Rejoice in the Lord always and again I will say: rejoice. Let your gentleness be

known to everyone.

Don’t you think, good old Paul is overegging the pudding? Some kind of

penetrating remarks won’t get more comprehensible by repeating them all

the time, often the contrary ist the case. “You must be glad“ people say to us in

situations which don’t seem to give any reason to rejoice. Sometimes on the

background of much trouble and frustration ironically one positive aspect is

stressed this way: Be glad. “Freu dich doch“.

“Be glad” we say when a present or a surprise we have long prepared doesn’t

get the reaction we hoped it would. Rejoice! But I don’t want to rejoice says

little Rumplestilzkin inside us and stamps his foot.

Rejoice in the Lord always. This is part of a communication between two groups

of Christ-Believers, one Paul and the people with him, and on the other side the

congregation in Philippi which distances about 800km from Ephesus, where

Paul is presumably writing his letter, whilst the distance between London and

Berlin is a bit more : ca. 1100 km. Paul is greeting people in Philippi, mainly two

women Euodia and Syntyche, and one Clement. Euodia and Syntyche seem to

have had important positions, they are called co-workers, and Paul says: they

were fighting (struggling) with me as athletes do. This is another proof to the

importance of women ministries in the congregations founded by St. Paul, but

Euodia and Syntyche don’t seem to agree all the time, and if this is significant to 

Paul and the congregation, it is even more a witness to the important

function of these two women in the Philippian church. Thus there seem to have

been quarrels in the congregation, maybe two factions behind these two

women – and it seems to us that this is real life congregation life - as it has

been for 2000 years obviously to this day.

I liked this reading and chose to reflect upon it today because it tells us of the

communication between Christian communities over long distances and in

different but yet similar situations (and surroundings). Which of course also

applies to us and our 24 years old history of partnership and belonging

together. And I think of the past four years since we were last here in October

2019 when we were celebrating 20 years jubilee whilst in Parliament there was

an important debate (may be even decision) over BREXIT going on. And then

Brexit came and we vowed to stick together, and the Covid pandemic came and

we had to adapt to a completely new situation, people were very ill and dying

in both our communities, and we had the strangest of moments, no services in

churches , empty and lonely they stood there - online services, both Fr. Tom

and I developing from pastors to film directors, services with a limited

number of participants, for vaccinated people only, with registration only...All

kind of absurdities -or what seem absurdities now – and I think we went

through this together (also practising online meetings and services with varying

success...). We went through this together, and then in the middle of Europe

war broke out – nobody had ever imagined such a thing – and with it not only

an identity crisis (as Europeans after WWII and after the supposed end of the

cold war - and as Christians proclaiming that weapons won’t achieve peace,

that you have to hold the other cheek and transform swords into

ploughshares) but also an energy crisis that confronted us with the problem of

so many people in our rich countries not being able to afford satisfying their

basic needs. We are in this together between Ephesus and Philippi, Berlin and

London, and now for one week we have been speechless with horror and

anxiety about what is happening in Israel and Gaza. And again: we are in this

together. And in all this we hear Paul the apostle shouting at us : rejoice, and

again I tell you: rejoice. And again Rumelstilzkin is stomping his foot and

shouting: How dare you! How dare you tell me to rejoice in such a situation,

when there is such sorrow and such fear everywhere. Paul says: rejoice in the

Lord.

And that probably means, other than the joy of looking forward to something

or the joy of looking back at something wonderful the joy in the moment. The

moment you feel: everything is alright and as it should be, heaven and earth,

man an god united, together. In Germany in many churches initiatives are

growing that are a kind of service agencies providing services like baptisms,

weddings, funerals and other occasions of blessings outside a parish

organization. The blessing agency in Hamburg is called „St. Moment“ (Saint

Moment), I’m not sure myself what to think about this name, but I suppose it

expresses well what Pauls means by rejoicing „in the Lord“ : to be NOW

completely in and with (and close to) God - and I think, this is something we

also experience when being together between our congregations, this type of

REJOICING which also gives so much strength and courage and inspiration to go

on in serving the Lord and the Neighbour, and engaging for peace, and

understanding, social justice and reconciliation in spite of and against all these

many reasons for NOT rejoicing at the moment. Of course for Paul rejoicing in

the Lord doesn’t mean just a moment, but a general attitude of feeling at ease,

of feeling safe and secure and resulting from that (is) a big serenity.

Confidence, even in the valley of the shadow of death, as the psalm says.

And I assume, the emotional attachment to that psalm is also something we

share, we share with the Jewish people in such distress at the moment (valley

of the shadows of death) and we share with each other.

I remember a moment when I was a very young girl of about 15 or 16. I was

visiting a friend in a village in the German alps, and one morning we started

very early in the morning to climb up a mountain to be up on the peak for the

sunrise. It was very dark, we were walking through the forest alone and we got

very scared by the noises of the forest. Then my friend started saying “und ob

ich schon wanderte im finsteren Tal…”. She had just learnt it in confirmation

class, I hadn’t - and I’ll never forget the effect it had in that very dark wood on

us two girls outsmarted by our own courage.

Meanwhile I have got to know the psalm and well. I got to know it at the side of

hospital beds and beds of people dying, very often it helped to loosen the lump

in the throat and also the tongue. In the moment when these words are

pronounced, confidence sets in, an astonishing certainty that whatever is, is

right and is going to be alright, what ever happened or is going to happen will

be preserved by God. Almost like a mantra..

The verse I like most is verse 3 “He shall refresh my soul”. He shall convert my

soul (says the old translation). From being very exhausted, dull, tired to the

fullness of life and spirit. I mostly like the old German wording „er erquicket

meine Seele“. It means: God restores life. In the confession of faith you talk of

(the judgement of) “the quick and the dead”. That sounds so full of life to me. I

know that you have the word „quickening“ for the first movements of the baby

in the womb. We have the word quicklebendig, which means, very much alive. I

hope that we can come out of this Service, this Sunday, of this weekend

together like this: QUICKLEBENDIG. And: rejoicing. Amen