Summary: Only the love of Christ, seasoned by suffering, can birth a common mind.
We begin today with a story. Well, more of a fable. It was first told in short story format by Jane Tyson Clement -- a 20th-century poet, playwright and novelist. The title is, "The Storm." Here's a retelling.
Once upon a time, in the Midlands of England, there was a certain village -- a picturesque community of thatched-roof houses along the banks of a river. In this village dwelt three brothers. The oldest was the ferryman; the middle one, the miller; and the youngest the forester, who looked after the game preserve belonging to their lord.
These brothers had done well for themselves. They had much to be proud of. But they were far from happy. None of them had ever found anyone to share his life with. They lived solitary lives. Once a week they would gather at the village tavern for some venison stew and a flagon of ale, but they spoke but a few words. Each brother seemed lost in his dark thoughts.
That is, until the day a terrible storm rose up. For many hours before it struck, the air had grown heavy and humid. Strange white seabirds were sighted, soaring over inland meadows. Charcoal-gray storm clouds gathered overhead. The songbirds fell silent.
The three brothers hastened to their respective houses. The storm began at dusk, with howling winds, torrential rain and the creaking of trees bent over at unnatural angles. The darkness was complete -- the sort of darkness that fills a person with dread.
The forester, snug in his stone cottage, was well aware of what the storm could do. Walking back to his house, he'd mentally noted a large, dead beech tree a short distance from his front door. Surely it would fall. He could only hope and pray it would miss his house.
A chill wind was moaning through his chimney. Then he heard the noise he'd dreaded -- splintering wood. With a mighty thump, the trunk of the great tree crashed to the ground.
It barely missed his house. But then, in the stillness after its falling, he heard another sound -- one he'd never expected to hear. It was the sound of a child crying.
This couldn't be. It had to be an illusion, a trick of the mind. But then the forester heard it again: the cry of a youngster, just outside his thick, oaken door. Should he risk unbarring it? Only a madman would go out on a night like this. But the child's cries beckoned him onward.
Out towards the fallen tree he went. He couldn't see the child, but he could hear him. Reaching into the tangled branches, he felt a small, wet face. Touching the boy's chest, he could feel a furiously beating heart. He eased the little boy free from the tangled branches, clutched him to his chest and fought the wind all the way back to the house.
Who was this mysterious child? He was no more than two or three years old. And how had he found his way into the branches of the fallen tree? No time to ponder such mysteries -- he wrapped the boy in warm blankets and hugged him to himself until he felt the little one's breathing slow. The two of them fell into a peaceful sleep.
He awoke to a blaze of sunlight and the singing of birds. The door of his cottage was unbarred and wide open. Of the child he had rescued, there was no sign. "Little one! Where are you?" he cried. Only the songbirds answered. Then he noticed the devastation of his beloved forest. He thought only of his brothers and the other villagers and ran off to help them.
Breathless, he arrived at the house of his brother, the miller. Pounding on the door, he called out his brother's name. When his brother answered, the forester poured out the story of the strange child he'd found cradled in the branches of a fallen tree -- and how he'd vanished the next morning.
"Will wonders never cease?" his brother exclaimed. "I, too, was behind closed doors in my cottage, burrowed deep into the blankets on my bed, when I heard a child crying. I threw on my cloak and went down the path as fast as I could. Right by the edge of the millpond, I found him -- so very close to the water! I scooped him up, brought him home and fed him hot broth from the pot on the stove. But the next morning, he was gone!"
The two of them rushed out, then, to the home of their brother, the ferryman. They discovered he, too, had had a similar experience. He'd heard cries coming from the opposite side of the river, poled his boat across and rescued the little boy. But when morning came, he was gone.
The three brothers looked at each other in stunned silence. Then they took in the storm's devastation all around. But their hearts were unaccountably light. They noticed the bright sunshine. It was a day of rare beauty.
"It was the same with each of us," the forester said slowly to his two brothers. "We reached out to the child -- and now the world is newly made."
No one worked harder than they to help their neighbors rebuild. Everywhere one of the brothers showed up, sorrow was eased, hope grew afresh and an unaccountable warmth crept into every heart.
From that day forward, the three brothers -- the forester, the miller and the ferryman -- were different men. Where their lives had once been sadness and gloom, now they showed forth contagious joy. The miller sang at his work -- something he'd seldom done before. The forester always had a child from the village by his side, as he walked through the woods. As for the ferryman, he delighted in giving children free rides across the river.
The joy of the three brothers spread to everyone. Travelers who knew the place marveled at how the very atmosphere had changed. No one went hungry or cold. No one suffered loneliness or fear. It was as though a new kind of joy had been set loose. "It was during the great storm that everything changed," the villagers would say. "Unexpectedly, joy came to us, and the world was new made."1
"Make my joy complete," writes Paul to the Christians of Philippi. "Be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind."
It's an extraordinary statement, when you truly consider it. Having a common mind is one thing -- a rare gift, in and of itself. But "having the same love?" What on earth can Paul mean by that?
Most often we tend to read this passage as though it were a letter written to individuals. But it wasn't. Our English language, unlike many others, uses the same, second-person pronoun, "you," for both the singular and the plural. It's hard for English-speakers to distinguish between an assortment of individuals or a collective group. Not so of New Testament Greek, as Paul's clearly addressing the entire community. Our closest English equivalent may be the word "y'all." Imagine Paul saying to the Philippians, "Y'all have the same love." That's how the Philippians understood it.
It's a rare enough thing for two people to share the same love -- but an entire community? For this to happen, such love must have some independent existence, outside our individual lives.
We're so used to thinking of love as something we create for ourselves -- a treasure to be jealously guarded and protected, lest we lose it. It boggles the mind to think of love as freely, lavishly and endlessly distributed throughout an entire community. But that's exactly what Paul believes is possible. Such love is not so much an individual possession -- "yours and mine" -- as it is "yours, mine and ours."
The love of Christ is bigger than any one of us, even any two of us. It's more of a great sea in which we all swim. And so we can be confident it will never run out.
Such is the discovery many survivors of hurricanes, floods and tornadoes have made. A storm has a way of bringing love out in a community. Suddenly, neighbors who barely know each other, who would barely nod to one another in passing, find they have something in common. They've been fighting the storm together. The storm has stripped away not only the leaves from the trees. It has stripped away their separateness.
Never fear that love will run out -- for, in Christ, God has arranged for us a limitless supply. Individual relationships may sometimes disappoint, but the love that flows forth from the Almighty through Christ into our hearts knows no limit. May we never hesitate to share Christ's love with others -- for truly it is without measure and without price!