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I have a lot of great memories of my church growing up. It was a good place to be. The focus was always on preaching the Gospel, so the Bible, Jesus, was at the center of everything we did. This was the place where I first led Vacation Bible School, taught Sunday School, and was confirmed. It even had a school attached to it that I attended and sang at up until high school.
Right around that time things changed. The focus was no longer just on preaching the Gospel. Instead it changed to ‘our way is the only way to preach the Gospel’. Being the cathedral for our Diocese complicated matters. Things got really bad for a while. All of a sudden, I had to go to other churches’ youth groups just to be involved with other Episcopal youth in the state. I was told that Christians I loved and cared for deeply were not ‘good enough’. There was even a time, when things were at the height of being bad, when the Bishop, the same bishop who confirmed me in the church building, was asked not to celebrate for the 11 AM Christmas Eve service like he did every year. Instead, he was relegated to the children’s service at 3:30. To his credit, he did it, and did it with a smile on his face the whole time even as kids were climbing all around him during his service. I would know. I was serving as his acolyte then.
For a church that put such an emphasis on our need of for Grace, we were poor in showing it to others. We thought we had the best way of doing things. We thought we had all the answers. We thought we were the ones who had it down perfect.
Paul speaks to this in Philippians this morning. Before our section today, Paul warns the Philippians of those focused on circumcision, that is those who see themselves made perfect through the flesh and their fulfillment of the law. Paul reminds these people that he himself has great reason to boast in the law. He was a Pharisee, the greatest of the law-followers, with such zeal that led him even to persecute the church. Yet when it comes to Christ Jesus, all the perfection Paul attained was for naught. It was all nothing compared to the gift of Grace in our Lord Jesus Christ.
God worked something new in Paul, just as God worked something new within the exiled Israelites as we hear in Isaiah. God worked something new in Paul, just as we saw God doing in all our readings last week. God worked something new in Paul just like God does in us.
The power of what God is working is such that Paul counts everything before as nothing. He sees his imperfection now. He sees that he still has a great deal more to go. He sees that he can do nothing, should do nothing, without Christ Jesus. It is his love for our Lord that keeps him going forward. It is that love that leads Paul to strive forward to perfection in the Grace and Love of Jesus. It is that same love that causes Mary to anoint our Lord, to make Him the sole focus for all her action. We are called to do likewise.
That is the very heart and truth of it all. None of us, churches or individuals, are perfect. None of us are better than one another. We are called not to have pride but instead to strive forward with Paul and so many others who have followed Jesus after him. We are called to try to be better. We are called to love others, even if they preach the Gospel a little differently from us, albeit still preaching the same Lord. We are called to work with one another to spread the Good News of our Lord, even if they don’t look at things quite the same way. We are called to love one another, even if we don’t always like one another.
My sending parish has made efforts to get back on the right track, though there is still a long way to go. The help and compassion of my sending Diocese has played a big part there. The question we must all reflect on is ‘where are we in our Faith journey?’, whether as individuals or a church. Perfection is something none of us have attained yet, whether we realize it or not. If we can follow Paul’s example, if we can lay aside our supposed perfection and instead chase after Christ Jesus with all of our being, then we have hope. If we make Jesus our only goal, we can begin to show love and compassion to one another. If we can take the time to realize where we are instead of where we think we are, then we can start to make the journey, with Paul, to make Christ Jesus our own, just as He has made us His own.