Sunday, October 5, 2014 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

Staring at Death

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b–14

Jesus is God saying to each one of us, “Your faith in me can be as tentative and diffident and fragile as may be, but my faith in you will never waver, not for one single second.” When God says this to you once, saying it again doesn’t make it more true. God says this to us in Jesus. Now that he’s said it, it remains true for always.

Sam Wells

Strange things tend to happen when you stare death in the face. I had that conversation just this week with a church member from here, and it is a conversation I have had many times before with others. Though we are all dying, when a person bumps up against that reality due to an accident or an illness, things can shift. Priorities might get rearranged. Life often becomes clearer. Perhaps one begins the spiritual journey of “falling upward,” as Richard Rohr puts it (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life). I simply know from personal observation that strange things tend to happen when you stare death in the face and live to tell about it.

I’ve wondered if that was what Paul was thinking. There he was, sitting in prison, again. He had been in prison numerous times before, but this time was different. He faced a capital sentence. He was going to be put to death. So I can’t help but wonder if that reality is why he wrote this letter. Maybe he wanted to pass on to his beloved Philippian church the clearer vision of life he was starting to glimpse.

Now, biblical and historical scholars offer basically three reasons why Paul wrote this letter at this time in his life. First, they propose this church in Philippi, like every other church in all creation, was experiencing some conflict and Paul wanted to help them work their way through the messiness as he did with so many of the other churches he pastored from afar.

Second, scholars assume Paul wanted to explain why their messenger, Epaphroditus, was returning to them. The Philippian church had sent him to Paul bearing gifts to sustain Paul in his incarceration. But Paul was sending the messenger back, and he wanted to let them know that it was his idea.

Third, it appears that Paul wanted to thank this small church for being so financially generous to him. The church at Philippi was the only one that consistently sent Paul money for his ministry. It was not an affluent church, by any stretch of the imagination, but they were such generous stewards. Paul was touched by the way the church always remembered his work and the fact that they gave so sacrificially. So, possible conflict, the return of the messenger, a thank-you note—we can derive these three motivations from what he wrote in this letter.

But I am not convinced that is the whole story. My hesitation comes from what I see in today’s reading. In order to appreciate what Paul writes, we need to remember Paul’s roots, roots he reminds us of himself. He was born a Jew, into the tribe of Benjamin and appropriately proud of his birthright. Paul was also a Pharisee. That meant he lived by full obedience to the whole law, written and oral, and before his conversion experience, Paul had zealously defended his tradition, not out of maliciousness but out of duty. He also was a Hebrew born of Hebrews, which was probably a reference to the commitment of his family to preserve their native language in the home (Fred Craddock, Philippians, p. 57).

Paul’s education, his bloodline, his family background, his social status, his zeal, his obedience to tradition—all of it comprised who he was. It stitched together the fabric of who he had always been. And yet in this part of the letter, Paul takes all of it to the garbage dump. He thinks about his birthright, his education, his background, his status, and he calls it all rubbish. A closer translation is “dung.” None of it meant much to Paul anymore. All of his accomplishments, all of his diplomas on the wall, all of the accolades, all those things that had stitched together the fabric of who Paul had been, none of it was of use to Paul anymore. Why? Perhaps staring death in the face led to an embrace of downward mobility.

But as I mentioned in the beginning, Paul is not the first person I have experienced who made those moves. Staring death in the face does some interesting things to people. A friend of mine who is a Presbyterian pastor was on the move in the denomination. He was being asked to serve on important committees. He was nominated for influential positions in the larger church. Meanwhile, the congregation he served was growing like wildfire. So, as it happens, other leaders started giving churches his name, and next thing he knew, he was being interviewed for other, more well-known, congregations. And then the doctors found cancer. My friend went through two surgeries and lots of checkups. And now, thanks be to God, he stands on the other side of it all. He has been cancer-free for a number of years.

But I have to tell you, things have changed. After he stared death in the face, he began to embrace downward mobility. He turned down the influential pulpits. He graciously bowed out of some of the positions of influence. He only served on the committees he wanted to serve on. If he did not feel called by God to do it, if he did not sense it would help participate in the healing of the world or of his own soul, he simply said, “No thank you.” He told me he realized that he liked playing golf, making visits, preaching, and being with his family too much to care about status and power anymore. Things shifted for him. Priorities became rearranged. For the first time in his life, he stopped trying to prove he was worthy or good enough. He stopped defining himself by his accomplishments, his diplomas, all the accolades. Rather, he stared death in the face and embraced downward mobility.

Steve Hayner has been serving as the President of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, my alma mater. He is now living with the terminal diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer. And as a result, he has stepped aside from his position of leadership at the seminary. But like Paul with his church in Philippi, Steve is still leading many of us, still teaching thousands of us, with his honesty about his journey. This is what he wrote on his Caring Bridge website at the end of July:

Someone asked me this week what I planned to do in the months ahead. I really didn’t have an answer except to say that I am not planning to focus on any projects which I somehow feel are being “expected” of me. For example, several people have suggested that I write a book, and they have a lot of opinions on what they would like me to write about. But honestly, there is not much joy for me in writing. I would rather focus on other kinds of creative projects. . . . I have some people that I am hoping to see. And, of course, I still have a number of deep human and global concerns for which I want to do my part in helping with the healing. As I have indicated before, there is a kind of daily “calling” to which I want to be attentive. Some days this will include more active options, while other days I will likely only have energy for quieter possibilities.

