Trinity 16 11
“I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in
the Lord…” says Paul
to the Christians at Philippi. If I were
Euodia or Syntyche, looking down from heaven now, I would be really fed up.
They only get one mention in the Bible, these “co-workers” of Paul, probably
leaders of churches meeting in their houses in Philippi. They have obviously
done a huge amount of good, struggling beside Paul in the work of the gospel,
as he puts it, but it’s what’s gone wrong which is the thing which gets noticed
and remarked on. Paul didn’t know that his letter to the Philippians would be
preserved for two thousand years – he wasn’t writing for publication at all,
but today all we know of Euodia and Syntyche is this squabble. Wouldn’t you
just be kicking yourself if you were them?
Leaving aside their feelings though, I am actually quite glad
that their spat has made it into Holy Writ. It reminds us of the reality of
community living. It is easy to get idealistic about the early church, to
imagine a time when everyone was filled with love for one another and a passion
for truth and justice. In every generation there have been Christian groups who
have tried to recapture those imagined early days through revivals and
reformations. There’s nothing wrong with that – we need to discover the Gospel
afresh for our own age. But those attempts never really work because they are
based on a fantasy, not on reality. Euodia and Syntyche and their unnamed
squabble perhaps do us a good service here. They remind us that we need to be
realistic about our flaws – flaws which people in every age have shared - if we
are actually going to achieve anything. We need to admit where we go wrong if
we want ever to go right.
That’s not a counsel for despair. This letter tells us that
despite their squabbles, these early workers with Paul made a difference for
good in the places where they were. Paul calls them his “joy and crown”.
Perhaps it was even the fact that they tried so hard to stick together and
resolve their conflicts rather than giving up on each other which was the real
testimony to the power of God working in them.
Community living is hard, whether that is the community of a
local church, the community of a family, the community of a neighbourhood or a
workplace, the community of a nation,
the community of Europe which is having such problems at the moment, or the
global community. It was ever thus.
I’m reminded of St Benedict, the founder of the monastic traditions of
Western Europe. As the Roman empire collapsed in the 5th century, he
sought refuge in the hills outside Rome, looking for peace and solitude to
pray. Soon, hearing of his wisdom and holiness, others came to join him and
rather against his will, they formed a community around him, an early
monastery. They might have admired him as a holy man, but it wasn’t all plain
sailing. Jealousies and resentments festered. Twice some of the monks even
tried to poison Benedict , which seems a rather extreme way of making your
feelings known!
Benedict survived, but clearly something had to be done. So
he wrote a Rule, a way of life for the monks to follow, and that Rule in some
form or other has become the foundation stone of most of the monasteries of
Western Europe ever since.
Most of it is simply common sense advice for getting along
together, observing a healthy rhythm to life, balancing time for work, prayer
and study. It sets out the way in which monks were expected to treat each
other, with respect and courtesy. They elected their Abbot, but having elected
him they were expected to obey him – there’s no point giving him authority if
you don’t trust him to use it. They all had a say in the running of the
monastery, but when a decision was made, that was it. They took a vow of
stability, staying put in that community for life – you couldn’t just flit from
community to community as the mood took you. It was a seriously challenging
commitment. It still is for the many religious communities that follow it. And
Benedict knew that living up to it would mean an equally serious commitment to
knowing yourself, tackling your own failings, growing and changing. If someone
else irritates us and gets on our nerves, it is never entirely their fault;
their behaviour is usually touching a raw, perhaps wounded nerve in us, which we
need to find healing for too. Following Benedict’s rule means committing
yourself to “conversion of life”, as the rule puts it. It is a tough demand,
and it doesn’t surprise me that monastic communities, like many other
experiments in community livingoften fail or run into difficulties , as do the
communities of family, neighbourhood and nation – it is much easier to blame
others than to accept that we need to change ourselves.
And that brings me neatly onto the Gospel reading where we
meet a man who also needed to change – quite literally in his case.
