Sermon preached by John A. Huffman, Jr.
February 4, 2007
Copyright © 2007, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.
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.
(Philippians 3:12-14)
Every preacher who takes seriously his or her work has several central themes that weave their way through their entire pulpit ministry and practice of pastoral care. Every preacher I know has three or four messages that best express the essence of the Christian faith. This is the third time in my twenty-nine years with you that I have returned to this Philippians 3:12-16 passage.
When I travel to preach elsewhere, if I have never been there before, this message will most likely be included in the several talks which I will give. If I knew I had two last Sundays to preach at St. Andrew's, I would, on the second to last Sunday, preach this message. On the last Sunday, I would preach about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Do you ever feel boxed in? Do you ever have the feeling that life is passing you by, that the action is elsewhere? I have discovered a strange phenomenon, both in the lives of others and in my own life. Those of us who complain about being boxed in, when pointed to spiritual help, often make the contradictory comment, "I can handle my own life."
The Bible speaks to those of us who feel boxed in. The Bible also speaks to us if perhaps we think we have arrived.
Paul, a prisoner at Rome, wrote to fellow Christians in Philippi, stating in effect, "I am still growing in my understanding of who I am, who God is, and what God wants me to be. I am living beyond myself. It is the only way to live." Can you say this with him? Do you have a forward thrust to all of your activities? Are you being stretched beyond yourself to an exhilarating lifestyle? Or have you settled into a comfortable routine which you can handle? Are you finding yourself confined by a box of your own making?
You can live beyond yourself! Paul outlines four steps for this kind of creative living.
Very frankly, these four steps have revolutionized my life. When I forget them, my life is thrown off kilter. When I remember them, I am liberated to be all that God created me to be.
Step One: Face up to the fact you are not perfect.
Humility is one of the toughest commodities to obtain. Paul was no mealy-mouthed, introverted individual. He suffered from no lack of self-confidence. Yet he did have a healthy respect for his own human limitations. He wrote: "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 . . ." (Philippians 3:12-13).
Some of us lean continually on glass crutches made out of our own self-achievements. The Bible warns you against putting confidence in what you have been able to attain on your own. It strikes me that many of us suffer from the "Horatio Alger" mentality. It's the "self-made man or woman" syndrome. It's commendable in many respects. It has particularly caught hold of some of us who are committed to the basic capitalistic philosophy. We have applied ourselves with all diligence to our chosen professions. We have proven ourselves to be achievers. Perhaps you've earned a prominent position, or a lot of money, or a good marriage partner. You pride yourself in your achievements. Granted, they are many.
What you and I sometimes forget is that "every good and perfect gift comes from above." We have forgotten that it is impossible to really make it on our own. Somewhere there is a father or a mother who invested themselves in you. Somewhere there is a friend who gave you some good counsel or loaned you some money. Somewhere there is a teacher who invested some time in you, believing that you showed promise. No one has ever made it on his own.
Even though there are some worthy candidates for the "rags-to-riches award," Paul, the achiever, says, ". . . I do not consider that I have made it my own . . . ." There is a big difference between Saul of Tarsus, the Pharisee, and Paul, the apostle, writing years later from prison. The same individual? Yes. But, early in life, he was a self-made man. He had risen to the top of his chosen religious profession. He relates how he felt about himself back then. A few verses before in this letter to the Philippian fellow Christians, he describes how he had reason for confidence in the flesh, a self-confidence. If anyone had reason for self-confidence, he had it. Remember him telling about how he was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin? He described himself as a Hebrew born of Hebrews. He talked about himself as to the law a Pharisee, one who had zeal as a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, he would have been considered blameless. But then he said:
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. (Philippians 3:7-9)
Do you catch the turnaround in Paul's life? Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, turned his life around, offering him an authentic sense of humility.
It's encouraging to be humble. Granted, it hurts at first. The initial awareness comes hard. The encouraging thing is that you are not so surprised by your failures. The self-made individual has to constantly defend himself or herself at the point of weakness.
The late Paul Tournier, the noted psychiatrist, observed that there is a tendency to divide individuals into two categories--those who are strong and those who are weak. Society rewards the strong and tramples underfoot the weak. Somehow we view the strong as healthy. The weak are seen an unhealthy. Tournier emphasized that both the strong and the weak reactions are neurotic.
He wrote in his book titled The Strong and the Weak:
If weakness leads to a sense of failure, strength too has its vicious circle: one must go on being stronger and stronger for fear of suffering an even more crushing defeat, and this race in strength leads humanity inevitably to general collapse . . . .
I believe that there is a great illusion underlying both the despair of the weak and the unease of the strong--and the misfortune of both. This great illusion is the very notion that there are two kinds of human beings, the strong and the weak.
