You’ve Got to Have Skin in the Game
Philippians 3:7-16
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
October 2, 2022
A group of tourists visiting a picturesque village walked by an old man sitting beside a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked him, “Were any great man born in this village?” The old man replied, “Nope, only babies.”
The act of maturing is a process. Consider these three marks of maturity according to Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
Maturing people make a commitment. They orient their lives, they align their resources, they make a commitment to actually attain those things which matter most, once we determine with confidence that God has a rich purpose for his world and that he’s invited us to it.
Maturing means ordering your life so that everything points toward that as best as possible. Paul makes another play on words here, he uses a word that can mean to “pursue,” to “chase down,” it can also mean to “persecute,” to chase down for the sake of persecution.
In verse six, he said, talking about his own resume, he said, “If you want to know how zealous I was before I became a Christian, zealous for God, I persecuted the church,” he uses that word there. But in verse 13 and 14, he says,
but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
and here’s that word,
I press on (I chase down, I persecute, I prosecute, I give everything toward this) towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly[j] call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul at once pursued what he believed to be doing the will of God only to find out that persecuting was not the will of God and he encountered Christ on the Damascus Road. Now he pursues this heavenly calling. The pursuit becomes the commitment. It’s like the Olympic athlete in the middle of the race, only one thing matters, and that’s the finish line. And Paul says, “I pursue it” along the marks, I’m on the track, I’m running the race and the finish that matters.
The older we get the more we mature in this world the more commitments we make. We make commit ourselves to and educational path, we may ask someone or say “Yes,” to someone’s invitation to spend the rest of our lives together in marriage, we might have children, we might sign a 30-year mortgage, all of these are long-term commitment that maturing people find themselves making in this life around here and there are things that are not easily abandoned and there are consequences. And it’s that kind of commitment to Jesus that is more challenging that those things put together.
The decision to take hold of God’s purpose for our lives, is the decision to orient everything in our lives, how spend our time, how we invest in relationships, what we do with our money, all of these things are to line up with this purpose for which God is calling us heavenward in Christ Jesus. The call to become a Christian is not some add on to our lives, it becomes the center of our lives, and wherever God has us in our lives, that’s the thing that Paul says that maturing people orient their lives toward, “because it’s the most important thing,” he says.
The act of maturity is to set aside the temptations and the allures of the moment for the longer view, for the more important thing, something bigger. It’s the mark of immaturity to know what’s best and just to fail to pursue it, to choose second best because it’s easier. It’s a mark of immaturity to let go of that which gratifies for the moment but does not contribute to the long-term best and good.
So the kingdom of God, Jesus described, he said it’s like a treasure out on the field. A man was out plowing, working for someone else and his plow struck something. He thought it was a rock and he went around to clear the ground and no, it was a treasure box and he looked around and saw that no one had seen him discover this so he buries and he goes and sells everything he has so that he can go purchase that field and have the treasure also. It cost him everything but it was worth more than that.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a pearl or great price that a pearl merchant came across as he was traveling, looking for beautiful pearls and he found one that was more beautiful than any he’d ever seen and he went and sold all that he had so that he could have one pearl of great price.
The kingdom of God is like someone setting their plow to the ground and moving along the furrow and not looking back. This is the way Jesus described the kingdom and this is what Paul is saying here that mature people, once they determine that the kingdom of God is the more important thing then they orient everything toward that. That is a mark of maturity.
Paul says, “What I’ve done, this one thing I do, I have put everything else aside and pursue this one thing and those who mature are those who learn to think like that.
“Maturing people,” Paul says, “are people that no matter how far they’ve come on their growth, they still have long way to go.
Maturing people have not arrived.
A runner never runs a race by running along and running and running but have not excellent idea about where the finish line is. It’s not enough to quit before the finish line, to do so guarantees that you lose the race. It’s not enough to say, “I think I’ve run far enough, I’ve run further than most people could, faster than most people could, I think I’ll just quit now.” The finish line is what matters.
“Maturing people,” Paul says, “always know that they have ways to go.” We never arrived just because we think we have. It’s like a map in a long journey, they tell you how far you’ve come, but also how far you have to go. When it comes to service, and ministry and discipleship, maturing people know they’ve not arrived yet because the horizon for growth is always out in front of them.
The irony is that truly maturing people are the ones that are most aware of their need to go further. It’s the immature who think they’ve arrived, who presume they’ve got the answers to all the questions. It’s the ten-year-old that is likely to say, “Leave me alone, I’m a big boy, I know what I’m doing.” And so it is in the spiritual world. Maturing people know that we’ve got a long way to go.
