This morning, I had the privilege of being the senior preacher for Wartburg Seminary’s chapel service. My assigned text was Philippians 3:4b-14.
After I took preaching class two years ago, I visited my home congregation, and I asked my pastor how he learned to preach from memory, without using a written manuscript. His answer was, “One Sunday I got to church and realized I’d forgotten to bring my manuscript.”
I have my manuscript right here, and I think I’m prepared for this sermon. I like feeling prepared. Maybe more accurately, I hate the feeling of being unprepared. Have you ever shown up for something thinking you were completely ready, and then realized what you prepared wasn’t right, that your preparation didn’t matter?
I’ve shown up more than once on time for a class with all the reading done, ready to discuss, and then realized a few minutes in that I’d read the wrong reading. It’s a terrible feeling, and I hope I’m not the only one who’s done that!
I think Paul can relate to this feeling. In the section we just read from his letter to the Philippians, he rehearses a list of his credentials, all these things that give him authority. This man has done everything right. Circumcised on the eighth day, met all his religious obligations, faultless under the law.
I’m sure he turned in all his papers on time, never missed chapel, and received glowing recommendations from his candidacy committee. But as soon as he lays out all of his credentials, he says none of it matters. When he encountered Christ, his pedigree and his credentials were useless. Everything he thought he had to boast in is worthless in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ and being known by him.
That’s true for us gathered here today as well. God is calling each of us to ministry, whether that’s as a pastor, a teacher, a deacon, a parent, or however else you’re living out your baptismal vocation. God is trusting us with the proclamation of the gospel. Once he experiences the surpassing value of knowing Christ, Paul says he regards everything else as loss, and he’s forgetting what lies behind. And he wants us to emulate that.
Yet what lies behind us is what has brought us here. Lots of that is good, experiences and people that shape our calls, forming how we do ministry. Some of it’s negative, maybe things you’ve done that you’d like to leave behind that you, things you feel chained to that you’d like freedom from, times you’ve doubted God would work through you, or even choose you as a child.
We began this service gathered around the baptismal font, giving thanks for the gift of baptism where we are drowned and given new life in Christ. In the waters of baptism, we are claimed as children of God and set free for life in Christ.
You are a beloved child of God. You are called to minister, to love and serve God, the church, and the world, but your call doesn’t depend on your credentials. It doesn’t depend on your candidacy committee, your professors, your degree, or your family.
Those are important tools through which I do believe God works, but your call is rooted in your baptismal identity as a child of God, in Christ crucified for us, and in the power of the resurrection. God uses who we are and what we bring with us, but we’re no longer bound to our past. Your call, your very life, is rooted in what Jesus Christ has done for you.
So on the one hand, this is a comfortable Lutheran text. We tend to like the parts of the Bible talking about the value of righteousness through faith, versus righteousness under the law.
But then Paul starts talking about pressing on towards the goal and straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize. And that’s where the Lutheran “by grace alone through faith” part of me gets a little less comfortable.
As I told my Teaching the Bible class a few weeks ago when I led a study on this passage, every curriculum resource I could find on this text is all about the “pressing on toward the prize” part. There are lots of inspiring, motivational graphics and photos of runners pressing on to the top of the hill, or rock-climbers stretching for the goal, reaching toward the peak. Try hard enough and anything is possible! God’s waiting for you to climb up!
And that’s not what I believe. Can Lutherans even talk about pushing towards a goal?
But then Paul clarifies, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Christ Jesus has made me his own. We’re gathered here this morning because God’s not waiting for us to climb up, but instead by grace has come to us.
We’re here not because of anything we’ve done, not because our efforts to discern and follow God’s call have done any good, but because Christ Jesus has made us his own and the Holy Spirit has gathered us together and is leading us to faith in Christ, faith that we are indeed beloved children of God.
In this season of Lent, this season that began with the reminder that you are dust and to dust you shall return, a reminder of our own mortality and impermanence, we are called to reflect on our lives and to examine where it is we’re putting our trust. What is it we’re straining for, pushing towards? Is it our own achievements? Grades? Positive comments on a systematics paper? A good internship placement? Our kids, our families?
All those may be good, but they’re not what’s ultimate. Lent is about what’s ultimate. Lent calls us to forget our confidence in ourselves, and to instead put our faith, our trust, in what’s ultimately trustworthy, in God.
And not in some vague abstract notion of God as a good, comfy force that’s there to support us when we need it, but in God revealed in Jesus Christ on the cross, in the sure foundation of God with us. When we look at the cross, we see Christ’s faithfulness. We see how far God is willing to go. We see Jesus pressing on for us in a way we never can for him.
We keep straining forward toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus, and before we’ve even started, God comes to us. Our hope is built on Jesus Christ, the one who comes to die for us and who brings us to new life.