A conclave of comedians – Philippians 1:1-11
This week the news has, naturally, been full of stories about the Pope, and on Tuesday I saw a story about Pope Francis hosting a gathering of comedians at the Vatican last year – a conclave of comedians – 107 comics from 15 countries – where he praised their ability, their power “immersed as we are in many social and even personal emergencies…to spread peace and smiles…. You remind us,” he said, “that homo sapiens is also homo ludens [or wise human is also playful human]! For playful fun and laughter are central to human life, to express ourselves, to learn, and to give meaning to situations.” And then he said, “I like to pray daily – and I have done this for more than forty years – with the words of Saint Thomas More…Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humour. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others. Amen.”
For the past 12 weeks, we have been working through a series based on Field Notes for the Wilderness by Sarah Bessey and we finish today with her chapter on joy! “When it comes to this experience of an evolving faith, I… find it peculiar,” she writes, “that we don’t talk more about its joy and gratitude. It’s not easy to evolve, but oh, there is joy here, too. That’s because there is so much being healed, restored, renewed in us.”
And there is plenty of joy here too in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul is in jail. Paul is under sentence of death. But Paul thanks God every time he remembers the Philippian Christians, “always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
#1 He is thankful they have been his partners in gospel work and gospel life.
#2 He is thankful for the wonderful things God has done and will do in their lives. Verse six: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
#3 He is thankful for their love! Verse seven can be interpreted either way: “because I hold you in my heart” [and] “because you hold me in your heart”. The feeling is mutual!
#4 And he is so thankful that their faith and their friendship has not diminished in the face of persecution; “for all of you are my partners in God’s grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.”
And all this thankfulness springs up as joy like a fountain in his soul! Bessey quotes Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, “The root of joy is gratefulness… it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”
Counting your blessings, keeping a gratitude journal, saying grace at meals are all practices of thankfulness that lead to joyfulness in our lives. They are good healthy habits for everyday life, and positively life-saving habits for when the going gets tough.
Bessey describes, for a time, keeping a notebook beside her bed and, just before she turned out the light, writing down five things she was grateful for. “Nothing fancy,” she says, “nothing magic, just: I’m grateful for [my daughter’s] freckles, I’m grateful for how much [my son] loves Simon & Garfunkel albums….I’m grateful for [that] text message today. Night after night,” she says, “I took time to write it down, and day after day, I became more observant, more watchful for gratitude, and even, dare I say, more joyful because of it.” (You can try this using the sheets down the back.)
At a difficult time in Aron’s and my marriage, our marriage counsellor encouraged us to tell each other ten things we appreciated about the other each night. Ten things! That
was not easy at the time – for either of us. And yet over time that practice encouraged appreciation and fostered gratefulness and turned into joy.
I have been thinking about this as next weekend’s Assembly has drawn closer, and my feelings of grief and disbelief and impotence have grown stronger, that now is a good time to remember all that I am incredibly thankful for, that has happened alongside the things I am grieving.
And it sounds a lot like that list of Paul’s!
#1 I am so grateful for people who partner with me in the gospel. I caught up this week with Christine Redwood, pastor of Seaforth, and Christine Macpherson, pastor of Berowra (if you want your daughters to be Baptist pastors, call them Christine) and I thank God every time I think of these people.
#2 And I am so thankful for this church, for how we worked through a difficult process together and remained together. As James Carter put it in our session after church two weeks ago, “We have recognised the importance of distinctive Baptist principles [and] the breadth of the Gospel and how it is in no way diminished by differences of views on particular issues.” For this reason, I, too, am confident, “that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
#3 I am so thankful for the genuine affection within the Open Baptists community and in this church; that we offer a genuine welcome, as our website says (not a conditional welcome as the NSW/ACT Association teaches). We hold each other in our hearts! (Megan Williams is heading up a working group to foster closer ties between our Open Baptists churches – and one immediate opportunity is our Zoom prayer gathering on Monday night – tomorrow 7:30 to 8:15.)
#4 And I am moved by this church’s commitment to association. Not wanting to withdraw voluntarily from association with the NSW/ACT Baptist Association. Believing, as Paul says, that we are “partners in God’s grace” despite the challenges we face and the differences we navigate.
