The Conspiracy of Kindness
Philippians 2:12-18
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
September 11, 2022
Today we commemorate 9/11. Stanley Praimnath, 9/11 survivor writes, “I still have the shoes I wore to work that day. The soles are melted and they’re caked in ash. I keep them in a shoebox with the word ‘deliverance’ written all around it. They’re kind of like my ark, a reminder of God’s presence and the life I owe to him.”
The wife the pilot that crashed in Shankeville, Pennsylvania, reflected, “If we learn nothing else from tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.”
Author David Levithan stated, “What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’re never met.”
Queen Elizabeth II who passed away a few days ago (September 8th), on 9/11, after the attacks that killed almost 3,000, sent this message to our country, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
President Barrack Obama encouraged, “Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.”
God is calling us to a testimony of contrast, not a holier than thou mindset, but standing out against the darkness of this world.
Last week we were reminded to do everything without murmuring and without arguing. When our words give life, then we stand out against the world whose words are constantly taking others down.
There is another word here, he says, “Listen to your calling to Christlikeness.”
The apostle Paul said, “You’ve always obeyed me when I’m there, that’s good. You’ve listened to my teaching and you’ve done what I’ve said. But now I’m absent from you and much more, I pray that you would listen to my words and do what I said.”
“Because,” he said, “You have to work out your own salvation.” He does not mean that you have to work for your own salvation, he said, “work out your own salvation.”
It is working it out like a mathematician works out a problem and brings it to its conclusion. To work your salvation is to do those things which God has done in grace through Christ Jesus to its full conclusion on our lives like working out a math problem. “And you work it out,” he said, “it is God who works in you both to will like it is God who works his will, that is to give you the desire to become like Christ and to accomplish God’s good purpose in you.” But we cooperate in that endeavor. We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. But God is at work in us, he is seeking for us to become, it says, “to become children of light.”
God has in mind for us to become like Christ. Christ-like. That does not mean that we become divine. It means that we become fully human, we become what God intended for us from the very beginning.
In the biblical story there were only three fully human beings. In the early chapters of Genesis, there is the story of Adam and Eve and in the beginning they are fully human, they are created the way God wanted them to be until they separated themselves from relationship with him.
And Jesus Christ who the Scriptures calls the second Adam comes along and he demonstrates with his life what it was that God intends human being to look like. We watch Jesus when he interacts with his enemies, when he interacts with his friends, we listen to the way he responds to people. When we hear his words of compassion, what we are listening to is the words that God intends what human beings are to be.
And you and I are not fully human, we are not fully human beings, we’re all seconds, we’re broken.
Raised by the power of God, he poured out his spirit and called us and put us in the church. It’s all a part of God’s plan to reform our hearts, to change us from the inside out, to reshape us into His children to bear his image fully.
So you read this a lot in Scripture, like 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul describes what love is like, love is patient, love is kind, and so on. Or Galatians, chapter five, verses 14 and following where he talks about the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, and longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, self-control, faithfulness, those verses are not just beautiful passages that are to be framed and stuck on the wall. This is actually the way God wants us to learn to live. He actually wants us to become the kind of people who automatically respond that way to one another and even to our enemies.
Paul says in Colossians 1:28:
It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.
In verse 15 of Philippians 2, Paul says this to his friends, “Here’s your destiny. This is what God wants:
so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.
He says in verse 15, ”By holding fast the word of life.” This message God has given us, this new life is obtained by holding fast the word of life and if you do this, I’ll know that I have not wasted my life investing in you all.
The testimony of contrast, the church standing out distinctively against this world is when it holds fast to this word of life, this message of hope and has lives that validate it.
When we lose sight of what God intends for us, that He intends Christlikeness, we tend to fall back to our complaining, and our arguing, and our dissatisfaction about the process, like the clay arguing against the potter for the shape that he is making it. It’s not rational, it better if the clay becomes pliant in the hands of the potter and so with us. Don’t lose sight of your calling to Christlikeness. If you want to be distinctive from the world than that’s the way, we do it.
We don’t do it by our politics, we don’t do it by our arguing, we don’t do it by our condemnation of other people, we do it by moving towards Christlikeness, the mark of Christ in life.
What God wants from us is full humanity and he is capable of using everything in our lives, every circumstance, every relationship, to shape us toward that further and further. The past or future trials of our lives, the ordinary events of our lives, the practices that we take up as Christians, like prayer and worship, all of these are tools, instruments in God’s hands to shape us towards Christlikeness and that’s what we’re working towards, that’s working out our own salvation. God provides the desire in our heart and God provides the power to make that happen. When we keep in mind what God wants from us, we stand out in contrast to the world around us.
There is another piece to this that causes us to have a testimony of contrast and that is when we lean together and individually into service that costs us something. Something that we don’t necessarily get something back in return. Sacrificial service. Paul says in verse 17,
But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you— and in the same way you also must be glad and rejoice with me.
