Euodia and Syntyche: Of One Mind

" I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord." (Philippians 4:2)

How can I agree
with one who is so worldly,
accepts and serves
at expense of God's own truth?
Leaving that out
which is the most important:
salvation and change,
obedience to God?

How can you love God
and yet accept what's sinful?
How can you just preach
what people want to hear?
How can I agree
to what I see you doing?
I cannot be
of one mind with you.

But if my mind is Christ
and if my heart is love
He opens up my eyes,
I see in you
the same passion for Him.

And as we break this bread
and as we share this cup
we are one body, we
are One in the Lord,
Sisters in Christ.

How can I agree
with one who's so one-sided,
obeying the rules
at expense of those God loves?
Talking so much,
not standing up for justice,
not loving the lost
or the marginalised?

How can you love God
and yet not love your neighbour?
How can you condemn
with words that hurt his soul?
How can I agree
with what I see you doing?
I cannot be
of one mind with you.

But if my mind is Christ
and if my heart is love
He opens up my eyes,
I see in you
the same passion for Him.

And as we break this bread
and as we share this cup
we are one body, we
are One in the Lord,
Sisters in Christ.

He gives us gifts,
He gives us love,
He sends us out
to be His light.
The gifts we have
are different
yet incomplete
when separate.

So may our minds be Christ
and may our hearts be love
and may His Spirit work
through gifts that He
has given to us.

We may be different
yet we are meant to share;
we are one body, we
are One in the Lord,
Sisters in Christ.

___________________________________________

[23. June 2013]

Inspired by an awesome ecumenics course (June 2013). ^^

I suddenly had the idea that this would make a good "duet" - since it's about two people. And the idea is that they go from disagreeing to seeing that Christ unites them. So this turned into a song and yes it has a melody (but due to my music theory being really crappy I have still not written it down 3 years later).

I opposed two viewpoints in this poem; I'm not sure I chose the right positions to pit against each other, but since I had a melody in my head this was what fit the melody... ^^; (Yes melody sort of came first for this one.)
Both of these things are important (loving God and loving one's neighbour) but I get the feeling that certain (mostly theologically conservative) churches put more focus on loving God, sometimes to such an extent that they don't think so much about actually going out and changing the world, or even hurt people in the process of trying to teach them truth, while others (generally more "liberal" / "progressive" churches) put more focus on serving people, sometimes to such an extent that they bend the Bible a little or become selective so as to be more accepting of marginalised groups (e.g. concerning the homosexuality issue).


The Bible makes it clear that Jesus wants both love of God and love of neighbour from us, since He says the greatest commandment is both (Mt 22:36-40). And it's a sad thing that it's so easy to get one-sided and emphasise one thing so much that the other side gets neglected. We need both.

But this poem is not just about "balancing out" the viewpoints or which is "right". It's about church unity. Who are Euodia and Syntyche? They are two co-workers of Paul who disagreed about *something* (doesn't say what), and he exhorted them to be "of one mind" (Phil 4:2). I took them here as examples of disagreement, differences and unity in the church.

Recently I realised the beauty of being brothers and sisters in Christ, about how Jesus actually breaks down boundaries between people (story here). And I think denominational boundaries shouldn't block us from each other either. I sometimes see certain Christians venting against certain other Christians, and I think often the problem is that when we act like that, we fail to see the other person as someone just as passionate for Jesus. Last week I was with people I did not always fully agree with theologically. But I had the impression with most of them that they really have a genuine relationship with Jesus. In the end, only God knows who the "true believers" are - and those are scattered, in my opinion (and Augustine and Luther thought the same haha :D) throughout the different churches of the world (in the universal "invisible church"). We don't need to all think the same way - but we need to recognise others as our brothers and sisters even if we don't always agree with them 100%, and let ourselves and our way of thinking and doing be challenged by theirs. This past week I learnt that each denomination has its strengths which we can learn from. God has given us different gifts, different points of view, different areas of focus - and I believe we're meant to combine all this as one body, to His glory, instead of rejecting one another.

A true Christianity is in the end both positions together (i.e. loving God and loving our neighbour). Because we can't love and serve God without loving and serving our neighbour. I wouldn't compromise at all on that. If people use "serving God" as an excuse to trample on people, they are in the wrong and behaving in a non-Christian manner. Most of the time, though, where churches have a different "focus", we can learn from each other or be reminded by each other of certain aspects we are weaker on. Differences in theological detail do not mean that "something's wrong"; we should be open to working with and learning from other denominations, and recognising in them our brothers and sisters for whom Jesus is just as important as for us! (More here - from ages ago though)

Picture by Théodore Chassériau

Nympha: Make This House Your Own

"Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house." (Colossians 4:15)

O Lord our God
who has brought us together,
turned this hodge-podge mix of people

into a family -
take this house, we pray,
and make it your own.


May this be a place
that strangers call home;
an open door
to the far and the near,
the lost and the seeking,
sinners and righteous,
Gentile and Jew.

