Proper 22
Preparation
Please begin by reading Philippians 3:4b-14 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.
Reflection--Pressing On
We may quibble about some of Paul’s theology, but we can’t doubt his commitment. Paul was never one to do things half way. He did not just give lip service to his beliefs. His zeal for what he thought was right was matchless. This included harsh repression of early Christians, something he thought he was doing for God.
But then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and everything changed. (You can read the story of his dramatic conversion in Acts 9.) He saw the world through new eyes after that encounter. He was an influential, well-educated-member of his society. He enjoyed respect and social position. He was one of the “insiders” and yet he gave up everything to became as totally devoted to following Jesus as he had been to his old beliefs and values. He gave the rest of his life to answering God’s call to spread the word to the world that Jesus was God’s messiah who revealed God’s love for the world through the cross. He pressed on through the most difficult of circumstances including physical abuse and imprisonment. As a result of this dedication he became by far the most effective witness for Christ in the early church and Christianity’s most influential theologian, writing about a quarter of the collection of writing we know as the New Testament.
Paul saw his life as a journey, one in which he constantly pressed on toward the goal of knowing Christ more fully and becoming more Christ-like, never looking back. In that regard we can hardly do better than to emulate Paul. This is still the central pattern for Christian life.
The difficulty comes in living day-to-day. How do we find our way in the middle of the journey? How do we know that we are right? Which road do we take at life’s intersections? What are we to make of the curves that life throws our way? Again, we can learn from Paul.
Without question, Paul was a flawed human being. Some of his mistakes, like his persecution of Christians, were extremely serious errors. Without question he also sometimes interpreted faith through the distorting lens of his own cultural values and was unable to sort out those values from God’s will. (For an example, see 1 Corinthian 14:33-36.)
Like Paul (and every other biblical faith hero or heroine!), we are all flawed. We all have our human weaknesses. Our faith journeys are sometimes two steps forward and one step back. We all occasionally take the wrong road and have to retrace our steps. We all come to faith dragging our past behind us like a ball and chain. Until we see Jesus face to face we all see the world through the lens of our training, our experience, and our culture with all its distortions; something that even Paul recognized. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12, KJV.)
So how are we to live? We just do the best that we can. Like Paul, we press on from where God finds us when we first encounter Jesus, fully aware that our understanding is (and in this life always will be) flawed. We put the past behind us and look to Jesus as our model in decision making, including his practice of giving time to serious prayer when choosing which way to go at life’s cross roads. With Paul, when we have choices to make we ask ourselves what love requires. “The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14) “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:13.)
We simply press on, realizing like Paul that knowing Christ is a life-long task but that there is no higher calling “because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus.”
revclay
_______________________________ Philippians 3:4b-14If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised 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.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More 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 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 from God based on faith.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 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. Beloved, 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, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
[NRSV]