Philippians
2:12-18
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
October
31, 2010
All
Saints Sunday – Reformation Sunday
I saw a movie the other night, a good
movie, called Hereafter that asks the
question, “What happens when we die?” One
answer offered is that nothing happens. The
lights are turned off, the curtain closes, and that’s it.
We’re finished. Done.
That would make a very short movie, however, if it was the only answer.
But, the movie having just arrived in town, I do not want to give too
much of the story away. Told through
the lives of a French newswoman who has a near-death experience in a tsunami, a
medium who is able to talk with the dead, and a young identical twin whose
brother was killed tragically in an accident while running an errand the
surviving brother was supposed to have done for their mother, there are enough
twists and turns along the way to make us think about what we think happens when
we die.
As people of faith in God, we do not
believe that there is a “here” but no “after” though we may not be of
one accord about what it might be like. Steve
Tigner in his 9:30 Hour presentation last Sunday reminded us of the Apostle
Paul’s predominant teaching: that we die a physical body and are raised a
spiritual body which is why, among other things, it does not matter if our
bodies are buried or cremated. But
even if we are in league with Paul, the “hereafter” still is mostly mystery.
As I say in memorial and funeral services: I do not much understand the
physics and mechanics of resurrection, but because I trust God with my life, I
trust God with my death. And so,
when we die, what happens? Where are
we? We are safe in God, forever.
So, it seems to me, our concern ought
to be not so much with death, but life. I
love the beginning lines of Mary Oliver’s poem called “The Singular and Cheerful Life.”
The singular and cheerful life
of any flower
in anyone’s garden
or any still unowned field –
if there are any –
catches me by the heart,
by its color,
by its obedience
to the holiest of laws:
be alive until you are not.
The holiest of laws: be alive until you are not. As
Christians, the process in which we are engaged while being alive until we are
not is called sanctification.
That is a big theological word that means living more fully into our
saintliness or, to coin a word that I like better, our saintedness.
It is our living out of our union with Christ by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Paul often wrote about
the Christ who lived within him. We
make a mistake when we think saints are those special few who are singled out by
a religious tradition because of an outstanding record of good deeds or a highly
exemplary character or an impeccable reputation for having lived a particularly
righteous life.
Paul used the word “saint” at the
beginning of nearly all of his letters in the New Testament – “to all the saints in
But notice also in our passage from
Paul’s letter to the Philippians that he writes to them to tell them to “work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling…”
Earlier this fall, we talked about salvation as spaciousness.
Spaciousness as the heart of salvation is a significant Hebrew concept in
the Old Testament and the early church. It
envisions salvation as our being brought into a more expansive life, a wider
freedom, a bigger way of thinking and living that we call “gospel”…in
other words, into the largeness of God.
So working out our own salvation means
allowing the Spirit of God more and more to teach us,
instruct us, and move us into the largeness and largesse of God that
Christians believe is most clearly seen in Jesus.
The reason that Paul tells the Philippians to work out their own
salvation is twofold. It has a
double meaning. Paul is writing his
letter to the Philippians from prison and, though he would like to get back to
The other meaning of Paul’s
instruction that the Philippians work out
their salvation with fear and trembling is that though the ongoing work of
sanctification is not possible without both God’s initiative and persistence,
they need to play their part, too. In
the sanctification of our lives, begun and powered by God, we need, too, to play
our part. This is so important.
Without God’s grace – the free gift of God’s own life shared with
us, the free gift of God’s love for us, the free gift of God’s Spirit to
continue to bring to our remembrance all that Christ and the prophets have
taught us and to lead us into more and more of God’s great and expansive Truth
– without God’s grace, we are dead in the water.
The lovely symbolism of baptism is that we are raised up out of the water
to new life. In the words of the
baptismal liturgy – as we die with Christ in a death like his, so, too, are we raised with
him by the glory of God into a new and glorious resurrection life and that is
not our own doing, but God’s.
We often think of resurrection as
occurring at the end of our lives after we die.
But what we see in baptism is that the risen life begins much earlier
than that. It begins at the
beginning of our Christian lives and the rest of our lives, including what
happens at death, is a part of the sanctification that God works out in us, with
us.
For it is God who, by God’s grace,
justifies us – makes us right with God – and then makes possible our
sanctification, our saintedness, forever after.
