Eyes On the Prize (Philippians 3:4-14)

Sermon as Preached on 3/17/13 at Lambs and Evington UMC

 

There’s the famous song that is played during the Christmas season that says it’s the most wonderful time of the year. While it is hard to argue against Christmas time being wonderful time of the year, I have to admit that to me, right now is the most wonderful time of the year. When else in the year can you have the beauty of snow, with snow angels and snow ball fights one week, and then the very next week enjoy a day at the lake or a picnic in the mountains?  For children and teachers spring break is right around the corner so for many families that means a time of vacation or a nice family outing. In the church we of course are inching closer and closer to the wonderful celebration of Easter, and with every Sunday get more and more excited about its arrival. And of course, the cherry on the top of what makes this time of the year the most wonderful time of the year is (put on jersey) March Madness! That’s right this time of the year where college basketball teams from all over the nation gather to compete for the national championship. Different teams from Liberty to Notre Dame, VCU to Duke face the daunting task of trying to win at least six games against the best teams that nation has to offer all with their eyes on the prize of being named national champions.  Players and coaches must put in long hours of studying game films, even more hours of practice, they have to travel all over the nation in a matter of weeks all while completing their academic studies.  They must avoid the distractions of interviews, social media, and whatever the sports news are saying about them. They have to avoid the temptation of looking past a team that they should easily beat because what makes March Madness so crazy is all of the upsets that can happen. As a Duke fan trust me, I know this all too well. These next few weeks are a time in which players must avoid distractions and at the same time they must embrace the things that are going to help them reach their goal.

            Avoid distractions and embrace things that help to reach a goal; it kind of sounds like what we have been talking about all of Lent doesn’t it? You may have been wondering where I was going with all of this, but now hopefully the pieces are starting to fall in place. In fact, in our scripture for today, Paul himself seems to also be making some sort of analogy to a sporting event, though more likely some sort of race. He says, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,  I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Not that I have already reached the goal, but I press on… I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul talks about striving after a goal, pressing on towards that goal. Paul even admits that he has not yet reached that goal. So what is the goal that Paul is seeking after? It of course is not a national championship, but it also isn’t something else that we would expect such as fame, fortune, or power. The prize that Paul is seeking after is the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ.

            The prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ; this sounds nice and wonderful but what does it actually mean?  Well, in our own Methodist heritage we have special words to describe what Paul is talking about. We would describe what Paul is talking about as Christian Perfection.  Now many people here this word perfection and get scared. They think of this as an unobtainable goal, that there is no way that we as humans can be perfect because we just make far too many mistakes. We forget to change our clocks, we forget what our spouse told us to get from the grocery store, we got a ticket for speeding,  our jump shot is horrible, and we can’t sing as beautiful as the people we hear on the radio.  How can we be perfect? If this is what we mean by perfect, then yes we can’t be perfect. We will always mess up, we will make errors, we will forget things; that’s all true.  This is not the type of perfection we are talking about however when we talk about Christian perfection. We are not trying to become Mr. or  Mrs. Perfect, the ones you see on T.V. or in the newspaper on wished that you could be like them;  we instead accept that simply things that we just are not good at because we aren’t trying to become like God. In fact true Christian Perfection is having or will fully submit to God. Christian Perfection is when or thoughts, or actions, or emotions are all aligned with the will of God. It when we say not my will but yours be done and actually live it out every day of our lives. John Wesley  believed that Christian Perfection was actually possibly within in this lifetime, though it something that most people will be striving towards all of their lives. Even Paul admits that he is not yet there.  Far too often people mistake the beginning of the journey  for the end. The grace of the Holy Spirit works in our lives before we even realize it and leads us towards that moment of baptism in which we are washed by the cleansing waters and join with others as the body of Christ; and yet many people think that this is the end of the road. Like a team that celebrates being selected for the tournament, it truly is a huge accomplishment, and yet it is only the beginning, we must keep our eye on the prize. Baptism is but the beginning of our new life in Christ, a life in which we must continue on towards our goal, towards that prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ, towards Christian Perfection.

