Text: Philippians 2:1-13

Not to brag, but I go to the gym two or three times a week to work with a trainer. The program that I’m part of is called “TEAM” training and usually I’m working with between 2 and 7 other people. Exactly who I’m with rotates depending on everyone’s schedules but it ends up being a lot of the same folks.

I’ve been doing this for about 3 years. I’ve learned lots of different exercises and how to use the various equipment and what kinds of adaptations to do if something’s injured or if I need to ease off or work a little harder. And I really like doing the TEAM training because of the accountability and connecting to other folks – all of whom are at different places in their fitness journey.

Right now, one of the trainers – Alicia – is pregnant. Pretty soon she’ll be taking parental leave. The real story is that at Rainier Health and Fitness, there are a bunch of trainers and when someone is gone, others adapt and fill in and they adjust. But I was imagining a scenario inspired by Paul’s letter to the Philippians. 

I imagine that Alicia leaves but she writes a letter to the TEAMs crew saying something like this: 

Friends, I will be gone for a while but I know that you have the tools and resources you need to keep showing up and working out.  Just keep doing everything you learned from me when I was with you. 

Some of you are newer to training. That’s okay! Teach each other and learn from each other . But remember to be gentle  and to support and encourage each other. You can write to me to ask me questions and I’ll answer but I know that you’re strong. I’ll be back soon to work with you again. You got this!

And then I imagine she might share a work-out playlist for motivation. She does like to sing along to the music while she’s coaching. We’d need songs that keep us moving, that reminded us of our previous work-outs and routines, that are up-tempo and motivating.

Paul is also telling his folks to keep working out. And he also leaves a playlist. Well, he leaves at least one song. Maybe there were more he didn’t write about.

The words that Paul sends to the Philippians are “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (In the CEB, which we heard, it was “carry out” your salvation.) As a reminder here: He’s not writing to you or to me but to this team. Team Philippi.  

And another reminder. This work-out is not to earn something but a reward and response and a process unto itself. Timothy L. Adkins-Jones at the Working Preacher says this:

Our lives, in community, should reflect the gift of salvation. Working out our salvation with fear and trembling is ultimately a description of the life in faith: a forging of something new, which respects…Christ’s sacrifice. The community, then, isn’t called to work for salvation; we are called to work because of salvation. The command is a response to grace, instead of a condition for receiving it. 

This is where the song comes in. Paul offers the Philippians a reminder that not only do they have each other and the tools that they need for gentleness and thoughtfulness and unity, they also have Jesus. They didn’t have the gospels but they did already have hymns about the nature of Christ. This was their work-out playlist.

6 Though he was in the form of God,
        he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
7 But he emptied himself
        by taking the form of a slave
        and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human,
8       he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
        even death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God highly honored him
      and gave him a name above all names,
10  so that at the name of Jesus everyone
      in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow
11    and every tongue confess
      that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The community at Philippi was a mixed status group. So Paul may have been specifically aiming these words at those with higher status and position. After all some among them were already literally slaves. The invitation is to humility and devotion to Jesus and to each other. 

This hymn is also a reminder that the kind of death that Jesus died was a political death – crucifixion was a political execution – and that to imitate him might have difficult consequences. There was likely anxiety within the community about that. 

To be a Christ-follower meant being a part of a weirdo community that disrupted hierarchies. It meant proclaiming that not Caesar but Christ was the one to bow down to. That, unlike Rome, citizenship and status was available to anyone: male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free. In heaven and on earth and under the earth. 

I sometimes wonder about Lydia, the business owner whose home was the home of the church and who supported Paul. I wonder if Lydia’s purple-dye business took a hit when she started being known as the church-lady. Or if slaves and servants were punished by their heads of household for associating with this community that taught them they were equals.

That kind of devotion to each other and to Jesus in spite of their trembling fear of potential or real consequences would have meant they really would have needed to depend on each other and to work out as a team. Timothy Adkins-Jones again:

Like a blacksmith steadily banging metal into a predetermined form, we are to gradually develop our discipleship. Much like the call to be like-minded, this reverential working-out is an active and aggressive practice that takes great effort. Importantly, Paul’s verb is in the present imperative, indicating sustained and continuous effort. The Christian life is not a single decision but an ongoing practice. 

In other words, discipleship is a discipline.

Very occasionally, I will go to the gym and work out on my own. I know that plenty of people do this often and even prefer it, but for me it’s generally only when I can’t fit the TEAM work-out schedule into my schedule. Because I really value the connection to community and when I sign up to be at the gym and I know people are going to be expecting me, I will show up.

TEAM isn’t just a work for a group of people. It’s also an acronym: Together Everyone Achieves More. In my experience this is true. Whether that’s at the gym or in Christian community. When we work out in response to the good gifts of Jesus, together with others who are of one mind, have the same goal we can indeed achieve more. It’s kind of like church and I know that for some people fitness is indeed religion.

One key difference is that while I wouldn’t rule out God working through my fitness cohort at the gym, the church is the body of Christ at work in the world and, as Paul tells the Philippians, “God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out God’s good purposes.” When the going gets tough, the tough have God working with them and in them. 

God is here among us. And we want to live out God’s good purposes. Sometimes we don’t want to do the specific things that we understand to be a part of God’s good purposes: get to church, show up to support a friend or neighbor, go to a protest, spend time in meditation or spiritual practices, do the service project, whatever. 

We want to live out God’s purposes. We want to work out, even when we don’t really want to do every specific exercise. I know that because you are listening to the sound of my voice. And it is God here among us that calls us into that desire. 

I often think of this Thomas Merton quote and take great comfort in it. I will offer it as a closing blessing and prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

May it be so. Amen.

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