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The congregation at the Macedonian city of Philippi was the first church established by Paul in Europe. Like all our "firsts" it had a special place of affection. We remember fondly our first car, our first job, the first home and community in which we lived, and our first romance. We still can recall our first excitement with hearing the first song or rock band that gained our attention, and those first moments when Christ became both a frightening challenge, as well as an abiding consolation.

Sometimes we get a bit restless with those who are always reciting the time when Christ took saving control of their lives. We wish they would tell us about the progress they have made in the Christian life. But we cannot deny that, with some exceptions, there is something in us that holds many of our firsts in grateful memory. A best-selling autobiography, Angela's Ashes, tells of the grim life the author endured growing up in poverty-stricken Ireland. It is a testimony to our wishing to preserve with some gratitude of our first life experiences, even under such terrible circumstances.

A church organist, in the midst of the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s, told a wedding soloist she would not accompany her in the popular song, "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face." She objected to the line, "The first time I ever lay with you." This offended her and it was certainly not something to be remembered in the music sung before Lohengrin and the grand processional. Whatever ethical violations this song remembered with fondness, it touched a realistic part of all of us -- our firsts are warmly remembered. The pastor overrode the organist's objections, thinking that our so-called "hot sins" may not be so central to the faith as uncaring, selfishness, hopelessness, and social injustice. At any rate, we have had too much focus on serious, adult consensual sex, with or without the approval of the church or state, and too little attention to these other sins.

The upshot is that the image of Christianity is fixed at the level of sexual behavior, for teens and young adults, allowing them to come to the conclusion that the faith's wisdom is not for them, because it is all about sex, the intense biological drive of their lives. It is certainly better for us to bind our sexual loyalties to the consent of our religious communities and of the public affirmation of the state. But any narrowness here can bring about other sins and sinful structures that Christ would condemn.

Paul tells the Philippian congregation that he is thankful for the monetary gifts and for their steadfastness in the gospel. They have been struggling with intra-congregational disruptions. Some in the Philippian church are cliquish and unwilling to fellowship with others in the congregation. Much of this behavior then and in present congregations is mild. But sometimes it is deadly. One contemporary church decided that an excessively tattooed youth did not fit into their definition of a Christian person. He left the church under their condemnation. A couple of years later, the youth pastor was asked by the police to come and identify him at the morgue -- he had blown off his head with a shotgun. And we fuss about tattoos? Yet, even less forms of divisiveness poisons the spirit of the church. This is tied to the second concern of Paul at Philippi. Apparently some of the members of the church were professing they had become perfect in all spiritual matters. There are always two problems here: One is that personal perfection confessions create divisions in the church; and second, it is obvious to others that the self-acclaimed perfect Christian is not so perfect after all. Such a person is living out a lie.

It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.... And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight….. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.... And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more
-- Philippians 1:7, 9

But something more is noticed in this lection and the whole of Philippians. Some commentators describe it as setting the difficulties "in a wider framework." Most of our life issues can be better managed and overcome when we acquire "a wider framework!"

Peter Storey is a retired Methodist bishop in South Africa, active during the struggles to overcome his country's segregation laws. For many years, he and Anglican bishop, Desmond Tutu, joined the forces of resistance to the Apartheid system of separating the whites from the blacks and the browns. After the 2004 American presidential election, he wrote an open letter to American Christians who were dismayed at the election's outcome. Acknowledging the sadness of many American Christians because the election seemed to endorse violence, war, the affluent, racism, narrow religious and political mindsets, and the enthronement of economic success at the expense of precious human and public values, Storey wrote:

In South Africa too, we were up against a "Christian" government, acting in the name of Christ, supported by significant numbers of members of our churches. It became crucial to expose the false gospels of nationalism, militarism, racism and security right within the church ... It means re-evangelizing the church in Jesus' way of enemy-love, inclusion, of not fearing Caesar, of standing for the most marginalized. It took a long time, but it helped bring transformation.In South Africa too, we were up against a Christian government, acting in the name of Christ, supported by significant numbers of members of our churches. It became crucial to expose the false gospels of nationalism, militarism, racism and security right within the church ... It means re-evangelizing the church in Jesus’ way of enemy-love, inclusion, of not fearing Caesar, of standing for the most marginalized. It took a long time, but it helped bring transformation.

