Transcript
Richmond’s First Baptist, May 10, 2026
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Philippians 1:1-18a
I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
For the past eight months we’ve been following the Narrative Lectionary, working our way through some of the Bible’s best stories. Today we turn our attention not to a story, but a letter—Paul’s letter to the Philippians—written while he was in prison. A letter is different from a story, and yet, as New Testament professor Tom Long once said, “There is a story behind every verse of Scripture.”
There is certainly a story behind these.
The Philippians have remembered Paul in his imprisonment. They have sent a gift of some kind, delivered by a man named Epaphroditus (apparently a member of the church). Paul is moved by their generosity, filled with appreciation and gratitude. While he is still thinking about them he picks up a pen and writes: “I thank my God for every remembrance of you.”
It’s not a bad passage for Mother’s Day, is it? It sounds like the kind of thing a son might write to his mother after receiving a care package in prison. But if you keep reading, something interesting happens: Paul doesn’t sound like a son writing to his mother; he sounds almost like a mother writing to her son. In verse 7 he writes, “I hold you in my heart.” In verse 8 he writes, “God is my witness, how I long for you.” In verse 9 he writes, “And this is my prayer, that your love would overflow more and more.” And
in verse 6 he writes, “The one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.”
That’s not just gratitude: that’s care. That’s the voice of someone who wants to see the Philippian church grow, flourish, and become everything God created it to be. And when you remember how this story started—in a conversation by the river, a home opened in hospitality, a life turned around in the middle of the night—you realize: these aren’t just supporters; these are people whose lives are bound up together.
Paul would acknowledge that in Christ, the lines get blurred. The one who receives care becomes the one who gives care. The one who is supported becomes the one who strengthens. And somewhere along the way we stop asking, “Who is the parent here?” and start seeing something deeper: a community where love flows in both directions.
And here’s what I’m noticing today: that nurturing, motherly love isn’t just the Philippians’ love for Paul or his love for them—it’s their shared love and care for the gospel. Both of them have bent over that crib in the middle of the night. Both of them have offered up prayers for its future. “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,” Paul writes, “for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
And that makes me think of Lydia.
She was the first convert on European soil, remember? She was one of those women who had gathered on the riverbank just outside the city gates for a prayer meeting on the Sabbath day. She was a “worshiper of God,” Luke says, meaning she was one of those Gentiles who had profound respect for the God of Israel, even though she might not have known very much about him.
What an opportunity for Paul! Who may have overheard their conversation and asked if he and his traveling companions could join them. “It sounds like you’re talking
about God,” he would have said. “Well, yes,” she would have answered, “but we don’t know very much about him.” And then Paul would have asked, “Can I tell you more?”
And I’ve been trying to think about just how he would have presented the gospel to Lydia. She wasn’t one of those Athenians, who worshiped at the altar of “an unknown god.” She had heard about God. She had some idea of who he was. She just needed to know more. And Paul would have been eager to tell her.
He may have started as Stephen did in Acts 7, with the whole history of Israel. Or if she was already familiar with that story he may have jumped ahead to the promise of a Messiah. And if she knew something about that he may have said, “Here’s the good news: the Messiah has come!” “Oh!” she would have said. “Really?” “Yes, really,” Paul would have answered. “His name is Jesus of Nazareth, and while he was here on earth he went about doing good, and healing people, and telling them about God’s coming kingdom. But when the Romans got wind of that they crucified him. They thought he was an insurrectionist. My people thought he was a blasphemer. We were glad to get rid of him. But on the third day God showed us how wrong we were by raising him from the dead.
“What?!” Lydia would have said, shocked. “I know!” Paul would have answered, “but it’s true! I’ve seen him myself!” “When?” Lydia would have asked. “On the road to Damascus,” Paul would have answered. “I was actually persecuting the church in those days, rounding up the people who believed in Jesus and taking them to jail. But then he appeared to me and asked me why I was persecuting him! I didn’t even know who he was! He told me, and told me to go into Damascus and wait, and after three days a man named Ananias came and baptized me and I became a believer. I mean—the next day I was out there on the streets of the city telling people that Jesus was the Son of God.”
“But I didn’t know very much. I went away for a while, into Arabia, and it was there that I received a revelation. I saw that this good news was not just for the Jews, but for anyone who believes in Jesus. I learned that we are made right with God not by keeping the Law of Moses, but by trusting in the Messiah. That is, we are justified by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. And guess what? He’s coming back!”
“What?!” Lydia would have said. “When?”
“Well, we don’t know when,” Paul would have answered, “but the Day of Christ is closer now than it’s ever been. And when he comes,” Paul would have said, looking around, dropping his voice to a whisper, “he is going to establish the Kingdom of God on the rubble of the corrupt Roman Empire. It’s going to be glorious! And it’s going to have big, wrought-iron gates that will swing open for everyone who is in Christ Jesus, Jew and Gentile alike!”
