Three Acts

Three Acts

Philippians 3:7-11

September 2, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When I was in high school, I had a long and storied thespian career. “Thespians” are actors, by the way. No, I don’t know why they’re called that. Anyway, I was in pretty much every play Rossville Drama Department put on between 1981 and 1985, though I doubt anyone remembers any of my performances. I was what might be called a “third act player.” Because I wasn’t that great of an actor, I tended to get the bit parts, playing characters who showed up in the third act. I still remember my very first performance on the Rossville High School stage. The play was The Silver Whistle, not a classic by any means, but in that play I had the role of the cab driver who, for some reason I can’t remember now, brought a key character to the retirement home where the story took place. I even remember my lines—or my one line, that is. Would you like to hear it? (The correct answer is “yes.”) Okay, here we go. “Lady, I want my money now!” Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m sure, if you knew the play, you would be able to see how that key line made all the difference in the third act.

The last week of the story of Jesus, the last few days of the story of Jesus, is a story in three acts, each one critical to our understanding of this part of the bigger story. For the last several weeks, we’ve been relearning our story, our faith story, the story that stands in contrast to the story the world is constantly trying to tell us. Basically, here’s the contrast. The world’s story goes something like this: you’re okay, but you’re going to die, so grab as much pleasure as you can right here and right now. So: life, pleasure, death. Though most try to deny it, there’s not much hope and no future in that story. But the Christian story goes like this: creation, fall, redemption and restoration, and we’re in the second week of talking about the “redemption” part of that story. As Pastor Rick helped us begin to think about last week, “redemption” centers around the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom we believe is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Of course, it’s no secret that people have varying opinions about Jesus today. Some don’t want anything to do with him. Some try to deny he ever existed, though no serious historian will say that today. And then, as Rick talked about last week, there are those who like Jesus, but who deny he’s a savior of any kind. He’s just a good teacher, someone with good ideas and principles to live by. The problem with that idea is that Jesus claimed to be so much more. As my favorite C. S. Lewis quote puts it, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse…Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to” (Mere Christianity).

It’s the final three days of Jesus’ story that calls us to decide who he really is and whether or not redemption really is part of the Christian story. Two weeks ago, we talked about the fall, when sin entered the world, sin being our choice to go our own way, to rebel against God’s way. So a couple of weeks ago, we read Paul’s seeming despair over that situation: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” If the story ended there, it would be dismal. It would be hopeless and life would be pointless. But in the very next verse, Paul comes to this startling conclusion: Jesus can save him from his sin, from the punishment that was awaiting him, and Jesus is the only one who can. Paul puts it in a triumphant declaration: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

Now, I say that is startling because to watch Paul’s early life, you would never have thought he would have come to that conclusion. He tells the Philippians that, among his own people, the Jews, he excelled. He was born in the right family, followed the law of God to the letter, and even became a persecutor of those people who said Jesus was the savior. He was, by his own report, “faultless” in all of his religious observances. But then he says this: “Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ” (3:7). In other words, those things that were so important to me, I willingly gave them up for Jesus. That would be like a Wall Street banker achieving huge financial success, making more money than he ever dreamed, and then saying, “But I don’t care about any of that money; in fact, I threw it all away so that I could live in a run-down shack in the woods.” What would cause a man who was, by his own account elsewhere, “advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers” (Galatians 1:14), to throw all of that away in order to follow a rabbi from the no-where town of Nazareth?

To get the answer to that question, we have to take a brief detour over to Acts 9, where we find Paul, then known as Saul, going from Jerusalem to another city, Damascus, to arrest anyone who claimed to follow Jesus. Suddenly, he is knocked to the ground by a bright light and he hears the voice of Jesus. After that encounter, Saul is a new person, a different person, and he starts going by his Greek name of Paul. More importantly, he begins preaching about Jesus and considers everything else as loss. The word he uses literally means “street filth or dung (Fee, IVPNTC: Philippians, pg. 141). Now, that’s not to say Paul has suddenly thrown his Jewish faith in the trash. Instead, he’s showing what he’s willing to give up for the sake of Jesus. Everything that was so valuable to him, everything he counted as the most important thing for him, he was willing to give up once he met Jesus. Most of us try to hold onto all those “important” things like status, wealth, possessions, pedigree and all the rest. We try to “add Jesus” in as “just one more thing.” Paul wants the Philippians (and us) to consider this question: just how important is this story, this Jesus, to you? Would you be willing to give up the world’s story, the world’s idea of success and power, because of your consuming desire to have Jesus (cf. Craddock, qtd. in Witherington, Friendship and Finances in Philippi, pg. 85)? 

