In A Manner Worthy

 

Sunday, September 21^st, 2008

Proper 20A/ Ordinary 25 A/ Pentecost +19

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Philippians 1:21-30

Theme: Owning the life of Christ – and living it

 

 “²¹For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. ²²If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; ²⁴but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. ²⁵Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, ²⁶so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. ²⁷Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, ²⁸and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. ²⁹For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well— ³⁰since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”

 

It would seem to be a contradiction, on the face of it. 

 

We believe a Gospel of salvation by grace – a salvation which we can DO nothing to obtain, but which all we have to do is ask for – confessing and believing, first that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, and that Christ’s dying on the cross was for us – each of us, all who have been and all who are to come. 

 

We also believe that upon receiving that salvation, our lives are SUPPOSED to start to change.  There are those who believe that it is possible to attain near-perfection in the conduct of our daily living – in our Christ-likeness.  I happen to believe that it is a moment-by-moment variant as to how well we’re doing in the Christ-likeness department.  I DO believe that our salvation – and how it reflects in our daily living – is a process more than an event. 

 

Yes, there IS a moment in our lives, whether we remember it or not, where we became aware of the love of God, through a mother or father, a grandmother or grandfather, a Sunday School teacher, or a Pastor … but more than that, we became aware that God loves US – as individuals – that God cares for us and wants to be in relationship WITH us.

 

That realization can be overwhelming.  That is why it is, in many cases, a signal event in our memory.  For me, it was, as I’ve shared before, on the eve of my tenth birthday at a camp in west Tennessee.  For Leslie, it was when she was eight, under the preaching of Junie Foster at Thalia Lynn Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.  Incidentally, on that same Sunday, Donald, Leslie’s dad, at the age of 43 or 44, walked to the front of the sanctuary and asked to be baptized and to become a member of Thalia Lynn at the same time as Leslie.  He has stated that his real growth as a Christian began from that point on, even though he believed and was baptized in a sister tradition at the age of twelve. 

 

I imagine if we went around the room, many of us could name the place and time when we came to that same place in our faith walk.  It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, of course.  Many people I know came to that realization gradually, over the course of many weeks or months … or even years.  It was in looking back over their pilgrimage that they recognized the call of God on their lives – drawing them nearer and nearer to God’s self.  Even for those of us who DID make our decision public at an early age, in retrospect we can see evidence of God’s presence and guiding and molding when we look back on our experiences and who God put in our lives as we grew. 

 

So we have this offer of the free gift of salvation on the table – literally remembered, when we celebrate communion – and it is ours to take up or reject.  If we choose to take it up, it is a most precious gift – THE most precious that we could ever receive in our lives – because it IS the gift of life.  But in the receiving of the gift, we then become Disciples of Christ – that is, students, apprentices, learners.  And what we learn from our master is that, having received the gift of salvation carries a responsibility with it.  That having gained our lives by giving them over to God, we now understand Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark (chapter 8) when he said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,^* will save it.”  To put it another way, even though this is presented as a win-lose situation, the rules that would normally be understood to apply DON’T.  Yes, we DO lose our SO-called lives when we turn them over to the Lord, but in doing that, we discover that what we held dear, or as important, or meaningful is either put in correct perspective as secondary, or made all that much MORE precious through the eyes of faith.  What would SEEM to the world to be a win-lose proposition is in reality a win-win one. 

 

Paul was near the end of his life when he was writing to the Philippian church.  He wrote it during the two years he was in Rome waiting to present his case before Nero, who was emperor at the time.  I suspect that on some level, he was aware that his earthly life could end at any time.  He could almost see, can almost taste the glory to come.  And yet, he was struggling with still wanting to be here on earth, present with his brothers and sisters, sharing with them in their journeys, in their growing faith, in their sharing of the Gospel or letting go and going on.  And he ends up choosing to stay – to be with them, to continue to lose his life by giving it away.  The way he puts it: “I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith”                    

 

So what does that progress and joy in faith mean?  Paul actually describes it pretty specifically: “standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel” That is nice and simple, isn’t it?  It means being unified and working together.  So living our lives in a manner worthy of Christ means doing that, period. End of sentence.

 

But … you see??  It doesn’t JUST end there.  To take those two phrases and apply them to our lives implies letting them infuse ALL of our lives – how we talk, how we treat each other, how we treat strangers, how we carry ourselves in the world.  At its core, at its heart, living a life of faith is not coasting along for however long after one receives salvation.  Living a life of faith has everything to do with engaging in a life FULL of action – full of learning and loving and giving, sharing and holding … we speak of serving a risen Lord, but we run the risk of serving a building if we lose sight of the fact that the church is what Cliff showed us last Sunday – and what most of us probably learned as preschoolers – here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people.  The Church is not the bricks and mortar, it’s not the pews and carpeting, it’s not the painting over the baptistery, or the beautiful cross stitch of the Lord’s Prayer that is standing in the hall through these two doors to my right.  WE are the church.  I understand how over the years we’ve telegraphed the phrase ‘the church that meets in the building located at the corner of Mulberry Road and History Land Highway in Warsaw, and now we just say ‘Jerusalem Baptist Church’.  But there is a real danger in losing the connection with the central truth of our faith that says that the body of Christ is not built on blocks and girders, but on the hearts and shoulders of men and women who stood together in one spirit, and worked side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel.

 

Lets pray.