Epiphany 2B

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6: 9-15a, 19-20)

That word just kind of jumps out of you, doesn’t it? You know which one I’m talking about. It’s starts with an “f.” That “f” word evokes images of forbidden sensuality and carnal escapades that we only dream about in our most savage imaginations.

It’s right smack dab in verse 13, staring at us. And the “f” word I’m talking about, of course, is...”food.”

Why? What did you think I meant?

Well, I suppose the “other” “f-word” will make my point just as easily, if more colourfully. Because as I’ve been reflecting on the theme of “stewardship” I feel that we often neglect to include our most valuable resource - our bodies - as something we need to “steward”. How we treat our bodies can be just as important to our stewardship mandate as how we sustain the land, clean the oceans, capture carbon, or manage our finances.

As you can see I’m not exactly a poster boy for healthy eating. If anything I’m a cautionary tale of how poor nutritional habits and a sedentary lifestyle can wreak havoc on one’s life.

I’m a stress eater. And let’s just say that the last few years have been VERY stressful. And my habits thus far have not helped me in dealing with the stresses of the last half decade. If anything my late-night encounters with the drive thru and Monday Night Football cans of beer have made my stress levels worsen. And by extension, the quality of my life.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t been warned. Information on diet and exercise, the stuff of a healthy lifestyle, isn’t exactly scarce. I fact it’s always in your face, waving a condemning finger, giving you the stink eye.

I knew that 30 minutes on the elliptical is just as effective at battling anxiety and depression as prozac. I knew that getting 5-10 servings of fruits and veggies a day is just as useful at elevating my mood and giving me energy as any high octane caffeine explosion I can get at Starbucks. I knew that the two of them together would help me put my life back on track better than many counsellors or life coaches.

But I chose other, easier, options. And it wasn’t until I had a recent health scare that I realized what I was doing, not only to my body, but to my life. And to those around me.

I began to realize why Paul asks us to honour our bodies. I realized that what I was doing to my body and to myself, was keeping me from living in the faithfulness that God wants from me. What I was doing to my physical self wasn’t allowing me to assert my best self. It’s like Paul looked me up and down, grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, and said,

“Are you kidding me? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

When I read that it was like Paul smacked me across the back of the head. And I knew something had to change. Status quo was not an option.

So, I’ve started making changes in my diet and exercise routine. I’m eating lots more veggies then ever, and I’ve been giving my Fitbit a good run for the money. And right away I’ve noticed my energy levels increase, my mood brighten, and my thinking become clearer. I’ve lost 20 pounds since arriving in Calgary.

And yesterday, I was given a terrible reminder of the consequences of poor lifestyle choices when my mom called to tell me that my sister’s husband’s brother, age 55, died yesterday of a heart attack while out for a walk.

Yes, choices have consequences.

So, eating healthily and exercising is becoming, for me, as important a spiritual discipline as prayer. It’s becoming clear to me that, as I shed unhealthy weight, I grow more fully into who God wants me to be.

“...do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

But this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows their way around the bible. Bible stories tell us a lot more about life here on earth than it does about an eternity in heaven.

Right from page one, God creates a physical earth out of nothing, and God calls that physical earth “good.” And at Christmas, we celebrate a God who came to join us in our physicalness, as God came to meet us human beings as a human being in Jesus.

Somewhere down the line we forgot the point. And we decided that “spirit” was good and “flesh” was bad. And that has led us to mistrust what God has so lovingly created. We were born physical creatures to glorify God in our bodies. But we decided that we’d rather be “spiritual” without reflecting on what that might mean.

Having just finished a course on Spirituality and Music for my doctoral degree, I’ve become keenly aware how hard it is to define “spirituality” in a way that honours the biblical story by keeping it’s feet firmly planted on planet earth.

The temptation to think of “spirituality” as an escape from creaturely being is very real. Placing “spirituality” in the other worldly column may have started with the ancient Greek philosophers, but we Christians have taken up their cause and made it our own.

We sing more about heaven than we do about earth. Our songs are often for a longing for a disembodied future than they are about life with a God who is known through other people. We praise a God who is “high and lifted up” more than we join our voices with the God who became flesh in Jesus and shared our fragile limitations.

