Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 10/12/14
How many of you have
ever watched the show “The Biggest Loser”?
I know the name sounds a little mean, but what happens on this show is
actually pretty awesome. For those who haven’t seen the show, people who are
severely overweight or obese volunteer for months to be part of a weight loss
camp where they exercise vigorously daily and learn nutritional alternatives to
what they have been eating. At the end of the show the person who has lost the
greatest percentage of body fat becomes “the biggest loser” or in other words
the winner of the competition. While this show has been on the air for quite a
while, this year they are doing something a little different. This year they
are calling the show “The Biggest Loser: Glory Days” and the people who
participate are actually former athletes and models. It is really shocking to
see people who used to make a living off of the abilities of their bodies now
hundreds of pounds overweight. It almost makes you want to ask how is that
possible? How can former NFL, WNBA, and Olympic players be this overweight. How
could somebody who used to train on a daily basis, who would put their bodies
to their limits regularly, who I watched perform at the highest levels on
Sunday afternoon, how can they now be more out of shape than me? I think that
more than ever, this show reminds us of the dangers of complacency. It reminds
us that we cannot afford to stop and boast about what we have accomplished. It
reminds us that just like the care of our bodies is a constant struggle, the care
for our souls is constant as well.
Paul addresses this issue of complacency in our scripture
for today, but diving right into that section would be jumping the gun a
little. We need to first see how it is that Paul gets us from our message from
last week, to this danger of complacency. If we remember last week, we focused
on what is the crux of this letter to the Philippians; that is that in order to
become a disciple of Christ, we must have the same attitude as Christ, that is
humility. In other words just as Christ
who is God, emptied himself for our behalf, for us to be a true disciple, we
must be willing to empty ourselves for Christ. When we truly humble ourselves
before the Lord, something amazing happens. Slowly our heart and our souls and
our minds become more aligned with God. We become closer to God, and in turn
our actions will become more Godlike. It is amazing the transformation that
comes from this life of discipleship.
One of the great dangers of this life of discipleship is
that we can begin to boast about our transformation. It begins innocently enough, usually it
begins with a truly humble want to share the good news of Christ, but over time
pride sneaks and our story becomes less of what God has done for us and becomes
about what we have done. We’ve all seen it before, the recovering alcoholic
that goes from celebrating their own sobriety to judging all who drink anything
at all. The person who through grace has become financially stable who then
rails against all the poor and homeless who just aren’t working hard enough.
Often times it’s not even as drastic as that, in fact one of things that drives
the most people away from the church, are the members who act as though they
have it all figured out, you know the whole holier than thou approach.
Paul warns us about the danger of boasting in our faith.
It’s actually kind of funny, the way that Paul makes his point about the
dangers of boasting, is by out boasting everyone else! Paul says, “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.” For Christians today, it
is hard sometimes for us to understand exactly what it is that Paul is boasting
about, because we forget the struggle that the early church went through. This
usually begins with the fact that we forget that Jesus was himself, Jewish. What
he read was the Hebrew Scripture, he often quoted the psalms and the prophets.
He sat in discussions with the other Rabbis and the chief priests. He
participated in the Jewish holidays such as Passover. Jesus was Jewish. And so
after Jesus died, there was a wide belief the followers of Christ must first be
Jewish, including being circumcised. There was a great debate about this, but
even those who fought for the Gentiles to be part of the movement, realized
that a special allowance was being made for them, they were being added to the
family, the stories and history of what we call the Old Testament was not their
history.
With this going on in the background, and while writing
to probably a large group of Gentiles, Paul reminds them, if there is anyone
who should boast it should be him. He is circumcised. He is part of the tribe
of Benjamin, one of the tribes of Israel, meaning that he is 100% Jewish. This
is a reminder to the people of Philippi that he shares the Jewish history with
Christ, and that most of them do not. And yet he goes over and beyond this. He
says not only am I Jewish, I was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were known for their
strict adherence to the scripture and for their deep devotion to the Law. In
other words Paul is saying that not only is he Jewish, but he is part of an
elite group, one of strict discipline, and that even in this group he was one
of the most zealous. Paul really puts the people of Philippi in their place.
The beauty though is that his boast isn’t a true boast,
but an opportunity to teach about the humility that he talked about in the
previous chapter. He says, “ Yet whatever gains I had,
these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 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 says that everything
that he has to boast about is nothing, because the greatest thing of value to
him is knowing Christ. Paul even says that he regards all of these things as
rubbish, which in all honesty our translations of the Bible have softened the
harshness of what he said. The words Paul uses to describe these things he
boasted about is actually closer to feces, or excrement, or in today’s
vocabulary it would be a little four letter word that I’m not bold enough to
say this morning. Everything that Paul has to boast about is worthless, because
of the value of knowing Christ Jesus.