The truth is that human beings are much more alike than they think. What is different is the external mask, sparkling or disagreeable, their outward reaction, strong or weak. These appearances, however, hide an identical inner personality. The external mask, the outward reaction, deceives everybody, the strong as well as the weak. All men, in fact, are weak. All are weak because all are afraid. They're all afraid of being trampled underfoot. They all are afraid of their inner weakness being discovered. They all have secret faults; they all have a bad conscience on account of certain acts which they would like to keep covered up. They are all afraid of other men and of God, of themselves, of life and of death.
There is something in each of us that wants to prove that we are strong. There is something in each one of us that wants to cover up our imperfections. The mature believer in Jesus Christ understands who he/she is. They face up to the fact of one's own imperfection. In fact, the most spiritual Christian is the individual who thinks least of self, placing more confidence in the Lord, The result is genuine self-esteem, coming from a realistic self-understanding. Reflecting on the fact that he is not perfect, Paul declares that in both his strengths and his weaknesses he is understood, cared for, by a Loving Lord. He writes: ". . . Christ Jesus has made me his own."
Living beyond yourself involves facing up to your limitations, acknowledging the fact that you are not perfect. Tournier talks about not only the neuroses of the weak and the strong. He talks about a wholeness which comes from acknowledging both our strengths and our weaknesses as distortions which can destroy us unless we touch God's gift to us in Jesus Christ, which is labeled "grace." Grace is God's unmerited favor. It accepts us as we are and enables you and me to live beyond ourselves.
Step Two: Live with your back to the past.
Paul writes: ". . . but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind . . . ."
Expansive living involves putting away damaging memories. I must be very careful when I say this so you don't get the wrong idea. Living with your back to the past does not mean psychologically repressing negative memories and experiences. We are too sophisticated today psychologically to declare that all you need to do it put a memory cap on the past, sealing it off as if it had never happened. You try to do that, and you may very well end up like an old-time pressure cooker in which the pressure builds so greatly that finally it blows its top.
It is important that you deal tenderly with those issues coming out of a dysfunctional family environment, those circumstances of sexual or psychological abuse which others have inflicted upon you or you have inflicted upon others. Denial is not a healthy way to live. Living with your back to the past does not mean forgetting everything. Far from that, before you can forget, you need to remember.
Just what is it that we need to remember?
First, we need to remember the bad. There is healthy therapy involved in identifying those negative influences upon our lives instigated by others and also taking ownership for the things we have done wrong. If I try to kid myself into thinking that everything about my background and my own life and activities has been positive and good, I am involved in unhealthy self-delusion. Not only do I have to admit that I am not perfect in the present, but I also need to admit that my past is not without blemish. I am a sinner. I was conceived in sin. I need to deal actively with both my own destructive attitudes and behaviors and those that have been visited on me by others.
Second, I need to remember the good. The mature believer in Jesus Christ is a learner. We become educated not only by our defeats but by our victories. We learn from them both. At a much deeper level, you and I need to remember certain facts which happened in history which enable you and me to then forget that which would be unhealthy. Christianity is a historic religion. It is based on certain facts which happened. Ours is not a relativistic, religious philosophy.
Alan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, noted that we are living in a relativistic society. He described a professor looking into the smiling faces of a freshman class, knowing that the young people before him really believe only two things. One is that they believe all truth is merely a matter of opinion, and, two, they believe that all morality is merely a matter of preference. Bloom, a Jewish philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago, was deeply concerned that many young men and women in our society today had no understanding of absolute truth. He might have overstated his case. Haven't you met people who see truth as only a matter of opinion and morality as only a matter of preference?
The Christian is one who believes that there is a God who created all that is and will bring to completion all that He has initiated. This God became human in the Person of Jesus Christ. He went to the cross. He died for your and my sins. He rose from the dead. He offers you and me forgiveness of sin--past, present and future. And He enables you and me to walk through life set free from the heavy burden of sin, to deal creatively with the ambiguities of our human existence, empowered by His Holy Spirit.
How I ache for the person who does not remember both the good and the bad. Even some of us Christians can forget. Some of us carry hefty bags over our shoulders all through life. Granted, there was a day in which we put at the foot of the cross that hefty bag filled with the garbage and sludge of our lives prior to coming to personal faith in Jesus Christ. But, as we turned and walked away from the cross, we checked out a brand-new hefty bag, and we've been putting in garbage ever since. Each day, the load gets a bit heavier. That's not living beyond yourself. That's living caught up in yourself. You simply do not expose yourself to God's grace. Some of us are not living in the reality of what He has done for us.
Once you and I put our trust in Jesus Christ, we are privileged to lay down that hefty bag daily at the cross. We are privileged to leave it there. Take those miscellaneous pieces of garbage you and I pick up each day and throw them down each day. Don't let them build up.