And not just in the church. It’s taken over our lives. We’re trying to escape out bodies.

Technology is created so we don’t have to use our bodies as much as we normally would. So-called “labour saving devices” reduce the amount of physical activity as much as they reduce the amount of time spent doing those chores.

While I’m delighted that I have a washer and dryer in my apartment, and I did a happy dance when I saw that my kitchen had a dishwasher, I also know that they are reminders for me, backward reminders of my physicality. Signs to remember to move my body because that’s what it’s there for.

And our newest technologies keep us better connected, I’m not denying the good. I am a text messaging fiend. While not nearly as much as my 13-year-old daughter, I text with friends all over the world.

I have maintained cherished friendships through words. It’s all that we have because we live so far apart. We keep up with each other’s daily lives in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before cell phones.

And apps like Skype, Facetime, and Snapchat can help bridge the distance, but as I’m sure you well know, an image on a screen is a barely adequate replacement for someone’s personal presence.

Technology is a constant reminder that we aren’t together physically, but it’s a connection nonetheless. And the danger is that words and images can’t be fully felt on the screen. Words can describe and express the moment, but they have limitations. And those limitations are deeply felt.

When we finally do meet in person, the words stop, or at least step aside for a moment, even when we’re speaking. It’s not the words that are communicating. But the physical presence. The energy we exude to each other. The facial expressions that enhance the meaning of our words. The tonality of voice. The movement of the body. The eye contact that says more than any word every could.

And in that moment of physical presence, we glorify God in our bodies even if we do not touch. We glorify God in our bodies because we are not alone. We are honouring each other by being fully present, knowing that this presence is a gift. And the longing for physical presence is God’s way of saying “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, you are a sacred space, you are a holy sanctuary, where God lives with you and in you, so that you can best live with others, in that same kind of intimacy.

Spirituality isn’t meant to be an escape from the world, but a deeper engagement with it. To connect with the Spirit is to connect with the God who is redeeming the world, not destroying it. Spirituality is knowing that there is more to life that we can sense with our bodies, but also knowing deep within our flesh and our bones, that through the Spirit those lives merge. Heaven enters earth.

We glorify God in our bodies through exercise and healthy eating so that we can assert our best selves to others, and offer our gifts to enhance the world.

We glorify God in our bodies when our sexuality is primal, honest, intimate, life-giving in the best and broadest sense of the word, where two people unite to lose themselves in order to find themselves.

We glorify God in our bodies when we respect the earth’s fragile abundance, which God says that we honour and care for, taking from it that which need to live and thrive, but ensuring that the cycle continues for the generations to come.

We glorify God in our bodies by creating and maintaining strong relationships, because we were not meant to be alone, we have been created to connect, to share, to offer, to receive, to be together.

We glorify God in our bodies when together, as the Body of Christ, we love others and we care for the world God made, being God’s hands, feet, and heart in a world that needs God’s healing power and presence.

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

I didn’t know that before. But I know that now. I know that good news isn’t just spiritual, but it’s also physical. In fact, the two can’t be separated. Heaven came to earth in Jesus. And we are his living body in the world.

In a moment we will receive Christ in the physical expression of bread and wine, Christ’s own body and blood, so that, as we receive him, our body joins with his. And we are nourished in order to feed others in our body.

It all starts with ourselves, and the Spirit who takes up residence inside of us, making our bodies Holy, the very dwelling place of God. The temple out of which God changes everything.

Congregation repeat after me:

“My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

“I have been bought with a price.”

“I will glorify God in my body.”

May this be so among us.

Amen.

Pentecost 17A

One of the things they tell us in preaching class is to NOT use ourselves as positive examples of gospel living. The preacher should never be the spiritual superstar in the sermon.

It’s arrogant. It assumes that the preacher is on a higher spiritual plane than the listener. It suggests that it’s the preacher’s behaviour that the listener is supposed to model rather than Christ’s.

It puts the preacher in the centre of the sermon, rather than God. And the pulpit is not the place to show off the preacher’s spiritual prowess.