But, Paul also exhorts the Philippians to “work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
The Greek word that we translate as “working out” has as its
meaning the sense of bringing something to completion or fulfillment.
An Olympic athlete is gifted with particular abilities, but they have to
be worked on, worked out, practiced, developed.
I frequently visit members of the church who are in rehab after some kind
of surgery or another because they have to work their muscles and joints if the
surgery is going to bear fruit.
Fred Craddock, an old country preacher
who has appeared at Chautauqua a time or two and about whom Jim Dahlie was
telling me a story last week, has a wonderful way of describing how some of us
get a little lazy about our own involvement in our sanctification, saying, “Some
members and clergy head straight to the hammock as the only place where a
doctrine of grace can be kept safe.” Now
that is a little theological joke but I think it is hilarious, if not also sad.
It is a way of saying that we oftentimes do not want to work very hard at
growing into the fullness of a sanctified, spirited life, using God’s grace as
an alibi for our laziness or lack of zeal.
“Some members and clergy head
straight to the hammock as the only place where a doctrine of grace can be kept
safe.”
What is the “fear and trembling”
that Paul writes about? Not the kind
of fear that afflicts a slave standing before a tyrant master.
It is the fear and trembling of wanting to do something well that seems
beyond us, of not wanting to disappoint, of wanting to acquit ourselves well at
something. You would think after
thirty years of preaching that it would simply be second nature for me.
But I experience a certain amount of fear and trembling every Sunday,
some Sundays more than others. Sometimes
it is because I know I am going to say something that may not play so well with
some people. Sometimes the whole
idea of speaking for God to the extent that preaching does that seems
preposterous and I often feel very small. But
Paul offers saving grace when he says, “But
God is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good
pleasure.”
That is how it is with all of us as we
participate in a lifetime of being sanctified, of being sainted.
When you think you cannot forgive someone their sin against you, when you
think you do not have any gifts worth contributing to the common cause, when you
cannot forgive yourself, when you fail in love – whenever there is something
being asked of you that seems to be beyond your strength, remember that God
is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
One last thing:
maybe because we are Americans, we tend to think of salvation as an
individual thing. Such a view is
exacerbated by those who go around asking others, “Are you
saved?” But biblical
salvation, while being personal in the sense that we participate in it, is not
individual. It is communal.
It is social. Paul is writing
to the Philippian church.
That is why the prophets of synagogue and church spoke and speak to
nations. Salvation is social.
God does not cherry pick a person here and a person there for salvation
and so we selfishly try to get ourselves in a position to be picked.
No! We all belong to each
other. We are in this life together.
God so loved the world. Salvation
in God’s eyes is an all or nothing prospect.
Working out our salvation means that we do it as a church, as God’s
people, as the salt of the world, for the sake of the whole world.
We want the world to have a good taste for everyone.
The goal of the church is not to turn the world into a church but to turn
it in to a world commensurate with God’s dream and hope for it.
It is why God said through Micah that what is required of mortals is to
do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.
Kermit Hogenboom has such a good sense
of this. I can count on one hand the
number of funerals or memorial services of church members he has missed in the
time I have been doing them here. Even
if he did not know the deceased very well, he recognizes that the one who has
died is a part of the church that has been working out its expression of
salvation together and he comes to mourn the loss to our earthly congregation of
saints.
The Reformed tradition in which the
Presbyterian Church stands is adamant about the social nature of salvation.
Not only are we to be involved in the structure and politics of society
but also in the reform of those structures and politics as
we are given a new perspective by the sanctifying Spirit of God.
That you and I personally are being sanctified by the Spirit of God
and working that out in our lives is only to be understood in the context of the
Spirit of God sanctifying all of society. That
is God’s mission. The church
itself does not have a mission. God
has a mission of sanctifying the world – so that justice flows down like
mighty waters and swords get beaten into plowshares and bombs into bread and the
meek inherit the earth and love abounds – God has a mission of sanctifying the
world and God invites, involves, includes the church in that mission.
We sing now the signature hymn of All
Saints Day, honoring and remembering and thanking the saints who came before us
for the salvation they were able to work out in their lifetimes, who helped to
make our experience of the Truth and Wisdom of God a bit wider and deeper, and
on whose work we build in our time. Once
again we commit and commend them to God’s eternal care in the hereafter.
They rest from their salvation labors as we continue on in ours.
To God be the glory!
Amen.
Copyright
© 2010 First Presbyterian Church