Isaiah 59:9-20
Psalm 13
Philippians 3:1-16
Mark 10:46-52
A few years ago, my wife, Shayna, and I and my parents stayed for a weekend in Palm Springs, California. And if you're unfamiliar with Palm Springs, it's a small resort city in the middle of the Southern California desert. And Palm Springs is by no means the hottest city in the world, but it holds its own. Much of the year, it's over 100 degrees. In fact, just this last October 1st, it broke a record for the hottest recorded day ever in October for the whole United States, a balmy 117 degrees Fahrenheit. So congratulations to them.
The town is your typical tourist town in the middle of a desert. It's full of hotels and Airbnbs with giant pools and nightclubs and resorts and water parks and a ton of high-quality restaurants all surrounded by the barren wasteland that is the Sonoran Desert. But my absolute favorite thing about Palm Springs is this thing called the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. It's a cable car gondola that takes you up the side of a mountain. Just above the desert, it starts just above the desert floor and heads over 8,000 feet above sea level up to near the top of the nearby San Jacinto peak. And it only takes about 12 minutes to get there.
Up at 8,000 feet, the entire world feels and looks different. The contrast is so drastic. You know, just 12 minutes ago, you were on the desert floor that is barren and dead. Now you find yourself in this vibrant alpine forest. You know, sitting in the valley below roasting in the sun, you would never know that there was this beautiful forest just 12 minutes away from you. With all the glitz and glam of Palm Springs, you might never even feel the need to travel to the tramway and head up to the mountain and see this beautiful forest that's hiding from you. You can have a perfectly great weekend eating at all the restaurants and laying by the pool and just taking in all the leisure. There's so much to do and see in the town. Why would you ever want to take the tram to the top of the mountain?
Desert cities are these interesting things to me. Through the pure willpower of the human spirit, we are able to turn a desert wasteland into a thriving metropolis. So much so that often when you are in these cities, it's easy to forget — if it wasn't for the scorching heat — that you were actually in a desert. Desert cities, they give me this kind of strange feeling though. Something's off, something's amiss. They're beautiful and they're often fun, but they always seem to be the thing that should not be. Their very existence seems to stand on a razor's edge. I think there's a bit of hubris involved in building a city in the middle of a desert, especially in a place like California, which is prone to droughts. Places like Palm Springs always seem to run the risk of flying a little too close to the sun.
We, as humans, we're often so confident in our abilities and in our standings and in our accomplishments that we become convinced that it's those abilities and those standings and those accomplishments that are the source of our salvation. It is through them we are spared from the harshness and the cruelty of the desert. Such is the situation to which Paul speaks in our passage today.
Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3 verse 2 through 7, "Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evil-doers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ."
A frequent obstacle that Paul faces throughout his ministry was a number of these rival groups that were traveling around, causing all sorts of division and confusion in the churches that Paul would plant. One of these groups, probably, was a group of Jewish Christians who were convinced that these Gentiles, these non-Jewish people, if they were to join the Christian faith, actually needed to do so as Jews. They needed to observe the Levitical law, they needed to eat the kosher diet, and most importantly, the males needed to be circumcised. In their understanding, righteousness comes through strict adherence to the Torah, to the Jewish law. This caused all sorts of confusion in Paul's churches because the gospel that he had presented to them was focused on a righteousness that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.
In Paul's mind, Christ was saving all the Gentiles as Gentiles. He wasn't calling them to take on the Jewish law, the Jewish customs. They were able to keep and maintain their ethnic and cultural identities, with some changes of course, but because they were justified before God through Jesus, and not by any adherence to the law. So often did this confusion arise that Paul feels it necessary here in Philippians to warn the Philippians of what he has been coming across, that there are these groups of false teachers going around and claiming to them that Jesus is not enough.
Paul's problem with these opponents is that they placed too much confidence in their own flesh. They put way too much stock in human standards. They believe their status and their accomplishments will lead to their salvation. On the contrary, Paul says, we put no confidence in the flesh. And to prove it, Paul demonstrates why he, by his opponent's standards, should actually have a lot of confidence, even more confidence than them. By his opponent's standards, he's actually perfect. He checks all the marks. But by both birthright and by merit, he should have total confidence in the flesh, and yet he has none. In fact, Paul says, "I consider all these things a loss." Even more, he calls them garbage.