St. Paul would have failed that class. He wouldn’t have listened to instructions. He’s not afraid to plop himself down right in the middle of his proclamation. He inserts himself into a story that he did not create.

Just look at verses 4-6 in today’s second reading. That’s a killer resume Paul has, isn’t it? And he doesn’t hold back. It’s sounds like a humble brag; complaining about the great things in his life as they were bad things, as a way of bragging. If it were anyone else it would seem that Paul wanted the church in Philippi to know with cold clarity, just how awesome he was, and the cost he paid to be a Christian.

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he says, “I have more: 5circumcised 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; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

In other words:

“Yes, I was amazing at everything I tried. I was born into the right family. I went to the right schools. I graduated at the top of my class. I reached the top of my profession. And when I was at the height of my powers, I met Jesus, and gave it all away. And now I count all my former success as losses because I have gained Christ. So, I hope you realize the sacrifices I made to follow Jesus.”

Paul is clearly contrasting a “before” and “after” picture of his life. His “before” picture is his life as a religious leader, a protector of tradition, obedient to Jewish law, and a fully-fledged, card-carrying, enthusiastic member of the religious establishment.

His “after” picture was one of loss, loss of status, prestige, authority, and wealth. He renounces everything about his former life, content to live out his days as a wandering preacher, planting churches where ever he found himself.

He says he’s gained everything since receiving Christ. His old life is past. He just wants to forget about who he once was. 

That’s why, as you may recall from the Book of Acts, he changed his name from “Saul” to “Paul” when he met Jesus, to mark the birth of the new person in Christ. Saul was dead. Paul was alive.

But I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I’m not convinced that Paul’s life is as clearly marked as he would like us to believe. Paul was still deeply invested in his past, no matter what he says.

It’s not that I’m saying that Paul was lying, or was a fraud, or was somehow being disingenuous. I just see fingerprints of his old life all over this letter. And all over his other letters. I see his old life popping up everywhere in his new life. I see his old life underneath everything he writes.

Paul was DEEPLY schooled in greco-roman rhetoric. So, the literary forms he uses in his letters expose his educational past. He knew how to write in ways that educated, upper-class, Roman citizens could understand. His letters are masterpieces of an ancient literary tradition that he knew intimately.

For example, by using himself as an example of exemplary living he was employing an important device used in Roman persuasive arguments. 

That’s how people wrote, according to Roman literary tradition. He wasn’t being arrogant. He wasn’t inserting himself where he didn’t belong. He wasn’t putting himself at the centre of the sermon. He was outlining his credentials like he was supposed to do.

Paul was writing according to the tradition in which he was formed. So, without Saul, the zealous Pharisee, blameless under the law, there could be no Paul, the letter-writing, church-planting, rabble-rousing, evangelist, whose suffering for Christ counted as gain.

No matter how hard he tried to run from his past, it was always there. In his mind there may have been a clear mark between his past life and his present vocation, but in his work, his past is always present, even if he didn’t see it.

As Christians, we often have a difficult relationship with our pasts. We like the language of growth. We like to feel that we’re moving away from one thing (sin) toward another thing (a strong relationship with God).

We like to feel that we’re moving toward a spiritual goal, a deeper connection with God. A bolder proclamation of what God is doing in our lives. We want to know that our faith is growing, that we are somehow, getting better at following Jesus.

And those are worthy aspirations. Aristotle rightly noted that human beings are “teleological creatures” which is a fancy way of saying that we humans are goal-oriented, that we need a purpose for living, that we want to grab hold of something that is always in front of us.

And of course, Paul knew his Aristotle. That’s why Paul said that he “presses on toward the goal...” 

Paul needs something in front of him to keep himself going. He keeps looking for new challenges, new quests, new experiences. 

His feet never stay in one place for long, and his hands are always occupied. His eyes are persistently looking for the next opportunity, and his lips are forever singing a new song. 

Paul is in constant motion, running another lap in the race that has been set before him.

But if Paul is running this race to escape his past, then that is race that he’ll never win. Nor should he. God used his past to make him the great Christian thinker and preacher that he was. 

