Philippians 3:4b-14
Lent 5 - Year C
Proper 22 (27)- Year A
Distinguishing between a bark and a bite is important data. Knowing the situation raises our confidence of being able to respond appropriately. When these basics are confused or are intermittently so we find ourselves in Kafkaesque scenes.
It is, of course, important to know about ourselves as well as others. Sometimes we confuse our intentions with our behaviors. Since “I” know “Christ” and “Christ” can be counted on, you can count on me to let “you” know what “Christ” wants you to do. Our personal assurance too often leads to our privileged arrogance toward others.
Rather than looking at Christ or our striving (having put so much effort into faith beyond my experience, I need to have it be truer than true for me and you) it is probably worth spending a little more time with our “not having reached the goal of resurrection”. Without careful analysis of our situation, we are likely to strive overmuch, over-function, and miss a subtle call or beckoning to a next step.
Our temptation is to achieve spiritual, resurrectional, success right now. It’s the right thing. Pressing on without reflecting on what leads us to press on, quite quickly gets to be counter-productive.
During Lent we may need to move more slowly in order to move more at all toward what yet lies ahead.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/03/philippians-34a-14.html
So how do you talk about what is most important in your life. Will some form of family values cut it? Is security the issue behind all your issues? Being one-up over one or many is where its at?
Paul talks about knowing resurrection's power as being top on his list.
For him this was more important than "being a meticulous observer of everything set down in God's law Book."
Is there anything more important than this for you? How would you phrase Paul's heart's desire? How would you share that with others?
Don't give up the attempt to define what is most important. Keep at it.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/october2002.html
In verse 9 are we dealing with righteousness that comes "through faith in Christ" or "through the faith of Christ"? The translational decision is important as we look at the desired outcome - resurrection of Paul from the dead.
This is what he presses onward toward. If it is the call of God in Christ Jesus that is the potential energizing of the accomplished goal of resurrection, this might help us choose the NRSV footnote instead of its primary translation.
In this light it is both appropriate to empty oneself of past credentials and to fill oneself with living in the present differently than before because the future is already cared for - G*D in Christ Jesus is replicable in Paul's life, my life, your life, and the life of all.
In light of the acquittal of Karen Dammann it is tempting to suggest that she placed more stock in the faith of Christ working in her life and the life of the church than she did in her own faith in Christ. In this way, whichever way the temporal decision went (prison or beating - to use Paul's experiences), she would still be on an upward path toward resurrection. More simply put, either way a participation in a full life of abundance would be a guiding principle. To rely only on our own faith is to leave us open to the vagaries of experience -- sometimes we're up and sometimes we're down.
Are you leaning into resurrection? Do you have a different way of expressing your current goal in life? Might this focus on resurrection be a post-modern, beyond the "Christo-logical" [NISB note], equivalent to a beginning organizing principle of Methodism -- escaping the wrath to come. Intriguing to consider: Are you more energized by escape imagery or arrival imagery?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
Today someone wrote to say they had done a Google ranking of sermon preparation sites and my humble wesleyspace.net was currently sitting at #16. That information astounded me. I've stopped putting counters on things and just muddle along. The prize I have been seeking is not #1 in such a ranking. The prize has been my own growth and I seem to learn about such best by seeing what comes out of my fingers at the keyboard. Other folks have other ways to garner insight regarding what they hold to be most important.
So, what is the prize you have been seeking? What goal have you been tracking, in season and out? What is your "God in Christ Jesus" equivalent? Perhaps you put it in exactly those words - perhaps not.
Is there a way to deal with all this resurrectional goal and making it our own that won't fall into the trap of the very next sentence (15) about mature folks being of the same mind (mine) and if you don't you must be immature but you will come around. Yes, you'll come around! Ha ha ha ha ha!
How do you talk about participating in a larger goal than your own in such a way as to not be dismissive of either your own goal or that of others?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
I've got good gifts. Oops, to merely say that leaves me open to pride and downfall. Better to be covetous for the gifts of another. Given the quality of my gifts I really need to find the perfect one to try imitating because anything less would have me outshine them. It is hard to be humble.
So to do a little reverse psychology on the fates I'll strive for suffering in death. That way those silly old fates, who are too stupid to catch on and can only reverse things, will reverse my suffering into heaven.
See, if you just spend a little time figuring these things out you can make out like a bandit. Well, maybe that's not the best thing to be compared to, but what are you going to do with these old sayings that get lodged so deeply in our brainpans.
All this fancy footwork to get at the nub of the matter. Here is a worthy process of life: "forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead". If we were to strip away all that other put down of gifts and the opportunities they bring as being third-rate (not even second class) we might better see the connection between living expansively/expandingly in a loving direction and the present moment.
To do so reduces the restrictive limitations of past experience and enhances the creative possibilities still before us.
- - -
So we affirm the note in The Interpreter's Study Bible: "What is unclear, and debated, is whether Paul's insistence on these points is intended to correct some opponent's message or to recall and anticipate problems he had encountered elsewhere, especially in Corinth."
It turns out all the suffering and diminishment language, the dismissal of good gifts, is off message and distracting.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html
"Surpassing value" is a strange concept to any economic system. Each system has its value pluses and minuses, but not any values beyond itself.
Surpassing value turns our usual economic, political, religious, processes into so much dog-dung (as The Message so graphically puts it.
Surpassing value puts the other usual values of life into a new frame.
So, state your surpassing value in 10 words or less.