Then Bishop Storey encourages us, who are both angry and depressed, to take a wider view and "get on with the tough business of witnessing!"

Bishop Storey's letter makes two points that would be welcomed by Paul. His advice is also applicable to both personal and social issues. One is the necessity of a continuous evangelism in the church. Reinhold Niebuhr once said something like this: "It is not tragic that the church has to face a godless and secular world; it is tragic that we have a godless and secular church with which to face a godless and secular world."

This sermon will close with the wider view and our personal pains and sufferings. But it is certainly with a note or two to say that an undue dose of personal religion has afflicted our mainstream churches. We can go from church to church on Sunday morning and find very few notices of Christ confronting the many public issues, sermonic or otherwise. The frantic drive for membership growth, huge facilities with even higher mortgages attached, the pastor's concern to be popular and not unsettle his or her base of financial and numerical support -- all push our churches toward a personal gospel, avoiding any public or social controversy. The image of "evangelism" in almost all our churches is exclusively joined to personal religion. Evangelism on a wider view is desperately needed in the church.

Storey's second suggestion is to remind ourselves that God doesn't work exclusively with Christians. A silly, but terribly sad tale hitting the networks, tells of a North Carolina pastor who expelled from his congregation, members who did not support President Bush, and who would not come to his office, confess their political sins, and ask for reinstatement. The pastor is certainly a fool, but not for obvious reasons. Grant his conviction that President Bush was doing God's will. His foolishness, however, is believing that God has no chance for doing godly things other than through Bush Republicans; no non-Bush Republicans nor any Democrats could be counted on to be on God's side.

There are several biblical witnesses that God has the power to get things done through non-Israelites. The Persian king, Cyrus, is called Messiah since he fulfilled God's promise to free the people from captivity. Jesus once told his narrow-minded disciples that anyone doing the good works he was doing was God's disciple, even though he didn't belong to Jesus' entourage. And that wonderful Pope John XXIII directed his cyclical on world peace, Pacem et Terris, "to all persons of goodwill." If the human race is going to make it through we must sense that God is working far beyond our own religious tradition. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, secularists, and humanists are our allies despite the differences in our traditions, or even the lack of any religious tradition.

And, in the great numerical gains of Islam in our day, we must not throw up a wall of resistance insisting that our tradition is the "God-approved" faith compared to all the rest. There is plenty of work to do for all our religious traditions, and if our own is judged to have a better sense of God and life than all the others, it will be known only by its results in our lives, not by our wordy arguments and scriptural concoctions. God's work and reality are not so limited as we Christians are often encouraged to believe. Here is a wider view clamoring to be heard.

Finally, a wider view with our personal sorrows, given limitations and loads of guilt and spiritual depression -- our Advent season can help steady us. Advent is a season of hope, and human creatures must always be open to the hope that God wills us to have, in this life and the next. Trust in God does not exempt us from sorrow, nor will it heal our minds and bodies beyond what medical science can do. Trust in God does not blot out our guilt so that we never recall its reality, nor treat it trivially. Trust in God does not break up our depression over our own life situation, or our distress at the state of affairs in the world.

But, trust in God does call us to believe that we can be given the power to manage our grief, our ailments, our guilt, and our low spirits. This is the image of Jesus in our New Testament. He knew all these troublesome moments, perhaps even guilt as when he was a bit short with his mother and family, when he read out his adversaries, or when he allowed despair to momentarily overcome him on the cross. Yet he trusted that God could empower him to handle all these troubles and put them into the wider context of what God was doing with humanity, with history, with nature, and with the entire cosmos.

John Haught, a Roman Catholic lay theologian, often speaks of God and our "unfinished universe." He argues that God is not done with things as they are -- neither the world, nor human individuals. God cannot perfect either instantaneously, but God is luring all things and all people toward an earthly and heavenly perfection. This wider view enables us not only to endure suffering and disappointments; it enables us to fit them into God's never ending "love divine, all loves excelling," as that great hymn puts it. Or as Paul says in the wider view, "All things work together for those who love God" (Romans 8:28).