Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
15
October 2017
Philippians
3.4b-14
Exodus
20.1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Did anyone get to see the World Athletics Championships
at the
Olympic Park over the summer?
With the best athletes from around the world
doing
battle against both themselves and each other,
all for the
glory of taking the Gold medal.
From Ussain Bolt pulling up in agony in the 4 x 100 metre
relay,
to Mo
Farrar taking Gold in 10,000 metre run,
the training schedules are rigorous and exhaustive,
or do I
mean exhausting?
Anyway, I have to confess that when I was at school,
I was never
much of a sprinter…
it just
wasn’t me!
The sudden burst of energy that was required
to propel
the successful sprinter down the hundred yard dash
in
10 seconds or whatever
just didn’t
seem to be within my capability.
The National Institute for Medical Research describe the
short sprint like this:
An athlete accelerates [their body] to reach a speed
of more than forty
kilometres per hour in about fifty strides.
Although the sprinter may not need to breathe
for most of the ten
seconds of the race,
the heart will be pumping two hundred millilitres of blood in every
heart beat,
or about four
buckets-full per minute.
Well, not in my body, is all I can say!
Sprinting, throwing, hitting, jumping…
all of
these and more, leave me exhausted and in last place.
However, that isn’t to say that I have no athletic
abilities…
Cycling,
jogging, and swimming
were all
sports at which I was OK
Not
great, you understand, but OK
And I continue to swim a mile at the Oasis over the road
several
times per week.
You see, I’m more of a long-distance stamina kind of person
I might not be very quick over a hundred yards
but I’ll
still be going five miles later
when the
sprinter has long since given up
and gone
for a shower.
And this ability to keep going, and going, and going
has stood
me in good stead on various occasions over the years
Liz did her Gold Duke of Edinburgh expedition when she was at
school
and so when
we go away on our holidays
we often find ourselves surveying various unlikely looking
mountains,
with Liz
excitedly poring over an ordnance survey map
plotting
our route to the top.
In fact, next week, we head off to Peru,
and,
altitude sickness allowing,
will be
taking the high path from Macchu Picchu
to
the peak of Huyana Picchu.
And believe me, when you’re climbing a mountain
you need
all the long-distance stamina you can get…
It was Liz who introduced me,
on one of
our early holidays together in the Lake District
to the concept of the ‘false peak’.
I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about here?
It’s when
you can see the top of the mountain
in front of you,
and your
hopes rise, and you walk that little bit faster,
and
you strain that little bit more,
because you’re excited that you’re
nearly at the top.
but then,
when you get to the false-peak,
you realise
that actually it isn’t the top at all,
-
it was merely an interim horizon.
and that
actually you’re only a tiny part of the way up
with
the vast bulk of the mountain
still
rising in front of you, waiting to be climbed
We had just this experience once
on one of
our walking holidays in the Austrian Tyrol.
Having found what look like a mountain-top lake on the map
we set off
in search of it,
only to discover that the footpaths were nowhere near where
they were supposed to be,
and we
climbed, and climbed, and climbed,
and that every time we thought we’d reached the top,
the horizon
had moved and we would see yet more climbing in front of us.
Encountering a false peak can be one of the most depressing experiences,
because it
demoralises the climber
and it saps
all the enthusiasm that has got them this far
as
they are forced to contemplate the much greater climb
that
still lies in front of them
Now, I don’t know whether Paul was a regular mountain
walker…
Certainly he went to all the best schools, as he trained to
be a Pharisee
so you can be fairly certain that if there was a first-century-equivalent
to the Gold
Duke of Edinburgh’s expedition,
then Paul
would have taken it
And, knowing Paul,
he would
probably have got top marks in all the categories!
After all, he does rather go on in our passage this morning,
about how
completely brilliant he is
at pretty
much everything he has ever turned his hand to.
With shades of Trump-like boasting,
he says, ‘If
anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more.’ (3.4)
To which I always find myself wanting to mutter, ‘show off’.
Whether
it’s keeping the law to nth degree,
or persecuting
Christians, Paul was the best, the very best,
In fact,
no-one has ever been betterer at persecuting Christians than he has. Fact.
Well,
anyway…
I suspect Paul did
know something about the joys and frustration
of climbing
mountains
because it is this image which is in view
in the
second part of the passage we read earlier.
Having made his point about how great he is,
he then has
this rare moment of humility,
where he says, ‘Yet whatever gains I had,
these I
have come to regard as loss because of Christ.’ (3.7)
In fact, more than that, he says he regards everything as
loss
because of
the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.
Paul says that for the sake of Jesus, he has suffered the
loss of all things,
and regards
them as rubbish, in order that he may gain Christ. (3.8)
Now, I know something about the pressure to achieve.
I went to
that kind of school.