In this way, we are able to now forget. True education is remembering what you need to remember so that then you can forget the rest.
My friend, L. Homer Surbeck, now deceased, was a retired senior partner in the Wall Street legal firm of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed. Back in 1963, when I was working in the travel business leading tours for Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, he was one of 65 of us who traveled around the world together. Our initial stops were in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In each of these places, government political and business leaders addressed the group, giving us briefings. After each of these briefings, Mr. Surbeck would get me aside and ask me some of the most elementary questions about that part of the world, matters that did not come up in the more sophisticated briefings.
One day, in frustration, I said, "Homer, anyone as intelligent as you has got to know more than you are pretending to know." He grinned and said, "You know, you will never believe it, but back in the Second World War, I was loaned by my law firm to the Pentagon. I was in charge of intelligence for one whole area of Southeast Asia. Then, when the war was over, I simply erased my mind and went back to the law firm. I didn't need to have my brain cluttered up with all that useless detail. I figured that if I ever needed it again, I could always ask someone questions or read some books." I asked him how he learned to erase his mind. He said, "My mother taught me how to do it. When I came home from school the first day she sat me down and said, 'Homer, what did you learn today?' I tried to tell her everything I'd learned that day. 'But, Homer, I am not interested in everything you learned all day. I want to know the most important fact, the most important concept."'
Mr. Surbeck went on to describe that night after night his mother drilled into him the concept that he was to prioritize and remember what was absolutely important. All the rest was detail that could be forgotten. What my friend didn't say was that his mother had a pretty good pedagogical method. She knew that in setting up priorities we have to review the material to decide what we are going to cast away.
The Christian who is living beyond himself has learned to forget those things that are nonproductive for future creative living.
There are two kinds of things which you need to forget.
First, you need to forget the bad. Forgetting implies forgiveness. You, as a believer in Jesus Christ, are cleaned out of the garbage which cluttered your past life. All of us need an authentic catharsis, a real cleansing. We all need a ventilation of our lives refreshed by the Spirit of God. If you have not received Christ's forgiveness, you cannot truly forget. You are just repressing guilt in your deep inner life, only to find it cropping out in unfortunate neuroses. God's grace is essential to understand that you are forgiven. You are still not a perfect person. But you are a new person in Jesus Christ. The German poet, Goethe, emphasized the optimistic possibilities of forgetting the bad and saying, "The one great truth is not that the past is dirty, but that the future is clean." Do you catch the upbeat of that statement? An outstanding editor once said, "The true secret of editing is to know what you should put in the waste basket." Forgetting means clearing your mind of those things which could only destroy your creativity.
Second, you need to forget certain positive achievements. This is difficult. You and I love to pull out our old scrapbooks and read the clippings. We luxuriate in achievements of yesteryear. Granted, we should be able to indulge ourselves in a few whimsical moments of reminiscing. But watch out. Sad is the individual who has only the clippings of the past. We label him as a "has been." Don't rest on past laurels. If Paul is saying anything with regard to forgetting, he is warning the believer to forget all of the spiritual achievements of the past. That's the best way to backslide. That's the best way to dull your cutting edge.
It's important for us to not just forget our spiritual accomplishments. Some of us are being destroyed by our past family and business successes. We are constantly looking back to the day before the divorce or when our partner was still living, constantly reliving the days of our vocational successes and, in the process, viewing ourselves as "has beens."
One of my good friends, Gordon MacDonald, told some of us that he did research to see what made some of his older friends in their eighties so attractive to him. One feature he discovered was that they were not just living nostalgically in the past. They were actively accomplishing in the present. And they were interested not just in reminiscing about the old days but alert and alive, helping others now in the present.
Step Three: Have a worthwhile goal.
If you really want to live beyond yourself, you have to aspire to a worthy goal. Paul writes: "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." (Philippians 3:13-14).
Do you have a goal for your life? Have you focused in on a specific for which to aspire? Have you put any goals for your life in writing? I suggest that you take out a piece of paper and jot down in one sentence your whole basic purpose for living. I have a lot of momentary goals. I set them and then immediately forget them. The achiever is the individual who puts them down in writing, seeing them in their proper relationship. She puts first things first. He prioritizes.
Make sure your goal is worthwhile. Some of my goals get nowhere. Some of them make little sense. Some of them are distorted. Some of them have no sense of expansiveness to them.
Paul talks about pressing on toward a goal to win a prize. He alluded to a heavenward, upward motion in our goal setting. He is describing something that moves beyond one-dimensional living. He warns us of getting absorbed with the status quo, getting caught up in our contemporary culture. He warns against cultural religion. Don't come to church to somehow placate the fury of the gods. Don't live in one-dimensional living marked by a little bit of religious game playing. Live beyond yourself to the glory of God. Don't allow yourself to die as a person. Allow yourself to expand. One-dimensional living has so little to offer.