I thought of education being like that a lot. It’s like you walk into a room and three are three doors and you walk into a room and there are twenty doors. And you choose one of those doors and there’s a room with fifty doors. There’s always more, more, more. And we never arrive.
A teacher tried to explain this to group of students and said, “If you draw a circle and inside that circle is everything you know and the circumference of that circle is everything that you don’t know, lies outside of that. Then you know you know more so you draw a bigger circle and the circumference just got bigger. And you draw a bigger circle and the circumference just got bigger.”
You’re constantly figure out that there is more to know than one could possibly know. How do you think it is in our relationship to god? God is an infinite being and we have finite minds and it would take an eternity to get to know an infinite being and still you’ll never know him fully. It’s always out there for the maturing person. It’s the immature person who thinks they’ve arrived.
Paul has another play on words in verse twelve, he said, “Not that I have already attained it or reached the goal” that phrase reach the goal that is translate to “become perfect,” it’s the same word he uses in verse fifteen when he says, “Not that I have already reached the goal or have become mature,”
Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;
I’m still trying to chase this down, I’m trying to grasp this and yet he says, “those of us who are mature will think this way.” And so it is a tension, “I am not mature yet, I have not go ahold of this yet, I have not obtained it, but I’m pursing it.” But if you are mature you will think this way to.
It’s always in front of us. C.S. Lewis, in “The Chronicles of Narnia” there is an episode of Prince Caspian and when Lucy encounters Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure, after a long absence, she hasn’t seen him for a long time.
And he says, “Welcome child.”
And she says, “Aslan, you’re bigger.”
And he says, “That’s because you’re older, little one.”
“Not because you are?" she asked.
“No, but every year you grow, you’ll find me bigger.”
Our growth in Christ doesn’t allow us to eventually comprehend or understand everything that is to be known spiritually. God grows as we grow, that is we become aware more and more of God’s greatness and God’s bigness, and the fact that we can’t comprehend it. Those who are mature understand that they have a long way to go.
Martin Luther said,
“This life is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness. It’s not health, but healing. Not being, but becoming. Not rest, but exercise.”
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going one, this is not the end, but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.
That’s the kind of journey that we’re on in following Christ, one in which the opportunity for growth and maturity is always out in front of us. We are getting to know the eternal one and it is going to take eternity to do that.
Maturing people think like this, “I’ve not yet arrived.”
Maturing people value hope, more than memory.
Maturing people know that the horizon of the future is the place where there is leverage for growth and maturity. It is always in front of us. That’s the place where influence can happen, that’s the place where life can be shaped, it’s in the days that lie in front of us. The immature get stuck in the past, in a lot of ways, sometimes they can’t let go of some experience that took place long ago that they cling to like a parasite on their skin and they think that they can never be forgiven or never get over it and they can’t see the future. That’s an immature place to be because God’s forgiveness is complete and great but sometimes the immature will not let go of the past. Sometimes the immature will hold on to something in the past that was great ad glorious and they’re afraid the future does not look like that, they don’t want anything to do with the future so they hold on to the past accomplishments and say, “That’s good enough for me, I’m just going camp out there.”
Mature people learn from the past and build from the past, but they don’t live in the past. The horizon is always in front of them when they’re mature. Life is a journey, it’s a race. You succeed by going forward, not going backward. Paul’s maturity is found on this openness toward the future.
He’s in prison cell, for crying out loud, he’s already accomplished so many things in his life. It would have been easy enough for him to say, “Enough is enough and my ministry and my life is over, my growth in Christ is over.” But instead he has this image of a runner in a race, he is still pursuing what lies ahead.
Forgetting…
He uses another word play; Paul says he has a holy forgetfulness. He says “Forgetting what is behind,” he uses a Greek word, it’s a long word but it sounds like just the next word, “Forgetting what lies behind.” The usefulness of the past is over, it served its purposes. Tomorrow is more important than yesterday, hope is more important than memory.
Paul understands, as he is maturing, that God is the God the future, he stands before us, and keeps inviting us to his future. He does not want us to camp out at any place or fall in a hole and stay there, he doesn’t want us to rest on any laurels of past years, he is constantly calling it’s people forward and maturing people know the future is really important and they lean into it, they move forward because that’s where the finish line is, where the race is accomplished.
So hear Paul’s words here, it’s a beautiful thing. “Brothers and sisters, I lost everything for the sake of Christ, but this is the most important thing for me, to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. So this is one thing I do: I forget about the things that are behind, I press on to the things that lie ahead. God apprehended me for a purpose, I’m yielding myself to the high calling of God in Christ Jesus and I’m not going to rest until I’ve crossed the finished life and those who are mature have learned to think this way and if you think any other way, God will show you.”