Sermon: Choral Evensong - 8 March 2015

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 8th March 2015

Service:

Choral Evensong

Readings:

Exodus 5.1 - 6.1

Philippians 3.4b - 14

Listen:

Download Recording (MP3, 3.1M)

‘I am still running, running to capture the prize that captured me’, says St Paul. In preparation for this sermon I was tempted to go to Surrey Sports Park and try out the running machines. I resisted the temptation. In fact, I resisted the temptation to do running of any sort in preparation for preaching.

I think any sustained time on a running machine would drive me bonkers. To me it seems a little strange to run hard and go precisely nowhere. It’s not really the image St Paul conjures up for us in his letter to the Philippians. ‘I am still running’ he says: but he is running in pursuit of a prize.

A better image, perhaps, is of Mo Farah or Christine Ohurougu running flat out to capture a prize. That’s almost certainly the image Paul had in mind, one of the Games, and runners straining after the prize. But then you could say they are just running in circles.

Paul takes us beyond those images. He asks us to ponder our own calling and discipleship, our identity in Christ, the source of our confidence and what is really precious in life. His image is more like the fell runners who run over different types of terrain, up hill, down dale, through water, over obstacles, stumbling sometimes, exhilarated at others. That’s the run of the disciple.

The fell runner cannot take confidence in much, other than that which energises and drives him. He does not know what the terrain will be like; all he knows is that a course is before him that will have its ups and downs.

Prior to his call on the road to Damascus Paul had taken confidence in an identity that he later saw as taking him round in circles, that meant he went nowhere. His identity was now in Christ.

He had been captured, drawn in, if you prefer. Either way, ‘Christ Jesus has made me his own’ (Philippians 3.12c). Being caught by Christ meant his previous labelling of himself and others as ‘in’ or ‘out’ was empty.

The call of Christ moves us beyond exclusive and inclusive labels, both are too restricting, they mark and define. What captured Paul is the universal, cosmic consequence of Christ’s saving action on the cross, on which Christ Jesus ‘stretched out his arms for us [human beings]’: it is a profoundly Catholic vision.

The consequence for Paul was that he had become like the man in Jesus’ parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field’ (Mark 13.44). 

Paul had found the treasure: or rather the treasure had found him; caught his eye; captivated him. Paul dispensed with everything else he had – his ancestral heritage and advantage, his reputation, his zeal and righteousness - all that is jumble to go in a sale so he could capture the treasure.

This raises huge questions, with a distinctly Lenten character. What then about the things, even people, who appear to give us status and a sense of entitlement: what of our narratives of success, ambition, control, merit? Can we ever trade them in for something more precious?

Paul wants to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and decisively by sharing in Christ’s sufferings by becoming like him in his death. This is when he and we put to death, or allow the Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, to put to death in us all that stamps out life.

Capturing what has captivated. This is the Christian pursuit: solely Jesus Christ, who has already taken hold of us. This is all about God’s grace, God’s initiative, which is what captivates and captures.

And in two short verses Paul blows the myth of Pelagianism, that early heresy, which suggested that salvation was something that a human being could earn: trying to capture without being captivated.

So, a Pelagian would read Philippians like this, ‘Not that I have already obtained this or have reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own…’ And there it ends.

This matters today. Discipleship is not about self-fulfilment or personal achievement: it is about Christ fulfilment; being filled and replenished by Jesus Christ. Paul used to think that fulfilment was about his membership of a tribe and other identities that were not about his identity in Christ Jesus.

The message coming from Paul in Philippians is that when we try to create our identity through anything other than Christ we are creating a straw man. And taking us to our first reading, bricks need clay not straw.

Human identity comes from God who formed Adam - us - from the dust and clay of the earth, and breathed his Spirit into Adam’s nostrils, creating a living body of a human being. The straw is only of use to be burned to fire the brick. The flames of the Spirit, like fire, purge and burn away our own vanities, delusions and false identities.

The abject hopelessness of life without Christ is exemplified in Pelagius. He echoes Pharaoh’s pushing of the taskmasters, who in turn beat the supervisors, who in turn drove the Israelite slaves into the ground.

Pelagius like Pharaoh tells us, ‘You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, let us go and sacrifice to the LORD’ (Exodus 5.22). How dispiriting. There is no grace there.

Thankfully God has another word to answer that despair, ‘Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed by a mighty hand he will let the Israelites go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land’. (Exodus 6.1)

So the Israelites will flee from Pharaoh, they will move swiftly and deftly. Their journey, the Exodus, prefigures for us the passage through the waters of baptism and the journey on into the Promised Land, and to find a promised land within it.

Paul’s is a running theology. He runs to pursue Christ because he knows Christ has already pursued and captured him.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
(Hebrews 12.1-2)