This congregation that Polycarp is writing to has lost a Pastor who’s fallen away. They are to watch their own lives and doctrine so that they do not go the same way. Don’t be swayed, don’t be dragged, don’t be seduced, or driven off the road. In order to stand firm we need to ‘love the brotherhood.’ Polycarp is quoting 1 Peter 2.17. The brotherhood here is just the church. Our standing firm requires that we are with one another.

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, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX.

Dear Adsum

Thank you for your last letter, particularly your guidance to ask God for patience in the midst of trials. Though, I must admit, this is a “thanks, I hate it” sort of thank you. Who wants more patience? People who want to be more like Jesus.

I am not a patient man. My wife is much more patient than me, as are many others I know. I think of the dear patience of a close friend whose debilitating illness has not been healed by the Lord and his desire to keep pressing in to follow Jesus anyway. It’s an inspiration to me.

Of course, I don’t think he’ll recognise himself in that sentence, because I don’t think he thinks he’s a patient man.

Today’s passage in Polycarp is:

Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because “alms delivers from death.” Be all of you subject one to another, having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles,” that you may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct.

Stand fast! Because of the example of Jesus and of the saints that we’ve already heard we should stand firm. Christians are to be boulders. The sort of obstacle that the wind and waves of life can’t move.

I find myself drawn to rural examples. I’ve lived in cities for my whole adult life, and for all my primary school had a flock of sheep (yes, really) I don’t know much about the countryside. I do recall once driving up a steep track in Wales that a flock of sheep had decided to sit down on at night. Progress was difficult.

Progress is even harder if something larger than your car, like a cow, decides to stop in the middle of the road. You can’t do anything about it except wait. The cow has no interest in the urgency of my journey, they go their own way. Oddly, Christians in this analogy are the cow, not the car.

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