Philippians, Tim Kaine and Stephen Colbert: Who Knew?



Imagine my surprise when Stephen Colbert featured several quotes from the Bible all in one episode of the Tonight Show!  Not that liberals can’t be religious but Christianity hasn’t been fashionable in Hollywood since Jane Fonda found God and it turned out not to be Ted Turner.  
The first quote came from his guest, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine.  Kaine is a practicing Catholic (as is Colbert) and spent a year in Honduras as a Jesuit missionary worker.  He taught welding and carpentry to the Hondurans when he could have been at Harvard, which is what I call living your faith.  You have to admire that.  When Colbert asked Kaine for his favorite quote from the Bible Kaine offered Philippians 2:3. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.   
Kaine was followed by Tony Hale, an actor on a truly vile HBO series called VEEP.  Hale is also creator of The Haven, a place for NYC Christian artists.  Colbert asked him what he could offer from Philippians and Hale quoted 4:4-7.  Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  The man knows his Bible.   
I don’t watch Colbert by choice.  You have to wade through six minutes of boredom for 20 seconds of funny, which essentially means Colbert can’t hold Johnny Carson’s coat let alone sit in his chair.  Nevertheless, I was impressed with the obvious commitment to Bible study on the part of Colbert and his chosen guests.  And it got me looking at the 11th book of the New Testament.  If it has been a while since you did the same, pick it up.  Philippians takes up only 2 ½ pages in my Bible, and it is worth 30 minutes of study. 
Philippians is the last of Paul of Tarus’s four “prison” epistles (Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon and Philippians).  While Colossians was meant to address a specific time of crises, Philippians is a message of pure joy.  Paul ventured to the Greek town of Philippi around 50 AD, establishing the first Christian community in Europe, and in this letter Paul (imprisoned in Rome) recalls the happiness of this time in his discipleship. 
The quotes are designed to show how people of Christian beliefs may build a thriving and harmonious community by modeling their lives on Christ. It is one of the most quoted books in the Bible and we can all use a little community building right now.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ…
…And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God…
…Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…
…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things…
…And the God of peace will be with you.
So, maybe it is true that love is love is love is love is love.  Keep the faith.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more