I understand that in some schools, it’s the nerdy swots who
get bullied.
In my
school, it was the precise opposite of this:
The
academic excellers were lauded,
and
those of us who got mediocre marks were derided.
Nothing was ever good enough for my school,
short of
straight ‘A’s in all subjects.
Which as a mere one ‘A’ at GSCE
(in
RE in case you’re wondering. I figured, stick with what you know),
and none at
A-Level, kind of guy,
marked
me out as something of an under-achiever.
Well, Paul knows something of the feeling of not hitting the
peak,
not
attaining the goal.
In spite of all his excellence,
he had come
to realise that there was so much more that lay before him,
than the
peaks of achievement he had already left behind him.
So he uses the image of pressing onward towards a goal,
in the face
of discouragement and exhaustion,
as a metaphor for the Christian life,
which has
been both his own experience,
and the
experience he expects of those he is writing to.
Paul begins by defining his goal:
and he says
that his goal in life
is to know
Christ and the power of his resurrection
so
that he may attain himself the resurrection from the dead.
This is the goal
towards which Paul is pushing:
to become
like Christ
and to join
Christ in resurrection
Which sounds like a fantastic goal, doesn’t it?
I mean, who
could argue with that as a goal?
Don’t we all want
to become like Christ?
the
greatest, the bestest human of all time!
Don’t we all want
to live forever?
to see the
hold and fear of death broken!
If there is ever a carrot to dangle in front of people,
surely this
is the one? Isn’t it?
Except, of course, things aren’t so simple – or, indeed, so
attractive
because
Paul then also spells out how he is
hoping to achieve this goal.
And he says that he hopes to become like Christ
not in
terms of being wise, and good, and holy
but in
terms of sharing in Christ’s sufferings!
Well, now, hold on a minute…
this is
suddenly starting to sound a bit less attractive…
Imagine the baptismal service, imagine the altar call…
“Brothers and sisters, dearly loved of God
I want to
challenge you all tonight to become
like Christ
“Brothers and sisters, Have you seen Mel Gibson’s film The
Passion of the Christ?
well, that’s the path I’m inviting you to
tread tonight…
“Will all those who feel the Lord stirring their heart
to begin a
life of suffering and rejection
please come
to the front during the next hymn?...”
…But this is what Paul says…
If we are to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
we need to
know him also in his suffering and death,
Because without suffering and death
there can
be no experience of resurrection.
As my Dad says to me on a regular basis
when I
phone him for a moan about something or other,
“Simon, no-one ever said it was going to be easy”.
And yet so often we do seem to tell people
that
becoming a Christian will be easy.
Or, if we don’t say it explicitly,
we imply it
in so many ways.
So often, we make conversion the goal
which we
encourage people to press on towards.
In so many of the programmes for evangelism,
so beloved
by churches desperate to stave off numerical decline,
from Alpha
courses, through Contagious Christian training,
and into
Purpose Driven mission statements,
we put so much of our own effort
into
helping people become Christians.
And surely this is no bad thing, is it?…
I mean,
with numbers declining in the churches in this country
isn’t a
decade or two of evangelism the obvious solution!?
The Baptist Union even changed its strapline a decade ago
(2007),
to
‘Encouraging Missionary Disciples’.
And so we make conversion the goal,
and we
struggle with our potential converts
as they
press on through their doubts and their questions,
And we invest huge resources in helping them to realise
that the
answer to their sin and sense of loneliness,
is a
relationship with Jesus Christ
who
will forgive them
and
never leave them by the power of his Spirit.
And so, as I said, it is conversion
that becomes the goal
But what concerns me in this
is that
conversion, as we so often promote it, becomes a false peak,
which ultimately leaves people demoralised and exhausted,
and utterly
unprepared for the mountain that still lies in front of them.
For Paul, the goal was not conversion:
This wasn’t
Paul’s own experience…
Even as dramatic a Damascus
Road experience as Paul’s
was not
understood by Paul as being the goal.
It was merely a ‘false peak’.
The first
of many.
Actually, maybe the word ‘false’ is slightly misleading here
because, of
course, ‘false peaks’ do still have to be ascended
- they
still require effort, and exertion, and determination.
But what is ‘false’ about a false peak is that it isn’t the
top of the mountain,
even
though, from the perspective of the approaching climber,
it might
appear to be so.
From the perspective of the pre-Christian, if there is such
a thing,
who is
journeying towards conversion,
it can be hard to see beyond that particular horizon.
But from the point of view of the life-long Christian
looking
back fifty years or more;
the mountain that was conversion,
can now be
seen to be little more than a small foothill
to the much
greater mountain of the life of faith.
So we need to tell people who are on a journey towards faith
that the
goal is not conversion,
the goal is becoming like Christ in his suffering and death,
in order to
become like Christ in the power of his resurrection.