Paul puts it, "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
Kairos CoMotion puts it in more than 10 words:
Re-form the way we live together so as to more fully embody the radically expansive love of God
Network for solidarity, advocacy and action
Act-Up on behalf of those who are silenced, excluded or dispossessed
The United Methodist Church says it is "making disciples of Jesus Christ."
How do you play with "knowing", "reform", "network", "act-up", "making", and your own way to phrase "surpassing value"?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html
Are you confident in the flesh? Do you have your understandings all in a row? Are you sufficiently certified? Are your advantages being played to the hilt and your disadvantages minimized? In other words, have you padded your resume?
Surely, you have you have an explanation for such intractables as poverty. I've been following a Lenten Reading Program that is about to get to the chapter on poverty in Bob Edgar's new book, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right. In peeking ahead there is this provocative line, "It is time for a New Revised Standard Version of international capitalism, and it must begin with the simple proposition that each of God's children deserves love equally." (p. 188)
To have the power of resurrection in our back pocket without getting it out and "straining forward" to apply it to individuals and systemic processes is to not have it at all. Nowhere will resurrection show up more dramatically than in the ratio of poor to rich. This is an accurate moral measure of our lives, individual and corporate.
The above book indicates that if someone handed you a one-hundred-dollar bill and in return you gave seventy cents back, every one of the Millennium Goals could be achieved and the lives of more than one billion of the least-of-these would be transformed. Even such a small thing we find it impossible to do.
What social holiness will come from your knowing the power of Christ's resurrection?
- - -
a degree on the wall
I passed Jesus
I am authorized
to pass judgment
and never lose another game
just watch me point
point at my degrees
at least 34 of them
it is so hard to forget
all that went into getting here
and so easy to remember
that with all that I am
and all that I have
I don't have to strain
quite so much as I used to
to make the train
when the heavenly call
goes out
to be continued
even a progressive pilgrim moves
into a slough of despond
before having their degrees
unloaded
and replaced
with a dance of joy
naked
to be continued
with others
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Philippians 3:4b-14
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 or Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 19 or Psalm 80:7-15
Matthew 21:33-46
World Communion Sunday, by its very existence, recognizes that there are incompatible differences between those who sacramentalize a eucharist in Jesus' name. We emphasize different commandments and so are constantly balancing and rebalancing our boundaries.
Putting the Exodus and Isaiah passages together we find less emphasis upon the specifics of thundering commandments, than on what G*D expects to be their result -- justice (Isaiah 5:7).
Left on our own, we are afraid - who can keep every jot and tittle? But seen as precursors to a longer prophetic justice (thus the vineyard images in these pericopes) we are able to keep on.
In this light, the Psalmist is correct to see the commandments as clarifying - "Here is an example of justice: honor those who have gone before." In keeping that which builds justice we find a great reward, one worth pursuing with all our energy. It is also this that connects us with Prophet Jesus - identifying a great justice and what stands in our way of moving toward it.
- - -
listen to another parable
what is going to happen
to those in the tale
just so it will happen
to you and your family
as we project
so we are
change an expectation
and you change a course of history
facts are not immutable
or determinative
listen to a parable
live a parable
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
Again the issue of authority. What do we claim as our grounding? Is it time to take another look at it? As I wrestle with a vocational call to keep a pastoral authority going or hearkening to a cultural call of retirement (yes I made it to the magic age of 65 last week – just 5 years left on my biblical warranty), I am asking again what am I pointing toward and which route will best move me forward.
Given where you are on your life's trajectory, where you can place an "I Am Here" sign on your life map, where do you stake out what you are looking for. Can you phrase it like Paul, "I'm looking to attain resurrection from the dead"? Would you say the same thing in different terms and thus ground yourself somewhere to be able to achieve such? Would you say something completely different?
May you press on toward the prize of your call, your authority, in this day, in this age, in these circumstances.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html
Paul notes his equivalent of America's "white male privilege" and trades it for something he considers to be of even more surpassing value - his experience of a call and wilderness spirit quest he identifies with Jesus Christ.
There are many who have claimed the same precedence for their conversion to one surpassing value or another - from tea baggers to suicide bombers to urban gangs to monetary profits to family/congregation.
The insight here is not in the absolute of a given surpassing value which will focus our life. This is all too common. Rather, listen to verse 13 without reference to your or any particular holy involvement - "I forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead".
Paul's "Jesus" talks about that which is coming after him - Holy Spirit and our doing greater thing than he did. There is talk about post-modern living. Can you imagine what it would mean to be post-Christian?
What do you think Paul would want us to forget regarding our current understanding of Jesus and Church that we might join him in stretching forward? With this as thought experiment as encouragement, what do you feel needs to be forgotten that you might move ahead?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/philippians-34b-14.html
We are always defining the right way to live in terms of our own experiences. Stephen Colbert’s persona trusts his feelings, not facts. No matter how confident we are about our having found the one true way to live, a bit of mercy for what others have found is in order.
While it is important to ground our actions in what we trust, we simply can’t trust our trust to not fool us into foolish action. Claim is not proof.
So act on what you know, knowing that you don’t yet know enough. Willing to leave what lies behind; straining forward; we press on. This can be for some a preferred future or imitation of a living G*D or just stubborn DNA, but we press on. This is not some Easy Button pressing on, but a pressing on that calls for our best which is better than we’ve been able to do up until now. Pressing on will come from our emotional life as well as our intellectual life, employing our individual gifts and striving for a common good.
Even sure of our present definitions of reality, we press on.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/09/philippians-34b-14.html