One of my friends in ministry posts the same thing almost every Thursday night. He, like me and many other pastors, takes Fridays as a day off in lieu of Sundays. But unlike me and many other pastors, he is extremely disciplined at actually doing so, regardless of how crazy things are.
I have gotten much better about it; during the 
pandemic I started practicing what I call a digital Sabbath on Fridays, which is mostly about not checking, writing, or responding to email, which takes up a surprising amount of time and energy during the week. I honestly don’t know what pastoring would have been like before email, because of all the time you would have had for other things.
But I do sometimes let my sermon-writing bleed over into Fridays because of having to do other things on Thursday that I didn’t get done earlier in the week, and I sometimes work on other projects on Fridays because there just isn’t enough time otherwise. But not my friend; almost every Thursday night, I see his regular weekly post, which simply says, “the work isn’t done, but it’s time to stop. #Sabbath.”
One of the concepts in interfaith work that I like most is called “holy envy.” It’s when you admire something that is a part of another religious tradition and not your own, but which you admire and wish was a part of yours. For me, one of the biggest objects of holy envy is the Jewish Sabbath. I think Christianity made a huge mistake when it discarded the Sabbath law. It’s obviously something that we can still choose to practice, but that’s much, much harder.
God knew what God was doing when God made it a law, because God knew that if it wasn’t an absolute prohibition on work, we would find loopholes and workarounds and exceptions and pretty soon it would fall by the wayside entirely. Which is exactly what Christians have done with it, which is why God is so explicit in the commandment in the first place. It’s the second-longest of the ten commandments, second only to the one about not worshiping idols, and for the same reasons: God had to close the loopholes because it would be so tempting to find ways around it.
So God says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.” Everyone, everything, does no work for one day a week; no exceptions. The law is that the work isn’t finished, but it’s time to stop.
Holding tight to that practice, to that law, makes it clear that the world doesn’t stop when we do. It makes it clear that the world is fully and finally in God’s hands, not ours. And if God, the creator and ruler of the universe, took a day off after creating everything, how can we possibly think that we or our work are somehow more essential and more pressing than that? Honestly, it’s close to blasphemy to think that about ourselves, and even closer to idolatry to think that about our work, whatever it might be and however good or important it is.
We need to understand and experience, on a regular basis, that the work is never truly finished, but there are times that it can or should stop. And that is very, very hard for us, especially in a U.S. cultural context, where our work is generally such an integral part of our identity that we often struggle to know who we are without it. And that makes stopping work, leaving things unfinished, very, very difficult, even for just one day.
One of the best examples of that difficulty is with Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony.” Schubert was a composer and a contemporary of Beethoven, and like Beethoven, was a major figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic periods in European music. One of his best and most famous works was his eighth symphony, or as it is most commonly known, the “Unfinished symphony.”
That’s because, as exquisite as it is, there are only two movements in it, while a complete symphony is almost always four. There is a third movement that he had sketched out on piano, but he never wrote the full orchestration for it, and nothing whatsoever related to a fourth movement has ever been found. It’s inherently intriguing that he wrote something of such beauty and innovation (many argue that it’s the first truly Romantic symphony that was written) but never finished it.
How could he leave something like that unfinished? That, of course, has been fodder for scholarly arguments ever since it was discovered and performed forty years after Schubert’s death. Was it because he became distracted by an onset of illness that he had around that time? Or because he was himself more interested by other scores he was working on simultaneously? Others speculate that he actually did finish it but the notes haven’t been found and they remain hidden secretly in an attic somewhere in Vienna, waiting to be discovered like a real-life “Indiana Jones and the Unfinished Symphony.”
That’s pretty unlikely, but it’s theoretically possible; after all, the first two movements weren’t found until 30 years after he died. Still others believe that he ended up incorporating the rest of the symphony into another work in the same key and meter, which is really starting to push the limits of probability, but it can’t be definitely ruled out.
And some have even argued that it’s not unfinished at all, but instead that Schubert boldly created the world’s first two-movement symphony. That seems downright silly, but it was a popular position among scholars for a long time, who found it more believable than the idea that Schubert wrote half of such a sublime symphony and simply stopped working on it, leaving it unfinished.
But the truth is, it is sometimes the greatest and most beautiful things that remain unfinished, precisely because of their greatness and/or beauty. That is precisely what Paul is reminding the Philippian church in the opening of his letter to them. Paul – and I’m going to say this at the risk of coming off as too technical in terms of Biblical scholasticism and hermeneutical theory – was kind of a jerk. An utterly faithful, resolutely committed, theologically brilliant, missional genius of a jerk, but still kind of a jerk.
