When Christians Disagree: Part 2

Philippians 2:1-5

When Christians Disagree (part 2)

            Last week we were introduced to a church that the Apostle Paul loved that was in turmoil over a disagreement between two people. These people were at odds with each other, possibly over how to best share the Gospel with their community. This was troubling to Paul and he wrote to them to help them learn to set aside their differences and find the unity they once had in Christ. He began by exhorting them to remember what they each had received when they had invited Jesus into their lives. Those things were Ultimate Peace - knowing that God will win in the end and if we choose God, so will we; the true understanding that God’s love for them is unconditional and eternal; that they had received the Holy Spirit who connects us not only to God, but to each other; and as they understood all that had been done to win their forgiveness that they would be able to offer the same forgiveness to others. Paul used this to drive home the point that as each person has received these wonderful gifts through Christ, so have the people with whom they disagree.

            While this is a good thing to acknowledge, that still leaves us with the question of how does that help us set aside our differences? I can acknowledge that you have received the same blessing of God as I have and still think you are wrong. “A bishop of a century ago pronounced from his pulpit and in the periodical he edited that heavier-than-air flight was both impossible and contrary to the will of God. Oh, the irony that Bishop Wright had two sons, Orville and Wilbur! Wright was wrong. Sure of himself, but wrong.”  (Robert P. Dungan, Jr., Winning the New Civil War, p. 38.)
            That is not the kind of disagreement Paul is addressing in his letter to the Philippians, one that can be solved by investigation or scientific proof. The battle going on in this church was between two people who were convinced that they knew the right way to do things. It was their way or the highway. Each side was determined to win the argument and make the other side bow to their wishes. In the 1890s there was a small Baptist church in Mayfield County, Kentucky. The church had just two deacons, and those two men seemed to be constantly arguing and bickering with each other. On a particular Sunday, one deacon put up a small wooden peg in the back wall so the pastor could hang up his hat. When the other deacon discovered the peg, he was outraged. "How dare someone put a peg in the wall without first consulting me!" The people in the church took sides and the congregation eventually split. Over a hundred years later, residents of Mayfield County still refer to the two churches as Peg Baptist and Anti-Peg Baptist. (Sermon Central.com)

           This conflict really wasn’t about a “peg”, it was about who was going to be in charge. Churches face these conflicts on a regular basis. There are the battles over all sorts of things, whether to have a dedicated Sundays School hour, so kids can be in worship, what kinds of cups to use to serve coffee, the color of the carpet, and all those things we affectionately call the worship wars where people want everything in the service to be just to their liking, the list is endless, but in reality, it comes down to who is in charge. What Paul calls in our passage people acting out of selfishness or empty conceit. This attitude was very troubling to Paul, not just because when it is present that it leads to strife, but because it is a sign of great spiritual immaturity. Like a small child who throws a fit because they didn’t get their own way, these two people in the church and the people who had chosen one or the other side, were putting their wants as the first priority and not asking one very important question, “What would Jesus want me to do?”

            There is a problem in asking that question when it is in the church. We can come up with some pretty spiritual sounding reasons for why we want our own way. I grew up during the music wars of the late sixties and early seventies. This was a time when rock music had really taken hold in our culture, I know for some of you it is hard to imagine, but in the churches I grew up in, Rock music was considered “the devils music.” Imagine the furor when people from that foreign country called California began to play rock music with words that were praising God. Immediately people started condemning the people who were doing this. When us young people who liked that kind of music began to ask why it was bad, we got all kinds of spiritually sounding reasons, like rock music led to drug use or it made you want to wiggle your body in the wrong way or it was full of subliminal messages that were designed to control your mind. The big one was that it simply wasn’t pleasing to God because it came from a rebellious culture. The truth of the matter was, for the vast majority of people giving these reason, that they simply didn’t like that kind of music and wanted to keep it out of the church. Just like “the peg” it was about who was going to be in control.

           So Paul, says to the people at Philippi, when you are asking that question, “What would Jesus want me to do?” when you come up with your answer you need to test it. The first thing that you need to ask, Paul says, who am I promoting? The word translated selfish here as it was used in the ancient secular world “denotes a self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means.” To put it in modern terms, “As long as I get what I want, the end justifies the means.” Over my years in the church, I have seen many people who operate this way. I have seen a youth director try to get a Head of Staff chased out of a church because he didn’t like being told no for something he wanted to do. I have had a group of elders who decided that they needed to make sure the staff of the church turned over every five to eight years in order to keep the salaries down. I have had to confront an elder in a church I served because she was spreading lies about one of my colleagues  that she did not like. I have seen a pastor play people against each other so that he could get a bigger raise and almost split the church over it. Selfishness and Empty Conceit, is when I pretend that what I want for the church is what God wants for the church. It is a sign of a very immature Christian.

            

     Paul says, if you really want to get in touch with what Jesus would have you do, you need to “change your mind”. This is biggest step on the path to maturity in your relationship with Christ. It begins with humility. Not just any kind of humility, but a humility that comes from an honest look at who we are, not compared to Saddam Hussein, or Ted Bundy, or that person who robs people for a living. We can always find someone who has lived a worse life than us. But true humility comes when we are honest about how we measure up to God’s yard stick. At one point in his ministry, George Whitefield, a minister during the 1700's, the Billy Graham of his time, received a vicious letter accusing him of wrongdoing. His reply was brief and courteous: "I thank you heartily for your letter. As for what you and my other enemies are saying against me, I know worse things about myself than you will ever say about me. With love in Christ, George Whitefield."(Daily Bread, August 18, 1992.) Whitefield was able to resist the human tendency to lash out at his enemies because of the humility he had gained from seeing himself for who he was when compared to what God desired of him.

            It is when we have humbled ourselves that we can truly understand, as Paul puts it in Romans 8, the height and depth and breadth of the love of God. It is in seeing ourselves as we really are and then understanding that God loves us in spite of all of that, not only loves us, but was willing to give the most valuable thing in the universe for our salvation, that we can comprehend what a wonderful gift it is. When we understand that, then we can find that sympathy and compassion that we talked about last week, the ability to forgive those who sin against us, just as we have been forgiven. It is because we have been forgiven, that we can get past the need to justify and defend ourselves, to put ourselves first. Then we can look past the our own needs and care for the needs of others. We can get to the point where we realize that God didn’t reach out to us with forgiveness, just to walk away and leave us to fend for ourselves. God invites us to do for each other what God has done for us. God looked out for our needs ahead of His own. God didn’t need to forgive us. God could have wiped the earth clean and started over. But God put our needs first. So as we set aside our own self promotion and our need to control and give our lives over to God, we will do what God has done for us, look out for the needs of others. This is spiritual maturity, this is our goal.

            During his travels, a monk once found a precious gem.  One day he met a traveler, and when the monk opened his bag to share his provisions with him, the traveler saw the jewel and asked the monk to give it to him.  The monk did so readily.  The traveler departed, overjoyed with the unexpected gift of the precious gem that was enough to give him wealth and security for the rest of his life.  A few days later, however, he came back in search of the monk, found him, gave him back the gem, and entreated him, “I want something more precious than this stone.   Please give me that which enabled you to give it to me.”

            This is an example of what Paul is talking about. The monk was able to put the needs of the other ahead of his own, because he desired to emulate what God had done for him. But we do not need to look to a story like this to show us what this means, we have the example of Christ, himself. We will look at that next week.

This sermon by Pastor Steve Ranney from September 22, 23 at St. Mark Presbyterian Church. To listen to the sermon, click here.  Photo Copyright RoyaltyFreeImages.net