Philippians 2:19–30

19 But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered up when I know how you are doing.  20 For I have no one else like-minded, who will truly care about you.  21 For they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.  22 But you know the proof of him, that, as a child serves a father, so he served with me in furtherance of the Good News.  23 Therefore I hope to send him at once, as soon as I see how it will go with me.  24 But I trust in the Lord that I myself also will come shortly.  

25 But I counted it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, fellow soldier, and your apostle and servant of my need;  26 since he longed for you all, and was very troubled, because you had heard that he was sick.  27 For indeed he was sick, nearly to death, but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, that I might not have sorrow on sorrow.  28 I have sent him therefore the more diligently, that, when you see him again, you may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful.  29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all joy, and hold such people in honour, 30 because for the work of Christ he came near to death, risking his life to supply that which was lacking in your service toward me. 

Commentary

I’ve read and re-read this passage looking for the right angle to come at it. The more I read it, the less I could find anything useful to say. I could have just pointed out that these two men, Timothy and Epaphroditus who helped Paul so much are good examples whom we should follow.

That’s useful and helpful, but I've been thinking over this for two weeks and it didn’t quite seem enough. So at risk of trying to sound too much like a smarty-pants, I‘ve gone back to the Greek original and thought about the words Paul used to describe these two men. There is one word for each which I want to focus on for this study. Please take the effort to study these Greek words – I hope you'll agree at the end that they were worth struggling with.

The first comes from v22. Our version above says: you know the proof of him – but it is a little bit clearer in the NIV: Timothy has proved himself. 

The word for “prove” used here is dokime, from the verb dokimazo which means to approve by testing. Coins were tested to make sure they were not counterfeit, and once tested they were certified dokimos, genuine. The single word dokimos was often stamped or written on the bottom of clay pots sold in the marketplace to show that they had been tested and found to be without cracks or flaws.

This is the same word used for character in Romans 5:3–4 in Paul’s reflection on suffering: We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (ESV) 

Character, here, means the tried and tested quality of a person who can be trusted to be loyal and faithful, no matter what. Suffering produces that kind of quality, because in suffering, you are cast back upon your most basic resources. All the normal props have been cut out from underneath. You only have left what is really true. Once you commit yourself to trusting God through that dark valley, you will never un-commit. You will have developed domikos-character. 

I have come to see that this is perhaps one reason why God does not withdraw us from suffering. He does NOT make us suffer; but he doesn’t always remove it from us when it comes to us in the natural course of life. He uses it to help us grow into this kind of deeply faithful character. Perhaps this quality can only come through suffering. And perhaps you can only really rejoice, when you have suffered and learned what being true and faithful really mean (both God’s faithfulness and yours).

Timothy was a reliable servant both of God and of Paul. He is perhaps the most profound example in the whole Bible of someone who was prepared to be a dedicated servant, without seeking the limelight. There is no record of anything Timothy wrote. We have few details about his life. We don’t know anything about his thoughts and ideas. But we do know these things: 

·     He accompanied Paul on at least one missionary journey (Acts 16:20). 

·     He was sent by Paul to sort out major problems in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17) and in Ephesus ( 1 Tim. 1:3). 

·     He helped Paul in the writing of at least five of his letters. 

·     He was imprisoned for his witness (Hebrews 13:23).

Timothy had been tested in the harshest of settings and found to be reliable, true, faithful. 

The second Greek word comes from v25, and was applied to Epaphroditus who had been sent by the Philippians with a gift to assist Paul in prison. Even until recent times, unless you had people to provide you with food and the essentials of life in prison, it was quite likely that you would die from neglect or the barely-sufficient food and shelter supplied by the prison. I'm indebted to a commentary by William Barclay for drawing my attention to this word. Barclay is always so good on Greek words!

The word is leitourgos, meaning simply a servant or leitourgia which has two meanings for us in the Christian world:

a)    The first meaning relates to the word liturgy. This is the work (ergon) done by the people (laos) in worshipping together. It involves the public prayers, the reciting of creeds and responses, the singing of hymns and so on.

b)   More importantly for us here, it refers to the practice of private individuals who so loved their city or district that they performed some great task for it at their own expense. They might build a stadium or a library or a hall. Or they might provide a social service of some kind, perhaps paying for the production of a play in a theatre or subsidise the training of local athletes or scholars. In the ancient world, people who did such things out of their own generosity were known as leitourgoi.

