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Revisiting again that study trip I took to the Bible Lands in my seminary days, I wish to reflect for a moment on that elusive, Loch Nessian, Sasquatchian rare sighting of a thing known as Christian unity. You may notice my sarcasm bleeding through at points here over the next ten minutes of your life.
Probably the most eye-opening reality for me on that trip was that even though it’s the Bible Lands, Christians were few and far between; roughly 5% of the population. In the early 20th Century, it was around 20%, but for some reason in the last 100, really 80, years Christians have emigrated to other parts of the world. You do see churches in the Bible Lands but they are mostly very old basilicas and cathedrals being maintained by priests, monks, and nuns that are visited by Christian tourists. There are still worship services in a good many of them, but you’re not going to find a congregation. New church buildings with vibrant worshipping Christian communities are rare.
In Jerusalem, Christians make up hardly 2% of the population. This 2% consists largely of monks and nuns attending to the religious sites of Christian significance under the care of their particular denomination. There are also mission/relief agency personnel who are mostly immigrants. As far as indigenous Christianity in Jerusalem and Israel in general, they are mostly Palestinians. A goodly number of Christians have suffered in Israel in this past century not for being Christian, but for simply being Palestinian.
In Jerusalem, there are a good number of significant Christian “Holy” sites that people pilgrimate to for a meaningful selfie. And wouldn’t you know it, there is big business all around it. There are lots of tour agencies, lodgings, restaurants, religious trinkets, and lots of little “come step in my little holy, prayer niche, light some incense, say your prayer, and leave a donation if you please” places.
Of these “Holy” sites the most holy for Christians is The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. (It wasn’t really that holy for me. I was more moved by the synagogue ruins in the Galilean town of Capernaum which was probably Jesus’ home base once he started his ministry. Everything is so religious in Jerusalem.) The Church of the Holy Sepulcher claims to house Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, as well as the tomb where Jesus was laid which became the spot of the resurrection. Long ago the church was called The Church of the Resurrection instead of The Church of the Holy Tomb. I’m sure there’s some interesting history and some profound theology in that name change. You know, how it kind of changes the focus of Christianity's most holy site from resurrection and new life in Jesus to a dead guy and a grave. There’s a big difference between saying “I want to go see where Jesus was raised from the dead” and “I want to go see where Jesus was buried”.
Now about Christian unity, you may or may not know that three Christian denominations have primary responsibility for overseeing The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. One would think that this to be a great sign of Christian unity. Well, let me lean in a little closer and give you “the details” on that. The three main denominations are the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Apostolic, and the Roman Catholic churches. The Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Syrian Orthodox also share minor responsibilities. You will notice there are no Protestant or Reformed denominations represented. The Protestants have their own “Holy Tomb” spot a couple of blocks away that actually looks like a tomb in a garden.
The operating arrangement that the Catholic and Orthodox churches have is known as the Status Quo. It was drawn up in 1757 by the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) who ruled Jerusalem back then. An arrangement had to be made because disagreements, often violent in nature, broke out between the different denominations over worship times and places and cleaning schedules. The Caliphate, a Muslim, very graciously brokered the deal but he decreed that a Muslim family would always hold the keys to the church itself because if one of those denominations happened to be granted the keys…, well, we know how that would go. That Muslim family still holds the keys.
The denominations are still known to have their disputes. Notably in 1902 ,18 Franciscan friars were hospitalized and a number of monks jailed when the Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox got in a dispute over who could sweep the lowest steps of one of the many chapels throughout the complex. In 2002 on a hot summer day, a Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade from its agreed upon place. The Orthodox Ethiopians saw it as a hostile act resulting in 11 monks being hospitalized. In 2004, on September 13 when the Greek Orthodox had a special celebration commemorating the relic of the Cross they have there, the Franciscans, (Roman Catholics) accidently left the door of their chapel open. The Orthodox took that as an insult. A fist fight broke out but no one was hospitalized. In 2008, a big brawl broke out there on Palm Sunday because one of the other denominations removed a Greek monk from the building for some odd reason. The brawl was big enough for it to make global news. When I was there in 1995 standing in line waiting to have a moment inside the tomb, one monk started yelling at another and cuffed him on the back of the head. A German tour group also cut in front of us. Needless to say, though it seems that there is much unity involved in operating the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it is just as well-known and maybe overshadowed by the fighting among its Christian caretakers.
