"SUPER-STARS"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Advent I
Sunday, November 26, 2000
I was standing outside of a doorway in an enclosed shopping mall, desperately waiting for the store to open in order that I could rush in and buy a gift that I had had my eye on for some time. I was certain that I was going to buy this before anyone else so I got there very early and stood in front of the door until such time as the owner would open up. But as I stood there minding my own business suddenly a runner came along with a balaclava on his head, mitts on his hands and running shoes on his feet and he ran into me, nearly knocking me over! I said, "Excuse me young man. Would you mind being more careful where you're running?" (or something to that effect) The 'young man' stopped, turned around and there under the balaclava was a man who wouldn't be a day under seventy years of age. He said, "Oh I am terribly sorry. My eyesight isn't what it was." I said, "Well, the rest of you is better than I have ever been!" We sat down together and talked and he told me he runs an hour every single day, rain or shine. If it's good outside he runs outside but if it's inclement then he runs inside the shopping mall. I realized then the dedication that this man had in remaining physically fit.
I think someone must be sending me a message because about three weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I was standing next to my cousin's young eight year old son. He was playing soccer in a field in Ascot, England. He's only eight years old. The rain was pouring down; you know of the floods that England has had. The mud was getting deeper and deeper; you know what English November cold can be like. It goes right through your bones! Here I was standing watching the young lad play football in the muddy field. On either side of me were a family member and a family friend who are professional athletes. The lad's father, on one side of me, used to be the manager of the England Soccer Team and is a professional soccer player by background, (many of you will have heard me mention before) and on the other was a family friend who was a professional cricketer who plays for the county of Leicester. We decided we'd had enough of watching the soccer game so we went into a little canopy and had some little cakes and hot coffee and stood there talking about sport. It was amazing listening to these two athletes describe the regimes they have gone through, all their lives, to stay in good physical condition to be athletes. In fact, Neil, the cricketer, told me that even in the off-season, he goes to the gym every single day until April when the cricket season begins, in order that he is in the peak physical condition for the challenges that might face him. He says that if he doesn't do this, he is simply not ready, or is subject to injury and his season could come to an abrupt end.
I must admit, talking to all these people about physical fitness and about making sure that you're in good shape is an inspiration, but so too is the inspiration that we get from the Book of Philippians that was read this morning. For in this book Paul uses the imagery of someone who is in training for physical exercise and he applies this to the Christian faith. If you look at our Bible study that we're holding on the Book of Philippians, it is entitled 'Running for the Prize'. For the Apostle Paul so much of the Christian life is indeed a race, a challenge, a struggle and it requires a fitness and virility to be able to accomplish it. Many scholars have given different reasons as to why Paul would use such imagery to describe the Christian life. Was it that he was in jail and could look outside the window and see the Praetorian guards of the Roman army preparing themselves for battle through physical exercise? Could it be that the Hellenistic culture in which Paul lived and wrote, loved the body and athletics and had a great impact on Paul and that his audience understood the language? Or was it that Paul in his infirmity simply desired to have the strength and therefore a wish that he would be physically fit enough to be able to do the work of the kingdom? We don't know. But we do know that throughout this Book ofPhilippians and in other Epistles that Paul wrote, there are references to verbs that describe preparing oneself for the life that one leads by a spiritual vigour and he uses words of physical training to describe the spiritual life.
In our passage from Philippians today there are four such verbs. Verbs which really, as Christians, if we take them seriously, challenge us just like an athlete to prepare ourselves to live the Christian life and to live a life in a totality of stewardship, a totality of giving oneself for the sake of God's holy kingdom. The first is WORK. Paul says, 'I want you to work out your salvation.' Let's not misunderstand what Paul is saying: this is not all of a sudden a turn towards work's righteousness in the writings of Paul. He is not saying here that we earn God's grace or that we earn God's goodness. He is not saying that through our work we in fact are going to be able to be able to earn our salvation. Rather, if you place what Paul is saying within the context of the whole of this passage in Philippians, he is saying that we work out our salvation in response to what God in Christ is doing in us and for us. For just preceding this passage we have that glorious hymn of Christ emptying himself and giving himself in order that he might be the servant of God, and in being the servant of God is glorified so that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. So there is no sense here of Paul having a work's righteousness but a work that is in response to that very grace of the gift of Jesus Christ. If you look at the word work in this passage in the Greek it is the word energein from which we get the word energy or energize. So he is saying to the Christians, 'You must be then energized for the work of God. But you must do so in fear and trembling.' Now Paul is a good Jew and knows that this phrase is peppered throughout the Old Testament. For example in Psalms 2:11 there is a wonderful phrase that says that 'you should serve in fear and rejoice in trembling'. It does not mean that we are cowards; it does not mean that we are terrified (and I have said this before from this pulpit), it simply means that one is completely and absolutely awestruck by the grace of Almighty God. So therefore, you work out your salvation in response to the awesomeness of God; the glory of God. You serve and rejoice on that basis. He then goes on to say that the reason you can do this is because it is God who works in you. It is the energy, the power, the dounamis of the Holy Spirit which works in the heart of the believers in order that we can work out our salvation. In order that we can live the sanctified and the godly life. So it is not something that we possess ourselves; it is the very power of God at work in our lives that allows us to work for the glory and the kingdom of God. When many people in the society in which we live and the church in particular find that they are worn out and tired of giving, when they're tired of offering themselves and wonder where on earth their next breath is going to come from to be able to serve God, the word of Paul comes as a great sense of support and encouragement. You work out your salvation but you do so from within through the power of the Holy Spirit working within your lives. You work, but you do not work under your own energy.
