“Whad’ya Know II: Christ and the Power of His Resurrection”

August 30, 2009

Philippians 3:7-14

Last Sunday I began exploring some of what Paul wrote to the early Christian churches about knowledge. As we move into September I’m looking at the different ways in which he answers the question: “Whad’ya know?” Sometimes Paul is very clear about the knowledge that he has, stating in plain Greek: “We know…” We’ll hear such a claim next Sunday. Sometimes Paul writes about a knowledge is more a hope than a reality—as in this morning’s scripture lesson from his letter to the Philippians: “I want to know Christ and the power of the resurrection.”

The process of learning—whether it is learning to tie your shoe or pursuing a doctorate—is about wanting to know—and about the awareness of what we have not yet attained.

This past Tuesday I saw a student sitting outside Phillips Hall with a puzzled look on his face, campus map in his hands, trying not to look too new, too confused, too lost. Perhaps such an experience is the root of those nightmares in which we have to be someplace—a class, an appointment, a worship service—but we have no idea where that place is. Do you have dreams like this—or am I just revealing my own neurosis?

Across the street on the Pentacrest the sign over a tent announced help: “Campus Directions,” it read. The sign announced the hope that students might find out where they are and from that knowledge get to where they wanted to go. Orientation is never enough, is it? Once we’re in the midst of things, we can discover that what we have, however sufficient, is not enough. We need something more, something else.

Orienting ourselves is not a task for freshmen alone. All of us from time to time need to get a clearer understanding of where we are and discover again where we are going and how to get there. We look at what we have. We consider what else we might need. This is the awareness that Paul commends to the Christians in Philippi. Through his letter to the Philippians he commends this awareness to us as well.

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.”

As you listen to those words, keep in mind Paul’s deep affection for the church in Philippi. Paul himself founded this congregation, the first church on European soil. Writing to them from prison, he says that he prays with joy for them and that he longs to be with them. Paul starts a letter to another congregation by writing: “O foolish Galatians!” When he writes to the troubled and troubling church in Corinth, you can sense the frustration as he goes to great lengths to spell out the nature of love for them, since they seemed to be lacking in this basic understanding. In contrast, the profound love that Paul and the Christians in Philippi had for each other is apparent throughout his letter to the church there.

Out of affection and trust Paul writes of his personal experience.

Once he knew where he stood. Once his position was secure, his orientation clear. He had every reason to be confident, indeed every reason to be more confident than anyone else. He was the child of Jewish parents, not a convert. He was raised and lived in accordance with the Torah. He was a member of a respected tribe. As a Pharisee, he was an expert in the Law. And not only all of this—Paul was even so zealous as to have been a great persecutor of the early Christians.

In other words, he had it all.

If Paul were a Congregationalist, he would have been a direct descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims. If he lived in Iowa City, his family would have been here before this church was established; he’d be a leader in the community. If he were a graduate student, he would have come here with an armload of honors. If he were a professor, he would have an impressive list of post-doc fellowships, extensive publications, and a MacArthur prize. That is to say, he’d be like us—or what we might want to be.

Paul knew where he was.

And yet…

After listing his many reasons for confidence, his many reasons to boast, Paul tells of a change in his thinking. In the midst of life, he discovered that what he had, however sufficient, was not enough. Something else was needed.

 Whatever gain he had, he now regards all of this as, well, our translation says: “I regard all of this as rubbish,” but a better translation would be “dung” or “excrement” or…well, that’s as far as I want to go in the pulpit. All that Paul was, all that he had, was, as Karl Barth put it: “Something which, once thrown away, is never touched again or even looked at…There can be no going back to—not, my evil ways—but to my very goodness.”

This is the point. Paul does not look back at his life and think: “What a vile person I have been.” Paul’s life is in every way a success. He is rightfully proud of his Jewish faith, his extensive education, and the way he has lived. He is a model worth following.

And yet, he now has a new orientation, a new way of valuing things. “My deepest gain I count but loss,” we sing in the old Isaac Watts hymn, echoing Paul’s words to the Philippians.

He cannot go back to his own goodness. Nor can we.

Now, this is just where this sermon could get interesting—because I’m worried that I’ve preached myself into a corner here. And, let’s face it, it’s always interesting when the minister starts to squirm a little.