It compares the life that he has been living in service to a drink offering or a libation of wine, water, or oil, that might be poured out on the altar till it’s all gone. My life is being poured out on your faith, on the work that God is doing within you. And even if it is, if I die here in prison, my cup is emptied out in this process, I rejoice and I want you to rejoice with me because life in Christ is life lived in service, it is lived in pouring itself out for the sake of the gospel. And he’s calling the Philippians to do the same thing, to take the eyes off themselves and to place their eyes on the needs of the world around them.
Both inside and outside the church. This kind of thing that God himself did when he became flesh and dwelt among us and he died on the cross. That kind of sacrificial service provides a real opportunity to a contrast to the world around us, to doing only what we can get for us.
A pastor shares about his congregation that was busy with activities, worship and growth. But soon he and others in the church became increasingly aware that they were isolated from the world around them, outside the walls of the church. “People were welcome to come in, but rarely do they see us going out,” he said.
So they decided to do an experiment. They identified in the church a woman that never met a stranger, she was outgoing and they asked her if she could go to the local McDonalds’ and interview people. And she did. She was supposed to ask people a few questions:
1) How long have you lived in our community? A year, five years, they would have different answers.
2) Can you tell me where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is?
3) Can you tell me where the local university is?
4) Can you tell me where home-style donuts is?
And she would ask a series of questions and the last one, “Can you tell me where First Congregational Church is?”
The pastor said, “We’re not physically camouflaged. We had twenty acres of land, we were a big white steeple church like many other churches have, sitting right in the middle of the city.”
But when she got to that question, one person after another would go, “Uh, hmmm…, I think that may be out where our kids practice on their field.” It was at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. They were not church people, otherwise they’ll be at church, right?
The pastor said, “They did not have a clue where we were. We were invisible as far as they are concerned.”
He continued, “We took that video and showed it at church one Sunday and I asked the question, ‘You know, if Jesus lived in 3801 Meadowbrook Drive, for twenty-five years, do you think people would know where he lived?’ And here we are the body of Christ, do you think people know where we are? Do you think they ought to think about us when they have a need? But we had isolated ourselves. There was no contrast to the world.”
My friends, the people around that church had not seen the contrast to the world.
The pastor said “that troubled us and one of the things that we did was to lean into service that cost us something and begin to serve our community in ways that we had not done before.”
So a couple of days past after Jared and Joe were playing catch ball and Jared had released his balloon to the heavens and Steve Sjogren, who was pastor of a church in Cincinnati, shares the rest of the story. Joe and Jared were out running errands on Saturday and Joe saw a carwash in a parking lot being sponsored so he decided to pull in his car that needed to wash.
He pulled in to a line of people with buckets and sponges and hoses and said, “How much is it?” and pastor Steve Sjogren was there and said, “It’s free, no strings attached.” And Joe said, “Really. Why are you doing this?”
He said, “We just want to show you God’s love in a practical way.” And it was that statement that kind of opened up a place in Joe’s heart. And Joe said, “So, you’re Christians?” and Steve said, “Yes, we are.”
“Are you the kind of Christians that believe in God?” And he said, “Yeah, that’s the kind of Christians we are.” And Joe grinned and he stared at Jerod and told Steve of the release of helium balloon a couple of days ago with the prayer, “God, if you are real and if you are there, would you send us someone who knows you?”
And Joe said, “I guess you guys are the answer to the strangest prayer God has ever received.
Steve Sjogran wrote a book, “The Conspiracy of Kindness” where he talked about a project that his church engaged called “Servant Evangelism,” finding ways of offering themselves as service to their community and whether people ask or not, when they ask, the answer was “Jesus.” They did not do it with strings attached, but always ready to give testimony. To stand out like starts against the darkness of the sky. Humbled and with service, with no strings attached.
The destiny that we have, you and I, is the very real transformation of our lives, the renovation of our hearts, it’s what God longs for, it’s why He gave the Son for, it’s why he poured out the spirit, it’s why he formed the church. He wanted a people who more and more resembled his Son Jesus in the way they lived their lives, in the things they valued, how they talk, how they speak of others and how they treat others, and how they serve others. He did not want just a bunch of nice people, he wanted people who sacrificially served in his name.
And that transformation as it begins to be expressed in our lives and in our words, will be a testimony of contrast, it will set us apart from the world.
We will be children of God, blameless and innocent, without blemish, offering the world an alternative to its anger, an alternative to its hatred, and alternative to its selfishness, an alternative to its demandingness, to its greed, its lust, its quest for power, like stars against the darkness, our lives will match the message of the gospel, word for word as we hold out the word of life. Our living will make it believable.
It is not a self-righteous, holier-than-thou-ness that God invites us to, but the very life that in His day found attractive, that’s the life of Christ in us and that’s the life he calls us to.
Let’ us pray, “Father, we need constant reminders of this because the world is so profoundly with us that we find ourselves regularly, constantly camouflaged, responding and thinking, responding just like the world and you’ve called us to something different. So thank you for the reminder that your word gives us, that you have a destiny for us that you have a plan and that you have a mission and that you ask simply for our sacrifice, our giving our lives to you. Help us with our words this week, our relationships, our opportunities, use us, we pray, in Christ’s name. Amen.”