• josephholubsermons
  
  
   
• 
  
• October 5, 2008  Pentecost 21
  Philippians 3:4b-16

““Press On”

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

Decades ago it was observed that mountains of junk cars were beginning to pile up, alarmingly so - hundreds of millions of them. It occurred to someone that there was a potential in these abandon, lifeless shells. So, machinery was developed that could literally chew up and shred old worn out cars that are ultimately reconstituted into new steel to be shaped into new forms.  The bottom line is that the hefty SUV, or sturdy pick-up, or sedan that you may be driving around today, might have been a Ford Pinto in an earlier life.

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 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 "skubala" 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 apparently the story of his life for he himself had been re-forged and refashioned - reconstituted in a transformative process.   

He regarded all of his old past as (skubala), as rubbish, for in his heart Paul was a new person, reborn in Christ Jesus.   However, it’s important to recognize that Paul doesn’t denigrate his past and his former life.  What occurred in Paul's life was that he was refashioned from the available materials of 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; the whole package of who he was and, we might say, processed it through the recycler of the cross and resurrection of Jesus to be crushed, crunched, cracked, shredded, redefined and finally refashioned into a phenomenal new creation.   “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection by becoming like him in his death,” declares Paul. 

And then Paul put his newly created self to work:

- no longer zealously persecuting followers of The Way, but zealously and tirelessly preaching the grace of God to all people.

- no longer puffing himself up with his own goodness and self-righteousness, but now  proclaiming a righteousness that is given freely as a gift of grace through faith.

- no longer using his articulate public speaking skills to polarize and ignite animosity, but now preaching the love, compassion, and grace of God.

- no longer living by a strict religious law that narrowly measures every person and every situation, but now embracing especially and even those considered outside narrow religious boundaries. 

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..."  That’s a description of Paul’s experience.  As I reflect on Paul’s words, and as I immerse myself deeply into his rhetoric, both in Philippians and Corinthians, I can sense his intensity and feel his passion as he labors to express what is almost inexpressible – the transforming experience in knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.  “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” 

For Paul, the cross and resurrection were core to the experience of following Jesus – dying to an old way of being; an old way of living; an old way of thinking; an old way of doing - and being reborn, reconstituted and transformed into a new way of being; a new way of living; a new way of thinking; a new way of doing. 

The cross and resurrection of Jesus are the crucible of transformation into which go the elements of our old being where we are reconstituted into something totally new.

An important thing to understand is that for Paul this transformative experience was an ongoing process.  Luke, in Acts 9, describes a dramatic event on the road to Damascus when Paul was knocked down, struck blind and heard a voice that he perceived was the voice of the Lord Jesus.  Biblical commentators have dubbed this event the “conversion of Paul.”  The problem I have with that dubbing is that it makes it sound like that’s all there was to it – that transformation was completed in Paul’s life in one incredibly intense moment.  Now, I don’t deny the poignancy of the moment, but it looks to me like that was merely the beginning of a dramatic change in Paul’s life.

Paul, in his letters, makes no mention of the Damascus road event specifically, but he does say that even though he was a violent persecutor of the church, “God had called him through grace.”  (Galatians 1:13-17) 

Whatever and however it happened, Paul was dramatically changed.  We hear him speak of it in this epistle for today, “I want to become like him in his death… not that I have already attained this… I press on to make it my own…”   “I press on…”  That’s a good mindset and a great by-word for the follower of Jesus – “press on.”  That’s process language;  journey language, not destination language;  that’s acknowledging that the process of transformation goes on, and on, and on, and on and we never arrive; we never grow enough; we never know enough; we never love enough; we never give enough; we never serve enough.  It’s not about enough or arriving.  It’s about “pressing on” and “loving excessively.” [1]

I do have a clue to what Paul is saying here.  I had my own Damascus Road Experience in the winter of 1992 that began a process of transformation in my life.  Senior pastor of the largest church in the Central States Synod, life on the surface appeared well and wonderful.   But in here (in the cloistered recesses of my heart) things were not so well and not so wonderful – they were downright frightening.  Haunted and secretly crippled by deep emotional wounds from my childhood; wounds that had helped create a profound sense of self-doubt and lack of self-esteem; that had in turn shaped me into a compulsive workaholic committed to the futile endeavor of trying to please all of the people all of the time, I crashed and burned!   It was there, sitting in the wreckage of my own life that I died and was reborn – that is, a process of transformation began in my being that continues on to this very day, and this very minute, and this very second in time as I stand before you this morning, and it will continue on until I draw my last breath.    

When I hear Paul say, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus made me his own”, I get it!   I experientially am familiar with what Paul is saying.   To make something one’s own is to own it; to take it to heart; to allow oneself to be shaped and molded and changed and reconstituted by it.   What is it that I press on to make my own, but the incredible grace of God that comes in the process of dying to an old way of being and being born to a new way of being – everyday, over and over - with every breath.

There’s one more thing Paul said that is crucial.  “…this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on…”

I personally cannot forget the incidents and events that inflicted deep wounds in my soul at a young age.  But I don’t think Paul means to forget like in memory loss, but rather I believe he means that a huge part of the transformative experience is to not allow past things to lay claim to my life today, but to let go of them and press on toward the grace that calls me and the transformative process inherent in the cross and resurrection of Jesus that can make me new again and again. 

If you think about it, so much of who we are, our makeup and identity, is a clinging and clutching to the past, so much so we can get stuck in and entrenched in what was.  The result is who we are today is merely who we were yesterday.  Dear God, that sounds depressing to me – to be trapped in my fears, prejudices, self-justifications, and limited knowledge of yesterday!  Who I am today is merely who I was yesterday?  I pray not!  It’s the cessation of growth and the termination of wonder.

I believe following Jesus to be about something radically and transformationally different.   Who I am is rooted not merely in who I was, but in whom I am yet to be as I “press on to make it my own” - to follow the one I name as Lord and the totally amazing grace of God revealed in his life – and to trust the process of death and resurrection into which I am called - and invited - through which I am transformed.