Philippians
3:4b-14
Like
Falling in Love
James Sledge October
8, 2023
It isn’t the case with all denominations,
but Presbyterian seminaries require classes in Greek and Hebrew, along with Old
and New Testament courses where translating texts from their original language
is part of the class. For reasons that will soon become obvious, I vividly
remember translating our Philippians reading at seminary.
When Paul writes, For his sake I
have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish… the
Greek word translated rubbish is skubala. (I love the sound of that.) But when we
went to our Greek dictionaries to look up skubala, we also saw definitions like
dung, filth, and excrement. And so naturally when students were asked to read their
translations in class, more than one had rendered the term with a word I won’t
repeat today, to requisite snickers and laughs. The professor smiled as well
and said something about our translations being more accurate than our Bible’s.
But sophomoric translation jokes aside,
what on earth would cause Paul to view his former life in such a thoroughly
negative light? One possible answer was that his faith had helped Paul escape
some horrible past, and indeed that is how Protestant interpreters read Paul for
nearly 500 years, following the template laid out be Martin Luther.
When Luther was a Catholic priest, he was
tormented by guilt. He used to drive his confessor crazy with endless
confessions, often returning repeatedly when he’d thought of something he’d
forgotten. Luther was also terrified that he hadn’t remembered all his sins and
feared that they wouldn’t be forgiven. Luther lived with an overwhelming sense
of dread.
Then the Apostle Paul came to Luther’s
rescue. Reading Paul’s letters with their emphasis on being saved not by works
but by grace through faith, Luther felt as though thousands of pounds had been
lifted off him. He no longer worried about whether he had confessed every sin
because he had been set right with God by grace.
That would be nothing but Luther’s
interesting, personal story except that he assumed that Paul had had a similar
experience. Paul must have despaired of not being able to keep every tiny bit
of Torah perfectly and so lived in terror of God’s inevitable judgment.
Thankfully, he had discovered grace in Jesus.
Protestant interpreters largely repeated
Luther’s views until late in the 20th century. Then scholarship on 1st
century Judaism began to question such thinking. A growing scholarly consensus
now suggests that Jews in Paul’s day did not despair at all about being able to
keep Torah. Rather they thought of themselves as being right with God if they
tried to obey the Law and renewed their efforts when they realized they had
failed.
Such a view seems to fit much better with
Paul’s own words in our scripture. When Paul describes his life as a Hebrew
from the tribe of Benjamin and so on, he says that he was as to
righteousness under the law, blameless. Blameless. That doesn’t sound
at all like Paul despaired of keeping Torah. He seemed to think he had been
doing just fine.
So if Paul didn’t view his former life as
something that had brought him to despair, as something that was a failure, why
did he now speak of that former life as rubbish, dung, excrement? I think the
answer is obvious. He had found something so wonderful that it made his old
life pale by comparison. Throw in the typical Middle Easter penchant for
hyperbole, and we have Paul saying that life with Jesus is so incredible that
nothing else even compares.
Most of us come from very different
circumstances than Paul did. If we grew up Christian, it’s hard for us to
compare a pre-Jesus life to a new one in Christ. But that does not mean that we
can’t experience something of what Paul felt. In fact, I suspect that many of
us have had an experience that feels quite similar.
I think there’s a very good chance that
many of you here have had the experience of falling in love. For some of you
that may be a recent event, and some of you may have to think back a bit, but
try to recall how life changed when you first fell in love.
When people fall in love it typically
reorients their lives. Priorities shift dramatically. Time once reserved for
other things is now consumed by time with the beloved. Often people who fall in
love become extravagant in spending money on the object of their affection,
willingly going without things that were once important.
Paul has had a similar experience. In
Jesus he has encountered a love so wonderful that he is caught up in it,
longing to love back in return. This experience of divine love had shifted his
priorities. Time once reserved for other things is now consumed with Jesus.
Paul has completely altered his life because of this love, and this is not a
burden or an obligation. It is now his greatest joy.
While many of us have had the experience
of falling in love, I wonder how many have had the experience Paul did, the
experience of a divine love so wonderful that it reorients one’s life.
Presbyterians and others like us have been especially suspicious of faith that
is passionate and enthusiastic, preferring to keep things in the head rather
than the heart. Yet John Calvin, the founder of our tradition who is often
depicted as dour and scholarly, said, “The Word of God is not received by faith
if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth
of the heart…”[1]
When we are rooted in God’s love, it wells
up in us and overflows in love toward God and neighbor. It takes shape as a grateful
generosity driven by love. People who are rooted in God’s love are generous
with their time, talents, and money in much the same way people who’ve fallen
in love are. And as we enter into the stewardship season, a time that is too often
more about fundraising and deciding how much we’ll contribute to keep the place
running, I’d like you to think about God’s love for you and your love for God
and neighbor.
In fact, stewardship season can be a time
to take stock of your spiritual health. At its core Christian faith is about
love, and if you’ve experienced God’s love so that you long to love God with
heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself, it will get lived out and
become concrete. It will show up in a generosity to God and neighbor, and the
biblical measure of this is the tithe, or the first ten percent.
If you’re like most Presbyterians, you are
nowhere near this, and I would never want to claim that if you upped your
pledge or giving to organizations that do God’s work you would suddenly be
spiritually mature and fulfilled. But I will suggest that moving toward a tithe
would not be unlike what happens when a marriage counselor urges a couple to
spend more time together, take vacations together, and do date nights, spending
money on each other.
If you do move toward a tithe, I doubt
that you will regard your prior life as skubala, but you may well see it in a
different light. You may even discover that your priorities have shifted,
becoming a little more like those of Jesus.
[1]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill,
editor, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1960) III, II, 36, page 583.
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