This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk.
You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III.
Dear Adsum
Thank you for your letter. You are kinder than I deserve.
I greatly appreciate your challenge to be challenged. I don’t have as much of this in my life as I could do with, particularly not from brothers who are for me. I do have a close friend who texts me when my writing, or preaching, is too close to the bone, but I’m sure I need more. I’d love for you to become one of them.
As to your question: am I seeking to accurately and steadfastly preach the word of truth? I dearly hope so. I’ve often wondered if the nature of preaching is seeking without arriving. The goal is to speak the words of God, and it’s lofty.
Much to ponder there. This week I’m writing to you about Polycarp’s chapter IV:
“But the love of money is the root of all evils.” Knowing, therefore, that “as we brought nothing into the world, so we can carry nothing out,” let us arm ourselves with the armour of righteousness; and let us teach, first of all, ourselves to walk in the commandments of the Lord. Next, [teach] your wives [to walk] in the faith given to them, and in love and purity tenderly loving their own husbands in all truth, and loving all [others] equally in all chastity; and to train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God. Teach the widows to be discreet as respects the faith of the Lord, praying continually for all, being far from all slandering, evil-speaking, false-witnessing, love of money, and every kind of evil; knowing that they are the altar of God, that He clearly perceives all things, and that nothing is hid from Him, neither reasonings, nor reflections, nor any one of the secret things of the heart.
Money is deceptive. Or the love of it is anyway. There’s a power that sits behind it, Jesus taught (Matthew 6.24), and that power yearns for our worship. Money makes the world go ‘round, we hear. It can certainly make us go in circles.
Have you ever noticed how you can never have enough of it? I speak from the somewhat unusual position of having lived very near the breadline and at other points in my life being substantially well-off (I typed rich and deleted it because no one thinks that they’re rich, but I was). I’ve never had enough money, and right now having a good deal less than I did a couple of months ago hope that it’s doing my soul good. It’s certainly doing my prayer life good.
My friend, strive to not make finances your master. It’s easier said than done, wherever you end up on the financial scale. Remember, as Polycarp reminded the Philippians, that you don’t get to take it with you. It doesn’t last, so use what you have to glorify the Lord. You didn’t bring it with you, it was gifted you by God. Use it to further the kingdom in all its manifestations. Practice generosity with your time, your treasure, and your talents.
I’m struck that in his financial advice, Polycarp told his readers to suit up for war. This is a fight, it gets under your skin, it gets under my skin. Let’s resolve to worship nothing but Jesus, however much of an idol factory our hearts are.
Having hit the place we least like preachers to hit—our wallets—he moves on to a completely uncontroversial topic by telling husbands how to treat their wives. Another reason to read the Fathers, they don’t have any qualms about the topics which make us queasy.
There’s a pattern here that Polycarp espouses which I think is helpful. First, he tells them to teach themselves. You and I have a primary duty as husbands, and it’s to teach ourselves the commandments of God. Which is exactly what you’d expect one cerebral writer to say to another, but at the very least we should learn from his pattern: start with yourself. Our first responsibility is to be disciples of Jesus.
Second, he tells them to teach their wives. My friend, I’d encourage you to teach Anna to walk in the faith as best you can. I suspect it sounds deeply patronising, both of our wives are intelligent women who are perfectly capable of teaching themselves. We might write it off as profoundly out of date. I think if we do we’ll miss the wisdom; a husband has a responsibility to care for his wife’s discipleship too.
Then the wives are to instruct their children, and the recipients of the letter are to instruct the widows. I think we can notice that there’s a pattern here. We teach ourselves then we teach those we have responsibility—or authority, even—for. We aren’t instructed to teach a bunch of random angry folk on the internet. I don’t think you’re particularly tempted to this from your writing, and I don’t think either of our writing is really aiming at this, but it’s a helpful principle to remember where God has given you some measure of authority and responsibility and then work from there. We start with ourselves, then our households, before even considering anyone else.
The ’anyone’ outside of the household that Polycarp highlights are those who don’t have anyone else to help them. A question for you to ponder: who are the ‘widows’ in your life and in your church?
We rarely speak of chastity as something that married Christians should exhibit, but Polycarp is keen to stress that his readers’ wives should love everyone apart from their husbands with chastity. We too should love all others than our wives, chastely.
I don’t have much to say about that, except that we live in an age that is anything but ‘chaste.’ I suspect that recovering this language, and more importantly this virtue, would be a boon to the church.
Polycarp moves on to instruct the widows to pray. My ‘ministry,’ if that isn’t too grand or American a way of speaking of it, both within the churches I’ve served as a pastor and more widely, has been built on the back of older women who pray for me. They are the backbone of the kingdom of God. Find those in your circles, if you haven’t already, and love them as best you can.
In the middle of that wonderful list of things that they should pray for others, I notice that he says that we should know that we are the ‘altar of God.’ This unusual phrase caught my attention. It’s not from the Bible, though it’s not a huge extrapolation from being called temples (1 Corinthians 6). The New Testament tends to refer to us as the sacrifice (Romans 12), giving our lives in an outpouring of praise, rather than the altar itself. He seems to use some language from chapter 41 of 1 Clement, another letter from this early period of the church’s history (with phoenixes), but this phrase isn’t there.
Perhaps it’s unimportant, but the imagery caught me. I’m not sure it’s typologically the right way of speaking of ourselves, but metaphorically at least the altar is the furniture where blood is displayed (not where animals are killed in Leviticus—a common mistake) and where the sacrifice is then burned as required. It suggests that we are those that bear the blood of Jesus who then ascend to heaven on the incense of our prayers (Revelation 5.8).
That’s worth remembering.
He ends by exhorting them to keep from sin because he sees all things. I thing we’re apt to act like this is scare-mongering, like a particular scary version of the song about Santa—“he sees you when you’re sleeping” sounds like something out of the trailer for a horror film—but the Lord sees all. It’s supposed to make us realise that justice will one day reign because all things are seen by the Lord and will be judged justly. It’s also supposed to warn us like Polycarp does here. We should keep from sin, we cannot hide it from the Lord.
That’s the thought I’ll leave you with today, Adsum, keep yourself from sin in whatever ways you might be tempted to depart from the way of Jesus. Repent where you need to, know that you will be freely accepted by the Father on account of the Son’s death on our behalf. Know that you will rise to glorious life in Christ. All of which frees us to turn from evil and rest in God. My prayer is that the Lord would lead us both to do so today.
With love
T. M. Suffield
Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash
I’ll be taking a short break from writing over the Christmas period and will be back on Epiphany with a round up of 2023.
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nuakh 