He could be argumentative, defensive, condescending, passive-aggressive, aggressive-aggressive, and he was all of those things and more in his letters at times. I think it’s more than OK to name that, because frankly it takes a bit of pressure off the rest of us; I mean, if Paul could be like that and still do what he did, there’s hope for all of us. But Paul clearly also deeply loved his people and his congregations; otherwise he wouldn’t have written so many letters to try to keep them on track theologically and spiritually.
That was especially true of the Philippian church. As you’ve heard me say before, Paul always tips his hand on what his letters are going to be about in the opening section. Generally, there’s a section in which he thanks God for particular attributes or practices of that particular congregation, which he then uses to set up his later points. He thanks God for the extraordinary size and diversity of the Corinthian church’s spiritual gifts, for example, which he goes on to point out is causing much of the division the congregation was experiencing as they competed over whose gifts are most important.
But for the Philippians he simply rejoices in who they are and how much love and connection he feels for them, and how grateful he is for their care and support for him. It’s why the Phillipians are often called Paul’s favorite church; he has no critique to give to them, only gratitude and love, and for Paul, that’s a pretty rare and significant statement in itself.
But within all that is a very important theological affirmation that I think he wanted the Philippians to hear, and that I think is important for us, as well, particularly today. “I am confident of this,” he tells them; “that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” There’s a whole lot packed in that one sentence.
“The day of Jesus Christ,” or course, means the last day, the day of Christ’s return to finish the redemption of this world and fully and finally establish the kingdom of God on earth. When he talks about “the one who began a good work in you,” though, he’s not talking about himself; he’s talking about God. He’s reminding them that it is God who began a good work in them.
Not Paul, which some of them might think; not they themselves, which others might think; no, it is God who began a good work in them. And he’s assuring them that God, the one who began that good work in them, will continue to bring it to completion, meaning that it is God who is continuing that work right now, and God who will ultimately finish it.
Now remember, Paul’s in prison for preaching the Gospel while writing this letter, and the Philippians are helping support him in prison because in that day you had to have people on the outside to feed you and give you clothing and medicine and whatever else you need if you were in prison, or you didn’t get it. And, obviously, the Philippians are anxious about what will happen if Paul isn’t released, precisely because they value his leadership and care about him so much.
So Paul’s reminding them that the good work in them isn’t from or about him; it is from God, and God will continue to see that work through to completion regardless of what happens to Paul. And, at least as important as all of that, the timetable is a long one. “The one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Only then will the work be actually completed, he’s reminding them. Now Paul probably thought that Jesus would be coming back in at least some of their lifetimes, based on some things he says elsewhere.
But he also acknowledges elsewhere that already at least some disciples have died, which is pretty much the ultimate version of “the work is unfinished, but it’s time to stop.” Because the important thing to remember is that they are a vitally important part of the work, but the work is bigger than any of them; God began it before any of them were there, and God will bring it to completion after at least some of them are gone, or all of them, as we now know. But what matters is the work is from God and by God; we simply get to play a part in it.
First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem, just like the Philippian Church and every other church that ever was or ever will be, is part of the Unfinished Symphony of God. We are not the composers; we are the orchestra, playing the parts that God has created for us. And one of the overlooked things about an orchestra is that it can play indefinitely if it is willing; it doesn’t depend on any one person, because there are groups for each instrument, and sometimes subgroups, like first and second violins, for example.
When I played in the school orchestra at Cetronia Elementary School in Allentown, I played trumpet, and we were each given a part within that section: first trumpet, second trumpet, third trumpet… I always like to joke that I was “last trumpet,” because I was not good, but in fairness it’s a tough instrument to play with braces. But I still had a part to play, and I played it, and if I couldn’t play a passage, there were other trumpets who could keep going.
So, theoretically, an orchestra can play forever, because it can swap out players who need to rest or leave for other ones while the music keeps going on. And the music itself, the symphony of the church’s mission and ministry, is unfinished, but not because the composer has lost interest in favor of something else, or because the work itself is complete.
Rather, it is unfinished because it is continually unfolding. God began writing the symphony of First Presbyterian before any of us were here, and it can and will continue long after all of us are gone. At some point, each us will need to say, one way or another, the work isn’t finished, but it’s time to stop, confident that the rest of the orchestra can and will keep the music going until the composer is finished.
Today is my day to say that. And I say it in the full confidence that not only can and will the music continue, but that the greatest movements in the symphony of this church’s mission and ministry are yet to come, because I, too, am confident of this: that the One who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.