🦁 Advent 3-1
Reflection
Good morning, and welcome to First Formation. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Psalm 126, Habakkuk 2, and Philippians is one of my favorite letters of Saul. Philippi is a military colony and it was so closely aligned with Rome, even though it was in Asia minor, that the two, there was a two person mayorship of Philippi, they were called the Duo Wiri, two men.
And they answered directly to Rome. They lived under the municipal code of Rome rather than local laws like other provincial cities. And Philippi appears most prominently in Acts 16 where Saul and Barnabas meet Lydia, a military dependent, and Dez, the jailer of Philippi. Dez for Desmophilax, which is like the warden or the jailer.
And, just, let's see, two generations before Paul, well, let's see if he was, Paul's father's generation, when he was, well, I guess, anyway, Philippi in 43 BCE, so about 80 or 90 years before, Paul wrote these, his letters. It was a site of the Battle of Philippi also known as the Liberator's Civil War, or the war that killed the Republic, because the assassins of Julius Caesar, who made himself emperor, had fled, and Caesar's allies, imperialists Brutus, I'm sorry Octavian and Mark Antony, pursued Brutus and Cassius Luginus, I think.
They, that, that's where they pursued them too in Philippi and they, you know prevailed in battle and it was the end and Julius Caesar's detractors and assassins were, were done. And with that, the Republic died as well. When Mark Antony and Octavian won, they retired a great number of their own soldiers to, to Philippi, and they, he renamed it Vilonia Philipp or the Victory Colony at Philippi.
And so this city is almost like, like Appomattox for the Civil War. It's like this was the end. This is where, you know, all the. The cards were shown and the chips cashed and the Empire would prevail and the Republic ceased to be. aNd so there's a great number of veterans from that retirement and then a couple of years later more veterans were retired.
This time from Octavians. And so by the time Jesus is living and Saul, Jesus and Saul and John the baptizer are kids, the first generation of military dependents and, you know, some additional veterans I'm sure, are making up the vast majority of the city of Philippi. And so if you look at the letter in general, It uses language you don't see anywhere else.
He mentions the Praetorian Guard. He uses the language of Soldiers of Christ, etc. But he's a civilian, Saul, talking to a military community in Philippi, the Christians in Philippi. And It's noteworthy because it's also known in scholarly circles as the letter to the Philippians, as Saul's letter of joy, because he uses this word rejoice, the English translation is rejoice, you know, something like seven or eight times in a very short letter.
But he also, he makes it very clear he's talking to the military. And in this reading in particular, he draws on themes that I think are timeless kind of hallmarks of military service, and that is the expectation that you will lose your life, that what you have is not yours and that self righteousness doesn't get you anywhere.
You can be as arrogant as shit, but that's not going to save your life in battle. It's much more likely if you're humble and you know what your own limitations are you'll do much more You'll, you'll do better. You're more likely to survive, frankly. And that kind of, that's, I mean, that's why bootcamp and basic training are stressful.
Like they train you to be humble, to get rid of this idea of entitlement that you deserve, you know, as much as you can get your hands on and like, cause those things don't save you when the shit hits the fan. wHen the rules go out the window, you need to be strategic and to be strategic means you've got to suppress, you know, your, your kind of self interests other than, you know, survival.
And so when he talks about accounting, I've, I've counted all my gains as a loss for Christ and everything is a loss. He's using these kind of, I don't even know if I'd call them like principles, like the army had. You know, leadership, loyalty, due to respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage.
They're not even like spoken. But if you are in a military community, you know that life is fleeting. You know, even if you're a dependent, you know, your, your spouse or your, your parent might deploy for who knows how long for, you know and may not come back. And all legions the legionaries, the, the Italian soldiers weren't allowed to marry.
And the. But the auxiliaries, which Jesus would have been in contact with, were allowed to marry, and they were, you know, they had more of what you might think of as a kind of a contemporary military experience. Sure, they might deploy, but they can marry, and they have, you know, some stable pay, but they don't have the same kind of bonuses that the legionaries had, which, who had to remain single, couldn't marry until they got out, carried a vice economy wherever they went because of that.
And also, the legionaries were, All but encouraged to extort locals because that would incentivize them to doing their doing their job You know making their life as comfortable as possible Often results, you know given that assuming they've had training and and discipline and everything you make their life comfortable and garrison And make them happy and they're more loyal to you.
They often can do better under stress So Paul though, he may not, you know fully know The language he's using, I think it does. I'm trying to be honest and think like, well, maybe, maybe he's just kind of throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks, but as a. As a military veteran myself, like, that resonates with me.
The, the subject of loss and becoming like someone in death, like, that speaks to martyrdom in the Christian, you know, kind of imagination, but that comes out of a military experience. You know, the persecutions began in the army in the early church. anD so becoming like someone in death or modeling your life after someone who has died Sure sounds a lot like, you know memorial day and memorials within the military reflecting on the good things they've done and and remembering what great friendship you had is Comes out of you know for me because it was so formative in my experience was military service, right?
And you know, you might have family members that you might you know Look up to but like that's what the makes the military so incredible. It's like you don't have to be family to get to a point of just almost absolute trust in another person. And not always, you know, there's some bad leaders and bad soldiers but I for one haven't found something like that in the civilian world.
And so Saul is drawing upon that because he knows his audience. If he's anything, he's a gifted writer and speaker, and he knows the kinds of things that connect with his audience. And in Philippi That audience is military veterans and, and their families and dependents. And so the idea that, you know, early church, you know, didn't serve is just preposterous.
And hopefully that, that myth can be dispelled if, among other things, we, we read this letter a little bit more closely and, and with an open mind.
