A Sermon preached on Lent V, April 3, 2022, at St. Augustine’s
Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8
As many of you know, being a priest was not my first profession. For over 25 years I worked for the Allianz insurance company as a senior manager, until the push and pull of the call I felt to become a priest just became too strong to resist. While I can only agree with Paul about the “surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” (Phil. 3:8) I still wouldn’t say that I consider my entire past and my previous profession to be a loss or to regard them as rubbish, which is a polite translation for the word that actually means dung or manure. On the contrary I think, and I hope that some of the things I learned in that time have helped my ministry with you, the ability to organise myself and others and to run meetings, for example! I know for sure that I had lots of opportunities to learn from many, many mistakes.
Just a little later in the service, we will celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary. I bet the couple don’t regard everything as loss but instead look back with joy on a marriage consecrated 40 years ago here in Christ’s Name and presence. And I’m equally sure that they have learned and grown in the process.
But I don’t even think Paul is saying that we must always forget or negate all our past. That would be wrong. We cannot change our past, but we can learn from it. And anyway, Paul himself starts off this extract from his letter with an impressive description of his own past, of his Jewish credentials, and of his exemplary behaviour and actions. When he then goes on to say, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ” he is not negating that past. He remains a proud Jew. But what he has discovered is so much greater, so much more important, so much more attractive, that his past simply pales in comparison. That discovery is Christ and the power of his resurrection, a power that stands, as we know, for the promise of forgiveness and new life.
Anything that stands in the way of following Christ is therefore a loss or debit. Following Christ, Paul says, requires a radical re-orientation of priorities and that may require letting go of some of the past. In his case those things he wants to let go of are an excessive pride, a belief that access to God entails belonging to a particular group or nation, his own role as a zealous persecutor of Christ’s followers, and a mistaken belief that he was blameless and righteous based on his own merit and ability to follow a set of rules. So, on closer examination, many of the things he had listed as “gains”, many of the things he had identified as being on the credit side of the balance sheet, were in fact not that good or positive after all.
So yes, Paul is calling on us to take a close look at our own past, and to see if there is anything there that we need to discard in the present, as it would stand in the way of our faith and our future. For us as individuals this is what the invitation to observe a holy Lent is all about, the call we heard on Ash Wednesday to self-examination and repentance. For us as a community and as part of society it is the call to examine, name, and lament our collective sins of discrimination, oppression, and prejudice – all our failures to respect the dignity of every human being.[1] And it is the call to repent and to change our collective lives to reflect and enable the new world and new life God offers.
When God speaks to the Israelites through Isaiah and tells them: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” (Isaiah 43:18) he, like Paul, wants them to discard things that are holding them back, in their case a fear for the future based on their past experience. Bad things had happened to them – the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, their exile in Babylon. But these are over. “I am about to do a new thing,” (43:19) God promises. I am offering you a safe return on a well-watered and safe way I will make in the wilderness. I will give you an opportunity to rebuild, to build a new Jerusalem. Do not be afraid of the past, and do not be afraid of your role in that past. God’s promise is that their part in those bad things, their faithlessness, their false allegiances, that had led to Israel’s fall are forgiven, redeemed, and will not impact their future.
In Isaiah God calls Israel “the people whom I formed for myself,” (43:21) while Paul says of himself that “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” (Phil. 3:12) Both are referring to a status that has nothing to do with who we are or what we have done in the past, but to God choosing them, him, us. This status of righteousness, of being accepted, loved, and saved by God “comes through faith in Christ.” (3:9)
Faith in this sense is not just an abstract ‘knowing about’ Christ like knowledge from a book. Faith is a matter of personal knowledge, what some traditions describe as a personal relationship with Jesus, one that enhances and complements our collective relationship as the body of Christ and as a worshipping community. Faith is trusting in the presence of God even when we don’t see or feel it. And faith is us attempting to imitate Christ, to conform to the patterns of behaviour that he taught and showed, in Paul’s words the desire to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” (3:10) To become like him in his death does not mean dying as such but sharing in the characteristics Jesus exhibited when he offered himself: sacrifice, love, forgiveness, trust.
Paul concludes this section of his letter by reminding his audience that this process of knowing Christ and growing like him is, unlike God’s choice for us, not a one-off single event: “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal,” (3:12) he says. It is a journey, in his image a race with the goal, the finishing line, “the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” in view. Now Paul can forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.” (3:13) because he has carefully examined and learned from his past and allowed God to redeem it. And runners don’t look back as it would only distract them and slow them down. Of course, in this particular race it doesn’t matter how many other runners are behind us, or even if they overtake us. In this race everyone who wants to can win the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus to live a resurrection life.
Amen.
[1] See for example “A Covenant for Dismantling Racism, Advancing Racial Justice and Building Beloved Community in Europe” at: http://www.tec-europe.org/covenant/
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