Life After Las Vegas: Philippians 3:4b-14 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

[Paul writes:] ^4bIf anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
  ⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
  ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (NRSV)

Autumn Sunrise by Kristie.  Creative commons image on flickr

Monday afternoon, I sat inside my parked car to pick up Becca at school. 

It was the day after last Sunday’s massacre of concertgoers in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

A woman approached me and asked if she had come to the right place to pick up her granddaughter, and I told her “yes.” 

She went on to say, “I’m so scared at the world—and I just want my granddaughter with me today.  When I was in school and my kids were in school, you didn’t have to worry about these kinds of things happening.  Now, I don’t even want to leave the house.”

If she’d said those things the prior Friday, I would’ve thought she was being melodramatic.  But after Sunday night, I can’t blame her. 

Once again, we’re thrust into a world we don’t want to live in—which is exactly what we felt after Oklahoma City; Columbine; 9/11; Virginia Tech; the Boston Marathon; Sandy Hook Elementary; Charleston, the Pulse Nightclub in Miami; and at so many other national tragedies.  We all want to go back to a time when these things never happened and life was so much simpler.  But, that’s impossible. 

So how does Jesus expect you to live in a world full of so much violence?  And violence isn’t just limited to bullets, bombs, swords, airplanes, or speeding vehicles: We do violence with our words and our prejudices.  There’s the violence of hunger and poverty, too…

The Apostle Paul has much to teach us by his beautiful words of testimony from his letter to the Philippians.

Once upon a time, Paul went by the name Saul—and he enjoyed a high position within political and religious establishment.  As he testifies, he was circumcised on the eighth day; a member of the tribe of Benjamin; a faultless and blameless adherent to Jewish Law.  And: he had the authority to persecute and kill anyone who confessed Jesus Christ as God’s Son.  Frankly, it is impossible to imagine wielding that kind of power.

Then one day, on the road to Damascus, Jesus hits Saul with a lightning bolt—and from that moment on, Paul is Jesus’ servant—proclaiming his death and resurrection wherever he goes.  And it wasn’t long before the power Paul once wielded was turned against him.  By the time he writes this letter, he’s in prison.  Nevertheless, his words can barely contain his joy.  He’s glad to have suffered the loss of all things.  He’s glad to be a prisoner for Christ and share in his sufferings.  All the power, prestige, and prominence he’d once enjoyed are now garbage to him.  To be blunt, it doesn’t mean squat. 

Please understand that Paul is not boasting about his faith.  This is not a “look what I’m doing” kind of testimony.  This is Paul’s testimony of what Christ has accomplished in him; “because Jesus has made me his own.”  The future may bring him more loss, more suffering, and even death—but he is joyfully assured that resurrection awaits him in Christ. 

Events like Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, 9/11, and countless others are watershed moments in which we cannot deny the reality of death and our powerlessness against it.  All of the stress we experience—and the evil we do—comes from the fear of death.  And death isn’t limited to the body.  Death is loss and failure; poverty and pain.  We try everything humanly possible to keep death at a distance and grab everything we can to make ourselves happy.  We fight each other for power, popularity, and possessions—and create death for each other.  We act as though we can control our destinies.  But death doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor or prestigious.  The only way you can prevail against death is by clinging to the one who overcame it. 

You don’t need to question where Jesus was last Sunday night, because the cross assures you: he was shot and dying on the ground.  He was running out in the line of fire to rescue those in harm’s way.  He is in the hospital rooms, recovering; he’s at the gravesides grieving.  And he is with everyone who is terrified by what this world has become. 

This is our hope in these dreadful times—that Jesus is going to prevail. 

I want to do something strange on this Harvest Home Sunday, and share with you the prayer of St. Patrick:

Christ beside me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ within me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me.

I invite you to pray these words as you step out into this world and all that it has become. Nothing will happen to you for which Jesus cannot prevail.  If you lose everything you’ve built your life upon, Jesus is going to have the last word.

This is the day that the Lord has made.  The joy of the Lord awaits you, and not in the pleasures and pursuits of this world that come and go so quickly—but where charity, love, and hope prevail.  So let your new day begin with a readiness to meet Christ in your struggles and to answer the call to his work—as you, the Body of Christ, do the good that is nearest to you, and conquer with him the death and darkness.