Without all those years in school, Paul wouldn’t have been able to share the gospel so effectively. 

Without persecuting Christians, Paul wouldn’t have learned the humility he needed to connect with other believers. 

Without his Jewish background, he couldn’t have understood what God was doing through Jesus.

The past is not something we can run away from. Nor should we. It was Paul’s past that made him into who he finally was.

And God uses YOUR past to create YOUR future in Christ. It doesn’t matter if your past is something to brag about or something to be ashamed of, God uses both the dirt and the splendor to build the kingdom of God.

That’s why YOU can run the race that has been set before you. YOU can press on because Christ Jesus has made you his own.

But that race is fraught with fits and starts, successes and failures, gains and losses. Triumphs and trials. 

We make our way up the mountain with skinned knees, calloused heels, and bloodied fingers, and just when we see how far we’ve come, just when the summit is within our line of vision, we find ourselves falling backwards and landing back on the spot where we started from. And then we begin again, tired. But stronger. And wiser.

Paul says to forget the past and push toward the future. And you may forget your past but your past does not forget you. Your past follows you, reminding you of who you were. 

Sometimes, it’s your past that pushes you backward down that mountain, because that’s where your eyes have been fixed.

And other times, it’s circumstances beyond your control that knock the breath right out of your body, the brokenness of human life and the messiness of human relationships, hit you so hard that you tumble backwards, grabbing hold of any branch that you find, but landing on your back, eyes looking at the sky, and seeing just how far you have to go just to get back to where you were.

That’s why God picks you up to begin again. God has as much faith in you as you have in God. God knows that you can stay in the race. God knows that you can keep moving. God knows that you can still put one foot in front of the other.

God redeems your past, and trains your eyes towards God’s future. Your past may have made you who you are, but your past will not make you into who you are becoming.

So you press on to what lies ahead.

You press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

You press on because Christ has put you on the path that leads to God.

You press on because God has given you the strength to meet the days ahead.

You press on because that’s all you can do, now that you have gained everything in Christ.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Easter 6A

According to sociologist Peter C. Emberley, Canada is a nation of seekers. Religious seekers in particular. For those paying attention this will not be new, but he provides some fascinating data showing us just how religiously and spiritually diverse we Canadians are.

But while he offers particulars, he isn’t saying anything that hasn’t been noted before. Throughout history, human beings have been known to be worshipping creatures. We want to bow down to something.

We want to believe that there is something out there that is bigger than ourselves, and that we are not alone, flapping through the universe without any meaning beyond our fingertips.



A recent trip to the movie theatre or glancing through Netflix’s selection will give show you just how hard we seek the divine.

The popularity of the Noah movie, the line-ups at Heaven Is For Real, the Twilight series, or re-runs of Ghost Hunters and the various other media offerings of the supernatural and the divine, show us just how much we search for something larger than our initial comprehension.

Standing at the Spirituality and Religion section at Chapters, and reading the accounts of seeking Canadians, I feel like Paul standing at the Areopagus, as he did in today’s first reading, looking out at the vast panorama of religions and spiritualities, and feeling, suddenly, very small.

For Paul, it was one thing to preach in the villages. Sure, they had opposition. But Paul and his friends saw great crowds drop to their knees and receive the message that they preached: salvation in Jesus.

But Athens was different story. As Paul entered the city he probably asked himself if the gospel could hold its own in the sophisticated intellectual environment of the university town. He might have wondered how his message would be received in the city of Pericles and Plato. Athens was the hub of intellectual achievement and the height of philosophical and religious inquiry.

If Paul was nervous he didn’t show it. He stood up and boldly addressed this vast, religious marketplace.

“Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

A curious beginning. Was he making fun of them? Being sarcastic? Priming the pump? Or was he sincere?

“For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘to an unknown god.’”

Smart move by these Athenians. I guess they were hedging their bets with this “to an unknown god” stuff. They wanted to make sure they acknowledged ALL the gods, lest they suffer the wrath of a snubbed deity.

