"For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again." [Philippians 1:21-26]
Let me ask you this: what's your reason for getting up in the morning?
What gives you the energy, the drive, and the passion to put your feet on the floor and face a new day--especially if it's still dark and the bed is so comfortable when your alarm goes off?
I ask because there's probably a first-level shallow answer off the top of our heads, and then there's probably a deeper answer if we give it a bit of thought. For folks who get up and go to work, part of our off-the-cuff response would be, "Well, I have to get up to get to work; that's how a job works." Or if your routine involves caring for a loved one--a spouse, a young child, or an aging or sick relative, maybe--you might say something similar: "I have to wake up so I can make a breakfast, or pack a lunch, or help someone with their physical therapy or doctor appointments." It almost becomes like running on autopilot: we get up because we have programmed ourselves to get up, and we go out and go to work or do our chores because, well, we don't really give it a moment's thought beyond, "It's just my daily routine."
But if I pushed you a bit and asked, "Okay, but why do you go to work? And why do you pack the lunches, or make the breakfasts, or any of the rest of your daily routines?" how might you answer? What makes it worth it to get up and face whatever comes in the new day? Well, pretty quickly our answers will turn to love, I suspect. You go to work, not just to put a roof over your own head, but to provide for people or pets that you care about. You do the morning routine for your children or grandchildren or parents or a spouse because you love them. Love is what keeps you going, I suspect; love is why we deal with the drudgeries of our routines or the weariness of work or the tiredness and tediousness of the everyday grind.
And in that sense, love is what gives us hope that we'll wake up again in a new day to do it all over again, all our lives long.
That's important to consider, especially for us who call ourselves Christians, because of course, we also have a Big Picture hope about life that awaits beyond this life. We trust, after all, that even after time and age and death have done their worst, that we will be more alive than we have ever been because of God's resurrection promise. I have a hope that when my heart gives out one day in this life, there will be a new breath of the Spirit's life in me and I will be a part of God's new creation. So, yes, I need to work to make money to feed my family and myself, but even after all of that is done, I have a firm hope that God will raise me to new life. And yet, even for all that glorious hope, I still get up every morning and go through all the daily routines of life and work and chores... because of the people I care about right now. I have a hope, not just for "One-Day-After-I-Die" but for tomorrow, because of the people I love who depend on me to be there when the sun comes up again.
Like I say, for most of us on most mornings, we don't go through all that thought process every day when we put our feet on the floor to start the day. But there are times when we get a renewed clarity about why we keep on keeping on. Sometimes it's when someone you care about has a health scare or gets a difficult diagnosis. Sometimes it's when you have to be apart from the people you love for a while, due to travel. Sometimes, if you're like the apostle Paul, it's when you're facing your own mortality and the precariousness of life.
That's where Paul is when he writes these words many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. Paul's letter to the Philippians is written during his imprisonment in Rome, while he awaits trial before the emperor. He is literally under guard with Roman soldiers penning him in, and he knows that the charges against him could mean a death penalty. When he writes to his dear friends in Philippi, Paul knows the deck is stacked against him; he could die at the executioner's hands, or he could die in chains waiting for the gears of the bureaucratic Roman justice system to turn another notch. He knows his life is in the balance, and he also knows that he has a hope beyond this life. Paul writes to the Philippians with utter confidence that if he dies, he will be in the presence of Christ and held in the grip of a God who loves him. That's not scary for Paul, but rather he knows he will be at rest and at peace. He's not afraid of dying, not a bit.
And yet--and this is the thing that gets me about this passage--Paul doesn't seem ready to check out. He doesn't say, "I just can't wait for the Romans to get this over with so I can go to heaven and be done with this wretched old world!" But rather, Paul tells the Philippians, "Even though I know I'll be with Jesus when I die, I want to keep on living right now--because I love all of you, and I want to be there for you." He continues that he is so sure that these dear friends of his need him to continue caring for them that he is certain that he'll survive his current predicament so that he can keep on doing what God has called him to do. He has a hope for tomorrow, not just for the hereafter, because he loves his this congregation. And it is his care for him that keeps leading him to put his feet on the floor day after day, whether that floor is of a prison cell or a Philippians house church one day, or even the golden streets of the heavenly city.
I know you're not in a Roman jail cell today, and I doubt you're awaiting trial of any kind while you read this. But I want to suggest that Paul's frame of mind is one we can adopt, too, for whatever we are facing today. We share Paul's Big Picture hope that God has got us no matter what, even beyond death, so we don't have to be constantly petrified by fear in our day to day lives. But at the same time, we also share Paul's love for the people around us who are our reason to keep going in this life. We keep facing each new day, and we keep putting our feet on the floor in the morning when the alarm goes off, not because we are afraid to die, but because we want to be there for the people we love. Love for other people gives us hope to get up and face this new day, not just for some future day in heaven. Today is a chance to love people whom God has placed in our lives, so today is a day to practice hope.
That's an important reminder for us that Christian hope doesn't mean giving up on the troubles of this life. We don't shrug off the needs of the world with some excuse like "I'm going to heaven when I die, so I don't have to care about any of this," but just the opposite: we care about this world all the more because we love people in it, and because God loves the world. Paul's example shows us how love for others in this world means we hope for the chance to use each day well for their sake, even while we know that after all our days are spent, God will still hold onto all of us.
Why do we put our feet on the floor in the morning and go through the day's routines all over again? Because we hope that there is good work to be done for someone we love, and for someone God loves.
Let's get to it.
Gracious God, give us the hope to see the value in this day as an opportunity to do good for those we love, and those you love.
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