Breaking with the Past

Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas

St James Presbyterian Church

Life Plans • Sermon • Submitted 7 months ago • Presented 7 months ago

Philippians 3:4–14

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Philippians 3:4b-14

Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!

5 I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. 6 I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

Pressing toward the Goal

12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

The key verse that sticks out for me as I read this text today is this:

Philippians 3:10–11 (NRSV): I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Humans are great at projecting their emotions and hopes outward and painting our world in light that we prefer. We project our past successes upon our hopes for the future. We project our past failures upon the future as well, nervous that we will be stuck in these things for all time.

This leads us to be unable to face the realities of suffering or see the beauty of redemption here. We believe we are bound to our failures, bound to repeat them. What if instead we realize that the creator of all things is still at work, designing, and redeeming our story? Your story?

What about your flesh? What is our “flesh” in this discussion? Paul speaks about the bodily marks of faithfulness that he has upon him and, without bragging, simply names the reality that he has done it all the right way. His flesh, our flesh, it is the lived, material manifestation of our selves and, often, what we consider when we place value on our actions and faithfulness day to day. My flesh is all my physical appearance and standing as a human, but it also is the attaining of things, qualifications, values, possessions — the flesh we occupy is our physical, lived being.

And we are quick to understand taking pride in our flesh. I feel pretty good about my flesh this week after running a half marathon. My strength, my endurance, my flesh paid off. We can also feel down about our flesh — we’re not good enough, we bear scars of past pains, we don’t look like what we want, we don’t have what we want.

This sense of flesh obscures this spiritual reality that Paul is talking about — namely that Christ’s death as a fleshy body, something that should have undermined his whole mission on earth, something that would seem to destroy him and pull the rug out from under his lived purpose, it is actually this flesh that experiences restoration through resurrection and is the vehicle for new life to be made out of.

What if our flesh, our lived reality, was no longer this thing that we ultimately expect to decline and fall apart, just because it physically is prone to do so? What if we could see our material forms and all the stuff we have as somehow belonging not to just this physical existence, but that we are spiritual beings that God is in the process of teaching and restoring, forgiving and making new? What if God could redeem our flesh and our spirits? We believe this is what God, in truth, does.

Tomorrow, our nation remembers two quite oppositional holidays. Historically, we’ve celebrated Columbus Day this week, a reminder of the conquests and imperial expansion of European settlers in North America. Many of us grew up hearing stories of this grand adventure of Christopher Columbus, who bravely set out to discover a new land for his people. This is a great retelling and shining up of history, but nonetheless is in the DNA of European Americans as we remember where we’ve come from.

And, in response and desire to address the pains of our past, we also more prominently now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day this week. In this way, we honor the legacy of the many nations of people who have long called this land we now occupy home. We acknowledge our historic genocide, as white settlers, and seek to learn and appreciate the traditions that have long existed here in North American, seeking to make amends, in even the smallest ways of honor, dignity, and respect, to the nations of people who have been harmed by westward expansion.

In our early years of marriage, Stacy shared a poem with me that was so striking in helping me understand the need to set the old practices beside and move towards a new vision of our land and the people who have called it home long before settlers who looked like me arrived.

The poem reads,

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue, It was a courageous thing to do But someone was already here. Columbus knew the world was round So he looked for the East while westward bound, But he didn’t find what he thought he found, And someone was already here.

The Inuit and Cherokee, The Aztec and Menominee, The Onandaga and the Cree; Columbus sailed across the sea, But someone was already here. It isn’t like it was empty space, Caribs met him face to face. Could anyone discover the place When someone was already here?

Do we believe that God can redeem our collective flesh of the sins of racism and genocide? Can we somehow be like Paul and acknowledge our failures in attempting exceptionalism and also see the possibility of God’s new future with us celebrating those we have harmed?

These were some of the questions the ancient Hebrews also wrestled with, as the oppressed and exiled people in this case. Our Psalm this morning speaks to these hopes — God raising God’s people up out of slavery and exile, again and again through their history. The Hebrew people longed to rest in the hope that God would reach out God’s hands and spread their people back out across their homeland. That they could reclaim their identity somehow, through God's work.

The people of God are asking for the vine to be restored. They are looking for a way to grow back into who they were.