Paul must have known what he was walking into. But whether it was holy arrogance or sacred inspiration, Paul spoke the unspeakable: that a grossly unnatural act took place and revealed who God is; Jesus was raised from the dead. 

There was no precedent for this in their philosophy books. This couldn’t be explained by natural law.

But Paul spoke, not with the eloquence of the philosopher or the arguments of the scholar, though he was both. He spoke the simple truth of God: that it is Jesus who saves, and all the time, effort, energy, and resources that went into building these temples and shrines were a colossal waste.

Paul doesn’t hold back. He hits them straight on. Salvation comes from the God who brought a dead man back to life. Period.

Of course, this message sounded unbearably exclusive at Athenian sensibilities. And his message wasn’t met with anymore enthusiasm then as it does today. And for the same reasons. 

Many folks today want religion or “spirituality” on their own terms. They want to create their own faith. They want to search after God according to their own instincts and needs, their own pre-determined ideology and agenda, without the heavy hand of the institution bearing down on them.

And TOTALLY I get why they do. 



Many people have had bad experiences with church. Some have been abused, spiritually, sexually, emotionally, or in various other ways. Church was a place to sit up straight, mind your manners, and do what you’re told. It wasn’t, for them, a place of honest searching or for asking hard but important questions.



Others feel that religious boundaries restrict true expressions of faith, and want to re-draw the lines on their own terms, free from outside authority.



Still others have seen too many cheesy TV evangelists who fly around the world in private planes, milking old ladies’ out of their pension cheques to pay for air conditioned dog houses.

And others have seen churches use their authority to judge others, to bring down the hammer, to make people feel badly about simply being human, to curtail human rights, rather than set people free in Jesus’ name.

It no wonder why people stopped looking at church as the vehicle from which to search after God.

But self-styled religion, and or DIY spirituality doesn’t come without its dangers. 

When does handmade religion or “spirituality” or “faith,” become an accessory, rather a rigorous engagement with the truth or an honest search for God? 



When does a homemade spirituality merely re-affirm what people already believe, rather than transform people through the study of a tradition that others have lived and died for over generations, and how can a person grow through the challenge and support of a committed community, and offer that challenge and support to others?

Just as many folks today aren’t burdened by such probing questions, neither were the Athenians that Paul was preaching to.


“When they heard of the resurrection of the dead,” verse 32 says, “some scoffed; but others seemed mildly interested and said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ At that point Paul left them. 

Some sneered. Others said they wanted to hear more about Jesus, but not now. Maybe later. No sense of urgency. Even Paul didn’t push the issue. He just gave his message, and left.

I wonder if that’s how we hear Paul’s message about Jesus. Sometimes we scoff. Sometimes we want to hear more but life gets in the way. And maybe Paul knew something most of us don’t; that sometimes the Spirit works instantly and other times the Spirit takes a lifetime. That faith is a process of fits and starts, peaks and valleys, and ups and downs. It grows and shrinks. Expands and contracts. Faith never stands still.

Paul knew how messy life and faith could be. He trusted people’s journeys. But he never compromised the message of the faith. He knew that Jesus really did die and he really did rise from the dead, and these events took Christianity out of the realm of philosophical speculation and dropped it into flesh and blood human experience. He knew that the God who raised Jesus from the dead was the God of history. The God of life.

That why Christianity can never be simply a set of good ideas; a mere philosophical backdrop to our lives; or just a moral framework from which to relate to others. 

And more than that, Christianity can never be the end result of our seeking after God, because our searching never ends. There is always more to learn. There is always more to understand. The more we learn the more find that we don’t know. The further we travel, the longer the road extends.The higher we climb the more our feet seem grounded to the earth.

That’s because it’s the height of human arrogance to say that we have the definitive word of who God is. It’s God who has that word, and God has named that word “Jesus.” 

But do we really understand that word? Does God translate that word into something we can understand?

Sometimes. Sometimes not. That’s why we keep searching, growing, climbing, falling, scrapping our knees, hitting the ground with our noses, and rising from our graves.

Our faith can so often be of seeking, finding, and then losing again. 


But more importantly, God never stops searching after us. Indeed, God finds us. Our faith is the end result of God searching after us, and grabbing us with a love that will never be let go. When we were baptized, we were named and claimed as God own children, joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection, chosen to be God’s people TODAY and into eternity. 

That’s what we celebrate this morning as Breanna is received into the household of faith through the sacrament of Holy Baptism. This isn’t just a one day event, but the beginning of her eternal life.

This isn’t just one moment in her years, this is the moment that gives meaning to ALL her moments. 



This isn’t just the initiation rite into an institutional church, but a celebration of what God is doing in her life, and a commissioning, where her gifts will be used for the good of the church and the healing of the world. 

That God has a claim on her, and we have an obligation to support her so that she can live her life as a witness to the God of love who called her by name, and given her a future of immense possibility.

Just like each one of you here. You who have sought after God, who have asked important questions, who have wondered about the God who is known and the God who is unknown, but still carry with you the trust that, somehow, in some way, we are not alone. And that we are loved. 

And from that love you want to do wonderful things for others, and serve the world joyfully.

That when your journey is over, you want to look at your hands, calloused and bloodied from building upon what God has already started, participating in God’s ongoing creation of a loving and just world, and celebrating the gift of life that we’ve all received.

Maybe that’s what Paul was trying to tell the Athenians; that faith doesn’t come from a life time of philosophy, but from the God who relentlessly seeks after us. And a life of us seeking after God.



Perhaps Paul would tell our world that he sees just how religious we are; but Jesus was raised from the dead not to give us “religion” or “spirituality.” But to give us life, and breath and freedom and salvation.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Pentecost 17A/Thanksgiving

I have a confession to make: I find preaching on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians really hard. It’s not that there no content to work with. Like all of Paul’s letters, this letter is overflowing with wisdom. And it’s not as if I have trouble understanding what Paul is trying to say, although, I do gain more insight his message every time I read it.

It’s just that Paul seems to be writing with a perpetual smile on his face. He seems abnormally happy. Which is particularly jarring given his circumstances. He’s sitting in jail knowing that, at any time, the cell door could open, and he’d be taken away to die an excruciating death.

But he sounds almost giddy in this letter. Which I find unsettling. I don’t know if I’d be in such a good mood where I in his position. I don’t know from where I’d summon the strength to get through the day, much less write a hope-filled letter to a struggling church that I just founded.

Of course, we can say that God has given him the strength. We can say that the Spirit of Jesus and the power of his resurrection was vibrantly within Paul, giving him courage to face an unspeakable horror. We can say that the mighty presence of God so filled his heart that he couldn’t help but burst out in joyful song. “Rejoice in the Lord, always! Again I say rejoice!”

And that would be true. But it would also be too easy. It would be only half the story.

I say that would be too easy because I often hear easy affirmations of faith in difficult circumstances. I sometimes hear people jump to quickly into the artificial God talk after something terrible has happened. I often hear pious slogans dismissing peoples’ real pain.

“She’s in a better place....” a husband says after his wife’s quick battle with cancer has ended.

“God doesn’t give us anymore than we can handle” she says at the bedside of a child whose been in a car accident.

“All things work together for good, for those who love Jesus,” is said after the last attempt to salvage the marriage fails.

You may have heard some of your own. You may have even said some of these. I know I have. These types of sayings often mask a fear. A fear that, if we don’t acknowledge God right away when something bad happens, then we’re not being good Christians. A fear that we’re losing faith. A fear that we’ve stopped believing in God in the presence of real, terrifying, pain.

A fear that, for all our talk about God being active in and among us, for all our prayers and proclamations about Jesus being raised from the dead, for all our pious declarations of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives, we worry that, at the end, it’s all just vacant words. And so we hide behind empty God talk, hoping that we can convince ourselves into feeling better.

But then there’s the rest of the story. The part of the story that says, that after the empty, pious, slogans have stopped; that after the quick spiritual sayings have been put away; that after the book of easy answers has been closed; and you sit in the stark silent jail cell of your very real, very human pain, you remember the whole story.

