"Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving"
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- Nov 23
- 5 min read
Paul implies that if you work your way through this checklist of holiness, “the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds.”
Psalm 100 and Philippians 4:2-7
November 23, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
In her novel, Gilead, Maryilynne Robinson writes about a young couple walking after a rain:
“On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose,
the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch,
and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them,
and they laughed and took off running,
the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress
as if she were a little bit disgusted,
but she wasn’t.”
“I don’t know why I thought of that now,” Robinson continues,
“except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments
that water was made primarily for blessing,
and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.”
Euodia and Syntyche were not like that couple – lighthearted and awash in blessing.
No, they were having a fight – something serious enough that Paul felt the need to call them out in front of God and the whole congregation in a letter to be read publicly!
(Can you imagine the embarrassment?)
We don’t know what they were fighting about.
Maybe there were like Mary and Martha – one reflective, one busy – at odds all the time.
Maybe they disagreed about some point of theology or approach to ministry.
Maybe they were competing over who would lead the church.
Or maybe they just irritated each other for some trivial reason.
Mark Swartz got under my skin in High School by writing too loudly! Scratch, scratch, scratch!
(Looking back, I was irked because we were taking a test and I didn’t know the answers.)
So maybe Euodia snored or Syntyche sang off key and they just got on each other’s nerves.
Whatever the reason, Paul thought it needed to be addressed, for their good and the good of the congregation.
You know what that’s like. You may be heading to a Thanksgiving dinner where a couple of your relatives don’t get along.
Maybe they argue over politics or WVU versus Marshall.
Maybe they were rivals growing up and never outgrew it.
Or maybe they’ve never agreed on the best way to cook a turkey and it’s gotten ugly!
You know how much you wish they could just get along?
I’ll bet Euodia and Syntyche’s friends felt the same way!
So how do you fix a broken relationship, heal wounds, resolve an argument?
Paul has some ideas and outlines them in the next few verses.
Though it must be said that this is personal to Paul. The three of them had struggled together in the work of the gospel. He knows what good and faithful people they are and it clearly breaks his heart to see them at odds. But counseling is not a long-distance endeavor. Nor is healing.
So he asks the congregation for help.
They can encourage and model helpful behaviors.
They can hug and bring casseroles to both Euodia and Syntyche.
They can look for needful compromises and coach apologies, face to face.
And maybe they are ready to do all that, but Paul has something else in mind.
First, he tells the waring duo to “rejoice in the Lord, always!”
It seems like an odd start. As Scott Hoezee observes, you wouldn’t think to separate two kids fighting on the playground and tell them to rejoice! But Paul does.[2]
The word “always” is the key – it suggests “regardless of circumstance”.
Holly Hearon writes, “There are many things that can be a cause of rejoicing: good news; an unexpected reprieve; achievement of a hard-won goal. In some cases, the ‘joy’ will be fleeting; [but] where the cause of rejoicing has an enduring impact, the ‘joy’ will continue. [It] sustains us even when we are worn down by life challenges. It is rooted in an ongoing relationship, built on trust, [and] is able to negotiate the moments of joylessness in ways that ultimately work for good.”[3]
Second Paul tells them to “let [their] gentleness be known to everyone.”
It is as if he is saying to Euodia and Syntyche, you’ve got a lot to deal with: external persecution, stewardship season, long lines at the church’s soup kitchen. No one is at their best right now, including you, so be gentle to each other.
He wants them “to recognize,” in the words of one scholar, “that we have a choice in how we behave towards others. It is not just about being nice or kind; it is about the exercise of power.”[4]
They can dig in their heels or they can show forbearance, reasonableness, and generosity.
Years later, people will forget what they were arguing about, but not about the reconciliation.
Third, Paul says, “the Lord is near.”
Euodia and Syntyche know this. They have taught new believers that Emmanuel, God-with-us, lived and preached and healed among us, and that he promised to never leave us, gifting us with the Holy Spirit, so that whatever we are going through, Jesus will walk through it with us!
But Paul is also comforting them with the nearness of Christ’s return.
That puts things into perspective. It means that they will not have to endure persecution forever.
But it also hints that they don’t want their potential last words to one another to be hurtful ones.
Finally, Paul advises, “Don’t worry about anything. Pray!”
In her book, Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris wrote that “when at midlife she finally joined a church, she did so for the best possible reason: she had become a Christian. Alas, the only church available in her small South Dakota town was in the throes of a dreadful series of controversies, brought on by the farm crisis of the 1980s. [Now this congregation included both] bank officers as well as the farmers on whose farms the bank was foreclosing. Thus upon entering the congregation she found a church in utter turmoil, with its members behaving about as badly as it is possible for grown-ups to behave. Things were a mess to the point that she knew that the only thing she and the other members could do was pray. [Since] she was a new Christian in need of a church, and this was the only church she had, she prayed and worked and waited.”
Paul implies that if you work your way through this checklist of holiness, “the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds.”
I’d like to be able to tell you it’s as easy as that; that Paul’s advice was not only a solution for Euodia and Syntyche, but for a small church in South Dakota. But I can’t do that. We only have this one letter to the Phuilippian church. We don’t know whether they reached resolution.
Perhaps we can take hope in the fact that it worked in Norris’ congregation. She writes,
“In the end things leveled off, although not before the pastor who had helped her become a Christian was forced out as scapegoat. In the long run, somehow grace gets through, somehow worship happens, somehow wonderful ministry gets done for a broken world, and somehow glimmers of the God of all peace shine through the cracks of our brokenness.”
Still, I like to think that Euodia and Syntyche found harmony and a place of blessing.
That would be a worthy way to enter God’s gates with thanksgiving! Amen
[1] “La Ofrenda, or, The Offering” by Saturnino Herrán, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN
[2] From his reflections on the text for cepreaching.org, 10/15/17
[3] From her reflections on the text for workingpreacher.org, 12/16/18
[4] Ibid
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