Now, I’m making up that part about the big, wrought-iron gates, but I believe that everything else is fairly close to the gospel Paul would have preached. And according to Luke, Lydia listened to that message eagerly, and when Paul was finished talking she asked to be baptized.
Paul may have explained (as he does in Romans 6) that when you get baptized it’s like taking a sponge and soaking it in water, only it’s not water you’re soaking it in—it’s Christ himself. You become so completely one with him that when you go down into the water it’s like dying with him, being buried with him, and when you come up it’s like rising from the dead. And the first breath you take is the breath of the Holy Spirit, the source of your new life in Christ.
Lydia said yes to that. She said yes to all of that. She was baptized, along with her household, and afterward she invited Paul and his traveling companions to come home with her.
Over the course of the next few weeks she and Paul must have had endless conversations about this life-giving, life-changing gospel, and somewhere along the way she became his partner in getting that gospel to the people. They knew that it was more important than either one of them alone. They knew that this was the thing that had to be cared for and nurtured, this was the thing that had to go forward even if the two of them were stopped. Writing from prison (where the Romans were trying to stop him), Paul says, “I thank my God for every remembrance of you,” perhaps thinking of Lydia.
But not only Lydia.
If you read Acts 16 you know that Paul got in trouble with the locals in Philippi because a woman who had a spirit of divination had been following him and his traveling companions around, saying, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation!” She kept it up for days until finally Paul, “very much annoyed,” turned and said to the spirit, “I order you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her.”
And it did.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. Afterward, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
Picture our heroes: stripped naked, beaten with long, flexible rods until they were bruised and bleeding, sitting in the innermost cell of the Philippian jail with their feet fastened firmly in the stocks. And then Luke writes: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…” [pause]. It’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it? Here we are, complaining when someone takes our parking spot, and here are Paul and Silas, beaten, bloody, bruised, yet singing hymns to God in the middle of the night. And the prisoners were listening to them, Luke says, just as people listen to us, because, as Jesus promised, “You shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). He didn’t say we would be good ones. He didn’t say we would be bad ones. He only promised us that people would be looking, people would be listening, and what they learned about him they would learn from us.
But, “suddenly,” Luke writes, “there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. He brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (and this is one of those verses everyone knows): “They answered, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’”
Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them, and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.” At the end of Acts 16 Luke tells us that, “After leaving the prison Paul
and Silas went to Lydia’s home, and when they had seen and encouraged the brothers and sisters there, they departed.”
But that Philippian jailer and all his household had become part of the church, and when Paul writes, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,” it’s not just Lydia he’s thinking of, but that jailer, and all those others who received his life-giving, life-changing word as well. “Always in every one of my prayers for all of you,” he continues, “praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
That’s why they took up a collection and sent it to Paul. That’s why they sent Epaphroditus with a gift for Paul while he was in prison. That’s why they prayed for him and the success of his mission every day. They were his partners in the gospel. They nurtured it and cared for it as a mother cares for her child. Which makes me wonder how are we “mothering” the gospel here, at Richmond’s First Baptist Church.
We might begin by acknowledging that it’s not exactly the same message Paul shared with Lydia on the riverbank that day. Yes, we believe that Jesus is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. Yes, we believe that he died, was buried, and rose again. Yes, we believe that we are justified by grace through faith. But while we may still believe that Jesus is coming again someday to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven (with or without the wrought-iron gates) we don’t preach that part of the message with as much urgency as Paul did.
Maybe it’s because we’ve gotten tired of waiting, but maybe it’s because we’ve come to see that establishing God’s kingdom is not all up to Jesus. Like the angel said to the disciples when he ascended, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here gazing up into heaven?” He didn’t say it just this way, but he meant that the disciples had work to do. And so do we. We are the living, breathing body of Christ on this earth, and if the kingdom is going to come it will be at least partly because we did something about it.
Paul did. He worked tirelessly, as if it were all up to him. He suffered and sacrificed for the sake of the gospel like a mother suffers and sacrifices for the sake of a child. And I think that’s why he was so grateful to find a group of people in Philippi who would help him do that, who would be his partners in the gospel—his “co-parents” if you will. “I thank my God for every remembrance of you,” he said.
What would he say about us?
Can we join him in that work? Are we willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the gospel? Can we give until it hurts? Can we preach until we’re hoarse? Can we work until exhausted? In other words, can we do for the gospel no more and no less than our mothers did for us until God’s kingdom comes, and his will is done, on earth as it is in heaven?
—Jim Somerville © 2026
