Grace and Peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
When my kids were little, each one played soccer, then tee ball, basketball, moving to Maryland they started lacrosse. Each one got a special shelf to display the trophies they got along the way.
Trophies: You’d think life is given meaning by the number of trophies you can put on your shelf wouldn’t you? St. Paul in Philippians makes a list of his. He talks about it as being “confident in the flesh”. He is a proud descendant of Benjamin and a Hebrew of Hebrews. Under the law, he says, he was blameless.
What Paul is doing is making a list of everything he took pride in. He is giving you the grand tour of his trophy self.
I can relate.
I came from humble origins. Neither of my parents graduated from High School. I always felt like my classmates in high school and college had a “leg up” on me. I couldn’t get enough education and didn’t stop until I got a Doctorate. I even did a genealogical research with my sister to discover a Revolutionary War ancestor so we could joint the D.A. R. All of it, to prove, in some way, a pedigree and prove my self worth.
Like Paul I felt that my self worth was something I had to prove, an achievement that I had to display, like a trophy on a shelf.
But what does Paul say about all the things that defined his self worth? He says he regards them as loss, more than that, he says they are rubbish – the actual Greek word is shocking – excrement. But he is shocking his readers, many of them like him who could claim the same ancestry, the same heritage, the same trophy shelf, to show them that his entire identity has been reformed since he came to know Jesus Christ as Lord.
We know that Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter. Prison food, prison conditions were terrible. Many died in prison from diseases they contracted there – particularly by infections born of the damp, dank conditions. But Paul, in spite of the misery of his prison circumstances is filled with hope. His hope is born of being part of the body of Christ, of being baptized into Christ’s body. Because the baptized participate already in Christ’s eternal life, Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…” Paul met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus and his life was forever changed. He knows that nothing could ever really hurt him again. Nothing in life was to be feared. God is unequivocally for us and has joined to human life in Christ and taken on our worst enemies – suffering and death – and rose from them victorious. There is nothing more to fear, nothing else that could hurt us.
In 1 Corinthians, the third chapter, Paul tells us mighty worlds of reassurance born of our being present in Christ; body. “No one should boast, he says about what human beings can do. Actually everything belongs to you. This world, life and death, the present and the future – all these are yours and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.
What does all this mean for us?
Well, the first thing it means is that we are to look over our personal history to see evidence of God’s fingerprints in our lives. How has God guided and blessed you? How has God kept, preserved, defended and protected you throughout your life.
God gave me two amazing teachers when I was in 10th grade. Like many boys, I was a bit ADD or ADHD in my early school years. I wasn’t dumb but I wasn’t really interested in school too much either. These two teachers, one history, one English saw my potential. They encouraged me, gave me extra reading and brought in books from their personal libraries to let me read and enjoy. I felt so honored. With their encouragement, I began a journey of insatiable intellectual curiosity. Looking back, I know God gave them to me.
I recently became aware of a man, who late in life, was downsized from a job that he did well, but had never brought him joy or fulfillment. He took a chance; listened to internal encouragement and direction from the Holy Spirit – this is his claim and his words not mine – and went to cooking school and became a chef. He worked in Europe, studying Italian cuisine and came home to America and opened a restaurant. He is wildly successful and gives God the glory.
There are sufferings too that each of us has faced. Yet, in retrospect we can see how God has used those sufferings and disappointments whether they are failed marriages, or disastrous family relationships to provoke growth and strength in us. Often times it is when we stop relying on ourselves, on our own strengths and skills, and throw ourselves entirely on God that we discover that God carries us.
Paul ends this passage with important words that capture his passion for spiritual growth; “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead”. He is pressing on to win the prize of which God was calling him heavenward.
The incumbent president that Ronald Reagan defeated in 1980 was Jimmy Carter. While Carter was in office, his family’s business was held in a blind trust so that his presidential decisions would not be colored by the temptation of personal benefit. When Carter and his wife got off the plane after his successor’s inauguration, they discovered that the family’s assets had been squandered, and the business was al least a million dollars in debt. So, after a period of grieving, the defeated president and his wife hunkered down and began to rebuild their lives.
Regardless of your political affiliations, there are many reasons to admire Jimmy Carter’s faith. He is certainly one who has forgotten what’s behind him and strains forward fo the prize. Just about every weekend, President Carter teaches Sunday school in a little Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. Because the church cannot afford a janitor or groundskeeper, every member pitches in. When it’s their turn, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter clean the bathrooms of the church. Every Saturday in the summer, a man who once was the most powerful leader in the world, and now a Nobel laureate, mounts a raiding mower and cuts his church’s lawn.
Forgetting what is behind, and straining forward to what’s ahead, let us focus this week on deepening our relational knowledge of Christ, our ever increasing awareness of his power, and greater sense of meaning in our suffering, as we walk with the Lord and grow in him.
In Jesus’ name Amen.
Who We Are