Philippians 3:2-16
[1] Why did he put up with it? Listen to the litany of hardship: imprisonment, beatings, stoning, three times shipwrecked, adrift at sea for a day and a half, hunger, thirst, exposure. “He” is the apostle Paul. Why did he put up with it all? Very simply he tells us why in the warmest letter he ever wrote, his letter to the congregation in Philippi : “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” These nine words say it all. If our hearts echo the same nine words; that is, if our experience of our Lord echoes his, then we understand the apostle. If, on the other hand, “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” finds no echo within us, then we must conclude that Paul was either a masochist or a fanatic. He must have been a masochist, putting up with extraordinary affliction because he liked to suffer. Or he must have been a fanatic, and like any wild-eyed fanatic, so very intense, hysterical even, that he was beyond feeling any pain.
But there’s no evidence of derangement in Paul. There’s no evidence he was ever masochistic or hysterical. Then “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” sufficiently explains why he put up with tortuous hardship.
It all began for the apostle when the risen Lord seized him. Paul was seized precisely when he expected nothing of the sort. It wasn’t the case that he had been badly depressed or anxious or confused or conscience-stricken and then had one day found relief in “religion.” He wasn’t looking for something to counterbalance assorted personal deficits that he had dragged along (“baggage” we call it today) since childhood. Neither was he calculating how much better it might for his career if he joined the service club, the historical society and the church. He had been overtaken. As he was overtaken he was overwhelmed. What possessed him now was light-years beyond anything he had expected, anything he had ever wanted, anything he had ever thought possible.
[2] Don’t get me wrong. I’m not belittling in any way those who look to Jesus Christ out of fear or anxiety or guilt or loneliness or bereavement or illness or approaching death. Such is our Lord’s humility that he welcomes those who come to him for any reason. Such is our Lord’s mercy that he accepts those who look to him from any motive, however self-serving. And such should be our delight that we too cherish fellow-believers who have come to him for who knows what reason.
My only point is that Paul didn’t look to our Lord because he felt needy; he wasn’t even looking. He was overtaken. Once overtaken and overwhelmed he found himself possessed of what he hadn’t even known to be available.
I am often asked how the gospel is going to gain a hearing with secular suburbanites, since secular suburbanites already seem to “have it all.” Decades ago preachers zeroed in on what people didn’t have: they didn’t have peace or joy or contentment; many were reminded they didn’t even have morality. But today’s suburbanites appear impervious to the older approach. Today’s suburbanites don’t fret because they fear their lives are empty. Life is so full they are chronically tired. (You must have noticed that exhaustion, not boredom, typifies suburbia.) They don’t flagellate themselves on account of moral failure. Either they feel they have morality enough or they don’t care that they haven’t. They don’t look to the church for help in dealing with emotional difficulties. Emotional difficulties are dealt with by therapists and pharmacists. Then where is the vulnerable spot, the “landing spot,” where the gospel can gain entry? There is no vulnerable spot, apparently, in our friends who “have it all together.” At the same time, it isn’t the preacher’s task to create such a landing spot. After all, the last thing we want to do is foster emotional fragility in those who feel themselves psychologically stable. Nobody told Paul that he wasn’t nearly as well put together as he thought himself to be. (Had he been told this he would have laughed.) Had some well-meaning Christian come alongside him prior to his arrest on the Damascus Road and said, “Brother, you need Jesus,” Paul would have snorted, “I need him about as much as I need a hole in the head.” Then how had the gospel gained a hearing with him? Not through glaring personal defects that a clever preacher could enlarge and exploit. He was overtaken and overwhelmed. What then possessed him he had never anticipated and could never have expected. He was captivated by “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
“Surpassing value” or “surpassing worth” – what is it? Huperechon is a Greek word which means that which is loftier, recognizably better, and more telling, and all these at once. Loftier, recognizably better, more telling. It doesn’t mean that what preceded was bad or worthless; it means that what has come surpasses even what is very good. What has come is simply loftier, recognisably better, more telling.
[3] What Paul had inherited was good; what had surrounded him from birth was rich. He was fortunate.
“Circumcised on the eighth day.” Unlike converts to Judaism who were circumcised in adulthood upon joining themselves to the congregation, Paul was circumcised in infancy. In other words he was raised by parents who were serious about the spiritual formation of their child.
I grew up in a home that was serious about my spiritual formation. When I was three weeks old my parents promised publicly, in a service of dedication, that they would do anything and everything to encourage me in the way of discipleship. They meant it. For years I saw my parents gladly endure inconvenience and cheerfully make sacrifices for my sake, hoping that it would all bear fruit in me.
“Of the tribe of Benjamin.” Benjamin was the only patriarch privileged to be born in the Promised Land. The tribe of Benjamin had given Israel its first king, Saul. Jeremiah and Micah, faithful Israelite prophets of gigantic stature, had been Benjaminites. Mordecai, a folk hero in Israel , had belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. To belong to the tribe of Benjamin was to be privileged.
I have always felt myself privileged. When I was eight years old my father had me read the editorial page of the Sunday New York Times newspaper. He had me read it on Monday evening when he bought it in downtown Toronto . Since I was only eight I didn’t understand half the words on the editorial page. And certainly I hadn’t a clue as to what issues the editor was writing about. Still, my father kept me at it. He told me he wanted to improve my facility in English lest I grow up lacking precision in verbal expression.
