our EVERYTHING, that this is our God, we join the work of that God, our God, in making all things new.

Even at the Grave

Even at the Grave

Even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Amen.

We are fortunate enough, this morning, to bear witness and participate in the second half of a liturgy begun 24 hours ago. Yesterday morning was the funeral and memorial service for Edith Angel, and this morning we, as a community, are going to baptize Henry Jordan, Edith’s great-grandson, into the death and resurrection of her lord and our’s.

We’re joining a liturgy already in progress, we’re rehashing what happened yesterday, because baptism and burial are, in essence, essentially, the same, or at least they’re two sides of the same sacramental coin. The words we say, the symbols used, the white garment, the fire, everything we do in these liturgies shows us that they are both getting at something Paul says in Philippians this morning, getting at the essential truth at the heart of everything we believe: we have been made Christ’s own. We ARE Christ’s own.

In the Anglican tradition, the tradition in which we squarely sit, our tradition, we believe that the sacraments are outward, visible signs of an inward, invisible grace. They’re signs pointing to the grace that’s already there. In the epistle this morning, Paul gives his laundry list of qualifications, his own list of outward, visible signs that point to…what? His abilities, his bona fides, his accolades and he counts them all as loss, rubbish, refuse, even. They’re nothing in comparison to the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ.” And that’s what yesterday and today, our combined and continuing liturgies of burial and baptism, are all about.

Knowing Christ, being united with Christ, being Christ’s own, forever… THAT is the whole point of this life. Burial makes clear what we proclaim in baptism: that our lives are not our own, they are Christ’s own. Burial is the consummation of the promise made in baptism: the promise Christ made in John 10 that Alan referenced last week, that Christ came to give us life, and give it abundantly, a life only he could give, because it’s HIS life to give. It’s not a life we can or could build on our own by being whatever our equivalent of Paul’s “Hebrew of born of hebrews,” or “a pharisee under the law” but something that is the free gift of grace, made possible in our covenant with Christ, forged in his blood; We are Christ’s own.

In baptism we become members of the family, of the household of God, and this morning we see members of a family by blood become members of a family by water and the spirit, God’s family. We know the phrase, “blood is thicker than water,” and there is something to that, absolutely, but there’s another, longer, slightly different conception of that phrase that may or may not have more historical roots, that reads “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” and I think that version reveals to us a truth about baptism. The blood of the covenant, our covenant, the blood that makes us Christ’s own by baptizing us into His death and resurrected life, IS Christ’s own blood. In baptism we cease to be our own and we become Christ’s own; we die his death and we are raised to this new life, HIS new life, with a new family, even as we walk this new life with our family of origin.

And this is why, at the end of our earthly journeys we say in the burial rite, that “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Because we are Christ’s own. Because it’s not on us to make us new. Because it’s not our job to save ourselves. Because it’s not up to death to have the final word, that’s God’s job. The Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has a line that has shaped my thinking around death more than just about anything, where he says “For the Christian, death is no longer the final horizon, God is.”

At our burial, we approach death knowing with a full confidence that God is beyond that death that we die, and at our baptisms, we begin the slow trek of eternal, abundant life toward that horizon where death no longer reigns, no longer has dominion. In our baptisms, we begin our journeys to that final horizon where God is, to that horizon that IS God, where there is no more sorrow, no more pain, no more tears, no more death, and where eternal life is found.

Amen.

Rooted in Abundance

Rooted in Abundance

Philippians 2:1-13

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I’m sure many of you have raised kids. Or maybe you’re raising kids. And so you remember. And if they’re siblings, that’s the first instance where you have to teach kids to share. Sometimes maybe you have to teach your adult kids to share, your partner to share.

But I’m talking about kids. Mine left to go to Children’s Chapel, so I’m going to talk about them now. I’m not going to tell you if this story happened when they were three and five or 13 and 15, because the answer is yes.

But if if your house is like mine, you got toys everywhere. You got Legos. You got cars. You got stuffed animals.

And sometimes when my boys try to play with each other, one of them will say, “I need to get all of the toys.” And so at that point, if you get all the toys you’ve won. Have you won playing together? Is it a competition?

Because what happens when you have all the Legos? Your sibling, your friend, can’t play. What happens when you have all the cars? Your friend gets to watch you play. Your sibling gets to watch you when you have all the stuffed animals.

What good is that? If there’s no interaction, there’s no play, there’s no sharing.

In our epistle reading today, Paul’s writing to a people who are trying to figure out how to live together. The church in Philippi had conflict. All churches have conflict. Shocker. If it’s your first time around here, we have conflict too, just to let you know.

Paul was writing to people and Paul just doesn’t, like write letters for this just because. He doesn’t write to a letter saying, “Oh, I haven’t checked in a while. I’m just going to go tell them all these nice things.” Paul writes letters to address issues. He hears about something. It’s like, “Oh my goodness, they’re at it again. I’m going to write a letter.” So any time you see Paul saying something, there’s a reason he’s saying it.

He doesn’t just think it’s a good idea and they should try it. He’s trying to answer a question or he’s trying to solve a problem or he’s trying to tell them how they live together in the midst of their conflict. And we see throughout Paul’s letters, folks can’t share. In one of his letters, Paul literally says, “some of you rich people, you’re getting all the food first and you’re leaving just scraps for everyone else. “Get it together” is essentially what he says.