And what worries me about some Christians I know
is that
they have struggled over the peak of conversion,
but have then sat down to wait and catch their breath
sometimes
for months, sometimes for years, sometimes for a lifetime.
It’s like they get to that first false peak
but then
turn around and spend the rest of their lives
looking
back at how far they have come
without turning to face forwards again
and
beginning the journey of pressing on towards the much greater goal
that still
lies in front of them.
As Paul says in verse twelve
“I have not
already obtained or reached the goal
“but I
press on to make it my own
“because
Christ Jesus has made me his own”
Paul knows full well that he has not yet reached the goal.
This man with the most dramatic of all conversions,
who went on
to shape the course of Christian history,
through his
brilliant pastoral and theological thinking and writing,
knew that he had not in any way reached the goal.
He knew of the struggle that still lay before him,
as he
pressed on through life to an eternity with Christ.
And he gives us a glimpse of his motivation to continue the
journey
when he
says “I press on to make the goal my own
“because
Christ Jesus has already made me his own”
Every climber needs motivation
to give
them that single-minded obsessive desire
to
press on through the cold and snow,
to press on
up the steep incline in front of them.
And Paul gives us our motivation here:
we press on
to make the goal our own
because
Jesus has already made us his own.
Grace and faith combine in this verse
to draw us
on through the hardships of life,
towards the
goal
of
knowing the power of the resurrection of Christ Jesus.
I’m not proposing to get into some great debate here
about
predestination…
What is clearly implied in Paul’s writing
is action
on both sides:
In the cross Christ has made us his own,
and in life
we are to press on to make Christ our own.
And this very act of pressing on
implies an
ongoing struggle.
Just because we are forgiven and our sins are washed away,
doesn’t
mean that we are suddenly free from temptation,
or that we suddenly have a miraculous ability to resist evil
under all
circumstances.
It is not for nothing that when Jesus was asked how to pray,
he
instructed his disciples to ask on a regular basis
for
deliverance from evil
and
avoidance of temptation.
We are not there yet…
we are
part-way up the mountain,
and
from time to time we will stumble and fall,
sometimes
we will fall and roll back,
meaning
we have to re-climb
over
ground we have already covered before,
sometimes
we will get thoroughly lost.
But through it all, says Paul, we are to press on towards
the goal.
Sometimes we will face hardships that are not of our making,
as the
spiritual equivalent of an avalanche
descends
upon us and threatens to sweep us away.
And these times are perhaps the most difficult times of the
Christian journey,
because it
is at these times that we doubt God’s very call on our lives.
When the avalanche never seems to stop,
and we find
ourselves struggling to even stand upright,
it can feel
as if there is nothing else to do,
but
collapse in a heap
and
be swept back down the mountain to the very bottom.
Well, it may be small consolation, but Paul knew all about
hardships:
both those
of his own making
and those
over which he had no control.
He knew all about guilt and sin:
never
forget this is the man who put Christians to death.
He knew all about unfair treatment:
He faced
beatings and imprisonment for no crime
other than
proclaiming the salvation that comes in Jesus.
And he knew all about loss and sorrow,
writing on
occasions with tears in his eyes
to those
who he loved
as
he shared with them in their grief.
And in all this his response was to press on
- to not
give up the struggle.
He said: “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 Christ Jesus”
And the only conclusion I can draw from this
is that the
Christian life is one of struggle and hardship.
Sure, there are fantastic views along the way,
there are
occasional places of refuge from the storms,
where we
can rest a while,
there are stretches of ground which are flat and easy,
in between
the stretches which are steep and treacherous.
But fundamentally, it is an upward climb towards a prize.
And this sense of journey and struggle,
brings with
it, I think, an inherent sense of dissatisfaction.
The person who makes camp on the plateau
just beyond
the peak of conversion,
and settles down to enjoy the view,
is not
living the life of the Christian disciple.
The true follower of Christ
is forever
dissatisfied with the way things are,
and forever
pressing on to see things change.
The call of Christ on our lives,
is to be a
people who want to see the world different.
We are called to be those who are the prophets:
who speak
out our dissatisfaction with the way things are
and who blaze the trail onwards
towards the
prize of knowing Christ
and the
power of his resurrection.
Because it is Christ alone
who can
bring new life where there is death
So when we look around us and see those people
in whom
hope and love have died
It is Christ alone who can bring new life.
When we see death of justice and righteousness
it is the
power of Christ’s resurrection
which alone
can bring new life.
When we see the death of relationships
it is
Christ alone who can bring new life.
And this is the goal for which we press on:
the goal of
the transforming power of Christ’s resurrection.
Nothing else would be worth the struggle
and nothing
else is enough to make it worth giving up
the struggle.
And so we press on toward the goal
for the
prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Amen
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