Striving forward

Texts: Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

I do like it when St. Paul talks about Jesus. I like it when he talks about the future. And I like it when he talks about being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Today, St. Paul is writing to the congregation in Philippi, mostly to thank them for being his friends. He's actually in prison as he writes. But Paul being Paul can’t help but give them some advice. Early in the letter he exhorts them to live their lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ, even when he is not with them, because …. Well, because people talk, you know. He will hear about it if they do not.

Going on, he advises them to be humble and to look out for the interests of others. He reminds them to be different from the world and to rejoice that they are called to be different.

And then he gets to the part we read today, which sounds like classic Paul, using some of the words he uses often - righteousness, suffering, circumcision. These would have meaning to those who heard his letter being read to them in church, which may or may not have the same meaning to us, depending on whether or not we hear them as jargon or as clinical terms instead of theological ones. Certainly the word righteousness has been freighted with a lot of meaning beyond what Paul intended. But that’s a conversation for another day.

What I want to consider on this day is Paul’s urging for folks to let go of the past and strive toward the future. A future that is determined by the call of God through our following Jesus. What lies ahead is not the result of a strategic plan or a business model or a set of lofty goals. What lies ahead will be revealed to us through listening for God’s call to us in this place and at this time. That’s what determines our future, where and how we will follow Jesus into the place God is calling St. James’s to go and to be next.

Now Paul, being Paul, with his sometimes dramatic way with words, suggested that he counts his past as rubbish. Modern psychology, especially the armchair variety, has two things to say about the past: First, that the past is NOT what makes you who you are. This is helpful to those who have suffered trauma in the past, or made horrible mistakes and have trouble accepting that they are not the worst thing they ever did. But also, one often hears that it indeed our past that has made us who we are now, warts and all, successes and failures and all, and that this is how our character has been formed. This is helpful to those who have learned to accept and come to terms with all kinds of things, stuff we could control and stuff we couldn’t control. It’s helpful to those who have done the work of putting their demons in their place, of forgiving and allowing themselves to be forgiven, of remembering that most every day all of us are just doing the best that we can and letting that be ok.

Paul of course was not a student of modern psychology, but I think where he is going with this in his letter to the Philippians is still a healthy way to look at ourselves today individually and as a community.

What he is pointing toward is this: No matter whether one views one’s past as horrific or glorious, following Jesus requires us to hold that past very lightly, because getting mired in or just replaying the past over and over keeps us from listening for God’s call to us here and now and beyond. If we want to live there, either in the glory or the sorrow or the frustration or the joy, we stop following the one we made promises at our baptism to follow, and we therefore stop living our life in a manner worthy of the Gospel. Jesus was always on the move. And so, as St. Paul reminds us, so must we be also, looking forward, pressing forward, listening for that call of Jesus - and following that call, even when the call is challenging and the way forward feels too much like change. 

But Jesus calls us to produce the fruits of the kingdom, which means to follow where he leads, to where God calls, to wherever God’s people are who need to hear the good news that we do not have to stay captive to the past but indeed should strain forward to what lies ahead, confident in our most basic identity as the beloved people of God, and do the work God has given us to do in this vineyard and in this time.