He continues on, he says, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I might know him in the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death; that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead."
What makes these things rubbish? What makes them a net loss for him? By all accounts, these should be a gain for him. The problem for Paul is that these things give people a misplaced confidence. They give people a false sense of security. They run the risk of not only tricking others into thinking that they've achieved some level of righteousness, but more importantly, these human standards have a way of tricking ourselves into thinking we have received the prize of salvation — that is, the resurrection of the dead.
Now in our day and age, I don't think we so easily, explicitly draw a connection between our heritage or our accomplishments or our merits and our eternal salvation. Some do, but I feel maybe in a Christian context you might not so easily draw that connection. I imagine most here would say they don't believe that our nationalities or our degrees or our job titles allow us to receive the prize that is the resurrection of the dead. Yet every single one of us, at the same time, relies on these things for our own security in the here and now, in this life. And in a way, these things are in fact our salvation. Our confidence in them keeps us from feeling any sort of anxiety over the worries of life. They give us a measure of meaning and purpose in a world where we are constantly faced with existential threats, where life often feels meaningless, where death is knocking at our door.
They are the comforts and the services of the city that keep us from remembering that we in fact live in a desert. And therein lies the danger of them. And this is why Paul considers these sorts of things a loss. They fool us into thinking we have achieved true meaning, true purpose, true salvation. It's not that they just lessen our anxiety about the worries of life. It's that they convince us that there's nothing to worry about at all. This is why Paul calls these things garbage. In our translation today, it uses the word "rubbish," and to be honest, that is a far, far too polite translation of what Paul is saying. The word in Greek has so much more crude meaning than "rubbish," right? It's junk, it's sewage, it's crap — I’ll stop there. This is church.
The thrust is we have no use for these things. They're useless to us, they mean nothing, and therefore they must be gotten rid of. This is something you need to eliminate from your life. Because here's the thing: if you have a pile of garbage lying around or a bucket of sewage lying around, it actually can start harming you if it lingers around. You need to get rid of it. And this can be a hard pill to swallow for many of us, because we have worked so hard to get where we are at today. We have given blood and sweat and tears to build our little city in the desert.
Now this isn't saying we all need to quit our jobs and tear up our degrees and sell everything we have and give it to the poor. But it is to say, we should truly recognize how unimportant these things are when it comes to our salvation. And more importantly, how easily these things get in the way of us truly knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection. These things are human standards. In our culture, they set goals for us, and we have to achieve a certain level of wealth, of knowledge, of power to procure security. But these human standards ultimately, they cannot keep the sands of the desert from encroaching on our cities. And so, for Paul, they're a loss. And they must be a loss for us to gain Christ, so that we may be found in Him, not by our own righteousness, not from a righteousness that comes from our accomplishments or our heritage or our merits, but by the righteousness that comes from God — the righteousness that can only be achieved when we place our faith in Christ Jesus.
See, righteousness is actually, it's not something you do. This is a state of being. It's something we are. It's something we become. It is a standing. And we can do nothing to earn that standing, nor can we receive it from other people. It's a standing that only one can give us: God Himself. It's the standing that says you are right before God. It's the standing that says, though this world is rife with worries and sorrows, though life seems entirely meaningless, though death comes for us all, there is still hope for those who are righteous in God. And that hope is the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, the hope that death does not render this life ultimately meaningless and pointless, because there is life found after death. But that standing and the hopes that come along with it, they don't come from within ourselves or from those around us, but through Christ Himself, in whom we place our faith, in our hope, in our trust.
It’s He who gives us confidence, not ourselves. Yet this confidence we have in Christ is different from the confidence that we might gain in the flesh, in our own works. In this passage, Paul makes it clear that he has actually achieved nothing. His confidence in Christ is more of a journey than a destination. He hasn’t attained that destination yet, and he is on the road. He says this: "Not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But 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 upward call in Christ Jesus."