Epaphroditus was being sent by Paul back to his home town, Philippi, because he had been very ill; in fact, he had nearly died. (This is a little by-the-way reminder that Paul did not apparently believe that all illnesses need to be healed. Sometimes people die – even when they are in the company of the great apostle! Think back to the suffering issues discussed above.) 

Paul did not want Epaphroditus to be regarded as having failed in his duty just because he was being sent back. 

Paul was using this letter to pronounce his own stamp of dokimos on Epaphroditus. He described him as his servant, his leitourgos, who had given unstintingly out of his own self, almost to the very point of death, for Paul. 

So what are we to do with all of this for our own lives at this time?

That question should provide lots of discussion in a group or opportunity for private reflection. At the very least, we should be thinking about our own witness and service as Christians. Do we demonstrate, or have we achieved, true Christian character? Do we serve as generously as public-spirited leitourgoi 

There are many who have been disappointed by the witness of the Christian church in Australia and Britain during the COVID crisis. The government told everyone to stay home, and so Christian churches meekly complied – even sometimes going beyond what was required. Even in my limited locked-down life, I have heard and read many voices asking deeply-disturbing questions.

At a time when people needed hope through the ministry of the sacraments more than ever, the national and state leaders of the Christian church have largely been invisible and impotent. It’s almost as though they had nothing to say to this crisis.

In making these comments, I do not want to take away from the huge amount of effort that many local churches have devoted to suddenly becoming television producers with nothing much more than backyard equipment and no training. It has been a massive upskilling in technology. Ministers and assistants have done many amazing things, for which we are all grateful. 

In Australia we have been spared (so far) the massive numbers of deaths from COVID. Our suffering has been minimal. But in the UK, where the death toll has been fearfully high, churches were actually locked on the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Priests who lived next door to their own parish church were not allowed even to enter the church to pray, let alone any depressed or bereaved parishioner. In Australia many dioceses COVID rules did not permit priests or lay visitors to offer communion or even to enter homes of the sick or lonely for visitation.

The question must be asked whether our national and state church leaders could – and should – have insisted on finding some way to allow churches to be open for prayer and private one-on-one ministry, and for providing sanitised forms of communion to small groups on a repeated basis throughout the week. 

Supermarkets were open. Hairdressers were open. Newsagents sold Lotto tickets and magazines. Cleaners and tradespeople entered private homes, regardless of the age of the residents, without so much as a single rule or requirement from the government. Football codes have been badgering the government for months to be allowed a resumption of play. Cafes sold takeaway coffees and meals. 

Many churches – especially those for whom the celebration of the Communion is a major plank of worship – could not apparently find a way to freely give away crumbs of bread and sips of wine, if not inside churches, then through some creative means consistent with national COVID-safety standards.

It is possible that there may be some in our community who will not bother to attend church after this crisis is all over because the church did not seem to bother to insist on our essentials of faith when the situation was critical. Those priests who wanted and were willing to do so, both in Australia and the UK, were often forbidden by their bishops.

Even with its terrible toll in some parts of the world, this pandemic is not the worst crisis imaginable in the not-too-distant future in a global sense. This was an opportunity to set down principles and practices which could serve the church well for such future crises.

In the midst of their crisis, both Epaphroditus and Timothy managed to keep a firm hold on what mattered most in their service to their communities, to Paul, and thus to God. They performed their duty and remained faithful no matter what the cost.

Group or Individual Questions for Reflection

1.    Discuss some Christians whom you have known who were like Timothy or Epaphroditus. How have they affected your faith? 

2.    Can you recall a time when you were able to deliver some faithful service to another Christian? Share it with the group, not being bashful or super-modest. it might help others to learn or to take courage from your story.

3.    What do you take away from this reading most of all for you personally?

4.    What have you learned about suffering from this reading?

5.    How well do you think the church has handled our witness in COVID settings? With the benefit of hindsight, could we have done some things differently?

Passage for Memory:

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Rom. 5:4.

Prayer Time:

1.    Ask for wisdom for your local and national church leaders in their gradual opening-up of church life again.

2.    Give thanks for the many diligent endeavours that churches have undertaken to continue to minister during this period.

3.    Pray for those people who are serving at this moment at great personal or economic cost in our community.  

4.    Ask God to teach you how to deal well with suffering.

Children’s colouring task created by Anna-Mieke Mulholland follows below.