Don had not worked like a dog for nothing. He had struggled up the corporate ladder to one rung below the vice-presidents —who were all brothers. So Don knew he wasn't going any higher on the ladder.
That was okay with him. They had treated him like family. He had earned a six-figure salary and eight weeks of vacation and had 10,000 frequent flyer miles to play with.
Then leukemia drove his wife, Donna, into the hospital where they shoved needles into her and pumped her full of chemicals and new bone marrow and blood and sent her home again — alive, but quite possibly dying.
Somehow after all that, Donna could rejoice to see so simple a thing as the dying violet offered to her in the chubby little fingers of her grandson, Trevor. She was thankful to be alive, but still she dreaded every day. When will it come back? How much more debilitated will I get? How much longer before Don gives up and walks out?
She worried about this last thought more than the others because Don had had big plans for this part of their life: plans for travel around the world, plans for skiing and scuba, plans for romantic rendezvous on the warm, white sands of some island in the Caribbean. There had been moments of fulfillment of these plans along the way, but all future plans now seemed dead in the water. Now their attention was focused on her treatment and her recovery from it. All their time and money was being spent on a war on a ubiquitous yet, unseen monster, lurking in her blood. The collateral damage was how sullen and curt with her Don was becoming. Donna feared losing Don as much as she feared the monster inside of her.
After several years of this, deep down in the most private place of Don's heart — a dark, red dungeon where he incarcerated all his evil thoughts — Don had wished she would die. He immediately rationalized such a horrendous thought by thinking, Well, then she'd be out of her suffering; then she'd be in a better place. But this hasty rationalization never completely obscured the truth that his seemingly compassionate wish for her death was nothing more than a cover-up for an increasingly malignant wish that he could be in a better place.
Still, Don was grateful for his wife, especially because she had always kept him connected with his children and all their trials and triumphs. She had briefed him so well on their lives that he appeared to the children to be intensely concerned about their welfare, and so they loved him as much as they did Donna — even though he was hardly ever home at all.
Later, when the leukemia returned, Don became weary of being both the general and a foot soldier in the medical army engaged in what was to be the final battle with the leukemia. Don was in charge of medications and transportation and negotiations with the home help they could afford. He became so weary that he begged the brothers to find a way to keep him closer to home, which they did, and he was assigned to oversee the construction of a $40 million facility expansion project.
Don found the contractors, Badger Builders, to be more like badgers than builders — snarling at him and hiding, not returning his calls about the routing of the ductwork and the codes they seemed determined to circumvent. Don began dreading each day of drudgery. He wondered how much more debilitated Donna would get. He wondered what size pipe was necessary for 100 toilets. Don became so weary he didn't care whether he lived or died himself.
It may have been like that for the apostle Paul when they finally dragged him off to the slammer in Rome from which he wrote the words we hear in today's lesson. "Dying is gain." "My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" (Philippians 1:21-23). The apostle Paul had every right to make such a statement. Hadn't he endured countless floggings including the five times he had received forty lashes minus one, the three times he had been beaten with rods, and the one time he had been stoned (2 Corinthians 11:23-25)? Three times he had been shipwrecked — once he had been adrift upon the sea for a night and a day (2 Corinthians 11:25). On his journeys he had been in constant danger from rivers, from bandits, from his own people, from Gentiles, even from his brothers and sisters in Christ (2 Corinthians 11:25-26). There were many sleepless nights, many days without food or water (2 Corinthians 11:27).
And every day, the apostle Paul felt anxiety for the churches (2 Corinthians 11:28). He wondered how those contentious Corinthians were doing. He wondered if the Galatians had finally understood the freedom of the gospel, and he wondered if they had finally repudiated those visiting preachers who had been so anxious to define righteousness as obedience to religious rules. It's easy to understand the apostle Paul's exhaustion, his eagerness to depart and be with Christ. And if the greatest evangelist of all time felt this way, who are we to judge Don for feeling the same way?
But that's only half of what the apostle Paul felt after he had been dragged to Rome and placed indefinitely under house arrest. All his life's plans were suddenly cancelled like Don and Donna's. The apostle Paul had hoped to preach the gospel in Rome and beyond. Instead, he arrived in Rome in orange coveralls and under guard — his international evangelical exploits at a sudden end. How was he to continue to start churches all around the world while he was incarcerated in Rome? How must it have felt for the great gospel globetrotter to have been cooped up in a house or a cell?
