Euodia, Syntyche, and the Elephant

Has a pastor ever called out your name in the middle of a sermon? Perhaps you were dozing just a bit in the middle of the message (not at LAC, of course) and then you heard the preacher shout out your name! And it's in a sermon about sin!! If that happens, most of us would come out of our slumber and become what the Germans call "hellwach," meaning brightly and thoroughly awake!

We are now nearing the end of Paul's letter to believers in the city of Philippi. A letter like this one would have been read publicly during a gathered worship service of the entire church congregation. In chapter 3, Paul spoke about our lives being made right with God not through works but through faith in Jesus, about the tragic destiny of those who set their minds on earthly things, about our heavenly citizenship, and about the fact that Jesus will return. A few of the attendees may have been dozing as this rich theology was being taught. Then, suddenly, Paul called out two members of the church by name. And what he did is plead with them publicly to start getting along. I imagine that the tone in the church service changed when these words first were read: "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Synthyche to agree with each other in the Lord. And I ask you, loyal yokefellow, to help them..."

This sort of thing, public "calling out," is very, very rare in the Bible because these women were not heretics or outsiders but faithful and active leaders in the church family. I can only conclude that the situation was so serious that Paul saw no other recourse. The name and work of Jesus were undermined by the antagonism of two people who were committed to Christ but could not get along with one another.

So, we will look at what the Bible teaches in the midst of this crisis of disunity. It is very different from what we find in most of the books about conflict resolution that we can buy on Amazon. And, because this was not the only church in history that had good people who had a seemingly irresolvable personal conflict, we should pay close attention to what Paul says. If we doze in this sermon, we might even hear our names being called out...

To His Glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor