| Rev. Melissa Hatfield
First Baptist Church, Jefferson City MO In the movie Zoolander, two male models, Derek Zoolander, fashion’s top male model and Hansel, the new boy wonder, are in competition to see which one is truly is the best male model. In order to determine which of the two is the most ridiculously good-looking, they challenge each other to a walk-off – a competition in which each model hits the runway with his best walks to try and one up each other. Strut after strut the competition continues until the exciting conclusion when Hansel captures the title with an impressive finale. Our Scripture this morning is a sort-of Jewish walk-off. I’m serious. Stay with me. The Apostle Paul is writing a letter from his jail cell to the church at Philippi. It’s a pretty upbeat letter of encouragement to the believers there as they tried to figure this Christianity thing out. Remember – this is a radically new way of believing and living for the world. Especially the idea of grace. Grace was an unknown in the religious world. We struggle to understand grace even today. What makes us think it was any easier for the new followers of Christ who had never heard of such a thing to accept that they were forgiven because of what Christ had done for them, not because of what they did. There were still many, many things to be figured out. Whenever uncertainty is in the picture, many people look to someone to lead them, to guide them, to tell them what to do. Paul was always working to remind them to keep their eyes on Jesus Christ, not the voices around them. Now – back to the Jewish walk off. We gather from Paul’s letter that some top religious leaders in town were claiming to have the final answer about how to acquire salvation. Paul calls them barking dogs and religious busybodies in verse 2 – all bark and no bite. We don’t really know who they were but we do know that they were trying to convince folks in Philippi that Christ was not enough. They were still very committed to many of the practices of the Jewish tradition as necessary for salvation. One tradition of primary importance was circumcision. Theses folks taught that the Gentile Christians should be circumcised like the Jews. That’s why Paul in verse 2 calls them “knife-happy circumscisers.” Name-calling was obviously not beneath Paul.
Now comes the walk-off. In his frustration with these religious leaders and the fact that some in Philippi were tempted to listen to them because they are good Jews who follow the letter of the law, Paul jumps up on the runway and struts his stuff – verbally, that is. In the first verses (4-6) Paul recites an impressive religious genealogy. He can claim a ritually correct circumcision: note it was performed precisely on the eighth day – meaning as a baby. Perhaps Paul mentioned this because his competition were adult converts to Judaism. Paul can also trace his lineage back to the small, but distinguished tribe of Benjamin. Furthermore, the apostle shares his name with Saul - the first (if short-lived and divinely replaced) king of Israel hailed from Benjamin, giving Paul a regal heritage. Benjamin also was the only tribe to stay loyal to Judah as the remnant of the nation that remained centered in Jerusalem. In short, Paul's lineage is unbroken and unquestionable. He's a Hebrew born of Hebrews—a kind of home boy claim available only to long-established Jewish families. Paul's pedigree isn't just sociologically secure; it's most importantly theologically impeccable. He's a Pharisee, the segment within first-century Judaism that was most concerned with making Torah life and law part of every observant Jew's daily existence. He was a fiery defender of the purity of the religion even to the point where he persecuted the church. On top of that, he was a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book. In other words, Paul says to his competitors “In Your Face”, as my youth would say. Paul totally dominates the walk-off - leaving the competition in the dust. Paul is top-dog. Paul is a ridiculously good Jew. You’d expect Paul to take his crown and promenade around on the shoulders of the Philippians but he doesn’t. And it’s not because he is in jail either. Paul uses the glory, the win, his title of “Top Jew of the Year” as the staging for a lesson in what truly validates one as a follower of Christ. Before we hear the acceptance speech, let’s talk about the message we hear in our culture today about what validates a person. I was at Barnes and Noble the other day enjoying a new book and a hot chocolate when I looked up to glance at the titles within my eye sight. Listen to some of the titles: - “Start Late, Finish Rich”
- “The Automatic Millionaire”
- “Never Eat Alone” – a book on finding success in life through networking.
