I never planned a career in insurance. (Yes, if you didn’t know, that was what I did for 30 years before I became a full time Priest.) I sort of fell into it after college, mainly because I needed a job and there were not a lot of things one could do with a degree in sociology. To my surprise, I actually liked it, and I was off and running. Fast forward ten years and I landed my first big job as a vice president. I was quite impressed with myself. I had degrees and credentials. I had a lot of experience and strong references. I felt I had finally arrived, that I had made it to the top.
That is, until I met our VP of medicine. The walls in her office were festooned with diplomas, certificates and awards. In addition to being an executive, she was also an MD with a master’s in public health as well as being a Colonel in the National Guard. I was suitable impressed, and
just a bit deflated, as my credentials obviously paled in comparison.
It seemed that she had it all. So, I was stunned when she turned to me later that week and asked if I had heard any rumors about her, and did I think her job was safe? It seemed that, despite her pedigree and accomplishments, she still felt vulnerable and worried.
Paul’s words to the Philippians tell much the same story. “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.” Like my friend and
I, Paul had spent his life pursuing just the right pedigree. But once he had achieved it, he had an experience that showed him it was all worthless. For once he met Jesus Christ, everything changed.
Listen to the next part of the passage from a different translation. “The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high
privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant.”
Paul had to learn this the hard way. He thought he had the world at his feet. He had become everything he had ever hoped that he would be. He was known and admired by the right people, he had the right degree of zeal, and belonged to the right cliques. In short, he was at the top of his game. But that encounter on the road to Damascus shattered his carefully
created self-image. My question for each of us is, are we doing the very same thing that Paul was?
We measure ourselves, and others, in a variety of ways. Looks, wealth, education, background, parentage, race, color, sexual orientation; the list goes on and on and on. We are always looking at other people and trying to determine how we measure up. It seems to be in our DNA to compare ourselves to others, and we either feel pleased in our “supposed” superiority, or envious when we feel we don’t quite hit the mark.
Paul did this too. He took great pride in being a Hebrew from the tribe of Benjamin, as though he had any choice in the matter of where and when he was born. As the old saying goes, “he was born on third base and thought that he had hit a triple.” He goes on to list his accomplishments as a Jew, a Pharisee, and a persecutor of the church. These were all significant credentials for a proper Jew of the time, but Paul realizes, after his encounter with Jesus, that he has been deceived by the world of men. He now sees that what the world values is not reality, but merely a construct.
Paul comes to realize that it is in knowing, and being known by Christ that we are valued, not by our earthly accomplishments. This brings us back to this morning’s collect, “Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be
found.”
This prayer reminds us that while the world will always turn on its own desires, we are not put here to get caught up in that. We are instead to love what God commands of us, even when it is hard. When we are tired or cranky, when we feel that we have already given our fair share
of time and energy, when we just wish the world would leave us alone; those are the times that we need to love what God commands of us and not simply what we want for ourselves.
For when we do that, then we are focused not on the needs of the flesh and the world, but on God’s promise and the kingdom. So how do we go about doing this? Paul gives a helpful piece of advice. “Beloved, . . 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.” The past is important, but we are not called to live there. We must honor our past and learn from it, but we should not let it dictate who we are and what we will be. We should look instead at what lies ahead. Paul is telling us not to focus so much on where we have been, but on where we are going.
I want to close with something I said in one of my first sermons at Epiphany as I think it captures this idea well. How many of you remember taking driver’s education class? I still remember a piece of advice my driving instructor gave me. He said, “You have a windshield
that is this big, and a rear-view mirror that is this big. You should remember to use them in that proportion.”
If we spend less time looking in the mirror and more time looking through that windshield at where God is calling us to go, then we will indeed keep our hearts fixed where true joys are to be found.