Paul is trying to clear the ground of the past. Sharing everything he has done and yet counting now is lost. God clears the space for the vines to grow, but we can't project the path upon them. We must let them unfold and grow in the direction God wills them to. Our work is to become open to this and prepare ourselves by denying all those old successes, letting them go, and trusting that there is growth in a path beyond.

At the heart of Paul’s argument is this reality: All of his credentials, experience, and heritage; all of his struggles, missteps, and sins. All of these things are less, in his eyes, than the life we come to know by knowing Jesus.

Said simply: Nothing of our accomplishments or failures stack up when set beside the love, inclusion, and wholeness that we find in the knowledge and relationship with God-in-the-flesh, Christ.

Now, you may quickly dismiss these statements. Sure, you say, but my struggles, my credentials, my heritage, my failures — where is God in these? How is Jesus’ love greater than these? These things are here, now, and real! Compared with this 2000 year old story and some words of a third-party observer to a long-dead church in the Mediterranean. How can this overshadow and hold my pain? How can this stack up with these things I can taste, see, experience, and must prioritize and take care of here and now?

Look, we all can justify ourselves or disqualify ourselves based on the standards of our world. But what Paul is inviting us to see here is that all those standards and qualifiers, they’re all dust when it truly comes down to knowing life in all its fullest, life as it is meant to be, life filled with meaning that can only come from the true Source, the Christ, the one who undoes the power of death and pain and makes a way forward for us all through letting all of that power and position die and…instead…accepting the humble place of suffering in solidarity with those who suffer, rejoicing with those who rejoice.

Paul wants to know Christ because Christ and his resurrection mark out at different way of knowing validation and meaning, something outside of the rat race or the burdens of guilt we feel. Christ’s life is what he wants, what we want, becoming like him in death. Not because we seek death, no, but because by this dying, we break with all the struggles and hopes of the past and find that our wholeness comes from allowing Christ to look upon us in love and call us his own.

Do you know that? That you are beloved by the Creator of the universe, the God of all things? I bears repeating, because it’s easy to diminish this or ignore it — you are beloved. And all that you have, all that you have done, all that you hope for — these are glimmers and projections and sparks of what true life is.

So then, what is this true life, what is this life broken from our past pains and desires? Do we leave everything behind? Do we sell our possessions and go live among the unhoused or the dying?

Paul has not reached the end of this life shift, but what he reminds us to do is press on. How do we know we have arrived? Well, what if we never do arrive, but rather, like Paul, we recognize that our life in its entirety is about pressing on, letting go of what we had held so tightly to in the past, and instead finding that it is this pressing on and pursuing of the one who calls us beloved, Jesus Christ, that is the ultimate end, the point, the goal. The movement, the race, the journey, towards finding confidence in this belovedness, this is the point. We press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. We press on trusting that there is more to all of these struggles and pains and hopes and joys. We press on in deep, deep hope of that God is making things new and repairing the broken places in and around, that the ultimate end of things rests in God’s hands and our work today is to seek each others’ wholeness and the repair and rebuilding from our past mistakes and faults.

And so, how does this resound in us?

Friends, your flesh, your accumulated body of pains and scars and strength and resilience; along with all your possessions and hopes, your families, friends, and community — all of these parts of us do not need to be thrown out or ignored. Rather, in knowing Jesus Christ, who loves us dearly and seeks our flourishing here and now in the world, in knowing Christ, we are given this joyous liberation from our flesh simply failing and holding us captive. We press on, together, with Christ as our light, to guide us towards wholeness and hope.

This is the heavenly prize, that life could be found in its fullest here on earth, as it is in heaven. That love would strike us to the heart and challenge us to repair and restore the broken places around and in us, with Christ’s loving help.

Do you want to be a part of community that seeks the healing and repair of all the wrongs of the past? Do you know that you can belong as a beloved part of this community AND that in your participation with Christ and seeking of Christ, you, me, all of us, can find redemption? Do you know this? You are beloved and Christ is calling you, me, all of us.

So let us break from the past. We don’t need to wallow and stay in our struggles. We don’t need to hold on to racist or genocidal histories and let them continue to write the future. We can participate in a new story, Christ’s story, which welcomes all and calls them beloved.

Come, let us run this race together, pressing on to the goal of knowing Christ, who writes our new stories, who redeems our past, and who sets us out together to share this good news of a better way with all creation.