The second word is HOLD , or the word GRASP. Paul says, 'I want you to hold on to the word of life.' No matter what the sway of culture or the world might be, of all things as a Christian, you must first hold on to the word of life before you hold on to anything else. A few weeks ago I was taking the train from Ascot to London and it stops off where you can make the change at the famous Clapham Junction, which is the major railway change place with the greatest amount of traffic (or it certainly used to be) for trains to be able to go in all directions. As I sat in the train waiting for it to pull up and go onto another track, my mind turned back nearly two hundred years. In the place ofClapham itself, in Clapham Common, in Holy Trinity Church, situated on the South Side of London, there was a group of Christians gathered together, who by the power of the work of the Holy Spirit, by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, decided that they were going to change the mores and values of the world in which they lived. The leader of that Clapham sect was a man called William Wilberforce who, by the power of the Holy Spirit was so convinced that slavery was wrong, that it was an anathema to God and Jesus Christ, that for year after year, after nine different attempts, he tried to bring in a bill taking out slavery. But he didn't succeed until finally in 1807 his bill was passed. But nine times he tried! Wilberforce wasn't satisfied however. So much did he believe in the power of the word of life that for the next twenty-odd years he kept striving until slavery was abolished within the British Commonwealth, m 1833 William Wilberforce finally got his heart's desire and slavery was finally abolished. The irony in all this is that three days later, after the bill was passed, William Wilberforce died. He had so committed himself to the word of life, so believed, so passionate that the gospel speaks to the day and age in which he lived that he had expended all of himself by holding on to the word of life.
My friends, as I look around the world in which we live and see what Paul said to the Philippians, we too live in a perverse generation; I think the need for us to hold on to the word of life is just as strong as it has ever been. When I see these sights from Davis Inlet and these poor children with their parents and leaders calling out for help, I cannot help but think that the word of life needs to go forth and our society needs to care. This is one of the great ironies and challenges of our time. Often when you do do something out of a sense of really caring you can often find difficulties later on. But you don't stop trying. When people call for help you offer it even if at times you are judged by later generations for doing do. In Davis Inlet they need help.
I think of the senior citizens in our world as our society is getting progressively older and that in twenty years' time when the baby boomers have aged, I worry. It is not being talked about. What is going to happen for the housing of those who are older and seniors within our society. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in a home of a senior citizen who was living in absolute squalor who can barely afford to make ends meet. I wonder whether or not the word of life, just like it did with Wilberforce, needs to go forth. When I hear there are children within our society living below the poverty line, even when all of a sudden the mantras of our day say this is a problem that we must solve and it doesn't get solved, I say to myself, 'The word of life needs to go forward!'. When I read in a national newspaper that Christmas really doesn't matter and we can just take the Christ out of Christmas and all we need is our humanitarianism, I say that we need to hold on to the word of life because the Christian gospel is not a ball that is hit out of the park, it is the game! It is the game for which Jesus Christ died and called the church to hold on to. It is a gospel that's costly.
