A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent year C

 

But whatever gain I had I have counted as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

 

Have you ever wanted something so much that you were willing to do almost anything for it?

Maybe, as a child, it was a special toy for which you saved every penny that came your way for months, or kept on extra good behavior before Christmas to impress your parents or Santa Claus.  Maybe it is some athletic or artistic or professional skill you’ve wanted to perfect so that you’ve given hours and hours of time and untold hard work in order to reach your goal.

 

Maybe it is the job you’ve always wanted or a person you love for whose sake you’ve changed your life in major ways.  Whatever it may be, I suspect most of us at one time or another have wanted something so much that we would give or do just about anything to attain our heart’s desire.

 

If we asked St. Paul when that had happened in his life, he would tell us that it was when he encountered Christ.  A love passing Paul’s thought and fantasy was revealed to him, and to live in and with that love became his heart’s desire, for which he was willing to give over his whole life.  

 

A well-descended Jew, faithful and zealous, Paul was rich in the ways that mattered to him.  He had solid social and religious status in his community, and that meant a lot to him.  Indeed, the opening verses of today’s reading from his letter to the Church in Phillipi are almost boastful about what he had:

 

If anyone else has reason to be confident… I have more:  circumcised 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; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 

 

But -- Paul goes on…  But -- all these gains I have counted as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

 

Paul so much wants the love and righteousness he has found in Jesus the Messiah,

 that he willing to give up everything that had once been so important to him in order to take hold of that gift.  Paul is like the pearl merchant Jesus tells of, who after finding one pearl of incredible beauty and value sells everything he has in order to buy that pearl; or like the man who found treasure buried in a field, and then sells all that he has to buy that field for the sake of the treasure that comes with it.

 

Not only has Paul given up everything that once mattered to him for the sake of Christ, he desires with all his heart to be joined to Christ.  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, if somehow, I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

 

In his desire for Christ, Paul is like a lover, who wants to know everything he can about his beloved and participate in every part of the beloved’s life, even suffering and death, in order to be as close as possible to the one he desires.  Yet passionate as it is, Paul’s desire for Christ is not simply intense emotion, which, powerful as it can sometimes be, is not enough by itself sustain a life’s direction.  Paul’s desire for Jesus has become rooted deep within him as what medieval writers in the Courtly Love tradition called an amour voulu, a willed love, a love that moves beyond emotion to commitment, permanent and unconditional.  It is this willed love that keeps someone moving towards their heart’s goal when the first flush of feeling has passed,  when the cost of reaching their desire begins to loom larger than it had at the start.  

 

And Paul does keep moving.  He is well aware that he has not already obtained his desire or reached his goal.  So [he presses] on to make it his own because Christ has made him his own, forgetting what lies behind him and straining forward to what lies ahead.  His desire for Christ, for which he has already given up so much, now shapes how he lives each day.  His desire for a life shaped by Jesus, joined to Jesus, is the driving force of his life.

 

Could most of us say anything similar about the place and power that desire for Christ has in our lives?  We’ve experienced the power of deep desires to direct our lives. We’ve been willing at times to give much to reach a desired goal.  But seldom, I suspect, has Christ been the goal for which we’d give and work with all our being.  Jesus matters to us, I’m sure – but maybe not with the full-hearted desire that marked St. Paul’s life. In that regard, we may look at Paul as being more holy than we are, perhaps more holy than we would even want to be.  

 

Yet I also suspect that many of us have had moments, and maybe more than moments, when we have caught a glimpse of what it might be like to have  desire for God to take center stage in our lives.  In those moments, we may have yearned for a certain clarity of purpose that often eludes us in the competing demands of life;  perhaps we’ve felt that our life would be focused on something lasting instead of what is transitory, centered on what really matters instead of the trivial things that often fill our days.  We may have hoped that we would be freer do what we know is right and good, and not to make the many compromises that we do because of our fear of what others might think or of the personal or economic price we might have to pay.

 

 And maybe, just maybe, we have imagined that to live in desire for Christ would give greater wholeness & deeper happiness than any other way of living ever could; we might have believed that today’s Collect speaks truth in that saying to love what God commands & desire what God promises  is to have our hearts fixed where true joys are to be found.  

 

If you have ever been moved by some such glimpse of what a life of desire for Christ might have to offer, or if you are considering that possibility right now for the very first time, then you may be more like St. Paul than you have given yourself credit for:  not having yet arrived at the goal, certainly; perhaps not running towards it full tilt, maybe not even jogging; but nonetheless moving towards it, even if only ever so slightly.  

 

That slight movement, that infinitesimal desire, is all God needs to work with. On its own, that tiny desire will not take us far, but if we offer it to God, God can work miracles with it.  

If we choose, we can take that tiny desire, no bigger than a mustard seed, and with it, we can ask -- ask that God will take that desire and make it take root in us as more than a passing fancy or momentary emotion, but as the willed love that will grow to direct our lives, maybe even to the point where, we, like Paul will be willing to give anything to reach the “prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

 

And if we ask in this way, we may find ourselves surprised at the results.  This morning, perhaps without realizing it, we’ve already done that asking once when we prayed the opening collect.  I invite you now to take your mustard seed of desire – the same tiny mustard seed which is all I have, and join me in that asking again.

 

Let us pray:

 

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners:

Grant us grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

March 21, 2010