Confidence in human standards can make us complacent. These human standards have goals that are set by our society, and our confidence is determined by whether or not we have achieved those goals. We made a lot of money, so we are wealthy. We earned a PhD, so we're intelligent. We built a company, so we're savvy. We found a way into a position of authority, and so we are powerful. But certainly, if we've achieved those things, we're not going to just sit idly by and do nothing. We're going to go and seek more wealth, and more knowledge, and more savviness, and more power. But the thing we will not seek is more confidence. We're not seeking it because we've already attained it. We're already confident in our own salvation. I am wealthy. I am intelligent. I am powerful. Of course, I would be saved.
Such was the problem of relying on righteousness according to the law in Paul's day. If someone is blameless before the law, there's no incentive for growth or change. One can confidently say to themselves, I've kept the law since my youth. Why wouldn't God consider me righteous? I have done enough. But we sit complacent, convinced of our own safety and our own security, completely unaware, or maybe even unwilling to admit it, that the city we built deep within the desert is teetering on the brink of destruction. One day, the water will dry up, and the cruelty of the desert will overtake us.
But the confidence found in the Lord, it's quite different. It's dynamic. It's moving. It never claims to have arrived on this side of heaven. It never says, "I have done enough." But instead, it says, "Christ is enough. Make me like Christ." It is a confidence that knows that our righteousness is not something that can be achieved. And because it's not something we can achieve, we are not tempted with stagnation or complacency, fooling ourselves into thinking that we have arrived at our goal. But instead, it is a righteousness that is given to us by God. And in that, it becomes a calling to live into that righteousness.
It calls us to put behind us our human standards, to forget them, to strive toward the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. It is here that God is calling us out of our desert cities, the testament to our own abilities, our own intelligence, our own power, our own will. And He calls us upwards, heavenward, to the mountain, that alpine forest that speaks not to man's own ingenuity and cleverness, but solely of God's power and majesty.
It's hard to leave that city in which we've built. How can we survive in a forest? The city is tame and controlled. The forest is wild and unpredictable. How can we leave behind all that we have worked for and done and come to a place where our efforts and striving mean nothing? This was the dilemma that faced Henry Nouwen. Many of you might be familiar with him, but for those that aren't, Henry was a brilliant Christian thinker and a Catholic priest, and he enjoyed a successful and prestigious academic career, spending nearly 20 years teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. But perhaps what Henry became best known for is leaving the academy and spending the last 10 years of his life with an organization called L'Arche, an organization that seeks to create communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live side by side.
And Henry in his later years reflected much on this move in his life, and he writes this: he says, “The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people was that their liking or disliking of me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then. Since nobody could read my books, the books could not impress anyone. Since most of them never went to school, my 20 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 proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. The experience was, and in his many ways, still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity. These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self. The self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things, and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and to give love regardless of any accomplishments.”
Henry Nouwen, he left the confines of the desert city, and he took that upward call to the mountaintop forest. He was wracked with anxiety and frustration while he did it. But notice what he said: his experience in a place where his only confidence could be in Christ, not in anything he had ever done. That is in which he discovers his true identity, who he really is, his true standing before God as a beloved son.
There's much, much to lose by moving out of the desert city. But there's so much more to be gained. When we leave behind our own confidences, our own assurances, our own prestige and accomplishments, we find Christ there. And where Christ is, we find life. True life. A lush forest of life that contrasts so deeply with the dead and barren desert below.
Perhaps God is not calling you to do something as drastic as Henry. Maybe the call is not to quit your job and head into uncharted territory. Maybe it is. But regardless, the upward call is always to leave our confidence behind. To stop convincing ourselves that our meaning, our purpose, our salvation is wrapped up in what we do or who we are, but that our hope, our salvation is in what God is doing in us through Christ Jesus.
So therefore, let us press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us leave behind all that which would deceive us into thinking we've already reached that goal. Let us leave it in the past, strain towards what is ahead. Let us put no confidence in the flesh. And most of all, let us hold true to what we have already attained. The love of Christ in which He died for us so that we might attain the resurrection of the dead.
Amen.