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Psalm 118:1-6: Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say: “His love endures forever.” Let those who fear the LORD say: “His love endures forever.” When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place. The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can human beings do to me?

Philippians 4:8-13: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Have you ever met a really content person? We meet somebody who seems content and we’re tempted to wonder, “Is there something wrong? Are they lazy? Are they unmotivated?” We have become conditioned to discontent. I was passing a colleague in the hallway and I said, “How are you doing today?” This is our requisite greeting, isn’t it. We don’t really expect an answer. It’s better than growling or ignoring them, so you ask, “How’re you doing?” And he said, “I’m doing just great, other than physically, financially, spiritually, relationally, or emotionally.” And he kept on going! That was his serious answer.

Our entire economy depends on it. We are marketed and manipulated every single way to be convinced that our lives aren’t quite right. The only things we get more of are the very things we don’t want: gray hairs, wrinkles, weight, loss of memory … what was saying? Oh yes, loss of memory. That’s all we get.

Contentment. What in the world would that look like? Our unabated discontent places us at risk of becoming a nation of cynics, a nation of critics. What happened to the last great American optimist? We’re gripped, it seems, be a horrific, ugly discontent and the cynical suspicion about anybody who professed to lead anything, or even report about anything accurately. We’ve become a world filled with cynics, instead of a world abounding in thanksgiving. I believe God is calling us this week to a new kind, a deeper kind, a resolute kind of contentment.

Isn’t it striking that contentment makes international news? When Violet and Alan Large last summer won $11 million in the Canadian lottery and then gave it almost entirely away, it made international news. I read this story around the world in various news reports. Our world was stunned to hear Violet, who’s just barely recovering from cancer say, “What you’ve never had you never miss,” and to hear Alan comment, “The money we won is nothing. We have each other.” Their act of contented generosity as a couple who had very little giving away $11 million stunned the world and silenced the cynics.

Is it possible for love to so abound in our lives that we’re content? That we’re generous? But wait a minute, you might rightly be asking, we live in a world with abundant reasons for discontent: cancer, divorce, unemployment, violence. World Vision exists because we follow the God who is heart-broken—utterly discontent—with all that is contrary to the will and way of God. We are called to focus on everything that is wrong in the world, on those who are abducted and abused, those who are struggling as refugees, those who are seeking for food, those who are desperate to find another dollar to feed their children and to give their children a future. It’s the world of ugly contrariness to life as it should be. That’s the world we live in. Is it possible to be content?

What would contentment look like? If it doesn’t make sense in life as it really is, then, it makes sense nowhere. It is but a Pollyanna-ish glad game that somehow is out of touch with reality, and we’re right to be questioning those who say, “I’m so happy.” Surely there’s something wrong if you’re just happy.

So Paul’s words to us in Philippians come to us with a  shocking invitation. “Rejoice always,” he says, “In everything, rejoice.” “That which is good, that which is pleasing, that which is good, fix your mind on these things.” “I’ve learned the secret of contentment.” What’s the secret of contentment? What is this invitation of the Gospel to find a new kind, a new shape, a new form, a new way of living? “I’ve learned to be content in every circumstance,” Paul says. “I know how to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I’ve learned the secret of being well fed, and of going hungry, of having plenty, and of being in need.”

It is good to remind ourselves that Paul wrote this from jail. Contentment isn’t something that we derive from our circumstances. Contentment is something we bring to them. “I have learned to be content.” Contentment is not an automatic aspect of life, it is a learned skill. We need to go into the School of Contentment if we are to learn it. It’s not just going to happen. There’s a discipline to contentment. There are choices to contentment.
Let me suggest four things we can learn.

First, in verse 13, Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We don’t simply believe in Christ, we live through Christ. To do all things through Christ is to be dependent on Him. The word “trust,” “dependency,” literally means “to hang” in Latin. To depend is to hang, to be utterly reliant upon. Even the Devil believes in God. It’s really no big deal that we believe in God. The issue is, do we trust God? It’s not a matter of belief, it’s a matter of hanging, of reliance.

St. Francis of Assisi used to be found in the middle of a field, standing on his head staring at trees or cows upside down. Or sometimes he would go into a town square, and do a headstand staring at the Cathedral in the town square. When asked why, he said, “I think you see life better when you look at it upside down, because you see how much we are hanging on the mercy of God. It’s a marvel that we don’t fall, that this cathedral doesn’t just fall into the air, that the trees don’t just leave the ground, because we’re suspended by the utter trustworthiness of God.”

