Upcoming Sunday Epistle
Readings
Sunday 8 October
2017
Philippians
3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have
more: circumcised 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; as to
zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of
Christ. More 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 and
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. 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. Not that I have already obtained this or have
already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ
Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my
own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward
to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly
call of God in Christ Jesus.
–––––––––––– –––––––––––– –––––––––––– –––––––––––– ––––––––––––
Paul
lists his credentials, and they are quite impressive to be sure. There are moments where Paul could be accused
of boasting about himself. In this case,
as soon as Paul has listed his credentials, he throws away all the status
points which he just referenced. All of
these things that are signs of his pedigree Paul refers to as rubbish compared
to the identity that marks not who he is but rather whose he is as a follower
of Jesus Christ. This is a powerful
statement, even an offensive statement.
When Paul speaks of rubbish, he is not merely speaking of garbage. He is speaking of human waste, of excrement. And he is doing so in a rather crude way that
some would refer to as vulgar.
This
image brings to mind for me the passage in Zechariah in which Satan, the
accuser, is bringing accusations upon Israel and the high priest, Joshua. God rebukes the accuser and calls the
heavenly beings who have witnessed these accusations to tend to the high priest,
to remove from him the soiled rags and to clothe him in rich robes that he
might stand in the purity of God and minister to the people in the name of God. And as he does so, the dirty rags of all the
people of God are exchanged for clean garments given by God.
For
Paul, his credentials are as the dirty rags of Joshua the high priest. Dare I say that Paul, a Pharisee, would have
known this text well. The apostle is
aware that he has been clothed in Christ, and thus all his credentials are
worthless in comparison with the power of Christ’s resurrection that has
transformed Paul and commissioned him to proclaim the Gospel. Nothing else matters apart from belonging to
Jesus.
It
is good for us to hear this, for it applies as much to us as it does to Paul.
–––––––––––– –––––––––––– –––––––––––– –––––––––––– ––––––––––––
Father Timothy
Alleman
No comments:
Post a Comment