Title: Going All Out
Text: Philippians 3:12-16
Introduction
Tom Toro is a noted cartoonist and writer. He lives in KS City, MO with his wife and family. But he was not always successful. At one point a few years ago he was so low he had to move back home to live with his parents. Depressed and feeling lost, one day while meandering through a used bookstore he happened upon a stack of old New Yorker magazines. As he flipped through the pages he noticed the cartoons were interesting… he liked them.
Something clicked and he decided to submit some of his own cartoons to the New Yorker. Shortly after that, he received a reply. It was his first rejection note.
A year and a half later, Toro had a pile of rejection letters. This continued until Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor at The New Yorker, gave Toro some honest and specific feedback. Mankoff said he didn't see any joy in Toro's cartoons. So Toro threw everything that he had done previously out the door, sat down with a blank sheet of paper. Recalling Mankoff's advice, he tried to draw from the heart. He was still receiving rejection letters in the mail, but his cartoons were getting better. Toro was finding his style. And then, one day, he wandered into his office to check his email. He said, "I went in there, logged in, and there sitting at the top of my inbox was an email. The subject line read, 'Cartoon Sold.'" It was the 610th drawing Toro had submitted to The New Yorker. (Putting that in perspective, that is like me submitting my sermon every week for 12 years… that is a long time and a lot of rejection.)
Clearly one conclusion we can draw from Tom Toro’s experience is that tenacity and dogged determination eventually paid off.
As a follower of Jesus Christ I would safely “guesstimate” that I have failed in my pursuit of living a perfectly Christ-like life at least 610 times… In other words, I’m not there yet and neither was the Apostle Paul at the time he wrote our text today.
He readily confessed, “I’m not there yet!”
I. I’m Not There Yet
I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have reached perfection… Philippians 3:12
Perfection is the highest possible standard. You cannot improve on perfection. Perfection means to be free of flaws or defects. It means the most extreme degree of excellence and the Apostle Paul, despite his considerably noteworthy spiritual pedigree confesses… I’m not there yet.
On April 12, 2012, the White Sox's pitcher Philip Humber pitched a perfect game. That is, he retired 27 batters in a row. No walks, no hits. It's a feat that's been accomplished by only 18 other pitchers in Major League Baseball's 108-year-old history. But then in November of that same year, the White Sox cut him from their team roster.
An article in Sports Illustrated zeroed in on Humber's deadly character flaw—perfectionism. The article's subtitle read, "For one magical April afternoon, Philip Humber was flawless. But that random smile from the pitching gods came with a heavy burden: the pressure to live up to a standard no one can meet." The article continued: The biggest problem with Humber wasn't his talent. It was, according to those close to him, the unrealistic expectations he set for himself. "He's a perfectionist," says Robert Ellis, [a former mentor to Humber.]"
Perfectionism comes at a high price. Once you reach it, what then? You’ve nowhere to go but the pressure to maintain perfection is unbearable. Humanly speaking, it can’t be done. No baseball pitcher can do it and no Christian can, in this life, be perfectly Christ-like and if we go the route of flawless – sinlessness.
So what did Paul mean when he said, “I’m not there yet?”
Perfection in this sense does not mean, “perfect” as we think of perfect. It means to become complete or full-grown. It is a qualifier as in distinguishing between a man and a boy or a craftsman and an apprentice or a master and a student.
Paul’s confession essentially is his way of saying, “I’m not there yet but I am living into who I hope to become in Christ.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with saying, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
Interestingly, though not where and whom he wants to be, he is not where or whom he was either.
II. I’m Not Where I Was
I have not achieved it but I focus on one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Philippians 3:13
The thing that the Apostle Paul had not yet achieved is found in verse 10, “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead.
In other words Paul is saying the thing he hopes to achieve is not to be fully realized until the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. See I Thessalonians 4: 13-18.
Meanwhile, Barclay states in his commentary on Philippians, “[A] Christian must forget all that he has done and remember only that which he has still to do.”
So when the Apostle Paul says, “I am not where I was,” he is saying “I am not going to live in the past.” He is saying, “The past is behind me and the future is before me… who I am to become as a follower of Christ is yet to be.
Earlier in out text, 3:7-8, Paul described all that he has achieved as garbage. The word is an interesting word in that there are several ways to understand what he meant when he spoke of all he had accomplished in the past as “garbage.” Some translate it as filth. Others say it means, fit only to be tossed out to the dogs. Some say it’s like the stuff we put in our trashcans to be picked up and hauled out to the landfill. Others point out that the same word may be translated as dung or excrement or manure. However you wish to understand it or how much value we may wish to place on our past achievements, Paul says, “We need to understand that hanging on to it and living in it is garbage compared to what lied before us in Christ.
In an essay titled "Good Guys Finish First (Sometimes)," Andrew Bagnato told the following story:
Following a rags-to-riches season that led them to the Rose Bowl--their first in decades--Northwestern University's Wildcats met with coach Gary Barnett for the opening of spring training.