To help them (and us) understand why this story is so consuming, then, Paul describes the “three acts” of Jesus’ story—only Paul does so in a way that is backwards to the way we normally tell it. Listen again to the way Paul talks of his desire: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). Paul didn’t get confused here; he’s telling the story in the order we do and will experience it. Let’s walk through Paul’s three acts and I’ll show you what I mean.

Act one: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection.” This is the first thing we do and should experience when we come to know Jesus, when we ask him to redeem us from the broken world of sin and death. Paul is talking about “now.” When we allow Jesus into our lives, as he did on that Damascus Road, we are united with Jesus. Everything he currently experiences becomes ours, including new life, resurrection life. Trying to describe it to the Corinthians, Paul wrote this: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). A lot of times, people will talk as if we get new life when we die, but that’s theologically and Biblically incorrect or at least incomplete. From the moment we trust in Jesus and ask him to come into our lives, our new life begins. That moment in Vacation Bible School, in the basement of the Church of the Brethren, Jesus came into my life and started making me new. I don’t gain eternal life when I die; I have eternal life now. Of course, some folks don’t understand that life is something that grows, develops over time. We don’t expect a baby to be able to drive a car; that’s something we have to grow into. The same thing is true of our life in Christ. We grow into it; he shapes and molds us more and more into this resurrection life. The world sometimes expects Christians to get it all right the first time. I remember a friend in college who called me on it one time when I said or did something that I probably should not have. Her accusation back to me was, “I thought you were a Christian!” In that moment, I needed to pray again, “I want to know the power of Christ’s resurrection,” because though I have been given new life, I’m still growing into it and I don’t always do or say things perfectly. That is, by the way, part of why we need each other, why we need to gather together here in this place, to worship, to refocus and to hold each other accountable. That’s why the Bible stresses community. The Scriptures don’t talk about “individual faith” because we grow in the power of his resurrection best together.

Act two: “I want to know Christ…the participation of his sufferings.” In the historical story of Jesus, of course, the suffering came before the resurrection, but in our own Christian experience, the suffering comes after the resurrection, after the new life. I remember an older pastor explaining it to me this way: when you don’t know Jesus, the devil doesn’t bother with you. It’s not until you know Jesus that the enemy begins attacking. Now, not every struggle or pain is the enemy. Sometimes, the circumstances of life just get ahold of you. Sometimes, bad stuff just happens because the world is fallen, broken. But why would Paul pray or hope to share in Jesus’ sufferings? After all, the world’s story tells us that suffering and pain should be avoided at all costs. The “American Dream” is all about freedom from any sort of suffering, isn’t it? No one likes suffering, to be sure, but those who have been through true suffering will tell you that in suffering we can find levels of grace, peace and the presence of God that we may never find any other way. James Bryan Smith, United Methodist pastor and author of The Magnificent Story, tells about his daughter, Madeline, who had a chromosomal disorder that was discovered while she was still in the womb. The doctors had told James’ wife, Meghan, that the baby would most likely die at birth, and that pronouncement sent them into an emotional whirlwind. They already had the nursery painted and the crib built; now the doctors were asking whether or not they wanted the medical personnel to keep the baby alive at birth. Smith says at that moment he felt an intense anger at God. They were faithful Christians; how could God do this to them? He yelled at God, but only heard silence. The next day, an emergency c-section was performed, and Madeline was born alive but not crying. It was likely, the doctors said, she would live, but they could not say for how long. Turns out, Madeline was born with two chromosomes switched, an incredibly rare condition. They were told she would never thrive and grow. And in the midst of their wrestling with how a good God could “do” this to them, Smith’s friend Rich Mullins wrote a song for Madeline. Listen to this.

VIDEO: “Madeline’s Song”

Madeline went to be with Jesus one month after her second birthday. Smith writes this: “During her life she became our beloved Maddie, who we dearly loved. She also became my greatest teacher. Madeline made me look life’s hardest questions in the face, not as theory but as reality” (The Magnificent Story, pgs. 109-111). Participation in the sufferings of Jesus is not easy, and it is not something we should actively pursue, because that makes us masochists and mentally unstable. But it is also something that should not surprise us. Suffering is part of life and it will come, but rather than driving us to despair, suffering should drive us to prayer. And if we’re not suffering currently ourselves, knowing that others are should also drive us to prayer. Dr. Maxie Dunnam puts it this way: “The deeper our love of God, the deeper our love of others. The deeper our love, the more we will suffer. The more we suffer, the more we will pray” (The Communicator’s Commentary: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, pg. 295). I want to know Christ, and to participate in his sufferings.

