Sermon for August 13, 2006

PRESS ON!!

6^th in a series based on the book of Philippians

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey Martz

Scripture: Philippians 3:4b –14 –  from the Revised English Bible.

If anyone makes claims of that kind, I can make a stronger case for myself: ⁵circumcised on my eighth day, Israelite by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born and bred; in my practice of the law a Pharisee, ⁶in zeal for religion a persecutor of the church, by the law’s standard of righteousness without fault. ⁷But all such assets I have written off because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I count everything sheer loss, far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I did in fact forfeit everything. I count it so much rubbish, for the sake of gaining Christ ⁹and finding myself in union with him, with no righteousness of my own based on the law, nothing but the righteousness which comes from faith in Christ, given by God in response to faith. ¹⁰My one desire is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings in growing conformity with his death, ¹¹in hope of somehow attaining the resurrection from the dead.

¹²It is not that I have already achieved this. I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me. ¹³My friends, I do not claim to have hold of it yet. What I do say is this: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press towards the finishing line, to win the heavenly prize to which God has called me in Christ Jesus.

Our staff team of 12 program staff members that meets together weekly did something new and risky a couple of months ago.

We participated in a feedback exercise in which all twelve of us evaluated each other’s job performance and gave evaluations of what each of us does well, how each of us contributes to the mission and vision of our congregation, and where we each need to do some things differently and to improve.

It was a scary and risky and very potentially productive experience and we all learned some positive things about ourselves and some ways we can keep growing and improving. My assumption in asking our team to do this three day exercise is that we are all doing some things in ministry very well—we have one of the best ministry teams in our church that I know of in our denomination—and that we all have areas of improvement and growth (the image is the one captured in the Japanese word Kaizen, continual improvement).

I thought of that experience and process when I read the words from this chapter of Philippians where Paul says about himself that he is not finished yet, he has not become perfect or complete or whole yet, and that he is still moving toward the vision that God has for him when God called him to do what he is doing as a missionary and evangelist. He reminds us that once he boasted about how justified he was, how perfect and legalistically correct he was as a super Pharisee and now he sees all of that chapter of his life as rubbish or dung compared to his ongoing journey in Christ.

Think about this with me—this leader in the early Jesus movement who is the reason the movement spread after the resurrection, says that he still has a lot of room to grow. He is the one who has urged us earlier to keep on working on our own salvation. He is the one who in his Corinthian letter says that all we can do now is see through a glass dimly and then later things will become clearer for us. Paul is not arrogant or proud about having already finished the race or the struggle; he is still in it and being formed and changed by Christ.

He has the same attitude of humility that he has encouraged us to have in chapter 2, and it is a hallmark of being a follower, a disciple of Christ.

It is the same humility that we can see in an article this week about the most famous and revered Christian leader in our own country, a man who like Paul is approaching the end of his life and is transparent about how he has become less certain about some things than when he was younger.

Billy Graham is in his twilight years and in an important article in this week’s Newsweek by editor Jon Meacham who interviewed Graham in his North Carolina home, Graham sounds, in his humility, like Paul does in the Philippian letter! He too has changed on some things. The evangelist who was for a while the counselor to many presidents says he is no longer interested in making political pronouncements and that he believes sincere Christians can disagree both about theology and about politics. He says that he believes that we need not look at every verse of the Bible literally and this is different from what he used to think. Like Paul, Billy Graham has some “used to thinks” and I hope you and I do also if we are doing what Paul encourages us to: leave the past behind and keep moving forward toward God.

Meacham says that Graham’s spirit of moderation is a welcome change for people who are hungry for a ceasefire in the culture wars. Graham refuses to be judgmental and he declines to render absolute verdicts about who is going to heaven and who is not. He was humbled and chastened a few years ago when he heard some of the tape recordings from Richard Nixon’s office and has apologized abjectly for his negative comments about Jews. Today he is willing to let God decide about the eternal destination of each person and says that he wishes he had been more active in the Civil Rights movement with Dr. King.