May this be the place
where we can show our true face:
be ourselves without fear,
confess and find forgiveness,
be radically accepted
into bottomless grace.

May this be the place
where we learn to love each other
as you have loved us,
where enemy becomes brother
and stranger becomes friend.

O Lord our God
who has brought us together,

take this house, we pray,
and make it your own.

Save us from the temptation
of making it a fortress,
fenced off from the world,
from which we defend
our values and beliefs.

Save us from the temptation
of shutting ourselves in
and keeping for ourselves
what we were meant to share.

Save us from the temptation
of trying to create
a perfect kingdom here on Earth
at the cost of the broken
whom you have come to heal.

O Lord our God
who has brought us together,

take this house, we pray,
and make it your own.

May it be a refuge
from the storm of persecution,
a safe haven
in a world that's torn apart,
a rock for the castaways to cling to.

May it be a greenhouse
where your children can grow
ever deeper in the fullness
of your love and your mercy,
bringing fruit to feed
those who hunger for you.

May it be the table
at which we are strengthened,
prepared for the task you have set us to do,
from which we carry your gifts
to a waiting world.

O Lord our God
who has brought us together,

take this house, we pray,
and make it your own.

______________________________________________________________

[14. August 2016]

A prayer for a church...
In the early church, Christians met in each other's houses. More well-off people offered their houses to be used as meeting places. Nympha is one such "benefactress" who opened her house - probably quite a challenge, because the Church was and is truly a "hodge-podge mix of people", not all of whom would have been pleasant house guests.

Writing this poem, I had to think about what the Church is, or is meant to be. I believe that Jesus came to reconcile us to God and to each other, to heal broken relationships and begin reconciliation in this broken world. Jesus came to save everybody. The consequence of belonging to Jesus is, then, that I will be part of a very mixed group of people (the church), PLUS I have the call (together with this community) to bring reconciliation and the love of God into the world - to people who are different from me and whom I might prefer to avoid. A major challenge in the early church, for instance, was a cultural / racial one: overcoming the gap between Jews (the "original Christians" were all Jews) and non-Jews (Gentiles).

I believe the church is meant to be a community, like a new sort of family - but a family that is open to all, not just self-obsessed and closed off to strangers, or so tight-knit it's hard for people to get into. (Sometimes, I've realised, we Christians have developed a kind of language that non-Christians don't understand. We talk about the Gospel but our explanations make no sense because we don't speak the way non-Christians do; we throw around vocab that they don't really know the meaning of - and maybe we don't know the meaning either!) I have experienced church most strongly there where I was a visitor and felt completely adopted into the community. E.g. this April I visited an Anglocatholic church with a friend (beautiful church service with incense!! Loved it! Will go again!). In the prayers, people from the congregation were mentioned by name. When the priest found out that my friend and I are getting ordained later this year, he said they would pray for us. That's what I call Church. It doesn't matter whether your worship service has a band or incense or flashing lights or whatever, but it matters that we care for each other as the worldwide Christian family, no matter whether we know each other "personally" or not.

Another thing about church as family is that it is open for all. We need to learn to accept all the way Jesus accepted us - no matter the background, political leaning, race, "sinfulness", etc. The great miracle of the Church is that it is the place where "enemy becomes brother / and stranger becomes friend". Our old enmities or boundaries that we had in our "worldly thinking" no longer should count! Because Jesus wants us to love others the way He loved us.

And that is a challenge! But I believe that is what Jesus is calling the church to... not just to celebrate our salvation in comfortable groups of like-minded people we get along well with, but to go where it's dirty and invite more people into the embrace of Jesus, and to celebrate together with people who are different from us - an even greater celebration, don't you think?

One more thing: Church is where we can "show our true face". I realise that is not at all easy. Churches are often the first place we expect to be judged in. Why, though? Why has the church become a place where we feel the need to "fake ourselves"? I'm not saying there should be no reaction to sin in the church - where we hurt each other or make choices damaging for ourselves and others, it is right for the church (and with that I mean the people, the members, the "family", not "church leadership") to step in and say something. But any correction should be done carefully and in love. The Church needs to be a place where we are not afraid to be ourselves, where we can also be open about our mistakes and sins. I think a first step is to take away the pressure to be "perfect"... then also, to take away the fear of being shamed. Best way to do this is precisely by being the loving family I believe the Church is called to be. We are not the perfect elected, but people growing towards Jesus - and all supporting each other on this way, not punishing each other for every slip-up.

For me, the Church is the community of reconciled people who have come into touch with Jesus and want to follow Him. We are all at different stages of our walk with Him, we all come from different backgrounds, we might even be "natural enemies" if not for Jesus. It is a challenge to overcome old assumptions and old boundaries, but that is a first thing Jesus calls us to when He calls us into the Church. The second thing is the call that goes to the Church as a whole: we are to be messengers of reconciliation. I believe we do that by living the love of Jesus (by fulfilling the first calling of accepting each other within the church) and by sharing it in the world through word and deed. That is my personal "ecclesiology" for you, in a nutshell... ^^;