Sermon 3rd July 2016

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, continues our exploration of the new life that Jesus offers. The reading is from Philippians 3 verses 1-11.

New Confidence

We have heard so much already in recent weeks about this letter of Paul to the church at Philippi, written maybe only 30 years after Jesus’ death (so try going back 30 years from now and you may remember 1986, it’s a long time in some ways but not really very long at all), this letter written to the first Christian community in Europe: so it was written to the first Christian church group outside the middle eastern region where Christianity started. And as we have heard over the last few weeks, it is a letter full of love, written from the heart as Paul opens himself up about what he thinks really matters to people he cares deeply about.

It is a letter very much in the early days of the Christian faith. I read somewhere that at this time there may only have been 8000 Christians in the world. And Paul is in prison, facing possible death. He knows some of the early churches are doing well. He knows however that some are already struggling, arguing and debating about the right way forward, facing division within and persecution from outside. He must, in one sense at least, have feared for the future of this new faith to which he had committed himself, body, mind and soul. Can he have had any idea that this would become the faith of billions of people? He must have feared that the life of this new faith, at least in this world before Jesus came again, could be very limited.

But he keeps on, going back again and again to what drives him on, going back to basics, to what he really believes really matters at the end of the day. Because that is where he is coming from, he is in chains and facing his own possible death. It is hardly surprising that it particularly focused his mind.

So you might think this is, possibly, not a letter for the every day here and now in the twenty first century because Paul is facing the possibility of dying and he is talking about ultimate the new life that Jesus offers. e big questions and in the context of a small and potentially very fragile early church.

What, you might ask, is he saying to me about this modern world, my work, my friends and family, my concerns over the political future of our country, the institutions I have to deal with: Government, the NHS, The European Union, the Church of England…..does he have much to say here about modern day complexity?

Let’s come back to that question over the next few minutes.

I was trying to think of examples of people who, like Paul, have come to look at things in a very different way to how they saw them before or who have gone on to live in a very different way to the way they lived before.

I heard last week about the broadcaster and economist Paul Mason who favoured Brexit, apparently, until very shortly before the referendum then changed his mind as he fully realized what it might mean. And, yes, I would be surprised if there had not been examples of people favouring Remain but changing late on in the campaign to Brexit.

And you do hear from time to time don’t you, about politicians who change parties, who argue passionately for one fundamental view of society then find themselves able to argue passionately for another. It’s usually because of their deeply held beliefs and understanding changing.

And I thought about my youth, it’s really just a minor example, of when I could happily have done away with the Royal family and all it stood for and compare that with my far more considered view now where I have come to respect the role of our monarch and the value of the monarchy in the history and richness of our nation. I would still reform bits of it, possibly a lot but it’s really good for tourism and is our history and there are far greater divides I believe in society than between the Queen and the rest. I have changed my views.

This happens too to people of faith. Uncomfortably perhaps it happens both ways.  As the Olympics approach in a few weeks we will see more of the former world champion triple jumper Jonathan Edwards on TV, and what an excellent sports commentator he is, warm, inclusive, knowledgeable and a supremely gifted sportsman in his day. At one time his Christian faith was so clear in all he said on TV that he was very well known for it but some years ago he suffered a crisis of faith. A friend of mine who I am seeing in 2 weeks’ time in Newcastle used to go to the same church and he describes the real pain to that church community when Jonathan left. Jonathan Edwards’ wife Alison still goes to the church but the pain of her husband leaving is still deeply felt, I understand.

People who move from seeing things one way and who come to see things completely differently. You may be thinking of examples yourself.

And Paul’s example of course is as dramatic as any you’ll find. From being a persecutor of the church and standing by while Stephen the first martyr is stoned to death to becoming the key figure in that post Jesus’ period in the story of our faith. “Christianity is unthinkable without Paul”, says one commentator. Paul is the one who had the Damascus Road conversion, a phrase we still use today to describe the dramatic sort of change that he went through.

And Paul starts this section of his letter that we are looking at today by getting pretty angry at those who still think in any of the ways he used to. [Watch out for those] [Beware of the] dogs he says, the evildoers who will still try to persuade you that you must be circumcised, watch out for those who still try to tell you that you must show those outwards signs as part of your faith. I think he is talking about those within the early church who still insisted on the old outward signs of their Jewish heritage and still tried to persuade others in the new churches to do the same. No, he says, we are finished with all of that.  We do not need outward signs. We do not need those “external ceremonies” is how the Good News Bible puts it.

If you want outwards signs of religious credibility he says, I can give you a better list than anyone. There it is. Circumcised exactly at the right time, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee expert in the law and a keeper of the law so much that you could not have found any fault with me. And so on. I had all the badges, all the medals. I was a top dog. But all that is no longer of any value to me.

Beware putting all your values on external things, what you have, what you wear, what your job is, where you live, what role you have in society. Beware putting too much value even on the outward signs you have of your life and position in the church! Might Paul be saying this to us today?

I have spent the last two years on Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs. The average wage on the Wharf is £110, 000 per year.  Tens of thousands of people pile in there every day. It is a complete bubble. Walk half a mile north or south and you will find the pound shops and the poorer housing.  But the Wharf itself is jammed full of the poshest shops you can find. And it has thousands of expensive, high-rise flats being built that most people will never be able to afford to even see the inside of. I swear I have seen more artificially plumped lips on a single tube train in the morning that I had seen before in my entire life. Of anywhere I know, Canary Wharf sells the dream. And you know what you hear time and again from some of the people who work there? That it lacks soul, that it seems somehow superficial. Externally it has everything, but it seems to me anyway, and I am far from the only one, that it really is lacking something very important. Do not put your faith in the externals.

