“We’ve Got to Do Something About This”
Philippians 3:4b-14
a sermon preached March 21, 2010, at Graham Friends
Last Sunday the worship team was practicing before Sunday School when Christian Corbett came into the sanctuary. The expression on his face was serious, even concerned. He had been upstairs with his sister and she had evidently done something that did not sit right with him. I couldn’t understand what he was saying about his sister’s actions because of the music being played. But it was clear that he was aggravated. At that point we finished playing the song and I could hear him say, while he put his hands on his hips, “We’ve got to do something about this!”
After I stopped laughing, I turned to Angela and said, “That’s next week’s sermon title. I don’t care what the text is.” The next day I began studying for the following Sunday and found that the text is one of my favorites, containing Philippians 3:9-10, “…and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
Have you ever read a scripture and know there was something of a vastness and depth that you would spend your whole life exploring and trying to understand. That is where I have stood with those few verses of Paul to the Philippians for 35 years. The rest of the verse has plenty for me to learn yet but I know that there is something profound in sharing Christ’s sufferings that has perhaps eluded me all these years. And if I really, really wanted to know it and share in it with my Lord, I might put my hands on my hips and say, “We’ve got to do something about this!” But sometimes we are content (or at last I am) to remain mystified by how sacred and inexplicable scripture sounds.
But before we move into that one phrase that has for so long evaded me, let’s look at the rest of these verses. The Apostle Paul bragged about his pedigree to make an important point. I will now do the same. I was born into a Christian family. My father was an educator and my mother an avid reader and they made sure I was given a good education and lots of books to read. I was baptized in the Lutheran Church and worshiped there in a full church with my family after attending Sunday School each week. I made use of the literature table, becoming acquainted with Daily Bread and The Upper Room at a very young age. I remember buying for a dime my very first devotional when I was perhaps seven or eight years old. I hungered after the mysteries of God even then. A few years later I was taught how to pull the rope in the bell tower and move with it’s recoil so that even peals of the bell would sound between Sunday School and worship. Later, I was taught Luther’s catechism. By the way, this was the long catechism, not the brief one. I learned about and memorized the Ten Commandments, The Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. I learned how to take communion without the wafer sticking to the roof of my mouth. I also learned how to eat at what you call carry-ins but we accurately called potlucks. How blessed I have been as a Christian to eat often and much from the tables of the homes of so many. My mom was a great cook but I got to eat the offerings of hundreds of good cooks and bakers. God richly blessed me as a boy with a fine education, a good home, a variety and plenty to eat and so much more.
But somewhere along the line, something must have happened at St Luke Lutheran Church because my parents and sisters stopped going. Was it because they got a new pastor? Was some need not met by the folks, the pastor, or God? Did someone say something that seemed uncharitable to one of my mom? They never said but I know something happened.
This I do know: I didn’t want whatever it was that happened to them to happen to me. I wanted to keep going to St Luke. I do not know what the mystery there was for me; but it was there and I did not want to lose touch with it. Was it the potlucks I kept attending in the church basement by myself, now a 12-year-old? Carry-ins still appeal to me today. Was it the literature table in the narthex? It certainly held an appeal to me. Was it my Sunday School class, now a group of Junior High School students. I have to admit that Kristie Grote held a certain appeal but then I found out we were related. Probably it was for the best. I did not ring the bell anymore. Catechism classes were long over but I do remember the lessons to this day. Was it the Supper of a waxy wafer and grape juice that was the mystery? Perhaps more than I realize.
Today that building is empty. It was abandoned perhaps 20-years ago and the windows boarded up. It now sits at the edge of a crawling landscape of construction where a new city hospital and accompanying doctors’ offices and parking lots are being built where many square miles of houses, restaurants, and other businesses have been torn down. But St. Luke remains; and I am glad, sad as it is to see that building boarded up and empty.
For an empty building it sure gave me a lot. However, whatever I gained with my family, my education, and even my church, I consider all of those fond memories lost. In fact, they could even be considered a disadvantage. The Greek word Paul uses here in verse seven is zemian, and means just that, “to be put at a disadvantage.” Kansas would have done well last night to consider their whole season a loss, a disadvantage if they depended on it as if to receive some coronation in Indianapolis. Upon what do we depend to receive our crowns? Mommy and daddy took me to church? I was raised in the right denomination? A great education? If you believe these things reason for confidence, then I have more confidence than all of you! I have never left the church. In fact, I’ve been a member of so many churches I have lost count. I have taught so many Sunday School classes and youth groups, even when I was not a pastor, that I can’t keep their faces straight in my memories anymore. I have pastored four churches. I am finishing a second Masters degree for a church that does not even require an education. I am, as my father-in-law used to love to say (and I used to love to hear, if he wasn’t saying it about me), “educated beyond my intelligence.”
Are these things reason for confidence before the judgment seat of God? May I go before God and say that I have degrees and pastored churches and tithed and stayed faithful to one wife and weathered insult for the Name and was zealous for his word and that on the basis of these things he should throw open the doors and set out a feast for someone as wonderful as I?
Rubbish! These things are actually a disadvantage to many simply because they do put so much stock in them. But what must one do to be saved? I mean, if I have done so much and so many have done even more than I and it’s all simply a disadvantage, then we find that we cannot “do something about this.”
God has done something about this. He has called us his Friends. He has invited us into a relationship with him whereby we can enjoy him through a knowledge of his Son (verse 8). You may take away my memories, and my family, and my education, and pastorate and chaplaincy. But leave me one thing: Jesus. I count everything as loss, disadvantage, rubbish, dung (as the King Jimmy puts it) for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. If I may gain Christ, all else is loss. And if I count on those other things, I am placed at a disadvantage that makes me a friend of me, not Christ. It is his righteousness that I depend upon — not my own moral or religious righteousness. My righteousness does not come from keeping the Law, from denominational headquarters, from educational institutions, from overworking, being a good husband, or a good person. My righteousness before God is a gift that comes through faith; it depends on God by faith alone — not education, position in life, or the approval of men. Faith. That’s all. Faith in what Jesus Christ did for me that I could never do for myself.
Now I know you know all of this but you must be reminded often. We forget the things we know and begin to depend on things that hold no promise. We must hold to what we have been given so that we may gain Christ and his resurrection. We must hold to Christ and be clothed with his righteousness and not the rags that are our successes or failures. This means that the moral realities that are your own life will not be the basis of some heavenly fashion show. If you show up dressed in your own righteousness then you will indeed have some fine clothes on but they will also be stained by your lies and hypocrisy and other sins. You will be wearing the latest designer fashions of the Church but they will be ripped, stained, frayed, and soiled. But if you are clothed with Christ, if you depend on his righteousness, you will be resplendent before God’s throne because you will look like the Son and not the sorry son you know you really are.
In fact, it is in the admission of this dismal condition that one may finally come to a knowledge of the resurrection. It is in a continuing dependence upon his suffering for you instead of your own religious suffering that attains the resurrection from the dead. And so, this favorite mystical sounding verse of mine simply and profoundly means a disregard for my imperfect piety and an abiding in the sufferings of Christ for me. The only sure method for pressing on (Php 3:14) is to try to do as well as one can but not lose composure in failure — because fail you will. When you focus upon yourself, whether on your successes or your failures, your life gets out of focus. If you are looking at yourself, you are going to end up walking into trouble. Refocus on the one who suffered and died for your inadequacies and rose from the dead so that you could be raised with him in glory. That is the only way I know of whereby you may press on to the goal. Forget what lies behind — what you have or have not done — and look to what he has done. Share in those sufferings of his for you instead of manufacturing your own and you will discover that he has already done something about which you could never do.