And in our letter today to Philippians, he starts off in verse three saying, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves.” He’s not just writing this because it’s a good idea. He’s writing this because there are people there who are regarding themselves this better than others.

He’s addressing an issue. He’s telling folks, “Consider not just yourself.” He goes on to say, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.” Let each of you not look to your own interest, but to the interest of others.

This verse is really interesting in the Greek that word “interest” isn’t there.

So in Paul’s writing to these people, telling them to get it together, he’s like, “Let each of you not look to your own…” Whatever it is, he’s letting them fill in the blank. He’s saying to those people that each of you not look to your own schedule and how busy you are. Let each of you not look to your own bank account and how much money you have.
Let each of you not look to your own job title and how important you are. Let each of you not look to your own wardrobe. Let each of you not look to your own interests.

Because if you win the game and you have all the stuff, what good is it if you get all your own interests? Whatever Paul’s talking about, what good is that?

Because sure, I have all these. I have all the toys and is. But number one, my friend may not have any. And number two, when my hands are this full, where’s the room for what God wants to give me?

Paul goes on to say in this letter to the Philippians, he tells us how to do it. He tells us to do what Jesus did, “have the same mind that is in Christ Jesus, though He was in the form of God,” though he had all the toys, didn’t regard equality with God, didn’t regard the toys as something to be grasped or exploited or seized or hoarded or craved.
But he emptied himself and being found in human form. He humbled himself. He gave of himself. He gave the toys. He gave his time. He gave his power.

Ultimately, he gave his life.

And he calls us to do the same. We’re not called to be Jesus. That might be a toy you try to grasp on to is being the savior of whatever situation. We’re not called to do that. Jesus took care of that.

But we are called to empty ourselves. We are called to look beyond what we can grasp. We are called to give.

And this isn’t just a church problem and isn’t just a Christian problem. This is a human problem. There’s a book I read this week. I got it on Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning I had finished it because I couldn’t put it down. It’s by a journalist, it’s called Scarcity Brain. And he travels all around. He goes from Iraq to untouched people groups to a monastery in New Mexico. And he talks to a lot of different folks about why we crave things. He talks to scientists and psychologists and he tries to figure out why are humans never satisfied?

Why do we never feel like we have enough? It’s actually a trick in our brain, that hoarding tendency that we want all of it. He lists out chapters of things that he thinks we want, all that we want, all the escape. We want to be able to get away. We want all of the certainty, all of the influence, all of the food, all of the stuff, all the information, all the happiness, all the toys.

We want it all. But what good is it when we have all of it?

I mentioned last week I served at 4 Saints Episcopal Food Pantry on a Saturday, and I joked that I didn’t actually do a ton of work because very quickly I was asked to drive Shirley home. And if you remember last week, I told you I drove her home eight miles on the east side of Fort Worth.

And in those eight miles, I passed three dollar stores and zero grocery stores. Remember, I asked us to think about when we drive home eight miles when we leave here and go to miles. How many grocery stores are we going to pass? But that’s not the most impactful thing that happened that day, because when I got Shirley home, I helped her take the groceries into her house and she started to set up some stacks.

And so she had a stack here. She had a stack here, she had a stack here, and then she went to her freezer and pulled out some meat and other things that she had had that they didn’t have at the food pantry. And she put some here in here and here. I’m like, Shirley, are you reorganized? What’s going on? What are you doing?

She said, “This is for my neighbor across the street. And this I’m going to take to the lady next door. And this is what I’m going to keep.”

If you remember, Shirley rode two busses to get eight miles to pick up food at 4 Saints, and relied on a guy to give her a ride home.

But she did not regard that food as something to be hoarded and grasped and exploited. But she gave of herself. She emptied herself. She shared her abundance.

At the end of this book, Michael Easter, the author,  sums up what it’s all about. He says, “Our world is overloaded with everything we’re built to crave. The fix for scarcity brain isn’t to blindly aim for less. It’s to understand why we crave more in the first place and then shake our worst habits and use what we already have better. Then we can experience life in a new way, a more satisfying way.”

We as Christians don’t do nice things. We don’t give, we don’t share because it’s “a good thing to do.” We do it because we think it’s the most satisfying way, because we are called to use what we have better.

That’s stewardship; using the gifts, the talents, the ability, the time, the money…using what we have better.

And if you think this is just pop psychology, it kind of is. But Jesus echoes what Michael Easter says. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and the author echoes what Jesus says.

Jesus, in a conversation with folks in the Gospel of John, was talking about why he’s here, what he came to do, what his purpose is. Jesus says, “I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.”

Jesus didn’t come so we could have life where we grab everything and hold on to it. Jesus didn’t come so that we might have life where we might win that life. Jesus didn’t come so that we could have all the toys. Jesus came to show us what it means to live.

Jesus showed us what it means to share. Jesus showed us what it means to be rooted in abundance.

So we’re called to emulate that. We’re called to walk in the way Jesus taught us. We’re called to put down the toys, to share what we have so that others around us can experience God’s abundance.