Is Paul speaking to us today in our modern complexities? Well maybe.

You can take all those external badges of religious honour that I had says Paul and you can throw them in the bin. In fact, I tell you what, you can throw them on the dung heap.

And where he is coming from is simply this. He is coming from his experience of meeting the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and he is coming from a radically different way of looking at his relationship with God that followed that meeting. No longer does he rely on keeping the religious law, being the right kind of person, ticking all the right boxes to make himself right with God. He relies now on being right with God through his faith in the risen Jesus as the Son of God, died, risen, alive. He goes from relying on a set of rules to having a relationship with the living God through his risen, living Son Jesus Christ.

Everything he says I can see as of no value when you compare it to what is really valuable and that he describes as knowing Jesus Christ as Lord.

A living relationship with the God of heaven, made possible because of what happened to his son Jesus here on earth? It becomes, I would suggest, a very different thing indeed from constant religious duty and observance, however much the churches might over the centuries have tried to revert to rules and regulations.

And so Jesus becomes the person, who remains with us even in the darkest days of our suffering. Yes the darkest days, whether prison, life or the fear of death, of ourselves or of those we love as we have heard already in this series on this letter.

Speaking to us in our modern lives in the middle of all its dark complexities? Well I think so because this certainty of suffering touches us all sooner or later..

And the religious rules I think Paul is saying earlier in this letter, become not narrow external observance and badges but a command to work out your new life, your new relationship with God in fear and trembling. Without complaining or arguing and in unity as we have also heard earlier in this series on this letter to the church at Philippi. The rules become a powerful imperative to love and not to hate, to unite and not to divide….

Might Paul be speaking to us in our complex world of political turmoil? Challenging us to rise and meet the future with these attitudes of love and not to fall for the powerful temptation to retaliate, to speak words of hatred, to fight.  

Well maybe Paul speaks to us from his prison even here in our new political world…

And might Paul be speaking to us as to how we should respond and be in all those difficult and complex situations we find ourselves in, in relation to all those complex institutions and situations, whether at home at work or in society? Well maybe we should be listening..

Coming back now to what Paul says in this particular section of his letter, he finishes these eleven verses by saying essentially two things:

Look, all I want is to know Christ he says first, again. If you look back through these eleven verses, he started this part of the letter by urging his readers to be joyful, “in union with the Lord”. It is we he says a little further on who rejoice in our life “in union with the Lord”. What is most valuable he says a bit later is the “knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord”. A bit later he says I want to gain Christ and be “completely united” with him. Then a bit later, “My righteousness comes from my faith in Christ” and now “All I want is to know Christ”, he says again.

You can see how strongly he feels that this knowledge and unity and understanding about the person Jesus is at the heart of everything that he does and says.  There is a theory that I heard mentioned briefly a few years ago by someone who had lost their Christian faith and I don’t know how widely this view is held, but it was said in public, that what actually happened to Paul was that he had an epileptic fit on the Road to Damascus. Well, I am never one to unnecessarily belittle any view that is seriously held, but to me at least it still seems pretty compelling that Paul based the rest of his life, his work, his new theology, his church foundations, on a real experience of meeting with the risen Lord.

And then Paul finishes this section of the letter that we are looking at this morning by saying finally this:

“I want to know the power of his resurrection”, Paul says, “to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life”.

I want to know the power of his resurrection…I hope to be raised from death to life.

Because Paul had met with the risen Jesus himself he knew the resurrection from the dead as a fact and not just a religious theory.

And this fact of life after death continues, I think, to allow us to do at least two things.

First, it allows us to consider with certainty that death is not the end. Just as Paul was able to talk about his hope that he himself would be raised from death to life, so we can have not mere speculation that maybe this is possible but a firm hope that it is.  The resurrection allows us to move from speculation about a possibility to hope in a new reality.

It was a hope no doubt which gave courage to many of the countless thousands of soldiers killed at the battle of the Somme 100 years ago this week as they faced the enemy guns, and a hope that permitted the families of those killed, on both sides, to believe that their death was not the end when they heard the dreadful news.

This same hope allowed me just over 19 years ago to speak to my sister and her husband when she lost her only child in the first few seconds of his life.

This same hope allowed me this week to speak to someone I know well when she was the first apart from the ambulance staff to see her next door friend and neighbour lying peacefully, when the neighbour passed away suddenly.

It allows me to hope whenever I see those whom I love or those around me facing the possibility of dying.

And it is a hope that also permits me to pray into the loving arms of their creator the innocent victims of the dreadful attacks at Istanbul airport this week and the dozens of victims of the attacks on the bus convoy of police cadets returning outside Kabul from their graduation ceremony this week and the many victims of the appalling hostage taking in Dhaka, Bangladesh this week.

So for me I think Paul is still speaking powerfully into our modern world in all its complexities.

Because the fact of the resurrection permits us to move, exactly as it did for Paul, from speculation about a possibility, to hope in a new reality.

And then to finish, I’d just want to say this. I think this fact of life after death continues to permit us to have hope not only at the end of life but it fires back all the way through life’s darknesses and difficulties to permit us to hope that even in the most dreadful of situations, new life is possible. It fires back all the way into every situation we face because it infuses even the darkest of situations with hope, with hope that new life is more powerful than anything that can be thrown at it.

We, like Paul, are people who believe in the power of resurrection, in the possibility of new life and of new hope in any situation.  And that surely speaks to us as we face difficult and potentially dark days ahead both at home and abroad. It will always speak to us, I believe, in our modern world and our modern lives, with all their difficulties and complexities.

Amen