At the heart of the Biblical faith is faith, trust, utter reliance. At the core of existence is this confidence that God is, and that God is good, trust in the sovereign goodness of God, this divine Yes that is spoken at the very heart of reality; not the no of the nay-sayers, not the sarcasm of the cynics, but this Yes. The Christian life isn’t looking to Jesus for occasional assistance now and then. It’s not to believe as if everything depended on God  and work as if everything depended on me. No, it’s to depend on God for everything. It’s to be as dependent on God as I am dependent on the air I breathe. It’s not an episodic, occasional kind of reliance on God, “I think I’ll take a breath.” If I don’t breathe, I die; if I don’t depend, I die.

We live through Christ, He is our life, and the Spirit of God calls us today to unlearn the myth of autonomy. This myth of independence, “I don’t have to depend on anyone.” In choosing autonomy over dependency, in choosing independence over community, we’re choosing loneliness over love. We’re choosing vulnerability over security. No wonder in our American addiction to autonomy, our deification of independence as the ultimate absolute, we are so lonely as a people. We feel so vulnerable, and so we have to depend on defense systems of various kinds to protect ourselves from those who are threats.

I was talking to a man on Monday who, when he was 13, left his home and was homeless for 15 years, living on streets up and down the West coast of the US. He said, after a few years of being on the streets, and being so vulnerable, so at-risk, so fearful of other people, he said, “I became one of the homeless who are campers. I pitched my tent way off in parks, way under the bridges, as far away as I could from other people because I was so afraid of other people.” He was independent, but trapped, wasn’t he? He was imprisoned by his fear. I asked him, “Andy, what changed?” He said, “I got tired of being afraid, and I got tired of breaking my mom’s heart.” He chose dependency. He chose love. He chose community over loneliness and fear.
Paul says in Chapter I of Philippians, “My imprisonment in Christ has turned out for the progress of the Gospel.” Now, our translators don’t know what to do with that phrase, so almost all say, “my imprisonment in the cause of Christ,” “in the name of Christ,” “my imprisonment for Christ.” But all Paul really wrote is, “My imprisonment in Christ,” because Paul was imprisoned in Christ. The walls of our prison are determined by the limit of our vision, and Paul’s vision extended all the way to Christ. So he wasn’t held in a Roman jail. That was not his prison. His prison was Jesus Christ.

George Matheson expresses this in his hymn, Make Me a Captive, Lord, and then I shall be free. / Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be. / I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand, / Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall be my hand. Make me a captive, Lord. Imprison me within Your love, and I shall be free.

Secondly, trusting God isn’t simply something we feel, it’s something we do. Trust isn’t an emotion, it’s an action. Paul says in verse 9, “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received, and heard.” Do the truth you know. Why come to church each Sunday and get a new load of truth, if you don’t live it. We just add new layers of truth onto our lives that we’re not fulfilling. Rather, do the truth you know. The little bit. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know all the truth; do what you know.

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked, “What would it take for India to become Christian?” His answer was stunning. Four things: “All it would take would be for you Christians to live a little bit more like Jesus. Secondly, all it would take is if you practiced your faith without watering it down, because the Christian faith is a pretty radical faith. Third, all it would take for you to cultivate love, because if I understand the Christian faith,” Gandhi said, “Love is the heart and soul of the Christian faith. And fourth, develop a more sympathetic attitude towards people who don’t believe like you do, that you might relate to them with understanding and kindness.”

Quite striking, isn’t it? Four simple little truths. I was in Zimbabwe, and in a slum area, that since then has been torn down by Mugabe. I met with the Christian Witness Committee of this slum, and who should walk into the Christian Witness Committee but a Muslim, as a member of the Christian Witness Committee. I asked him at the end of the meeting, “Why are you, as a Muslim, a member of the Christian Witness Committee of this slum?” He said, “It’s only the Christians who are doing anything good in this slum, and I want to be on the side of that which is good.” What would happen if we were to practice our faith without watering it down?