Jesus tells a parable about a Royal wedding. Royal weddings
are always about the future, the continuing of dynasties, the next stage in the
life of a kingdom. Prince William and Catherine Middleton found that out when
they got married earlier this year. Speculation started instantly about when
they would start a family and provide the next generation of heirs to the
throne. Whether they, or we, liked it or not, their marriage wasn’t just their
marriage; it was an event which will affect the course of our nation’s history.
In the Gospels, Royal weddings are meant to help us think about the future of
one particular kingdom – the kingdom of God.
In Jesus’ story, the wedding guests aren’t just being invited
to a party; they are being invited to be part of the future the king has
planned for his nation. But what’s this? They all refuse to come. It’s all a
bit ridiculous, frankly, and those who first heard the story would have known
that. Refusing the king’s invitation in an era when kings ruled absolutely and
often brutally, was suicidally foolish, as the ungrateful guests discover. Please
note that we aren’t supposed to read this as a description of the way God is –
it is a story, meant to make us think, and no more than that.
But if those guests won’t come, the king knows there are
plenty of others who will. His servants
are commanded to invite any Tom, Dick and Harry they find standing around the
streets and soon his hall is filled with people – good and bad, says the
parable. The only thing they have in common is that they want to be there and
to share in the future they are being offered, unlike the first guests. Mark
and Luke’s version stops with this happy scene, but Matthew puts a twist in end
of this tale, and it is a twist which I think the story really needs, even if
it is sometimes a difficult one to understand.
The king spots one guest who isn’t wearing a wedding robe
and, furious, he throws him out into the outer darkness. Again, we need to remember that this outer
darkness is just a part of the story. It’s not a description of life after
death. It’s always tempting, with Jesus’ parables to take them too
seriously, to assume they are giving us a point by point description of the way
things are. They aren’t and we get ourselves into serious trouble if we over-analyse
them or forget to read them in the context of the wider message of the Gospels.
That’s why it’s important, also, not to get worried by the red-herring of why
this man hasn’t got a wedding garment. Is he too poor?, we worry. Perhaps he
didn’t have time to go home and change? I f that were the case it would be
completely unfair to judge him - but it would also make a nonsense of the story.
We are clearly meant to understand that he could have got changed if he’d
wanted to – he just didn’t.
The point Jesus is making is that although this guest is at
this feast in body, he is not there in spirit. He isn’t willing to lift a
finger actually to be part of what the king is planning for the future. He
won’t get changed, literally, and that shows the king that he isn’t going to be
any use practically as the work of the kingdom gets underway. He’ll come to the
party, but he doesn’t want what it celebrates to make any difference to his
life.
Matthew’s version of this story tells us that being a
Christian is not simply about getting a ticket to the banquet, a seat at the
table for ourselves. It is about being involved in the making of God’s kingdom
– being part of his work. And that means being prepared to get changed, not
physically into fine clothes, but into the people we are meant to be. We need
to let God change us inwardly, showing us where we need to grow, where we need
to repent and make amends, where we need to learn to love and to be loved, to
forgive and be forgiven, to give help, and to accept it. It doesn’t matter how
old or how young we are, how sorted or how messy our lives are; this applies to
all of us. When we stop getting changed, we stop growing. If you are the same
person as you were a year ago, or ten years ago, if you are still carrying the
same resentments, repeating patterns you know aren’t healthy, if you know no
more of the Bible now than you did then, then there is something that needs
changing – through prayer, through talking with someone you can trust, through
taking the action you’ve been putting off (we usually know what we need to do,
we just don’t do it somehow.)
We all need to get changed, just as the wedding guest needed
to get changed and Euodia and Syntyche, enmeshed in their squabble in Philippi
needed to get changed. I’m sure they’d rather be famous for something else, but
actually they have given us a precious gift, a glimpse into the reality of what
it means to live in community, with its challenges as well as its joys. We
don’t know what happened to them, but let’s hope they heeded Paul’s words, and learned
to think on whatever was honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable, so
that the God of peace could change them. And let us hope that we have the courage
to do the same.
Amen
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