Paul uses another word: SHINE. He said, 'We must shine!' What a wonderful phrase. When I look at this magnificent hanging on the Communion Table and I see it leading us to the light, and that light undergirding the cross and Christ and the hanging of the lantern, the Light of the World, my heart rejoices. There is a need for light to shine in the world in which we live. The last couple of weeks I have been reading a book. I've been going into Chapters bookstore and I confess I've been having coffee and reading the book and then leaving and then returning and reading the book and having coffee, and leaving and coming back and reading the book. This book is by Dion Sanders, one of the greatest athletes in North America. He played football for the Dallas Cowboys and I think now the Washington Redskins. He also played baseball. He is the only player to have been in both the World Series and the Super Bowl, playing in both sports. Dion Sanders has written this book entitled Power. Sex and Money: How Success Nearly Destroyed My Life. What a different book from so many of the others that are on the shelves that are extolling power, sex and money, m it he talks about the fact that although he was a great athlete and was physically fit and he was strong and known as "Prime Time" and he was one of the highest paid athletes in North America, he said that he would come home after some of his performances and he felt empty inside, he felt hollow. Despite all of what he'd given physically, all the adulations of the crowd, all the sex and money and power he could ever have wished for, still there was this hole within himself. One day he met a Bishop who said to him, 'Prime Time, I'll tell you the problem with you. You want to shine, but you're not plugged in! Oh, you're plugged in to power, money, sex, glory and physical prowess, all those things. But after awhile they wear you down and they do so because they are not life-sustaining, they are not the power of grace.' When he thought of this, Dion Sanders said, 'You know, this is what I have been needing to hear all my life.' After he had committed his life to Christ the next day he got up and opened the blinds. Those of you who know Dion Sanders, he always liked to be flamboyant and wear gorgeous outfits and shiny clothes and splashy shoes and jewelry. He said he'd always wanted to be flamboyant and wanted to shine above all the other stars but when he opened the blinds and looked to the heavens he said, 'I realize that the one who had designed the glory of the world was infinitely greater than I. How much more should I plug in to that power and glory and splendor?' Dion's life was changed.
Many years ago there was a man and a woman dressed in rather threadbare, shiny suit and dress. They decided to visit the president of Harvard University. They traveled all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, arrived on the doorstep of the president's office and asked if they could see him. The secretary said, 'I'm sorry, that is not possible, the president is busy. Come back another time.' They said, 'But we've come a long way to see him and we really want to see him; it's very important.' So she sat the couple in their threadbare clothing in the office and they waited there for hours. Finally the president arrived and the secretary went to him saying that there were these people waiting to see him but not to give them too much time, they wanted to see him about something. 'Just give them a few minutes and then they'll leave.' The president looked at them and didn't know what they wanted, but said, 'All right, come in.' He sat them down and said, 'Now what do you want? I'm busy.' They said, 'Our son attended Harvard for one year but unfortunately he had an accident and died and we would like to erect a memorial in his memory.' The president said, 'I'm terribly sorry', looking at them in their threadbare clothing, 'we can't do that. If we put a statue up for every dead student that was ever at Harvard, this campus would become a cemetery.' They said, 'Oh no, no. We wanted to put up a building in his memory.' He said, 'Oh, that's very nice but you don't understand that the buildings here at Harvard cost 71/2 million dollars. I'm sorry, but that's obviously not going to be possible.' So the couple shrugged their shoulders, looked at each other and walked out of the room. The wife said to the husband, 'Do you mean to tell me that it costs only 7 1/2 million dollars to build a whole university? Why don't we do that then?' So they went back to Palo Alto, California. They were Mr. and Mrs. Leiand Stanford.
The light does not shine on the outside, it shines on the in. When Jesus Christ looks at his disciples, when the Apostle Paul looks at the church in Philippi he wants them to shine not with the glory of the world but with the glory of the Holy Spirit that comes from within and is a gift of God.
There is one last word: he said, 'I want you to REJOICE.' I want you to rejoice with the greatest joy for really at the heart of our rejoicing is giving and what makes rejoicing powerful is the gift. The Apostle Paul had been the recipient of that gift and the gift was overwhelming. Christians have, I'm pleased to say, over the centuries been gracious in their giving and I hope they will continue to do so as a sign of their rejoicing. Reminds me of a story of three boys who were comparing their fathers. One of them said, 'Whenever my father takes out a pen and writes down a few words he writes a poem and gets $50.00 for it.' Another boy said, 'That's nothing! Whenever my father puts pen to paper and writes something down he writes a song and they give him $ 100.00 for it.' The third boy said, 'Oh, when my father sits down to write, he writes a sermon and it takes eight people to collect all the money he receives for what he says!' We Christians have the world beaten! But we do so because we give from the heart. That's what the Philippians had done for Paul, that's why Paul said, 'I want to rejoice and share in the gifts that you have given.'
There's a wonderful African story of a young boy who lived in Kwazulu, Natal, who heard one day from his school teacher for the first time what Christmas really meant. The teacher had said that because of God's giving to us in Jesus Christ, so now we give to one another in the name of that Jesus Christ. So the boy thought of what he might be able to give his teacher and realizing that he had few resources he decided to run and walk miles up the shore to a little cove not far from Durban where there are the most magnificent shells. All day he searched the beach until he found the perfect shell that was greater than any other. He then had the long walk back with the shell. On Christmas Day he visited his teacher and presented the gorgeous shell. The teacher said, 'This is the most beautiful shell that I have ever seen. But you must have gone a long, long way to get it.' The young boy said, 'Long walk part of gift!'
That is the kind of commitment that really is born out of rejoicing. That is the commitment, the faith. That is the going the extra mile. That is what Paul thought SUPER-STARS really looked like. May you be one this day. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.