Third, Paul invites us in verse 8 to fix our attention on everything that is good—on that which is good, lovely, pure, honorable, just, pleasing, whatever is commendable (v. 8). Paul is pulling out every word he can, isn’t he, on the positive of the spreadsheet. Whatever is good, fix your mind on these things. Literally, the word he is using here is glue, irretrievably attach, cement, nail down, fasten, completely adhere your mind to that which is good.

What a different way of living. Our minds, our media, our entertainment industry, are completely fixated on that which isn’t good. The evening news would collapse if they only reported that which is good, so they pull out a little 30 second human interest story at the end to make us smile after we’ve been completely depressed for 30 minutes. Why is it that good news doesn’t sell? The only thing that sells is cynicism and suffering. That which is good, that which is pure, that which is lovely—fix your mind there.

Now, that doesn’t mean we refuse to be attentive to the brokenness and the pain and the suffering of others. Of course not. But the only way we have something good to bring into the pains of others is if our lives are overflowing with goodness and not just giant cavities of pain. We must allow the spirit of God to continually overflow us with the superabundance of God’s mercy, the excess of God’s goodness, the utter trustworthiness and reliability of God’s kindness. When we allow that to fill us, then we can go into all that is wrong in the world with something that is right, all that is bad in the world with something that is good, all that is evil in the world with something that is just.

God calls us to refuse to sit with the cynics, or gossip with the scoffers. When we see all of life dependent on God’s mercy we can treat other people with a bit of sympathy and kindness. When we see ourselves as utterly dependent on God’s mercy, we don’t have to be quite as hard on ourselves, either. We don’t even have to take ourselves quite so seriously.

I was once teaching a class on spiritual disciplines, and suggested, as we were doing the session on fasting, “There are various things from which one can fast, it need not be food. So why don’t you try fasting this week?” The next week we gathered, and a woman who was in her 80s came in beaming. She said, “I’ve had the best week of my life.” We said, “Why?” She said, “Well, I fasted.” “From what?” “From self-criticism. This was the first time I’ve gone through an entire week without telling myself what a jerk I was.”
Finally, learn to rejoice. When we see ourselves surrounded by the goodness of God, then we can indeed “rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, rejoice” (v. 7). Rejoice in the Lord, always. Not because things are good, but because we are surrounded by the God of all goodness. Not because my life is without problems, but because, Paul says, God is near. The Spirit of God will give me everything I need to do God’s will.

Rather than contentment leading to resignation to my circumstances, this kind of contentment, this kind of joy, gives me the capacity to transform them, to change them. A church, a community, a group of people who are set free with this kind of contentment can participate in God’s changing the world. It’s not a contentment that just resigns us to the status quo, but a contentment that has heard God’s great Yes, and as a result, we can overwhelm all the no’s, all the naysayers, all that which is wrong, with the goodness of God. A contented community who totally trusts God, radically obeys the truth they know, positively focuses on everything that is good, and resolutely rejoices in all things, can be used by God to change the world.
So, this week, this week of Thanksgiving, the Spirit of God is inviting us to take a move towards contentment, to practice the freedom of dependency. If you can’t stand on your head, at least put your head between your knees for a little bit, and look at life upside down, to see yourself suspended by the mercy of God. Obey the truth you know. Do one act of truth this week. Fix your minds on that which is good. Make a journal of gratitude this week, a book of Thanksgiving. Just start writing and don’t stop until you’ve put down everything you can think of that’s good. Invite the Spirit to flood you with the joy that comes from the fact that God is near.

A few years ago I was in Jerusalem, meeting with the Orthodox priest of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church where Jesus was buried, the church of the empty tomb. This man is under city arrest by the government of Israel because he is such a critic of Israel. But every morning he leads mass in this church, and every morning, as they leave, he tells his parishioners, “Don’t you dare leave here without a smile on your face.” He said, “We know that someday justice will come to the Holy Land. We know that someday peace will come here. It may be in five years, it may be in 50 years, it may be in 500 years. We don’t know how long it will take. But we are the people who worship at the church of the empty tomb, where God has entered into the full scope of human evil and suffering and brokenness, and emerged triumphant, resurrected. One day his Kingdom and justice will come to the Holy Land, so we joyfully persist in hope.”

So leave here rejoicing, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard, will throw its protection around our hearts and our minds, in Christ Jesus. Rejoice, for the Lord is near.”

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