You remember the story that tells you that you are not alone. You remember the story that tells you that God’s light is brighter than any darkness. You remember the story that tells you that life is stronger than death and that God has a hold on you with a grip that will pull you into eternity. You remember that you have a saviour who died and rose again so that the world - indeed the whole cosmos - might be saved.

And you don’t just remember the story. You feel it. It’s in your bones. It’s in every cell. It’s part of you. And you realize that your pain does not make you any less of a Christian. You realize that your doubts do not make you any less of a believer. You realize that your grief, your regrets, your broken relationships do not make you any less of a follower of Jesus.

In fact, it is your brokenness that gives you power. The husband who buried his wife knows how to talk to another person who just said good-bye to their spouse. The mom who knows what it’s like to sit at the bedside of a child in a coma can sit with other parents sitting by similar beds. The one whose marriage collapsed knows what to say, and what NOT to say to their friend who just found herself alone.

It’s then that you realize that YOU are part of God’s story, and that God cannot and will not tell that story without YOU, and you begin to understand what Paul was REALLY talking about.

That’s when you start to get a sense of how Paul could sing a song of rejoicing while sitting in a jail cell awaiting execution. You begin to see Paul with new eyes. And you begin to see yourself with renewed vision.

And you realize that you CAN rejoice, you CAN praise God. Not an empty or easy, sunny or smiling praise to an already blue sky. But a praise that emerges from the darkness, a praise that unlocks your jail cell, a praise that rises from the dirt and filth of your life, a praise that might bring as many tears as it does laughter.

It’s a praise of defiance. It’s praise of defiance against the powers of darkness that seek to overwhelm you and keep you trapped in your misery.

It’s a praise of defiance against pain and grief, it’s a praise defiance against all those things in your life that are trying to keep you down.

It’s a praise a defiance against all those things that are keeping you from becoming who God wants you to be.

It’s a praise of defiance that tells you pain, “You will not define me.” It’s a praise of defiance that tells your grief, “You will not take over my life.”

It’s a praise of defiance that tells the dirt and filth that surrounds you, “I am turning my gaze away from you. I will focus on whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, I will think on these things. I will keep doing the things that I have learned and received and heard and seen, and the peace of God will be with me.”

I think we caught a glimpse of that defiance this morning. You have turned your gaze. Many of you have brought an item to church that represents something for which you are thankful. And all of these items represent something hopeful, something life-giving. These items came from your lives. Many of them were an answer to hopelessness.

They are the keys that may have let you out of your own personal jail cell. They acknowledge the fact that thanksgiving isn’t trite little ritual we engage in once a year, but something that comes from deep within us, that we carry with us everyday.

That’s why we can join Paul in his song, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice!

May this be so among us. Amen.

Pentecost 16A

One of the things they tell us in preaching class is to NOT use ourselves as positive examples of gospel living. The preacher should never be the spiritual superstar in the sermon.

It’s arrogant. It assumes that the preacher is on a higher spiritual plane than the listener. It suggests that its the preacher’s behaviour the listener is supposed to model rather than Christ’s.

It puts the preacher in the centre of the sermon, rather than God. And the pulpit is not the place to show off the preacher’s spiritual prowess.

Paul would have failed that class. He wouldn’t have listened to instructions. He’s not afraid to plop himself down right in the middle of his proclamation. He inserts himself into a story that he did not create.

Just look at verses 4-6 in today’s second reading. That’s a killer resume Paul has, isn’t it? It’s sounds like back-handed bragging. If it were anyone else it would seem that Paul wanted the church in Philippi to know with cold clarity, just how awesome he was, and the cost he paid to be a Christian.

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he says, “I have more: 5circumcised 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; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

In other words:

“Yes, I was amazing at everything I tried. I was born into the right family. I went to the right schools. I graduated at the top of my class. I reached the top of my profession. And when I was at the height of my powers, I met Jesus, and gave it all away. And now I count all my former success as losses because I have gained Christ. So, I hope you realize what I gave up to follow Jesus.”

Paul is clearly contrasting a “before” and “after” picture of his life. His “before” picture is his life as a religious leader, a protector of tradition, obedient to Jewish law, and a fully-fledged, card-carrying, enthusiastic member of the religious establishment.