I run the risk of being the minister who told everyone to give up, to become slackers. For if our goodness is so much garbage, if our achievements are something to be thrown out, then why bother with any of this? Why bother with our congregation’s efforts to show the love of God to this city? Why bother with the teaching and learning that goes on all around us? Why bother with the often difficult task of loving our neighbors as ourselves, or loving our enemies, or—perhaps hardest—loving one another as Christ has loved us?

Is Paul’s new orientation taking us in a direction that we would best avoid?

You see, this is the time of year to tell students to do their best, to encourage teachers in their calling, to remind everyone at the end of summer vacation about the joy to be found in work well done, to urge you to put yourself fully into whatever you do. Instead I give you Paul saying that it is all loss.

Actually, Paul is speaking in relative terms. Compared to the greater good of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, the rest is regarded as loss. Knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection reorients us in a way that calls us toward achievement and success and confidence even while it points us to something greater beyond them.

And as we will hear next Sunday, Paul does encourage us to excel in what we do because our work is vitally important in light of the resurrection.

So I want all of you to be successful in your endeavors. I want to be to be successful. I want this congregation to succeed and achieve.

But we are invited to look beyond our success. We are invited to consider that there is something more valuable than our family status, our net worth, our educational achievement, our faithful involvement in this church.

Is this, however, just empty religious talk, a quick way out of the corner? Of is there something of real value in knowing Christ and the power of the resurrection?

In the Hebrew Scriptures the knowledge of God is based on God’s self-revelation to the people. To “know” God is to honor God, to follow in God’s ways. This is not just knowledge of “facts” about God. There is a living, relational quality to knowing God.

We know Christ as we discover in his life, death, and resurrection the self-revelation of God. We know Christ as we recognize Christ’s claims upon our lives and Christ’s power in our lives.

This is a new knowledge. And it is a knowledge that Paul has not yet achieved. Nor have we. We are, as Paul states elsewhere, those who are being saved, not finished products. Martin Luther made a similar point in saying that the nature of a Christian does not lie in what he or she has become, but in what that person is becoming. Knowing Christ is a process, not a result.

The power of the resurrection is the ability to act that comes from a faith—however tenuous—that God is bringing about a new creation and we are a part of that work and that creation. And because we are part of God’s new creation, the work that we do continues to matter.

The power of the resurrection is the ability to act because in the resurrection we come to see that, as it has been said, the arc of the universe is long but that it moves toward justice, even though this world can at times seem so obviously filled with such evil and injustice. We can truly act “in faith,” that is, trusting that the ultimate direction of creation is toward God’s good purposes for all of life.

This power comes not through our own positive thinking or by our strenuous efforts. This power rises from God’s vindication of the suffering and death of Jesus in the resurrection, in which we see by faith that even at the moment of great suffering and death, God was at work bringing life—and by that same faith claiming that God continues to do so today.

We, too, want to know such power—power that sets us free to love with abandon, to act even when fear presses in, to draw out the best in ourselves and other people.

Do you remember the entire phrase that Paul used to express this desire? “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Listen to that order:

Resurrection, suffering and death, resurrection.

Easter, Good Friday, Easter.

We live in the power of the resurrection now. Even now with all of the struggles of living, we recognize that we move from despair to joy, from paralysis to action, from sickness to health, from death to life. The ability to do this comes from the hope and faith that we have because we are Easter people, because we live with the empowering awareness that in Christ God has conquered death and the sin that separates us from God, from one another, and from the best in ourselves.

Paul says that the knowledge of this power includes a sharing in Christ’s suffering. The hope of knowing the power of the resurrection takes us into the suffering of the world. Certainly we would not enter such places on our own. On our own we would seek our comfort and disregard the hurting world. Left to ourselves we do seek simply our own comfort in the midst of a broken world. Knowing Christ as the Risen One gives us not just the courage but the ability to enter the places of suffering to offer the healing, the peace, the wholeness that God seeks for all creation.

This world is incomplete. We are incomplete. We move toward resurrection but we have not attained it. We press toward the goal, but it is not ours yet. We learn again in reading Paul that crucifixion and resurrection are connected. We learn this in our lives as well.

The process of learning involves our wanting to know—and includes an awareness of what we have not yet attained.

Whad’ya know?

By the grace of God may we know Christ and the power of his resurrection.