“This One Thing I Do…”

A Sermon based upon Philippians 3: 13-4:1

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

May 26th, 2019

Recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author, Mary Oliver passed away at age 83.   Some of great lines she wrote will now become even more valued; like these words in her poem, “When it’s over”:

“When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

 I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I’ve made of my life something particular, and real.  I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

A similar line comes from another great Christian writer, Madeline D’Engel: “What you think is not the point, but what you do is what’s going to count.”

The apostle Paul had a similar approach to his own life, writing to the Philippians, in the middle of verse 13, he says: “… But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

When I was a teenager in college, and traveling across North Carolina working with Youth on Methodist Lay-Witness weekends, I quoted this verse most often.  It was a directive for my own life that I wanted to pass on to others.  I wanted others to discover what I had learned through a very difficult moment in my life.  I wanted them to know how I had been given me a gift: the gift of focus. It had given also me a sense of fulfillment. 

BUT ONE THING I DO….

Perhaps it was the difficult days of imprisonment that helped Paul take stock in the focus of his life.  Normally that’s how it works, isn’t it?  When we are going through something very difficult, we focus on what matters most.

A moment ago, I quoted the late poet Mary Oliver.   In a world fixated on high tech, Mary found her focus in poetry.  After her death, a Harvard trained Psychologist wrote to honor her memory: “With stark simplicity, she offered us both spiritual guidance and common sense, all of which was garnered from lessons she learned while simply meandering in the woods.”   Interestingly, the focus in Mary’s life came through great pain and hurt early in a very difficult childhood.  Mary wrote: “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

Mary was able to find this ‘gift’ by putting her focus on nature, then books, which led her to God.  She said she starting reading, “the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,” and that nature offered her “an antidote to confusion.”  In another place she wrote about her unapologetic trust in God: “Why do people asking God for his identity papers, when the darkness opening up into the morning than enough?”   Out of her focus, through great pain, Mary gave three clear instructions for living a life: “Pay attention”, “Be astonished”, “Tell about it.”   I can’t think of any better way to find a modern example of what Paul meant when he said, “But one thing I do”.   People who find salvation in life, always find focus on something bigger than themselves, which leads them to confidence and trust in God.

The apostle Paul could have done many things with his life.   He had all the essential credentials necessary to impress his peers.   He was a circumcised Jew--a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. More than that he was a Pharisee. He not only knew the Law, he practiced it meticulously. He certainly didn’t need all the persecutions, shipwrecks, imprisonments he encountered after putting his focus on Jesus Christ.   

But for Paul, Jesus became his ‘life-saving’ focus.  Building up to today’s text, Paul wrote in verse 8: "For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."  The he adds: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death . . ."   Our text today is basically a summing up of everything Paul has said before: "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."  This one thing, which gave Paul his focus was simply this-- knowing Christ.  From knowing Christ came power to live, no matter what Paul faced.

Zig Ziglar, a popular motivational speaker in the business world, once asked his audience to consider whether their life was defined as a "wandering generality" or was a "meaningful specific." In other words, he asked, is life best lived when we are focused on a few important things or do we too often loose our focus when we spread our lives too thinly?   A good analogy, he said, is found in light. Light is a marvelous thing, coming to us in many forms. But it is the focus and intensity of light that determines its power. For instance, light bulbs generally have a low level of focus and intensity. The light rays scatter out of the bulb, creating what we call incoherent light. But take those same scattered light rays and focus them in one direction at one target, and you have a laser, which is infinitely more powerful.

Is your life incoherent, or is it like a laser?  Staying focused is the key to a life-well-lived; no matter who you are, or what you do. Comedian Jay Leno once went into a McDonald's one day and said the person at the counter, "I'd like some fries." The person at the counter then asked him, "Would you like some fries with that?" Focus!  Audiologist David Levy recalls a frantic client who lost her hearing aid. She had been eating a bowl of cashews while talking on the phone. Her tiny hearing aid was sitting on the table next to her. In the midst of her conversation, she mistook the hearing aid for a cashew and ate it.

With so many distractions these days; so much to do, so many places to go, and so much to see, to learn, to know, and to have, finding the right focus in our very short lives is more important than ever.  When difficult or confusing times come, we need the same kind of ‘laser’ focus that enabled Mary Oliver to cut through darkness.  And of course, we all need the laser-like power Paul found in the light of Jesus Christ.

It is told that when comedian Jim Carrey was a struggling as a young actor, he wrote himself a check for ten million dollars and postdated it seven years in the future. That check kept him focused. Even more impressive is the fact that, when it came due, he was able to cover it.  What kind of ‘check’ might you write to find your focus and name your future?

FORGETTING WHAT LIES BEHIND

Paul understood we need focus, but he also knew that the greatest obstacle to gaining our focus is not what might happen, but what already has happened—our past.  Paul’s past had been enforcing the law and murdering Christians.  Can’t you imagine, that after finding the truth about the love of Jesus Christ, Paul could have beaten himself down with guilt, shame, and regret? 