                        What keeps us from our goal?  To answer this let’s look at what Paul says at the beginning of this passage.  “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:
 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;  as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” If we continue with our March Madness theme, in basketball you have Cinderella teams, those teams that seem to come out of nowhere and win big games, and at the same time you have your bluebloods, those teams that always seem to be dominant, who have the best players, the best coaches, the money and the fan bases. Paul is a blueblood. In our scripture he tells us that if anyone has a reason to be confident in the flesh it was him. He was a Jew of noble esteem, born out of an esteemed heritage. He was a Pharisee, a man of power and knowledge. As we know he was a persecutor of Christians, since he had the power to uphold the law. In other words, Paul had all of the power that any Jew at that time could really ever wish for, Paul had it all.

            And with all of this Paul tells us, “More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”  Paul tells us that all he had, which was so much, he regards as loss. He even goes say that he regards these things as rubbish. Now my translation says rubbish, but that’s a very kind way of putting it. The word that Paul uses really means excrement or waste, or in our everyday language we could even call it….well I let you use your own imagination. Paul calls all of these things waste, rubbish or whatever because in fact that is exactly what they are when compared to knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. It is not that the things of this Earth and our stature in the world are in themselves evil, but the evil comes when we seek first after these things. The evil occurs when our focus shifts away from God and onto these things, when we fail to keep our eyes on the prize. Paul realizes this after his conversion experience on the road to Damascus. That all of his power, his knowledge, his stature and social upbringing really just don’t mean as much when you have Christ in your life and are striving towards that Christian Perfection.

Seeking earthly power and possessions are not the only things that stop us for striving for our goal.  In fact, we often fall short of our goal because we begin to focus on things that are good rather than things that are great. For example,  Paul says, “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,” Here Paul is showing that there is a difference between the law and faith. Now when we say law, we have to avoid thinking about that in our modern context, separation of church and state as we know it would be a foreign idea to them; in fact government as we know it was not the same. When Paul talks about the law, he is not talking about Parking tickets or lawsuits. When Paul talks about the law he is talking about the Jewish Law; the scriptures.  Remember that Paul was a Pharisee, that he was well versed in scripture, he read it and studied it and tried to execute it to the best of his abilities. There is a tendency for Christians to reject the law, but we must remember that the Jewish law is extremely important, after all it is part of our Bible. The law was given to Moses to teach the Israelites how to live according to God’s will. The law set out to unite the Israelites as the chosen people of God, and also set out to protect the weak and the helpless. Following the law is a very good thing, even for us today.

            Yet what Paul is reminding us is that of our focus is squarely on following the law, then we are not looking big enough. We have settled for good instead of great. For now we know God in an entirely different way. As we talked about last week, we have now experienced God in flesh through Jesus Christ. We have heard his stories, we have seen his miracles, we have witnessed his death and resurrection and we have be washed clean and united by his blood. To continue to focus squarely on the law without acknowledging the magnitude and wonders of Jesus Christ would be a travesty. The point is not that the law is bad or wrong, but that we experience greater things than the law through Jesus Christ.

            For Paul it was the law, for us it may be something else that we are directing our gaze towards; that we are settling for. It can be quite tricky since many of these good things help lead us towards the Perfecting grace that we strive towards. For example we could be wonderful students of the Bible, reading it, going to any studies about it, and yet if we are not doing it for the greater meaning of seeking to align or will with Christ’s then we have settled for good over great. If we are active in service in service, helping as many people as we can, but do it for our own benefit and not because we striving to follow God’s will, then once again we are settling for good over great. The Lord has great things in store for us, but we must continue to focus on God. We cannot allow our gaze to be diverted away from God, and we cannot allow our gaze to become too narrow causing us to miss the amazing scope of God’s glory and grace. As Paul tells us we must press on towards the goal of our heavenly call, press on towards Christian Perfection, that closest walk with God. We must keep our eyes on the prize.