Yet, somehow the apostle Paul was able to keep writing, keep preaching, keep serving, and keep living.
Why is that?
One. The apostle Paul was encouraged by the 10% that was going right despite the 90% that was going wrong. Okay, he's not going to be a gospel globetrotter any longer. Well, then there are always the prison guards! Practically the first thing he tells the Philippians is that his incarceration had "actually helped to spread the gospel," because apparently the minute he arrived, the apostle Paul started preaching the gospel to the whole imperial guard (Philippians 1:12-13).
Two. The apostle Paul also reported that the brothers and sisters in Christ in Rome seemed to have been made more "confident in the Lord" and began to "dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear" (Philippians 1:12-14). So he couldn't boldly go for the gospel where no one had gone before. Maybe the brothers and sisters of the church in Rome would. It appeared as though they were benefiting from his presence, his encouraging words. It was these brothers and sisters and the future of the church that made the apostle Paul reconsider only wishing he could die. "If I am to live in the flesh," then that's cool, because "that means fruitful labor for me" (Philippians 1:22). When the apostle Paul had discovered that there was fruitful labor for him even if it wasn't the kind of grand, glorious, gospel globetrotting he had been doing, then he could write, "I know I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith" (Philippians 1:25).
The apostle Paul was able to find new purpose to his life despite his weariness, his disappointment, his uncertainty, his incarceration, and his desire to die. He was even able to rejoice despite his suffering (the word "rejoice" occurs in Philippians proportionally at least four times more often than in any other of his letters). Was this because the apostle Paul drank lots of orange juice and took his vitamins? Was this because he had the right brand name clothing? Was this because he was cute? Was this because he consulted horoscopes or paid $300 for a motivational seminar?
Nope.
The apostle Paul simply proclaimed that it all was God's doing.
The woman who became their pastor had been quite helpful and faithful through the last chapter of Donna and Don's ordeal. When they had moved to the country, they had been forgotten by their church in the city, and at Donna's insistence, they began visiting a country church. They had called upon the help of its pastor even before they had joined and were pleasantly surprised that she even bothered adding a couple with all their troubles to her already full workload. This encouraged Don to keep wheeling Donna to church there whenever she was strong enough to go. But for Don, it was just another chore. Don was still exhausted from badgering Badger Builders and Badger Home Health Care and still angry about not being able to ski or scuba and loiter on the beaches in Aruba. And, he was deeply ashamed that he kept wishing it were all over for both of them. Don was quite sure God didn't want anything at all to do with an evil character like himself. It was nice to be forgiven every Sunday, but what good did it do when such a monster still lurked in his heart?
One Saturday night, Donna told him that they had to go to the church the next day and the meeting following to approve the plans for the new addition — no matter how bad she felt. So they went. During the meeting, Don was looking at the summary of plans for the new church building and was impressed that this little church in the country with the ugly orange chairs and ugly orange carpet had such big plans and so little reason to believe they could be accomplished. They had, after all, no product or service to sell, no R and D department staffed with Ph.D.s and IT professionals, no marketing staff, no ... and then Don's eye caught the name of the contractors for the church's new building project: Badger Builders.
Donna was raising her hand to approve the contract when he leaned over to her, jabbing his finger at the words Badger Builders on the handout, rattling the paper, shaking his head at her, but it was too late. A near unanimous decision had been reached to hire Badger Builders.
After church, Don asked the pastor if he could see the actual plans and if they could talk a little about where things were headed. During this conversation, the pastor happened to mention something about needing someone to keep in touch with the contractor, "You know, to make sure everything's going okay. There are a lot of guys here who know how to build barns and pole sheds, but not $800,000 buildings and...."
"I'll do it," said Don, "I know these guys ... really well."
The pastor was genuinely and gratefully surprised that someone who had shown so little interest in the church had suddenly volunteered to render such an extraordinarily difficult service. Don stated his offer again, trembling inside for some reason, nervously putting his hands on Donna's boney shoulders, and despite everything, he smiled, too, suddenly wondering, even suspecting, almost believing that this new purpose before him was, in fact, God's doing. Amen.