I Want To Know

 

Sunday, October 5^th, 2008

Proper 22A/ Ordinary 27 A/ Pentecost +21

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Philippians 3:4b-14

Theme: Setting priorities as followers of Christ

 

 “^4bIf anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised 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.

⁷ Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More 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 ⁹and be found in him, 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. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹² 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. ¹³Beloved, 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, ¹⁴I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

 

What are we truly willing to give up for the sake of the gospel? 

 

It is easy for me to say that I would give up wealth and power, because, at least in comparison with the more affluent members of our society, I have neither.  It’s easy for me to say I would give up my position and authority because, in the grander scheme of things, I have neither.  But ask me to give up my family, my name, my heritage?  That’s another matter. 

 

What is it we perceive we have, or own, or have in our background; that makes us stand a little taller in a crowd; that prompts us to make comments to ourselves when certain things happen around us, comments that we wouldn’t voice out loud except for in the MOST trusted of company …

 

What is it that we understand sets us apart from the rest of the general population of the Commonwealth of Virginia?  Or is it THAT?  That we are citizens of Virginia?  That we belong to the State that has birthed the most Presidents for our nation?  Or maybe it is that we live within miles of the birthplace of the Father of our nation, or of Robert E. Lee’s birthplace, or any number of other figures from our nation’s history?  It is no coincidence that our address is on History Land Highway.  There’s a reason the terms ‘come-here’ and ‘from-here’ mean something when speaking about where one is from.      

 

We love to set ourselves apart, to distinguish ourselves from those around us – by valid methods of distinction, such as heritage, or lineage, but sometimes, by whatever means are within reach.

 

The people of Israel had the trump card of all trump cards to pull out and throw on the table when it came to distinguishing themselves from the rest of humanity.  They had a covenant with God, an agreement to be God’s people.  In Exchange, God would be “their” God.  They could lay claim to worshipping the one true God.  It was a pretty nifty arrangement.  But one that landed them in trouble time and time again.  Even when they got it right, they didn’t quite get it.  And from the look of it, they didn’t always get it right.  Far from it.  There were nearly as many bad choices made as good ones. 

 

And Paul came from a long line of right choices.  When he goes through and enumerates those characteristics of his heritage and his upbringing which at one time set him apart from the rest of ISRAEL, much less the rest of the world, he’s not doing it in a derogatory way.  There was a purpose, a REASON for each of those separations – to be closer to God, to be more holy, to be purer. 

 

But where does he end up?  He counts it all as … loss, as rubbish.  Those are polite words for the original Greek, which is skubala, which can be translated as refuse, dung or excrement. And those are the NICE words.  The popular use of the term in the first century was probably something that we would not repeat in mixed company, if you get my drift.  And Paul uses the term four times!  Once in verse 7, and then three times in verse 8.  In the NRSV the same word is translated as loss and as rubbish.  Something else in the NRSV, the phrase that is translated as ‘for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things’, gives the impression of passive regret over what he has lost … Paul is doing nothing of the sort – what he is doing is making a statement AFFIRMING that he has voluntarily renounced those things for the sake of gaining Christ. 

 

What is interesting is that in voluntarily renouncing them, he is not denigrating them – not making them worthless – in and of themselves.  They still hold value, but in comparison to the value he has gained in knowing Christ Jesus as Lord, they pale in comparison – to the degree that he can call them excrement or worse seemingly without flinching. 

 

It would be as if I were to stand here and tell you that my upbringing as a missionary kid, my extended family of missionary aunts and uncles, my ‘cousin’ MK’s, the experience of living as a trans-cultural person in a world that is becoming more trans-cultural by the minute, but which was not at the time – if I were to assert to you that all that that FORMED me as an individual, as a person, as a child of God, is so much … crap … in light of the understanding that, over and above all of it, that so far beyond the deepest reaches those experiences and those people who have a hold on my heart and have influenced my life – that NONE of that even comes CLOSE to being as meaningful to me as it is TO KNOW CHRIST – I still treasure and value each and every one of those things – the life experiences, the relationships that have meant so much to me through the years, the identity I have developed BECAUSE of those experiences and those relationships, but it is so much MORE important to me to KNOW my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that the rest of it simply dims next to it. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

We may not think it, but we are a rich congregation.  I’m not speaking necessarily in monetary terms, thought comparatively speaking, for our size, we are holding our own, but in terms of heritage and history.  We just celebrated 175 years of being a witness for Christ last year.  The families in this congregation are families that for the most part have generations on generations of forbearers who stand behind them as a cloud of witnesses to what has been and what is to come.  So the question is, again, what are we willing – truly willing – to give up for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  More specifically, what comfort – or comfortable notion – are we willing to question and even give up in order to make both our worship and our life’s worship – how we live our faith – more representative of the Kingdom of God? 

 

For the first century Hebrews, the biggest hurdle was opening their services to those who up until then had been disqualified by virtue of THEIR heritage, their ancestry, or by the fact that they had NOT followed all the necessary protocols for becoming a member of the house of Israel – through adoption rather than lineage. 

 

A few weeks ago a man came over to the house from the parking lot over here, and explained that he was here to meet another man to sell him some crabs, but that he had no way to call the man to tell him he was here.  He gave me the number, and I called and told the man who was going to buy the crabs that the first man was here, and asked if he’d like to come down and meet to buy the bushel or two that they’d talked about.  The man selling the crabs was white.  The man who came to buy them was black.  I got into a conversation with both of them, and in the process, invited both of them to visit whenever they could.  The man selling the crabs smiled and said he would certainly try to find a day to come, but the other man, was a little taken aback by the invitation – he looked at me and said “I thought this was a white church!”  I told him that yes, for the most part it is, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t welcome everyone through our doors and into worship.  He seemed genuinely surprised that I meant the invitation. 

 

My hope is that he’ll take me up on it one of these days.   

 

Let’s pray.