There were two fellows who lived and breathed baseball. They were professional players with the Atlanta Braves and you would think that playing for a living would be enough. But not so – these guys breathed, ate, and slept baseball. More than teammates, they were very close friends. So, they talked with each other about that mattered most in their lives. One of their big concerns was whether there would be baseball in heaven. They loved baseball so much that they were not sure at all they wanted to spend eternity in heaven unless they could play baseball.

They had an agreement that the first one who died would somehow get a message back to earth, letting the other know whether baseball was in heaven or not. Well, it happened. John died, and Jim grieved. He grieved for days - deeply saddened over his friend John’s death. About two weeks went by, and then it happened. Jim was awakened in the middle of the night by the calling of his name, “Jim, Jim, Jim, wake up! This is John.” “John, where are you?”

“I’m in heaven - and I have some good news and bad news. It’s exciting, Jim. We do have baseball in heaven. It’s great. We play every day and there are marvelous teams, and tough, exciting competition.”

“That’s great,” said Jim. “But what’s the bad news?”

“Well,” said John, “You are scheduled to pitch next Tuesday.”

Most of us are excited about going to heaven, but we are not in too big of a hurry to get there. In our scripture lesson today it is obvious that Paul’s mind is not preoccupied with heaven. His word in summary is this: We Christians are energized by the promise of the coming of the Savior, but we must live now while eagerly await his coming.

Paul is very direct in his instructions. He gives us four clear signals for living while we wait. Let’s look at these.

I.

First, renewal comes through rejoicing.

Twice in this letter Paul urged the Christians in Philippi “to rejoice in the Lord” (3:1, 4:4). The second time, he repeats the call twice “Rejoice…again, I say rejoice!” And adds the word “always” The joy of the Christian is not a pausing quality. Rejoicing is not to be times of worship or praise. It is the style of the Christians, and then it is to be uninterrupted and unbroken.

For Paul to repeat twice in verse four the injunction to rejoice must mean that conditions in Philippi were such as to make the call to rejoice seem unreasonable? So he is saying, in spite of circumstances - in spite of annoyance, disagreement, persecution - rejoice! This was a theme of the apostle’s life. In a letter to another Macedonian church, the church at Thessalonica, he wrote “at all times” (I Thess. 5:17), and in 2 Corinthians 6:10 he speaks of himself as “grieved but always glad.” There is a beautiful little gospel chorus which says, “Joy is the banner flying high over the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there.” We usually think of joy as something that is given. It is that. It is the gift of the spirit that becomes a condition of the heart which is confident of its relationship to Christ - or a forgiven sinner accepted by God’s grace with the Living Christ as daily companion. On the other hand, however, joy becomes the expression of celebration which empowers us to be Christian. That’s the reason that Paul would say, renewal comes through rejoicing. Joy makes us strong, produces energy. Those who do not celebrate the joy that is a gift will not generate the joy that is strength overflowing into all other facets of our lives.

Joy cannot be self-created. We might generate surface excitement and rile ourselves up to some height of emotional ecstasy. But joy is something else, and its primary source is obedience. Recall Jesus’ words when a woman in the crowd shouted out to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked.” Jesus responded, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” (Luke 11:27, 28). Do you see what that means? The person in the crowd was crying out a blessing to Mary the Mother of Jesus. And what is this Jesus is saying? It is a more blessed thing to live in obedience than to have been the Mother of the Messiah, the mother of our Lord. Now that’s a radical word. Joy, rejoicing, comes primarily from obedience. That kind of rejoicing is always renewing.

II.

The second signal for living while we wait: Grace is communicated by gentleness. Paul said in verse 5: “Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.”

I know that when Paul said, “The Lord is at hand,” he was thinking about the expected return of Christ. But, the sentence is true in another way. The Lord is near present in us, and present to others through us - when we live as He would have us live. And gentleness is one of his marks upon us.