The sermons in our local church were usually bad, so very bad that my father, always charitable, would only comment on our way home, “At least the text was good.” (Frequently I reminded him that the text was the one thing an inept preacher couldn’t ruin.) As a result my parents would go anywhere in Toronto , dragging along me and my sisters with them, in order to hear better preaching. Since they had no car we had to travel on the TTC, even if it meant two or three streetcars.
“A Hebrew of the Hebrews,” Paul says of himself. He knew Hebrew, the sacred tongue. Most Jewish people of his era didn’t know Hebrew. They were biblically and theologically disadvantaged.
I know the logic of scripture. I am extraordinarily privileged in the theological formation I have received.
None of this is to be slighted in any way. All of it is good. It’s far better to have it than to be without it. Paul never pretended anything else. He never said it was insignificant. He does say, however, that it pales compared to the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ.
Let me repeat: I am everlastingly grateful for the Christian privilege to which I was born. It’s much better to have it than to be without it. Nevertheless, of itself such privilege guarantees nothing. While it points me toward knowing Jesus Christ it can’t generate this. I myself, at some point, must seize the one who of his grace seized me as first he overtook me and overwhelmed me. Every privilege in my background is important. Nonetheless it pales compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
[4] A year or two ago I met Dr Helen Huston, a Canadian missionary surgeon who has spent her entire working life in Nepal . Having read much about her, and having read a biography of her, I was eager to see her. I had already read a letter of hers, written earlier still, in which she had spoken of Christians who had been willing to suffer for their faith. Now she was telling me (and others) of fellow-believers in Nepal who were being persecuted. Some are ostracized, some are in prison, hundreds are out of jail only because they have posted bail and must report to the courts every month, many have mortgaged their lands in order to pay their bail. And then Dr Huston’s bottom line: “We must stand in solidarity with them. It is worth everything to know Jesus.”
I wish to draw our attention here to three matters.
The first. Helen Huston went to Nepal right out of medical school as a missionary of The United Church of Canada. As she came home on furlough every six or seven years she noticed a theological erosion in The United Church, which erosion developed into a theological abyss. Finally she distanced herself publicly from the several anti-gospel agendas that the denomination had adopted. Whereupon she was denied access to United Church pulpits. (Missionaries on furlough always itinerate from pulpit to pulpit, don’t they, if only in order to raise awareness of overseas missions and raise financial support as well.) She was also denied access to United Church seminaries, denominational authorities deeming it better that she not address candidates for the ministry. This amounts to denominational harassment.
The second matter. She has known much hardship herself in Nepal , having lived among Christians for whom persecution for their faith is as certain as the sun’s rising in the east.
The third. None of this has daunted her: “It’s worth everything to know Jesus.”
[5] In all she has written and done Helen Huston has drawn our attention to something crucial in Paul’s letter to the congregation in Philippi : to know the surpassing value of Jesus Christ is alsoto share in Christ’s sufferings and to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. Nothing can be more vital and visceral than this. To know Jesus Christ immediately relativises everything that we might otherwise regard as supremely important. In addition, to know Christ is immediately to share in Christ’s anguish as well as to share in Christ’s resurrection. Once we grasp how vital, how visceral, all of this is we shall understand immediately how unsubstantial, how frothy, most other things are by comparison. Remember, “surpassing value” translates a Greek word that means loftier, recognizably better, and more telling – all at once.
We suffer with our Lord’s suffering inasmuch as we immerse ourselves in those situations that cause him to suffer. He suffers wherever the world is broken; he suffers wherever people are flayed; he suffers wherever there is one pained person pained for any reason at all, her fault or somebody else’s. In his parable of the sheep and the goats it’s plain that our Lord suffers in the suffering of the distressed and the victimised whether these people are believers or not. What’s more, it’s plain from scripture that our Lord suffers additionally in the extraordinary sufferings that believers endure inasmuch as they are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
Our Lord’s resurrection, on the other hand, means that he triumphs in all such situations. You and I suffer as much as anyone else in life simply on account of the human situation. In addition we increase our suffering by deliberately standing with the distressed and victimised of the world. And then we increase our suffering still more by standing up with Christ’s people. And just because we have shared our Lord’s suffering in all this we are going to know his triumph in the midst of it all. We are going to learn how wonderfully effective he has been in situations where we thought he was handcuffed and where others never thought of him at all. It all begins with the surpassing worth of knowing him.
[6] I began today by asking us to ponder why Paul put up with it all: the beatings, the shipwrecks, the imprisonments – that is, why he put up with the torment he received at the hands of authorities as well as the pain inflicted through his extraordinary exposure to natural disasters. So far I haven’t mentioned the suffering he endured at the hands of the church: his pain at the congregation in Corinth that promoted party-spirit and bickering, even tolerated incest; his heartbreak at the congregation in Galatia that submerged the gospel in Spirit-less legalism; his dismay at the congregation in Thessalonica, some of whose members, misinterpreting the second coming, had quit their jobs and become bums. My question now is, why did Paul put up with what he did from the church?
He did so for one reason: that surpassing worth which can’t find words to describe what it longs to commend to others. This is the only reason, but this is reason enough. Knowing this, and knowing as well what it is to share Christ’s sufferings and see the efficacy of Christ’s resurrection; this is reason enough.
Ultimately this is the only reason why the church is in business, why I am speaking, why you are listening, why we encourage those among us and invite those not yet among us to praise God for his unspeakable gift, Christ Jesus our Lord.
Victor Shepherd
August 2004