Mary Oliver could have also gotten beaten down by her own difficult childhood.  You know how that goes, “I’m this way because my parents were this way, etc.”  Certainly, not to belittle the pain, the hurt, or the anger that any of us might get locked into because of what was done to us in the past, we need to hear something else Mary Oliver said.   She wrote: “There are stubborn stumps of shame or grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet.”  These kinds of stones will try to weigh us down, but in finding her focus, and letting go of her past, she gave some of her greatest advice:  “You must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

Forgiving, and even intentionally forgetting our past doesn’t mean we don’t remember it at all, but it means that we don’t allow our past to control or diminish us.  If, for the rest of his life, Paul would have carried around with him all the mistakes he’d made, his life would have been so heavy, his soul so tied down, that couldn’t have freely and positively shared Christ’s love.  But because of Christ’s redeeming and amazing grace, Paul was able, not just to ‘forget’ his past, but learn from it, and to transform his past. In Christ, he turned the negatives into the great positives of faith, hope, and love.

Recently, I attended a seminar lead by Verlon and Melodee Fosner from Seattle, tell about the work they were doing in their ‘Dinner Church’ ministry.  The church they served was in serious decline until they decided to stop everything they were doing, so they could go back to the three M’s of the early church’s approach; music, a meal, and a message.  Now, by shaping their ministry around feeding the poor and marginalized with food, fellowship and faith, that declining church now has 13 satellites, and they are helping declining churches and denominations around the country to recapture the spirit and mission of the church.

But what was most amazing was a story she told about a Hispanic woman named Ruby, who recently started attending one of their churches.  Ruby was Cuban.  When Melodee asked her about her life, Ruby told a sordid story about being persecuted in Cuba under Castro, then fleeing to New York, where she lived a life full of abuse and addiction.  Then, she said, one day a man showed up at her door.  She invited him in and they started having coffee today.  For eight weeks they shared coffee and he discipled her in how to redeem and live her life.  When Ruby’s neighbor asked, who is that strange man and why does he keep coming?  Ruby answered, I didn’t know him before, but we just have coffee together and he keeps encouraging me overcome by past and live a better life.  “What’s his name?”  Ruby answered, “I didn’t know him before, but he said his name was Jesus.”

At first, I was a skeptical about this story, until I realized that in Latin Countries, Jesus is a very common name.  It was what this Jesus was doing that was anything but common.  It is what the church should be doing too, if we want to be Jesus’s body in the world today.  We must move from our past to reach for our future, and we can do this by helping others overcome their past find their future too. 

THE PRIZE OF THE HEAVENLY CALL

Rod Wilmoth, tells of visiting a very historic church in Cincinnati. He wanted to see it, it was a famous church. He found the church. It was run down, paint peeling, closed up tight. He couldn't get in. He found the sexton, who agreed to open it up for him.

They went into the sanctuary, cavernous, old, dark, musty.

"Who comes here?" he asked.

The old man said, "Not many anymore. If it weren't for visitors, there probably wouldn't be any at all."   Then he said, “Follow me!”  

They went down a dark corridor to the entrance of a tunnel. They walked down the dirt floor of the tunnel into a room with a dirt floor and dirt walls, but a ceiling of reinforced concrete. The sexton asked,

 "Do you know where you are?"

He said, "No. I have no idea where I am."

"You are standing in the old church cemetery. A few years ago, the city told us we had to have off-street parking. The only place that we could do that was behind the church where the cemetery was. So we moved all the caskets, poured the concrete. That's the parking lot above your head."

Then with great excitement the sexton went over to a hole in the dirt wall. He reached his hand in and pulled out a human leg bone. He walked over to Rod Wilmoth, held the bone close so that he could see it in the dim light, and said, "Isn't this the most exciting thing that you have ever seen?"

A church that is only tied to the past will in time become a graveyard. And the most exciting thing in that church will be the bones of its ancestors.

Paul concludes our text by saying, "Let those of us who are mature have the same mind."  In other words, if you are a mature Christian, you have learned this too:  If you want to claim your future, you have to build upon, but not live in the past.  This is not only important for us when we have had difficulties over overcome, but may be even more important when the past was good.   Being mature in our faith, means that we learn to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

What is most important to understand here, is that Paul is not simply talking about going to heaven when you die. Paul is talking about knowing, living, and serving Christ here and now.   He goes on to talk about those who only live for ‘the god of their belly’ and only for ‘earthly things’, but they ‘press toward’ to live their most mature life, through answering the ‘heavenly calling’ of God in Jesus Christ.   Are you living your best, most mature, life?  Are you focused, can you move beyond your past, are you reaching toward a higher call?

One day Frederick the Great of Prussia was walking on the outskirts of Berlin, when he encountered a very old man who was proceeding in the opposite direction.

 "Who are you?" asked Frederick.

"I am a king," replied the old man.

"A king!" laughed Frederick. "Over what kingdom do you reign?"

"Over myself," was the proud reply.

There are very few kings and queens who have ruled over the kingdom of self.  God has given me and you an even higher calling than to rule to world; through Christ, we can rule over ourselves.   Anthony Campolo tells about a sociological study in which fifty people over the age of ninety-five were asked one question: "If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?" It was an open-ended question, and a lot of answers came from the eldest of senior citizens. Three answers, he found, dominated the results of the study. These three answers were:

If I had it to do over again, I would reflect more.

If I had it to do over again, I would risk more.

If I had it to do over again, I would do more things that would live on after I am dead.

So, let me conclude by asking: What is your ‘heavenly calling in Christ Jesus’?  Are you focused?  Are your able to answer?  Are you moving toward it?    Amen.