I have referred to Brigitte Bardot as being my favorite theologian. Her first theological treatise I read back in 1972 when she gave a definition of getting old, which read, "The day I could no longer have the man I'd like." She was asked by the interviewer from Vogue magazine what she was looking for in a man. "That he attract me physically." Then she went on to describe herself as the "most important sex symbol of all time." These were not the remarks which caught my attention. Her final observations were so precise and so deeply theological. She stated, "Time will destroy me one day, as it destroys everything. But no one else will ever be Bardot. I am the only Bardot, and my species is unique."
Here was a sad individual who saw herself as a commodity which was beginning to decline in value with age. At the time she spoke those words she was in her late thirties. She had everything, but nothing. She knew that she could reach for a few more thrills but that her value was temporary. She published her autobiography in her late fifties. She wrote, "I think about death every day. It's the decomposition that gets me. You spend all your time making your body look so good and then you just rot away like that."
Can you see the deep theological insight which she has shared? Are you a commodity whose price goes up and whose price goes down? The silver that once sold for five dollars an ounce a few months later went all the way up to fifty dollars an ounce and then came crashing back down. Those members of the Texas Hunt family who speculated in that commodity went bankrupt. Your life can be a yo-yo if you are living one-dimensionally, playing the commodities market with your life.
My predecessor in the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Robert Lamont, was in his study one day. A gentleman walked in and said to the secretary, "May I see Dr. Lamont?" I am an old classmate of his, have been on the mission field, and I am just passing through town and would like to say hello." A moment later Dr. Lamont came bursting out of the door from his office. The two men embraced, and then the missionary said, "Bob, what's new?" Dr. Lamont said, "I am just trying to discover the will of God and do it." What is your goal? Is it a worthwhile goal?
Could you ask for a better one than that capsuled in Dr. Lamont's response? Why not set that high goal, discovering the will of God as it's revealed to us in the Scriptures and then claiming the strength of the Holy Spirit to reach it. Don't allow yourself to become a commodity of declining value, vulnerable in the marketplace of life. Live in this additional dimension of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, discovering His will and doing it. Keep your eyes on a worthwhile goal.
Step Four: Go for broke!
Paul says, ". . . straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on . . . ." He is giving life everything he has. Can you think of a more creative lifestyle?
Please don't take step four before you've taken steps one, two and three. I know people who go for broke, but they haven't admitted that they are not perfect. They are not living with their backs to the past. They don't have a worthwhile goal. They remind me of the chicken with its head cut off, fluttering all over the place, going all directions at one time.
Develop a lifestyle of giving everything you've got. Do your very best. There is nothing wrong with the Christian being an achiever as long as your success is kept in proper tension with your humility. Strain every effort toward being the person God wants you to be, empowered by His Holy Spirit.
There is no room for amateurs in this business of serving Jesus Christ. A good Christian is one who blends talent with perspiration. God's gift of grace is yours through faith. The spinoff of His gift is your work to be the person He wants you to be. There will be pain and defeats along the way. There will be points when your goal will be frustrated, your energies will run low.
I am challenged by the ethical writings of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr who talked about "the impossible ethical ideal." Grappling realistically with the basic sinful nature of humankind, Niebuhr explained that we need not be caught up in a pessimism which refuses to take responsible, ethical action. Instead, we should strive toward that which is an impossible ethical ideal, doing our very best to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. Yes, we will fall short. Our efforts will fail. But, in the process, contributions will be made far beyond those which we would have made if our goals and energies were compromised by a defeatist attitude.
The artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, could not look at a picture remaining in his studio without wishing to retouch it here and there. Forms on canvas seldom are as fair as the visions in a painter's mind. The spiritual outlook is ominous where there is no self dissatisfaction, where there is no sense of striving toward ideals which at times are unreachable.
I get excited about the Christian life and this business about living beyond myself. The reason is that my ultimate perfection is in the person of Jesus Christ.
In my office are two symbols. One is a rough-hewn, olive-wood cross, symbolic of a life crucified with Jesus. The other is a marble statue of the Greek Discus Thrower.
The cross calls to self-denial, the losing of oneself in the serving of my Lord and fellow men. It reminds me of my own expendability. It highlights the sacrifice which Jesus made on the cross. It shows that I could not save myself. All human effort falls short.
The Discus Thrower alerts me to my responsibility for self-mastery. Every muscle is geared to the moment. There is no sense of looking back. There is no wasted energy. All is devoted to immediate excellence in which one reaches the peak of one's ability with goals even beyond that reached to the prize which is ahead.
These four steps, when I remember to take them, revolutionize my life. God help you and me to live in the strength of the One whose resurrection sets us free and whose Spirit empowers us to live beyond ourselves!