Life Together, part 2: A “Storytelling” Community*

“More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Phil 3:8

Last week we began to explore Paul’s vision of life together as a community of friends through his letter to the Philippian Christians. We were reminded that the root of our unity and common life is God’s story, which takes its most concrete shape in the story of Jesus’ self-emptying, self-giving, status-renouncing love (Phil 2:6-11). As we read Philippians, we quickly discover that for Paul the church provides a context for one of the basic and foundational practices of Christian friendship: the practice of telling our own stories as a part of the ongoing story of what God is doing in the world. In an American context where friendship is largely about whom I like and what friendships do for me, this probably seems like a fairly strange idea. But for Paul, a major part of Christian friendship is helping one another to see and to situate our lives in the story of what God is doing in the world.

The Philippian Christians see Paul do this several times in his letter. Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus on the Damascus Road changed the way he understood God’s saving purposes and his own story (2 Cor 5:16-17). Because of this encounter, he can reimagine his past, present, and future and retell his own story from the perspective of being in Christ. He does this in two particular passages in Philippians, 1:12-26 and 3:4-21. As you read these passages, you see that Paul is able to look at his own story and see in it a sharing in the story of Jesus, a reflection of the Christ hymn of 2:6-11. Likewise, Paul is able to retell the stories of his friends Timothy (2:19-24) and Epaphroditus (2:25-30) as reflections of God’s salvation story. Like Christ, they are concerned for the Philippians’ welfare, not their own; they take great risks for the sake of others; they look after the interests of others. Their lives are episodes in the larger drama of God’s purposes for creation.

How can we continue this important practice of helping each other narrate our stories according to the pattern of Jesus today? How can we help fit one another’s lives into God’s salvation drama? I want to suggest three things: dwelling in Scripture, imitation of others, and attentive participation in worship. First, it will require dwelling in Scripture, a long and sustained attention to the Word. Weaving our stories into God’s story demands that we know the drama of God’s saving work in creation. We must, therefore, be committed to learning the various movements of the biblical story together, reading it, meditating upon it, and dwelling in it together.

NT Wright has a helpful way to think about Scripture. Imagine the divine story of Scripture as an unfinished, five-act play: I - creation, II - the break in relationship between God and creation, III - the story of Israel, IV - the story of Jesus, V - the story of the church and God’s new creation, which continues until the climactic finale of the return of Christ. We find ourselves living in the middle of Act V, a part of the unfinished story of the church. We are the actors on the stage, living out God’s drama. We must know the beginning of the story to know how to act out our parts today. We take our cues on how to live from those actors who have gone before us, most perfectly seen in the self-emptying life and death of Jesus. Empowered by the Spirit, it is the task of the church to keep the drama alive, to keep the play moving until God acts decisively to finish the drama at the return of Christ. Empowering one another to live out this story is our highest calling as friends in Christ.

Next week we’ll continue this discussion by thinking about the ways that the imitation of others and attentive participation in worship can empower us to become “storytelling” friends in Christ. In two weeks we’ll finish up by thinking about the necessity of accountability in Christian friendships and community.

* I owe a great debt to Stephen Fowl's insightful and thought-provoking theological commentary on Philippians for the thoughts on friendship in Christ in this series. His work on Christian community and the reading of Scripture is also an incredibly helpful and challenging resource for contemporary communities of faith.