The Greek word translated gentleness in this verse is one of the most untranslatable Greek words. The baffling difficulty is seen in the way both the old and new translations of the Bible have rendered it.

The King James Version uses the word “moderation”.

Wyckliffe’s translates it “patience.”

Tyndale and Kramer use the word “softness.”

The Geneva Bible has it “the patient mind.”

The Rheims Bible uses the little used word “modesty.”

Moffat and the Revised Standard Version say “forbearance.”

And the New English Bible uses the word “magnimity.”

So you see that this is not an easy Greek word to translate. But, even that can be helpful to us. It is a fruitful exercise to reflect on these different translations and question ourselves as to whether the word describes us. Some may move through that list, come to “patient mind,” and feel condemned. How often do we appear gentle and understanding, but our mind is in high gear - questioning, judging, filled with unkind thoughts, even condemning. Then we come to the word “magnanimity”. That’s a big word for a big heart. A heart that is open enough, soft and tender enough, understanding enough, to accept another as the other is, to receive another into relationship unconditionally, without prejudging. Robert Frost once said, “Home is something you somehow have not to deserve.” If we are magnanimous, our hearts are homes to which persons may come without being worthy, or deserving.

You can move through the list on your own: moderation, patience, softness, modesty, forbearance all having something to do with the word gentleness.

I’m afraid gentleness is a lost word as a description of Christians. Our way of relating is shaped by the brusque world in which we live - a world of oppressiveness curtness, presumption. What yeast in the leave of life might we become if we cultivated gentleness? This is no “soft” virtue but rather a bent of character that controls our capacity for rage and activates our capacity to love. The gentle are courteous and kind; they exercise restraints; they practice reticence in speech, knowing that words can wound and silence may be more affirming than chatter; they do not intrude into another’s life but are available to responsive to others’ needs. It is no wonder that Paul in Gal. 5, names gentleness as fruit of the spirit.

III

The third signal for living while we wait: Peace comes through prayer.

Listen again to verses 6 and 7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made to known to God; And the peace of God which passes understanding, will keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.”

When I read these verses, I think of a phrase that somewhere along the way I tucked away in a niche of my memory as important: “Take yourself lightly so that like angels you can fly.”

“Be anxious for nothing”, is an admonition that touches the quick of every person. Anxiety, in the popular use of the term, is our most common problem. Worry, confusion of mind, pressures of daily life, uncertainty about the future - if we began to catalog specific aspects within these general categories, we would soon run out of time. Depression is the most common emotional problem in America today. It’s called the “common cold” of emotional problems. Often the severity of depression requires hospitalization, but those who are hospitalized, even those who are under the care of a doctor for this malady, represent only a small portion of our population who are functioning far below the level of effectiveness as persons who are weighed down so oppressively by anxiety that they cannot even dream of taking themselves “lightly so that like angels they can fly.”

In his study of “Self-actualizing Persons”, the psychologist Abraham Maslow found that self-actualizing persons shared, in varying degrees, certain attitudes. One of these was a tolerance for uncertainty. They seemed to know how to live with the unknown without feeling threatened or frightened. Taking a cue from Maslow, psychologists are talking a great deal about a “tolerance for ambiguity”. Uncertainty and ambiguity - not knowing about the future, and the confusion about value and things as they are - are characteristics of life. How we need to appropriate Paul’s word, “Be anxious for nothing.”

Anxiety in the way Paul is using the term, and the way we most often experience it, is the futile, frustrating, debilitating attempt to bear the burdens of life, and especially the burdens of the future by ourselves, alone. The Christian answer to anxiety is confident prayer which issues in “the peace of God which passes all understanding.”