Our culture pitches the idea to us that achievement equals validation. We are validated by what we do, what we accomplish. The more we do, the better we do it, the more validated we are in the eyes of others and in our own eyes. The goal is SELF-help. We are so hungry for validation through what we do that the self-improvement industry is a billion dollar industry. The idea of self-improvement can be incredibly harmful for Christians if it seeps into our being and hinders our ability to live by grace. Grace means we can do nothing to counterbalance our sins. We can’t validate ourselves in the eyes of God. No matter our pedigree or our good works or our behaviors or church attendance or family faith. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist, was honored in Israel as a “righteous Gentile” for having saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. He employed Jews in factories that made flawed and therefore useless armaments for th e Nazis. But in the movie Schindler’s List, when his factory workers were liberated, he broke into tears, saying, “I could have gotten more out . .. I didn’t do enough.” He was right. He was a courageous man, but he could have done more. Every one of us can say that. So much more we could have done. It is enough to make God weep. There is a mountain of evidence to sink any one of us when standing before the judgment of God. But that is not the last word. The last word is that in Christ, God has taken the judgment for us on the cross. Consequently, we live by grace. There are two things that fight against our living by grace according to author Philip Yancey in his book Rumors of another World. First, when we mess up we like to work our way out of it. Most religions have elaborate techniques for penitents to demonstrate their remorse. If you sit in a sweat lodge, embark on a pilgrimage, crawl on your knees, or sacrifice an animal, you can walk away with a feeling of self-satisfaction. You did something that somehow balances out the sin. You paid for it. Yancey told of a British conference on world religions, some years ago, where the participants were trying to decide if there was any belief that was unique to Christianity: They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh that’s easy. It’s grace.” After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and Muslim code of law – each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional. We want to pay for our sins and this gets in the way of living by grace. The second barrier to living by grace, according to Yancey, is that we like to look good in front of other people. We want to appear respectable and in control, a veneer that repentance slices through. It requires us to openly acknowledge failure and weaknesses that we normally seek to keep hidden. Acknowledging failure and weakness seems to be in direct conflict with the culture’s teaching of validation. Yancey says, “At the moment I am most aware of my own inadequacy, at that moment I am probably closest to God.” Rumors of Another World, pg. 157. Journey back with me now to the walk-off. Paul has put the competitors in their place. He is standing at the end of the runway, the victor. ; He hushes the cheering crowd and adoring fans and speaks.I’ve told you of all that I have accomplished. Of all my claims to religious Fame, all the good things that I’ve done, and why I could claim the title of top Jew more than these mitators. YET . . . yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.The place was silent. This was the oddest acceptance speech ever given. Here Paul could take credit for so many things. He had done so many good things. He follows the commandments. He defended the church and the faith fervently. He knew his Bible. Shoot, he wrote parts of the Bible. He led several ministry teams and went as a sponsor on the junior high retreat. His resume screams “Super Christian”. He doesn’t say that these things are not good or garbage. Paul says that in comparison to knowing Christ, they have absolutely no value for him. They mean nothing. Human effort and achievement have no value in light of Christ. Verse 10: “I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally.” In that same Barnes and Noble store I mentioned earlier, I watched a little girl following her dad as he looked through the discount table. He was wearing khaki pants. She was distracted by the children’s’ books and games that were piled up under the table. Her dad went on ahead of her to the next table but another man was walking by looking at the books on the shelf behind the table. He too was wearing khaki pants. The little girl looked up only enough to see the khaki pants and went over to hug the legs to feel the safety of her dad near by. Only when he said something in surprise to her hug and she looked up did she realize that what she was holding onto wasn’t what she thought she was holding onto. Friends, we grab hold of the wrong stuff thinking it is what validates us. Paul begs us to look up and realize that we are clinging to an inferior way of living. He begs us to let go of all human effort and grab hold with total abandonment to grace through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to ask, we don’t have to beg, we don’t have to earn the righ – we can’t. . . . just grab hold. “Philosopher and Theologian Francis Schaeffer never tired of saying that Christianity is both the easiest and the hardest religion. His reasoning was that it is the easiest because we do not have to do anything to contribute to our salvation; we need only come with empty hands and a repentant heart to receive the free gift of God’s forgiveness and love. It is the hardest because we are proud, and we do not want to be indebted to anyone, not even God.” Perfecting, 130. God’s Grace Validates. Say this with me, “God’s Grace Validates.”
There isn’t anything we can do but come with empty hands and a repentant heart to receive the free gift of God’s forgiveness and love. |