Bible reading: Philippians 4:1-9.

Message.

I’ve now been a Minister for well over 30 years. And one of the things which I’ve found most frustrating has been the amount of time I’ve spent soothing the ruffled feathers of folk who have become disgruntled by some aspect of church life or fallen out with someone else (I hasten to add that such incidents have been rare in this church, where we seem to rub along together pretty well). Those situations have always meant cautious conversations, difficult phone calls or diplomatic letters, together with sleepless nights and desperate prayer. There have also been times when I’ve seen a potential “blow-up” looming and I’ve wanted to avert it. I’m sure that every Minister has similar experiences which are both wearing and time-consuming.

None of this is new. In the Old Testament, Solomon became famous for his wisdom in solving all sorts of disputes. In the Gospels, even before the Church began, Jesus had to tell his disciples that the Kingdom of God wasn’t about points-scoring and status-seeking. He also talked about people resolving their differences before going to the Temple to worship and laid out a procedure for what, in today’s language, one might call “dispute resolution”.

Paul, too, had to contend with all sorts of problems: in the church at Rome there were disputes over Christians eating meat that had been previously used in pagan worship, in the Galatian church there were differences of opinion over the observance of the Jewish law, while the Corinthian Christians had become so fractious that they were taking each other to court. Paul also had his personal problems, such as the time when he, a workaholic who must have been hard to get on with, fell out with his more easy-going colleague Barnabas – a disagreement so intense that they parted company and sailed off in almost opposite directions, one to Cyprus and the other to Syria.

And so we come to the little story we encounter in Philippians 4, where Paul writes, “Euodia and Syntyche, I beg you by name to make up your differences as Christians should!”. He then pleads with someone he calls his “true fellow-worker” (I’ll come back to that) to “help these women. They both worked hard with me for the Gospel, as did Clement and all my other fellow-workers whose names are in the book of life”.

Now there’s quite a lot to unpack here. For instance, who were Euodia and Syntyche? Well, these are women’s names, and it seems likely that what we have here are leaders of the church at Philippi; it’s indeed possible that they were well-off businesswoman who hosted the church’s meetings in their homes. That may surprise us, as we tend to think that the early church leaders were all men. However there were several women, such as Lydia, Junia, Phoebe and Priscilla, who were clearly respected and seemed to have leadership roles.

We should also notice that Philippi was a Macedonian city; you might well say, “So what?” but it’s important because Macedonian women enjoyed greater freedoms, rights and powers than many other women of the time. It’s been said, “if Macedonia produced perhaps the most competent group of men the world had yet seen, the women were in all respects the men’s counterparts; they played a large part in affairs, received envoys, … built temples, founded cities, commanded armies, engaged mercenaries, held fortresses, and on occasion acted as regents or even co-rulers”. This means that no-one would struggle with this church having at least some female leaders. The “church father” John Chrysostom later wrote. “These women seem to me to be the chiefs of the church which was there, and Paul commends them”.  He makes it clear that he wasn’t simply saying that Euodia and Syntyche were the chief women in Philippi, but that they had a leading position in the whole church. The Scottish commentator William Barclay agrees: he wrote, “in the Macedonian churches women clearly had a leading place”.

This is good, but we can go further, as Paul calls Euodia and Syntyche his “co-workers”. That is a term of both respect and friendship; it also puts them in very distinguished company. For who else was given that title? I’ll tell you: Timothy, Apollos, Silas, Titus, Priscilla and Aquila, Urban, Philemon, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, and Justus. Paul says Euodia and Syntyche “have laboured side by side with me in the gospel”: not behind or below him but alongside or “with” him. In fact the word Paul uses here comes from the world of athletics: Paul is saying that our two friends are like team-mates or “co-athletes” who have run beside in the stadium. Once again this is a bold thing to say, as Greek athletics were strictly the preserve of men (and naked at that). Paul was really breaking gender boundaries here!