He says about himself, “Much of my life has been a pilgrimage, constantly learning, changing, growing and maturing.”

I could not help comparing Dr. Graham’s humility and the humility of the apostle Paul with the very different attitude I saw as I read the book by Ann Coulter for our book discussion tomorrow night in our Monday book group.

Coulter, unlike Billy Graham is quite sure of who is going to hell and who is not and she says, frankly, that she can’t help being happy about some of those people ending up in eternal damnation. We are reading and discussing her book not because I want to hold up her style of writing as a healthy example of civil dialogue in our country but because she describes herself as a Christian and she has quite a following. What I saw in her book so far is that her vision of Christianity and the vision of Christianity from Billy Graham and the apostle Paul are very different.

Ann Coulter’s absolute certitude and dogmatic statements fit right in with a survey I saw a few weeks ago in the Denver Post where some religious people said that they were very certain about the destination of their eternal souls and that they also know that many of their friends were headed for hell because those friends did not have all the correct beliefs.

Paul is saying in these verses, “Once I thought I had all the correct beliefs and now I see that all of that was not just wrong but was rubbish compared to having a relationship with God in Christ!”

Being a Christian is about a living relationship with God and not about believing the right doctrines! Does that sound familiar to any of you who have read “The Heart of Christianity” volume by Dr. Borg? And, there is more than one way to be Christian says Billy Graham and Dr. Borg; Ann Coulter most emphatically does not agree with that!!

Billy Graham seems to say in the interview that he has learned to be suspicious about anyone who is completely dogmatic and completely certain about everything. It is the same suspicion echoed in another book I read this week by Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor who now teaches on the faculty at Piedmont College in Georgia and is a prolific writer and columnist for the Christian Century. She says that when she was a parish priest she learned to be suspicious of members who had everything all wrapped up in a neat theological package with no left over questions or doubts.

She says she has learned that faith in God has more to do with trust than with certainty. Faith is a living relationship of trust. It is not much about certainty.

Another Episcopal priest, John Danforth, retired US Senator who is a mainstream Republican and speaks for the religious center as well, says that also in a recent article that criticizes religious fundamentalism for being too smug and certain about the absolutes that people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson always argue for.  Danforth calls us to be more humble and less certain abut which path is the only right path for all Christians.

There is that call for humility again, that invitation from Paul and from Billy Graham to take the long view and to remember that we are still looking through the glass darkly or dimly and that our perspective is finite and flawed.

Jesus talks about this attitude of humility in the Sermon on the Mount in the beatitudes—the statements that begin “Blessed are… He says blessed are those who are still hungry and thirsty for upright living for they shall be filled”  He does not bless those who are smug and self- satisfied and who think they have arrived and know everyone else who has not arrived and those who are doomed and damned.

More importantly, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.” What does that mean—those who are poor in spirit? How would you paraphrase that?

One commentator says it means people who know how much they don’t know—who realize how spiritually needy they are because then they can be helped. If we are like Paul was when he was a good Pharisee, we can’t be helped because we don’t think we need help!!

Blessed are those who realize their spiritual neediness because if we realize our neediness, we can be filled and there is hope for us!! There is not as much hope if we believe we have arrived.

Most of us believe that in this congregation and that is why there is such strong participation in mission projects and Bible study groups and Disciple classes—in fact over 220 of you are signed up for Disciple classes beginning next month and there is still room for others the next four weeks!

I want to end by focusing on what Paul does in the last verses. He uses some sports imagery as he often does and says that what he is doing now is leaving the past behind-forgetting what is behind and focusing on what lies ahead, I press toward the goal or the finishing line.

He gives us direction here. What do you need to leave behind in your life this morning? What do you need to forget and leave in the past so that you too can now press forward toward the high calling that God has for you?

God, we thank you for Paul’s example that he, like us and even like Billy Graham, is on a pilgrimage of change and growth and maturity. Help us to let go of whatever it is in our past that we need to leave here today and to concentrate on the calling you have and the future that you want for us. Amen.

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