Act three: “I want to know Christ…and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” At the end, we come back to the resurrection, and true to form, the third act changes everything. We are not only people who have a new life here; we have hope for the next life. The grave is not the end; the worst thing is never the last thing. I remember reading a column in the newspaper many years ago now written by a pastor talking about how he liked to do funerals. And I also remember thinking he was crazy. Who would “like” doing a funeral? As a layperson at that point, I didn’t much like going to funerals, so why would a pastor say he liked doing them? Then I became a pastor, and it was part of the job. But over the years, I realize I could now be the one who wrote that column. Do you know why I like doing funerals? I certainly don’t like the pain that people I care about are going through, and I don’t enjoy watching people grieve. But what I love about a funeral is being able to stand up and declare the good news, the hope of life eternal, the truth of the resurrection. As Pastor Rick is fond of saying, we get to spread the Gospel, one funeral at a time! One of the most powerful moments I had early on in my ministry was when a colleague of mine died. John Paul Jones was on staff as the visitation pastor at High Street Church when I went there, and before coming to Muncie, John Paul had had a long and fruitful ministry. About a year after I was there, John Paul had surgery that he never recovered from, and the three of us who were on staff with him there shared in his funeral. I will never forget our senior pastor, a big gentle bear of a man, touching John Paul’s casket, tears in his eyes, and saying this at the graveside, “I am proud to announce the transfer of John Paul’s membership from the Church Mortal to the Church Triumphant. The grave is not the end!” Somewhere in that moment, I realized what a high and holy privilege it is to proclaim to those who are grieving that there is hope beyond what we see here. The worst thing is never the last thing! Jesus promises that, for those who trust in him, for those who have found redemption in his name, there is coming a resurrection from the dead. Now, I don’t want to debate as to when that will happen; I know many folks believe it happens immediately when we die and others believe it won’t happen until Jesus returns. Personally, I don’t care about “when” because I am utterly convinced of this hope. It will happen, and when I die, the next thing I will see is the face of Jesus. The third act will be better than both of the previous ones combined.

Whatever I have here, Paul says, is a loss compared to knowing Christ. What about you? Where does Jesus rank in the list of things you have? He came, he lived, he showed us how to live a real life but he didn’t promise us an easy life. He showed that love is experienced in the midst of suffering, and then he rose again to give us an eternal hope. This is, ultimately, a love story. It’s not about Jesus somehow appeasing an angry heavenly Father; in light of how we talked about the Trinity a few weeks ago, that doesn’t make sense anyway. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is a love story meant to draw us to himself, to show us that there is nothing God won’t do to bring us back to him, to redeem us. That’s the message of the cross that we have up here in the chancel every Sunday—it’s a reminder that if Jesus can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things can be made beautiful (cf. Smith 125). There is hope that the world can be redeemed—and not just “in the sweet by and by,” but here and now. This world is the one Jesus died for. This humanity is who Jesus gave his life for.

So this week, for our soul training, I want to encourage you to engage with your sense of touch. If this world is the one Jesus died for, then Jesus believes this world is worth redeeming. Remember, the world was made good; that’s part of our “creation” story. It’s good. Find something soothing to touch, or maybe something to make with your hands. If you have kids, use Play-Doh to build something. Work with wood, dig in the soil, sew something with a fabric that has a different texture (cf. Smith 127). Think about how Jesus would have experienced materials like this as he grew up; he was God in the flesh, after all. Imagine what it must have been like for the hands that made the universe to touch the nails and the sawdust or the stone of the carpenter’s shop when he was younger. Imagine what it was like for him to touch the water of the Sea of Galilee with his hands—and his feet! Imagine what it was like for him as a boy to hold his mother’s hand and to know he created that hand! Just try to envision what Jesus would have thought and felt as he looked out on the world, knowing it is good, and knowing that this world, this very one, is the one he came to redeem, to save, to restore. So use the power of touch this week as an exercise in soul training, and as a call to prayer.

We’re going to help you begin this morning as we come to the communion table. There are a lot of reasons Jesus gave us this practice. It’s not just to help us remember his sacrifice, but also to give us something tangible, something hands-on. Sometimes as adults we get so super-spiritual about the whole thing that we forget that this is real bread, real juice, and that the taste and the touch are a part of the Christian experience. The bread and the juice are pieces of this world God uses to point us toward another world. So let’s come to the table this morning, grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice and thankful for the redemption he provides to us here and now. Let’s pray and prepare our hearts for holy communion.