This is the essence of the humility of discipleship. That
nothing compares to following Christ. But Paul lesson on boasting goes much
deeper than this, because what happens when we become true disciples of Jesus
Christ? What happens when we truly take on the attitude and the mind that was
in Jesus? If we are truly striving to follow Jesus, to be more like Jesus, then
we should expect for great things to happen through the power of Christ. We
should expect to be able to feed the hungry, we should expect to be able to
heal the sick, we should expect to eat with the sinners and tax collectors and
for them to join us in the journey with Christ. I’m not making this stuff up,
look at the book of Acts and see the success that the true disciples of Christ
had. When we take on the attitude that was in Christ, when we truly put God and
neighbor before ourselves, we will see results. It is why our conference does
this whole vital congregations thing, because when you are active in worship,
when you are bringing new people in, when you are active in mission, and when
you take more time to grow in discipleship then you will see results. You will
see growth and vitality.
But what do we do with this success? This is really the
next question of discipleship. Once you have experienced success, what do you
do? Do we look and see new members in the church and stop and boast about it.
Do we pat ourselves on the back for the energy that the children are bringing
to the church? Do we congratulate ourselves for the wonderful amount of money
that we have given towards mission and outreach? I think you know what the
answer is going to be, no. “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.” All of
this is regarded as rubbish, in order that we may gain Christ. We regard
everything a loss because of the value of knowing Jesus.
At first, I think it is easy to misunderstand what it is
that Paul is trying to say. Paul isn’t
telling us that new members, or a children’s ministry, or mission giving
is a bad thing, I don’t even think that Paul is saying that here Jewish lineage
or zealous lifestyle is bad. What Paul seems to be stressing is that what we
have done does not compare to what Christ is doing. He is stressing that
sometimes success can be our biggest hindrance in ministry. We can do something
well and then instead of celebrating the ministry being done and moving on, we
stop and we boast about it. We become complacent, giving is good enough,
attendance is good enough, the children’s ministry is doing good enough. When
we become satisfied with the way things are, when we stop and boast about what
we have done instead of humbling walking forward with Christ, the we have
missed the mark. Paul is right at that moment, then we should count it all as
loss, if our success distracts from the true mission of following Christ, then
it rubbish, excrement, it is....
This is why Paul goes
on and says, “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.” We as Christians have a
heavenly call of God, we are called to be followers of Christ. That means that
our goal is not to boast about what we have accomplished, but to continuously
press on towards the goal, to press on in our walk with Christ, to press on
towards that goal of being perfected in love. We are called to press on. This
term press on is a term that Paul uses a few times in this passage, and it’s a
term that is all too familiar to anyone has been mountain hiking like Heather
and I did a couple weekends ago. That weekend we had a goal, we were going to
make it to the summit of Sharp Top at the Peaks of Otter. Unfortunately, nobody
had quite communicated that to our bodies, so about a mile into our trek, we
exhausted. We stopped, there was a beautiful clearing, in which we could have
called it quits; we could have celebrated getting that high up and appreciated
the view we had, but we pressed on towards our goal. Later in the hike we got
to a crossroads where we were staring at a steep climb to the summit, or an
easy walk to another overlook. We could have taken the easy route and gotten a
beautiful view, but we pressed on toward our goal and finally we made it and oh
was it worth. The rolling mountains were breathtaking, but if we had stoppe we
would have never had that experience.
Our journey as disciples; our journey in following Christ
will bring us to many moments both individually and as a Church that will give
us the chance to stop and boast. An while we can celebrate what the Lord is
doing in our midst, we should never stop pressing on. Not just for the sake of
it but because of the heavenly call each of us has received; and because
knowing God, walking with God, surpasses everything. Complacency is a great
danger in the church, and there is no time for boasting. A church can almost
become like the contestants I talked about on “The Biggest Loser.” They spent hour after hour, day after day
preparing their bodies to be the best, to be pro athletes, to be models and
they were successful; but it just goes to show that if we stop pressing on
towards the goal, then it is all for loss. Our church has done some wonderful
things, but if we keep pressing on, if we don’t stop to boast but continue on in
our humble service of Christ, if we continue on the path we call discipleship,
then imagine all that is possible through the grace of God. If we simply keep
pressing on towards that heavenly call, then imagine the view from the summit,
a view of the Kingdom of God, and a place to rest from our labors.
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