-Paul is filled with gratitude and joy towards these Philippian believers - he has them in his heart, even though they are separated by some amount of distance as well as time. How did this happen?
-Sharing. Even toddlers learn about how important it is. We are all are taught from an early age that we need to share (because of course our native impulse is towards self). And then we grow up and - at least in the civilized west - we get all our own stuff, so much of it, and we live out our lives in way too much independence and individualism and isolation. Someone has said, ‘civilization is the progress of society towards isolation.’ Many of us barely even know the names of our neighbors, much less those who belong to the church family as us. We’re glad to be around those on a Sunday morning, but do we even know them, or their story, or what needs they have? Do we allow our needs and lives to intersect on any kind of a meaningful level? The early church truly lived into this idea of community - they enjoyed a (un)common unity. For them, sharing was the norm (Acts 2.42). They shared everything (Acts 2.44-45). They needed and depended on each other (cf Galatians 6.2). And they couldn’t wait to be together (Acts 2.46). The inexpressible joy and sacrificial love and constant gratitude they displayed with one another was rooted in this concept of sharing. And they shared far more with one another than just a common set of beliefs and a meeting once a week. They shared everything. They shared their stuff. They shared meals together. They shared life together, they shared in ministry together, and they shared hard times together. Truth is, sharing can be hard. And it can be messy. It means you don’t get to have it all to yourself, everything just the way you want it, all your ducks in a row. You’re gonna get dirty. Moving towards the needs of others and meeting those needs, the mere fact of spending mass quantities of time with broken people - you’re gonna get covered with their dirt. And that’s the root idea - something that is dirty because it is common, it is shared. But all this sharing not only meant that there was not one single needy person among them (Acts 4.34), it forged a depth of relationship, a oneness and caring and commitment that was comparable to what you might expect in a marriage or in a family (Acts 4.30). And the truth is, they were family. They were brothers and sisters in the Lord, and they lived like it. They lived into that reality. They lived like they really did love one another, all the time, with all that they had. May we find the grace and courage to make the space in our lives to enter into that same reality.
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