What are you thankful for that sits alongside the pain and the difficulty of this process? Let’s take a moment to turn to those around you and share one good thing, one thing you’re thankful for, one joyful thing that has emerged in the past five years…. (Pause)
There’s another reason for joy, according to Sarah Bessey, and underwriting every word of Paul’s letter to the Philippians and that is that joy is, quite simply, real.
Yes, suffering and grief and rejection and relationship breakdown is real, but, as Bessey say, “joy is part of the reality too….redemption is real, renewal is real, joy is still real.”
And one of the ‘great free joys’, she writes, is the gospel reality of “Jesus moving toward the margins to redraw the centre of God’s geometry.” In Jesus, God has reached out, God has welcomed in, God has made a home with, “people who were poor, distrusted, ostracised, sick, old, sex workers, tax collectors, women, illiterate peasants, fishermen, prosperous businesswomen, folk from the wrong side of the tracks – us! Us! Ours is the kin-dom of God, too.” Such good news! Such a joyful reality!
And Paul’s prayer at the end of this passage is that we go on discovering this joyful reality. That it continues to sustain us and strengthen us and guide us and grow us and overflow from us, so when all joy is complete, we will have, verse 11, “produced the
harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
Amen? Amen! Hallelujah? Hallelujah!
I want to finish with a story I’ve told before (though some of you might not have heard it) which I’ve been reminded of by all the images of the Vatican on our screens – especially the image of God reaching out for us in Michelangelo’s famous fresco, The Creation of Adam, in the Sistine Chapel.
In that painting, as you know, both figures are reaching, their index finders meeting in the centre of the composition, but Adam’s gesture is more passive, more casual… (I saw exactly the same gesture from a baby at Playgroup the other day, reaching for his mother, simply confident she would come!) …while God’s gesture is more purposeful, more vigorous. God is determined to reach for us, and nothing will get in God’s way!
In 2017 our family travelled to Europe, and we went to Rome and joined the 25,000 or so people who visit the Sistine Chapel every day, but we did something slightly clever and booked the last tour of the day, so there was no group pushing from behind.
But you will know – if you’ve been there – that the chapel is busy, packed with people, and if you raise your voice very severe looking priests shush you – loudly.
So, when I had a chance, I gathered my three children, Miriam age 18, Grace 14, and Zach 11, and said in my loudest quiet whisper, “There it is, just above our heads, Michaelangelo’s famous painting of God reaching out to Adam!” And then I pointed out a couple of other Biblical characters they should know.
And then we were moved on, through all the corridors, shepherded by men in uniform with machine guns – all very serious – to the gift shop where I asked Zach, would he like a set of pencils – with Michelangelo’s famous fresco on them – as a souvenir.
“Where was that?” he said! “I didn’t see that painting!”
“It was in the chapel,” I said. “Don’t you remember I called you all over and pointed up at the ceiling. It was right there in the centre of the ceiling!”
“No,” he said, “I thought you were pointing at something else. I didn’t see it! I didn’t see it. It was the one thing I wanted to see!” And to my astonishment he burst into tears. “I have to go back,” he said. “I have to see it.”
“You can’t go back,” I said. “It’s impossible. They’re closing up. There’s all the security. I’m sorry, darling, I’m so sorry, but we can’t go back.”
Enter Aron Downey, Father of the Year, who, after I’d explained, said, “Look, let’s just give it a go. Come on, Zach, let’s go.” And they headed off, down the corridor we’d just exited.
As Aron tells the story, at each check point he would explain, pointing to his red-eyed son, that he’d missed the picture of God reaching for Adam and this was what he most wanted to see; and that he’d pinch Zach occasionally so he’d cry more (but that’s exaggeration!) but whatever the case – it worked – and Aron and Zach found themselves alone in the Sistine Chapel (watched closely by a contingent of security guards) standing under the image of God reaching out eternally to humanity.
It was a moment of joy! It is a memory of joy. And it celebrates the joy of what God has done for us, of God letting nothing get in the way of loving us, of the joy of partnering in this joy, this gospel, with others, of the joy of seeing other’s lives transformed by this gospel of joy, of the joy of being genuinely loved – being held in the hearts of a community of joy, of the joy of persevering together because we are partners in God’s grace. This is our joyful reality.
Let me finish with the blessing Pope Francis gave to the comedians in June last year: “May God accompany you in this very beautiful calling to make people laugh, to be comedians. It is easier to be a tragedian than a comedian, it is easier. Thank you for making people laugh and also thank you for laughing from the heart. May the Lord bless you all. Thank you!”