Joy Complete

If you found out that you only had a few more weeks, months, or years left to live—how would you respond?

Some might want to look to experiences on their bucket list—to finally do the things they had put off because of fear or finances.

Others might become overwhelmed by grief and despair and find themselves paralyzed by fear over what might waiting for them on the other side of the veil of death.

Still others might want to use their remaining days making sure that their closest companions knew how much they were appreciated and loved, and seek to pass down this love and wisdom in whatever way possible.

That’s the choice our patron saint made.

Like Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Paul really does write “like he’s running out of time,” and our passage from the Letter to the Philippians sees him passing on the very heart of our faith to one of his beloved, fledgling communities.

It’s very probable that Paul wrote this letter while imprisoned here in Rome, not but a few blocks from here close to Piazza Venezia, and even though the words were written almost 2000 years ago, they still resonate with those who seek to live according to the strange, challenging, and life-giving way of the cross of Christ.

As we here in St. Paul’s Within the Walls celebrate 31 years of the Latin American community today, it is worth taking Paul’s words to heart and putting them into action among us with the assistance of God’s grace.

Not only because Paul says so and we honor and appreciate the words of our ancestor in the faith, but because time and experience have borne out the merit of them.

Joy—true and lasting joy that no empire nor power can steal or destroy—that joy only arises and becomes complete in the midst of the community animated by Christ.

Its seed is planted in the heart when we accept the Baptismal call to see the lives of others as precious and worthy as our own, and when we begin serving one another as Christ served us.

That seed is watered and begins to grow beyond its earthen womb as our mutual service to one another and to those beyond our communities of affinity begins to change us.

The more we serve, not out of obligation or being pressed into it, the more we experience the freedom that Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Paul, and generations of saints knew.

Serving in the Body of Christ does not shield us from suffering, but it does transform these trials and challenges of life into shared experiences rather than isolated individual ones.

We pray together during worship and at all times because that is one of the ways God has given us to turn mutual service into strengthened companionship.

And as the seed that was once planted begins to mature into a sapling, with roots drawing deeply from this living water of practice, then we begin to grow stronger and broader as a body when we finally begin to lay down for good the millions of petty human failings and offenses that others have done to us, and instead seek others’ forgiveness for our own.

When I got here almost 12 years ago, I experienced the Latin American community and the wider community of St. Paul’s as one firmly upon the path to maturity. 

And yet, the growth that we’ve done together over these years has required us to be truthful with one another when our relationships get strained, and it has required us to stay connected to one another even when the world’s wisdom might have encouraged us to go our separate ways.

It is this history of “sharing in the Spirit” of “compassion and sympathy” of “look[ing] not to our own interests, but to the interests of others” and of “Let[ting] the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” that has allowed us to share the joy we do today.

Not a superficial joy that simply papers over disagreements or differences, but the complete kind of joy that comes when each of us are reconciled and known as unique and necessary members of the Body whose focus is on the greater call we share in the crucified one.

When we break bread at this altar, when we share food downstairs, when we dance and sing and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and baptisms we do so as one body.

Aware that maturing as members in this body means patterning our lives according to the example we have in Jesus Christ, and knowing that because of his cross and resurrection, we need not fear the challenge of taking up our own.

The stronger we grow together, the more our community will be able to welcome others into our common life, and the more resilient we will be to turn our efforts and focus toward the larger systems of suffering within our world.

It was in this way that our ancestors in the faith transformed the Roman empire, revealed that vows of poverty and harmony with humanity and all creatures made the richest life possible, and marched and suffered together until the ancient divisions of race, gender, sexuality, and class were discarded for the fuller life of the beloved community.

We are the keepers and inheritors of a sacred grove of old-growth trees of faith, planted in the fertile soil of Christ, and we are called to add our individual and common life to their collective witness.

This is the wisdom our patron saint Paul chose to pass down to us when facing the reality of his own mortality in prison.

As we mark this 31^st anniversary together, let us live it to its fullest while we still have breath and spirit, and “having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” let us rejoice in the gift of a joy so rare, so wild, and so complete.