We must move on and ask, “So what was the squabble between these two women?” My answer is, “I don’t know”; in fact some scholars doubt if there was a squabble at all. However one can make a guess that it had something to do about the way that the two women, both keen on spreading the Gospel, carried out their ministry; I don’t think it was about the tea rota or the colour of the curtains! That would push this dispute into the realm of patronising sexist stereotype, and we don’t want to do that. But we all know that earnest and enthusiastic Christians can have conflicting ideas about how best to do God’s work. I’m not saying that that will lead to blows, but it’s uncomfortable and can provoke splits in churches. So Paul has to say, “Cool it, resolve your differences”, and he asks his faithful friend – who most authors think is actually the entire church community – to help them do it. The women aren’t just setting a bad example, they’re tying up the church’s resources and energy, which could better be used elsewhere.

I wonder how Euodia and Syntyche – whose names mean “Success” and “Lucky” – felt when this letter was read out in church? That was what usually happened with these epistles, and we can imagine them blushing with embarrassment and shame as their dispute was made public (or did everyone already know that they were at loggerheads?). It’s been suggested that they “shut off” after hearing their names and so failed to hear Paul’s commendation: “they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel”? Those words were noteworthy and valuable in a world driven by status and public honour, but the two women may never have heard them. What a great pity!

Well, we need to draw some threads together. The first thread, which I’ve already spent quite a lot of time discussing, concerns the place of women in churches. And I think we can safely say that, not only in the Philippian church but in many others, women could and did hold leading roles. I accept that there would have been some places where that was more culturally acceptable than others; nevertheless I must disagree with Christians who insist on male-only leadership and who reduce women to the status of ladies’ leaders, children’s workers, cleaners, cooks and bottle-washers. Yes, I know that Jesus’ twelve disciples, who became the leaders of the first Jerusalem church, were all men. But we see a different picture as we read through the book of Acts and the letters to the churches. And didn’t Paul himself – often regarded as an anti-women misogynist – write, “There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, or slaves and free people, or men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus”? I rest my case.

The other thread we need to consider is unity which in fact is a theme that runs through the whole letter. So in ch.1 we read of Paul’s hope that, whether he visits them in person or is absent and hears about them, he will know that they are “standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel”. A few verses later he writes, “I urge you to make me completely happy by having the same thoughts, sharing the same love, and being one in soul and mind”. And in ch.3, having famously said, “I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus”, he continues: “Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you”. All these verses come before Paul’s plea to the two women – yet, unlike in many other churches he writes to, there don’t seem to be any obvious rifts in this congregation. It’s more of an exhortation for the Christians to let nothing spoil their precious unity.

Paul was writing nearly 2000 years ago, but little has changed over the centuries: Christian communities aren’t always the wonderful fellowship of peace and love which we might have thought they would be. That shouldn’t really surprise us: not only are we all human beings, full of imperfections and opinions; we are also people to whom faith matters and we aren’t afraid to say what we think. That (most of the time) is a good thing! However I have noticed something intriguing over the years: it’s not usually big issues of doctrine or mission that cause problems in churches, it’s often matters which appear trivial.

So I can recall a Deacon saying to me, “Did you hear how Eddie” – a mild-mannered man – “said ‘Good morning’ to me?” In that same church our biggest disagreement was over a rickety and redundant Communion table which bore a plaque giving the name of its donor – a person who no-one could personally remember. In another church we had a spat over what to do with the flags of the Boys’ Brigade company which had closed; while in another the biggest row was over the placing of an artificial Christmas tree. In every case (and there were others) emotions ran high; I’m pretty sure that the disagreements arose because of deeper problems in the people concerned. Was that true of Euodia and Syntyche? We don’t know; perhaps it did.

We are living in a world which finds disagreement hard to handle. Instead of debating respectfully, people post crude hateful comments on social media; university lecturers lose their jobs because they dare to express an unpopular opinion; politicians live literally in fear of their lives because some extremist has taken issue with their comments; tabloid media prefer to exploit difference rather than showing where common ground exists. We mustn’t think that Christians are immune from these trends in society; we aren’t. And that means two things. One is that we must consciously reject them, learning how to accept other peoples’ views even when we don’t agree with them, discussing and debating courteously, accepting apologies when misunderstandings do occur, seeking at all times to preserve unity and peace. That must surely be the Christian way. That leads on to my final thought: in today’s aggressive world, can churches act as a beacon of hope, showing that there is another way of living together? I hope that the Philippian church managed to do that, and I hope that we will, too.