Now this is no glib word, no pious cliché, no easy moralizing about complex issues. Remember, Paul was in prison. Ponder even for minute the immediate circumstances out of which the word came, and let the movement of his life be flashed however quickly, upon the screen of your mind. At every step of his Christian journey, the hound of anxiety was snapping at Paul’s heels. And even when the hound was not in biting distance, its howl must have sounded loud in his ears. Fears, uncertainty about the future, persecution, physical mental anguish - again the list could become a catalog. Paul’s word comes from the sweaty arena of life where his word needs to be heard, and from a person who has experienced the answer he himself is offering. “Be anxious for nothing – but in everything, by supplication with thanksgiving, make your represent know to God.”

But his offer of prayer is not an easy solution; no magic formula here, no bedtime or morning rote, repetition of words that we have labeled prayer. He’s talking about prayer as the serious business of bringing our lives before God, examining our dependence upon God, examining our lives in God hands to be used, remembering and celebrating what God has already done, confessing our needs and dedicating our gifts, committing ourselves and all that we are to make our common cause God’s Kingdom, not our own kingdom. When prayer is seen in that fashion then it is not glib to say that anxiety is an attempt on our part to carry the burden of the present and the future ourselves. Prayer is yielding ourselves to and leaving ourselves present and future in the safe hands of God.

IV

That leads to the final signal for living while we wait: Attitudes produce action.

In verses 8 and 9, Paul provides a kind of catalog of virtues “Whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report - then he adds, “Meditate on these things.” Paul knew that to a marked degree, we are what we think.

The body of evidence to confirm that truth grows almost daily. Have we learned the lesson for ourselves? We are what we think. Sour dispositions create not only sick souls but also sick bodies. Feelings of worthlessness, bitter resentment and self-pity diminish us to fragments. A possessive nature, self-indulgence, self-protectiveness, and self-centeredness shrivel the soul, create dysfunctions within us, distort perception, blur perspective, and prevent the healing we need.

The opposite of this is also true. Those who fill minds with positive affirmations, who concentrate on the noble virtues that make life meaningful, set the stage for healing and make possible the, wholeness that is God’s design for all of us. Two thousand years before psychologists were teaching this truth, Paul discovered its power. “Meditate on these things,” he said - things that are noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report. We are what we think.

There is a hospital for children in Tiburon, north of near San Francisco, called “The Center for Attitudinal Healing.” It concentrates on cases of children suffering from traumatic diseases or from severe accidents that have disabled them. It is a remarkable place with a unique philosophy. Rather than the children simply being patients, or victims needing professionals to attend them, the children are encouraged to take responsibility for their own healing, and for the healing of other children. As a result of this philosophy, a community of love and concern which brings healing has developed. A newspaper article about the hospital quoted one of the responsible persons there as saying, “We feel that much healing takes place by asking the simple question, do I want to have peace of mind, the peace of God, or do I want to experience conflict? If we want to experience peace of mind, we will choose to extend our love to others, and experience the love extended to us. If we want to experience conflict, we will want something or want to evaluate why we are not getting it.”

The purpose of the hospital is to stimulate “attitudinal healing,” that enables the children to triumph over their adversity. The Center has a marvelous saying “If you can help somebody else you are not disabled.” It is a modern institutional witness to the fact that we are what we think.

Now here is the big word for Christians. What we think must always have the shape of the Cross about it. Jesus makes that clear.

He told us about how he was to suffer and die, how the least by this world’s standards would be first in his kingdom, how servants would become masters and how the Cross was the way to the Crown of life. But it’s so difficult for us to think that way. So we miss Jesus’ big message and meaning if we aren’t careful how we think.

I close with this. A young girl, upon walking into the church and seeing for the first time the cross on the altar, asked her father-preacher , Joseph Gotten, “Daddy, what’s that plus sign doing up here?” I submit to you that the cross does not symbolize the minus sign but the plus sign - not the “I” crossed out but the “I” stretched out - reaching down into the ground of being, up in the infinity of becoming, and out toward as many others as it can touch.

With the Cross as a plus sign shaping our lives, we can live while we wait, knowing that renewal comes through rejoicing, grace is communication by gentleness, peace comes through prayer; and attitudes produce action.