DIVINE RECYCLING

"For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and 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 of God based on faith." Philippians 3:8b

Did you know that the sleek car you may be driving may have had a previous life in another form?   

Twenty or thirty years ago it occurred to somebody that mountains of junk cars were beginning to pile up, alarmingly so - hundreds of millions of them. It also occurred to some people that there was a potential in these abandon, lifeless shells. Today, there is machinery that can literally chew up and shred old worn out cars into fist sized pieces.  After being stripped of usable parts, old clunkers are fed into this giant shredder which makes them into a metal meal and then conveyed into waiting railroad cars to be transported to the steel mill.   The bottom line is that the hefty SUV, or sturdy pick-up that you may be driving around today, might have been Yugo or an old Ford Pinto yesterday.

The Apostle Paul didn't have a Greek or Aramaic word for recycle, but there's no question he was familiar with the concept. The word in the epistle lesson this morning translated "rubbish" is a word that also means "dung." (skubala)  Dung was not only animal droppings, but it was also old plant matter.  Even in those days dung was recycled. It was returned to the fields and worked into the soil to make it fertile to grow wheat, figs, grapes, and olives.

If there was one thing that Paul understood it was the use of the old to create something completely new. That was the story of his life after the Lord knocked him flat on his backside on the Road to Damascus.  He himself had been reduced, re-forged, refined and refashioned - transformed and reconstituted in a process we could describe as divine recycling.   

He regards all of his old past as dung, as rubbish, for in his heart Paul was a new person, reborn in Christ.   However, it’s important to recognize that Paul doesn’t denigrate his past and his former life; he doesn’t forget his past life at all.  What God does in Paul's life is refashion Paul from the available materials or his past life.

God took who he was: his devout Hebrewness, his tribal sense of self, his zeal, his thorough knowledge of the scripture, his self-righteousness; God took the whole of who he was and fed it into the God-made recycler of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ to be crushed, crunched, cracked, shredded, redefined and finally refashioned into a phenomenal new creation.

Paul now uses his newly created self:

- no longer zealously persecuting Christians, but zealously and tirelessly preaching the grace of God to all people, especially the Gentiles.

- no longer puffing himself up with his own goodness and self-righteousness, but now he proclaims the righteousness that God gives freely as gift of grace through faith.

- no longer using his articulate public speaking skills to ignite hate and violence as he did in his previous life, but now preaches love, compassion, grace and peace with God.

It's no wonder that Paul declares in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, "If anyone is in Christ, the old has passed away, there is a new creation..."  You see, Paul was describing his own experience of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life.

It takes energy, intelligence and hard knocks to take what is salvageable from one junk pile and transform it into something new and wonderful and different.  It is no small or cheap task to build a crunching, smashing, car-shredding machine to begin to transform what is old and tattered into something new and awesome.

I believe it's totally appropriate to think of the shredder of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a similar way. It takes a lot for God to shred those things that we love to hang onto for dear life; those things we worship other than God; those things to which our identities and egos are intimately attached; those things to which we cling: be it an SUV; a career; an income; a lifestyle; a fear; a attitude of self-indulgence; an obsession to be safe and secure; an image in the mirror; whatever.

We are called to regard it all as loss (rubbish, dung, skubala) for the sake of Jesus Christ; to let God feed it into the shredder of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and allow ourselves to be refashioned and transformed into something new and awesome; living a whole new kind of life - the life of Jesus Christ in the world.

For sure, it's pretty hard to see what the end product might look like when the old clunker goes into the shredder, but it's a process we've come to trust because we've seen the results. We may even be driving one around.

More and more the new products on the shelves of our stores bear the label, “Made from recycled materials.”

It's no different with us. It may be pretty hard to see what God is doing in our lives when we hear we are to let go of the old stuff that we've trusted for so long. It's a hard thing to do!

It's hard to let go of the grudge.

It's hard to risk embarrassment or insecurity.

It's hard to trust giving or asking for forgiveness.

It’s hard to make a serious commitment of time, talent or treasure to God’s work in the church. 

It’s hard to live like Christ would live in your school or workplace.

It's hard!

But God gives us what we need. You can trust that the end product of the reconstituted you will probably look at least a little more like, maybe even a lot more like the Lord Jesus, who went through the shredder of his cross and resurrection first - for your sake - so that you might come to trust that God will refashion your life into something new as well.

You see God is not in the business of taking the old junker and just fixing it up a little: adding a few spare parts here; getting a tune up there; putting an additive in the engine; and maybe another coat of paint to cover the rust; whatever it takes to keep it running. No way! That not what God does!   That’s not how God works in our lives. 

What God wants is your old stuff and all the deadness. That's it! Nothing more! The promise is he will take it, shred it, and transform it into a whole new wonderful, incredible, stupendous, miraculous thing and way of life that will scarcely resemble what you were before - so much so that it will shock you and fill you with a joy you've never known.

I saw a "Cathy" comic strip that showed Cathy walking into her office saying, "The old rules are gone, but the old people following the rules are forever." I would say, in Christ that is not true!   It is not true! In Christ, the old rules are gone, yes; the old rules of righteousness by the law. But the old people, they can be made new as well.

Are you ready for this?  Are you ready to risk “Divine Recycling?”  Are you ready?