Jesus’ last teaching to his disciples was, “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34,35). This is what Paul was getting at when he told the Philippians to live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. If they/we were/are going to make the proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God become human, the true Lord and Saviour, who was crucified and raised from the dead and that by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit his kingdom, the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that he will return to fully establish his very good reign in his very good Creation, then we ought to have something to show for it. That something is our unity which Paul speaks of by saying that their life lived in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ shows up when they are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the loyalty to Jesus Christ that arises from the Gospel. That’s a wordy way of saying “Everyone will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love for one another.
Now, I need to go Greek on you for a moment because there are few things in what Paul is saying here that very unfortunately get lost in the translation. What we translate as live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ in the Greek doesn’t say what we individually minded post-Modern Western culture types here it as. When I hear those words, I immediately start thinking that “Me, Myself, and I” need to live my life in a gospel-worthy manner. Ok yeah, but that’s not what it’s saying. First, the verb incorporates the plural you. He is not saying each of you live your own life. Rather, it is y’all live your shared life, your common life together in a Gospel-worthy manner. There are ways in Greek to focus on how we live as individuals, but Paul doesn’t use those ways here. He pulls out a rather obscure word whose root word is the Greek word for city, which is polis. What we translate as "live your life" is quite literally, “Let the way you do city (common life in a commonwealth) be Gospel-worthy.”
To help you understand a little better. Philippi was a Roman colony in which Roman citizenship was very important. Rome turned a small mining community into a colony that would be a place where Roman citizens could settle down, like retire. Being a Roman citizen was important. In a couple of weeks, we will talk in a few weeks of how Paul tells the Philippian Christians that they are citizens of heaven. In Philippi the civic life shared by Roman citizens was very important. It’s also interesting to know that when Paul first visited Philippi around 49-50AD, he and his companion Silas eventually got arrested and beaten for “disturbing our city”. He cast a demon out of a young slave girl that made her able to tell the future. Her owners lost a means of lucrative income. They were arrested and beaten and imprisoned all without trial. They were released the next day, but Paul made it known that he and Silas were Roman citizens and refused to leave without some sort of apology. The city magistrates all came and escorted him out of prison acknowledging their mistake.
Paul wrote this letter about ten years later from prison and was expecting that at any moment the order could come to put him to death. This letter has a “last words” kind of feel to it. Paul’s “last words” focus on unity. The Philippian Christians also seem to be suffering some persecution as well. Paul’s word to them is that their openly displayed love for one another, the Christ-like quality of the common life, their unity is the evidence of the Truth of the Gospel of Christ to those who are wronging them. Love for each other, love for neighbour, love for enemy – these are the heart of civic life in the kingdom of God, the proof of one’s loyalty to Jesus Christ, the true Lord and Saviour.
We don’t really know specifically why the Philippian Christians were being wronged. We can suppose that their proclaimed and lived loyalty to Jesus rather than to Caesar and the gods in a city full of people proud to be Roman citizens proved problematic. Moreover, the egalitarian nature of their fellowship would have proved a disturbance to the order of Roman life that was very caste/status oriented. Loving and treating everyone as if they were family – slaves, the poor, the diseased, refugees, even enemies – would have threatened to overturn the Roman way of life.
For us today, we are the body of Christ in a world that has grown to have apathy if not antipathy towards the Christian faith largely because of our unholy marriage to imperialism. Jesus being Lord does not mean the Church is. Sadly, the reputation of the Church centres on our disunity and judgmentalism more than for our unity in love, for living our common life together in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. There is a lesson we need to learn from monks fighting at The Church of the Holy Sepulcher over the silliest things.
The world we live in and the Church’s place in it is not all that different today from what it was in the first century. The early church grew in an oppositional environment because their love for one another backed up their message. The love that people found in small Christian fellowships was the evidence that Jesus is alive and in their midst through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We must do the same today – focus on our unity in Christ. We don’t need petty fights about whose responsibility it is to do what. We just need to get together as often as we can in loving fellowship centered on knowing Jesus and invite, invite, invite, and invite some more. Most importantly, be that friend to all people, the friend who loves as Jesus has loved you. Amen.