As players found their seats, Barnett announced that he was going to hand out the awards that many Wildcats had earned in 1995. The coach called players forward and handed them placards proclaiming their achievements as they were cheered on by their teammates.
When all the awards had been handed out, one of the other coaches gave Barnett a placard representing his seventeen national coach-of-the-year awards. Then, as the applause subsided, Barnett walked to a trash can marked "1995." He took an admiring glance at his placard, then dumped it in the can.
In the silence that followed, one by one, the team's stars dumped their placards on top of Barnett's. Barnett had shouted a message without uttering a word: "What you did in 1995 was terrific, lads. But look at the calendar: It's 1996."
It's great to celebrate the accomplishments of the past. But with God, our best days are always ahead.
And so are ours? Paul says, ‘I’m pressing on!”
III. I’m Pressing On
I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Philippians 3:14
In January 2013, Sabine Moreau, a 67-year-old Belgian woman, was driving to pick up a friend in Brussels, about 90 miles from her home. So she carefully entered the coordinates on her GPS and then drove all the way to Croatia—nearly 1,000 miles away. The journey took the woman across five international borders. She stopped several times to get gas and take naps, but she kept pressing onward until she hit Zagreb, the capital of Croatia where she decided she should turn around.
After a few days her son got worried and called the police, who located Sabine by following her bank statements. She told a Belgian reporter, ”I saw all kinds of signs, first in French, then in German, and finally in Croatian, but I kept going. When I passed Zagreb, I told myself I should turn around."
I have had a couple of messed up GPS experiences so I know in the course of our living into our Christian life we can get distracted and get sidetracked. I have observed Christians who got sidetracked by the prosperity gospel. I’ve know a of some who got sidetracked by a gospel of grace that frees them to live like the devil because God’s grace is always greater than their sin. I’ve observed how the belief that the way to make America a Christian nation is by controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court sidetracks Christians. I’ve observed Christians who believe the Church of Jesus Christ is a means of political influence and I’ve observed how Christians have become dangerously close to equating love for flag and country with love for God.
I am trying to live into the title of one of Eugene Peterson’s books. The title is this: “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” (I might also add, “A Long Obedience In The Right Direction.”
Paul’s challenge to us is that we spend our lives as Disciples of Christ… learners or apprentices, growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. His challenge is that we be pilgrims… that we be going someplace. The goal is that we be runners pressing on toward the finish line.
In fact the image in our text is that of a runner leaning into the tape at the finish line. So it is in that sense we understand maturing in our faith is leaning into and pressing on toward the mark; immaturity, on the other hand is complacency and self-satisfaction.
Paul ends our text by stating, ‘I’m not going back.”
IV. I’m Not Going Back
We must hold on to the progress we have already made. Philippians 3:16
I think Paul is challenging himself and his readers to understand that we really can’t expect to grow and mature as Christians if we grow comfortable with where we are. He is saying, “We can’t relax and take it easy.”
People who have experienced addiction know they can never relax because if you do you will likely relapse and go back into addiction. People with anger issues know it. Anyone who has by the grace of God overcome a life living into one’s sinful nature knows how easy it is to fall back into immorality, impurity, idolatry, hostility, selfish ambition, dissention, quarreling, jealousy, angry outbursts, drunkenness and other kinds of sinful practices.
I don’t know if you remember the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It was a frightening time for many of us as we watched the housing market crash. It was a sobering reminder that the Great Depression could happen again. Many Americans responded to the rude awaking and changed their ways in order to curb their debt and manage their finances responsibly.
A December, 2010 article in Newsweek argues that after a brief period of cutting back Americans are starting to spend again—whether they can afford it or not. Some experts call it "frugality fatigue"—in other words, we're weary of cutting back, and we're ready to splurge again. The authors argue, "The truth is that spending may be hard to contain. Entire generations of consumers have grown up with the idea of instant gratification and the credit culture that comes with it."
So many who had managed to get a grip on the spending and reduce their indebtedness and who had begun to save money… fell back into their old pattern of mismanaging their money.
The article concludes with a warning: "Yes, spending is great fun, until the bill arrives. That's a lesson we've learned the hard way. Or maybe we haven't."
As to our spiritual lives, Paul reminds us, “We must hold onto the progress we have made in our walk with Christ.”
Conclusion
The late Henri Nouwen, a best-selling author and professor, recalls his first days at L'Arche, a community for the mentally and physically disabled, in Toronto:
“The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people was that their liking or disliking me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then. Since nobody could read my books, they could not impress anyone, and since most of them never went to school, my twenty years at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard did not provide a significant introduction. My considerable ecumenical experience proved even less valuable. Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. In a way it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again.”
In the same way, when we enter the kingdom of God, all our achievements won't matter. What God cares about is who we are, do we have faith in Him and are we consciously living into living a Christ-like life? Are we pressing on toward the high calling that is in Christ Jesus?
