If there were an Olympic event for complaining, the ancient Israelites just might take the gold medal. Today, after being liberated from slavery, they ask to go back, forgetting the oppression they suffered in Egypt and remembering the country as an ancient Olive Garden with fleshpots and never-ending bread sticks. Hearing their complaint, God sends them manna and quail to eat, but we know that soon enough they’ll start complaining again—“Manna again? We want leaks and onions, not these leftovers!” And they’ll attack Moses: “Why’d you have to lead us out here? Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt?”
The preaching of St. Paul, Rabat, Malta
But, if complaining were an Olympic event, the competition would be fierce. I suspect there’s something deep in our human nature—some survival mechanism from caveman days that made our ancestors less likely to be eaten by sabretooth tigers or stomped on by wooly mammoths if they were quicker to see the negative than the positive, more inclined to fear than to gratitude. The problem is if you’re not being stalked by a sabretooth tiger, this instinct for the negative sometimes results in clubbing our friends or retreating into the darkness of our own self-constructed caves.
When I get near the end of my time in Rapid City every summer—or this year, fall—I feel a little nostalgic. It helps me to imagine how St. Paul would have felt throughout his ministry, founding communities and then having to move on. He invested himself completely into each one; he made friends; he faced opposition, persecution, and disease; sometimes he owed his survival to the care he received from the Christians in each place. And because it was much harder for Paul to travel by foot and ship across the Mediterranean than it is for me to book an airline ticket across the Atlantic, I find the yearning and love expressed in his letters particularly poignant. This is especially the case in his letter to the Philippians.
Not all of Paul’s letters are as warm as the one to the Philippians. (The Philippians, just so we’re clear, were residents of the city of Philippi in northern Greece, not to be confused with Filipinos who come from islands in the Pacific.) In some letters—to the Corinthians, for example—Paul is in battle mode, trying to straighten out bad behavior. He wrote his letter to the Romans before he arrived in Rome, so it’s sort of an introduction and also a fundraising appeal. But Paul knows the Philippians well; he describes them as his partners for the Gospel from the first day. His letter to them was written from prison, probably in Rome. Contemplating the quarantine that awaits me on my own return to Rome, this is also something I can relate to. But despite these circumstances, Paul’s letter to the Philippians overflows with joy and peace. It’s obvious that his affection for the little church in Philippi is a comfort to him even in imprisonment. He writes, “I am confident… that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul knows that we can never just tread water in the life of discipleship. We must always keep striving. So the letter is an exhortation to continue to grow in Christ, but its tone is more that of encouragement than a call to repent.
Now you are probably used to being told not to take certain parts of the Bible literally. Today, however, I’m going to tell you to do the opposite. Read St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, and take them as if they were addressed to you, as if the letter began, “to all the holy ones of Christ Jesus who are in Rapid City.” And take these words literally: “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus.”
In today’s second reading, St. Paul warns us of autoimmune disease. An autoimmune disease, as you may know, is when the body attacks itself, one of its own parts. It’s a self-destructive disease. Last week we heard Paul tell the Corinthians, who had been squabbling over who had the better gifts, that all these different gifts come from one Spirit. One Spirit, many gifts.
Today Paul continues the same theme with the analogy of the body. The Church is like a body, with different parts—eyes and ears and limbs and so on—and if jealousy between these parts enters in and the eye stops seeing because it wants to hear, and the legs stop walking because they want to see, and the lungs stop breathing because they want to walk, then pretty soon instead of a body you have a corpse. It is one of the most important metaphors in the Bible, and this morning I’d like to focus on two implications of this metaphor. The first is that bodies share common goods. And the second is that the Body of Christ is meant to be alive.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 