When they stared death in the face, Paul, my friend, and perhaps Steve (though I need to ask him) clarified something important, something they already knew but perhaps had not yet given words. They realized that journeying through life for the sole sake of saving their own lives is little by little to cease living in any sense that really matters. As Fred Buechner writes, “Walking through life with one’s focus on accomplishments, accolades, even one’s own sense of righteousness, easily robs you of the joy of life. But journeying through life for the world’s sake, for Christ’s sake—even when the world scares or sickens you half to death—little by little makes you come alive” (Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey, p. 107).

Paul wrote, “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.” Every single day sitting in that cell, Paul stared death in the face. He knew there was a good chance he would not leave those prison gates alive. And that intense reality caused him to take following Jesus even more seriously. So he took his pride, his agenda, his selfishness, his independence, all of it, straight to the dump. It no longer defined him. It was no longer what gave him meaning. But he was also very clear with his friends that he had not figured it all out yet, either. “‘I am not there yet,’ Paul wrote. ‘I do not mean for you to get the idea that I have arrived, that I have attained my goal. Oh no. But I’ll tell you this: being like Jesus is the one thing on my mind’” (Fred Craddock, The Cherry Log Sermons, p. 97).

I think Paul wrote this part of the letter because he wanted to let his congregation learn deeper faithfulness through his experience. He did not want them to be on their deathbeds, or sitting in their own prison cells, full of the “if onlys.” If only I had reached out more. If only I had not been so concerned with what others thought. If only I had worked to reduce suffering in the world. If only I had really been honest. If only I had tucked the kids in bed more often. If only I had not let my voice be silenced. If only.

In the book Ultimate Prizes, the main character’s Uncle Will reflects near the end of his life that he had spent his life chasing after the wrong prizes. He remembers his sister saying to him decades before, “You and your prizes! The only prize worth winning is love—and just you remember that when you’re a lonely old man trying to comfort yourself with your bank balance and your fading memories!” After telling his nephew of his sister’s long-ago words, the man then concludes out loud, “But one mustn’t complain, must one. . . . I often remind myself of that when I’m feeling melancholy. I sit in my grand house and look around at all the mementos of my past, all my prizes, and I think: What a success I was! But after a while I begin to hear that silence, that long, long, silence, and I know with a terrible certainty that the only prize worth chasing is the prize I’ve managed to lose” (Susan Howatch, Ultimate Prizes).

Paul wrote this letter so he could show his congregation, show us, that the only prize worth pursuing is the prize of being found in Jesus. It is the prize of falling upward, or waking up to your baptism and realizing that God in Jesus has claimed you all along. It is the prize of figuring out that by no power or accomplishment of your own, because of nothing you have done or not done, you are known by God; you are found in Christ.

And for Paul, being in Christ meant the freedom to put aside the righteousness of one’s own accomplishments, even putting aside any accomplishment of one’s own faithfulness, in favor of the righteousness that comes through Christ’s own faithfulness (Walter Brueggemann, et al. Texts for Preaching, Year A, pp. 511–513). As Paul writes, he has been found in Christ because of Christ’s faithfulness, not his own.

For Paul, knowing Christ, being found in Christ, meant that his world got turned upside down; his answers became questions; and he had to radically reassess his past, his present, and his future. Knowing Christ meant knowing suffering, beauty, death, and life. Knowing Christ meant that each day as Paul sat in prison and stared death in the face, he found another face staring back—the face of the one who would walk with him through it all, not because of Paul’s goodness, but because of God’s goodness. I just cannot help but think that proclaiming that truth has to be one reason why Paul wrote this letter to his beloved ones.

In a few moments, as a community of faith united with Christians all over the world on this World Communion Sunday, we will stare death in the face. We will remember the night long ago when Jesus spoke of pouring out his life for us and for the world. We will remember and enact the reality that in Jesus the Christ, God embraced downward mobility. In Christ, God emptied God’s self and became one of us—human, weak in power, vulnerable.

But we call Communion the joyful feast of the people of God because we also gather at this table to celebrate the reality that as we stare death in the face, something frankly we do every single day of life, we do so with eyes wide open, for we trust that in God’s great mystery, the face that stares back at us is God’s face. We trust that because of God’s downward mobility, the power of death has been defeated and we are never alone. We have been found in Christ. We have been found one with each other, one with people whose names we do not even know and whose languages we might not speak and whose cultures we do not share—yet one body found in Christ, nevertheless.

And all of the other—our accomplishments, our diplomas, our accolades—all of that is fine. But let’s face facts: when it gets right down to it, when we look at each other from across this table, it becomes clear that Paul was right. When compared with the promise that God in Christ has made us God’s own, all of the rest of it really is rubbish. For this is the stuff of life.