His “after” picture was one of loss of status, prestige, authority, and wealth. He renounces everything about his former life, content to live out his days as a wandering preacher, planting churches where ever he found himself.

He says he’s gained everything since gaining Christ. His old life is past. He just wants to forget about who he once was. That’s why, as you may recall from the Book of Acts, he changed his name from “Saul” to “Paul” when he met Jesus, to mark the birth of the new person in Christ. Saul was dead. Paul was alive.

But I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I’m not convinced that Paul’s life is as clearly marked as he would like us to believe. Paul was still deeply invested in his past, no matter what he says.

It’s not that I’m saying that Paul was lying, or was a fraud, or was somehow being disingenuous about his testimony. I just see fingerprints of his old life all over this letter. And all over his other letters. I see his old life popping up everywhere in his new life. I see his old life underneath everything he writes.

Paul was DEEPLY schooled in greco-roman rhetoric. In other words, the literary forms he uses in his letters expose his educational past. He knew how to write in ways that educated, upper-class, Roman citizens could understand. His letters are masterpieces of an ancient literary tradition that he knew intimately.

For example, by using himself as an example of exemplary living he was employing an important device used in Roman persuasive arguments. That’s how people wrote, according to Roman literary tradition. He wasn’t being arrogant. He wasn’t inserting himself where he didn’t belong. He wasn’t putting himself at the centre of the sermon.

Paul was writing according to the tradition in which he was taught. In other words, without Saul, the zealous Pharisee, blameless under the law, there could be no Paul, the letter-writing evangelist, who suffering for Christ counted as gain.

No matter how hard he tried to run from his past, it was always there. In his mind there may have been a clear mark between his past life and his present vocation, but in his work, his past is always present, under the surface.

As Christians, we often have a difficult relationship with our pasts. We like the language of growth. We like to feel that we’re moving away from one thing (sin) toward another thing (righteousness before God).

We like to feel that we’re moving toward a spiritual goal, a deeper connection with God. A bolder proclamation of God in our lives. We want to know that our faith is growing, that we are somehow, getting better at following Jesus.

And those are worthy aspirations. Aristotle rightly noted that human beings are “teleological creatures” which means we humans are goal oriented, that we need a purpose to living, that we want to grab hold of something that is always in front of us.

And of course, Paul knew his Aristotle. That’s why Paul said that he “presses on toward the goal...” He needs something in front of him to keep himself going. He keeps looking for new challenges, new quests, new experiences. His feet never stay in one place for long, and his hands are always occupied. Paul is always running another lap in the race that has been set before him.

But if Paul’s running this race to escape his past, then that is race that he’ll never win. Nor should he. God used his past to make the great Christian thinker and preacher that he was. Without all those years in school, Paul wouldn’t have been able to share the gospel so effectively. Without persecuting Christians, Paul wouldn’t have learned the humility he needed to connect with other believers.

And God uses YOUR past to create YOur future in Christ. It doesn’t matter if your past is something to brag about or something to be ashamed of, God uses both the dirt and the gold to build the kingdom of God.

That’s why you CAN run the race that has been set before you. You can press on because Christ Jesus has made you his own.

But that race is fraught with fits and starts, success and failure, pains and losses. As well as gains and triumphs. We make our way up the mountain with skinned knees, calloused heels, and bloody fingers, only to find ourselves falling backwards and landing back on the spot where we started. And then we begin again, tired. But stronger.

Paul says to forget the past and push toward the future. And you may forget your past but your past does not forget you. Your past follows you, reminding you of who you were. It’s your past that so often pushes you backward down that mountain, because that’s where your eyes have been fixed.

But God redeems your past, and trains your eyes towards God’s future. Your past may have made you who are you, but your past will not make you into who you are becoming.

So you press on to what lies ahead, you press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. You press on because Christ has put you on the path that leads to God. You press on because God has given you the strength to meet the days ahead. You press on because that’s all you can do now that you have gained everything in Christ.

May this be so among us. Amen.