Rooted in Humility | Isaiah 5:1-7, Philippians 4:3b-14 | 10.4.26

All right.

Our first reading for today is from the prophet Isaiah.

The prophet Isaiah has returned to a metaphor that all throughout scripture stands in for the relationship between God and God's people, Israel.

And that's the relationship between a manager of a vineyard and the what is produced in the vineyard.

And so as we hear this prophetic challenge from the prophet Isaiah, let's listen for what God has to say to us today.

We're in chapter 5, reading verses 1 through 7.

I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.

My beloved has a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines, and he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine vat in it, and he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.

What more was there for me to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?

When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge, it shall be devoured, I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down, and I will make it a wasteland, and it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briars and thorns.

I will also command to the clouds that they that no rain will come upon it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished garden.

And he expected justice, but he saw bloodshed.

He expected righteousness, but he heard a cry.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm glad to be with you all today as we celebrate World Communion Sunday.

For some of us, this might be a new idea, World Communion.

It actually began in our own Presbyterian tradition.

In 1933, the Great Depression was grinding families down, and the world was already fraying at its seams.

And a pastor in a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh wondered what might happen if Christians around the world everywhere gathered at Christ's table on the same day and recognized our unity.

It's a day to celebrate the unity of the church around the world.

And the point wasn't to erase our differences.

Often in churches you'll see different cloths used, different bread brought from different places around the world.

It's not meant to erase the differences, but to remember that we all belong, even as we celebrate from different cultures and languages that make up the body of Christ.

Well, the idea caught on, and by 1940, the Federal Council of Churches had embraced it, and it has since spread around the globe and is celebrated by churches of all backgrounds and denominations.

And it's fitting that our reading today is from Philippians.

Because the early church was asking this very question: could there be unity without uniformity?

If you'll remember with me, Paul writes this letter to the church in Philippi from prison to let them know about his circumstances and to remind them of their reality in which they now live.

A reality in which their unity in Christ is more important and more vital than their differences, but it's one that doesn't force them to erase their differences.

Their differences are invited to coexist in the unity of Christ.

So keeping that in mind, let's listen together for God's word for us as it comes from chapter 3, beginning about halfway through verse 4, and continuing through verse 14, I'll be reading from the Common English Bible.

Let's listen now for God's word to us today.

Paul writes, If anyone else has reason to put their confidence in physical advantages, I have more reasons.

I was circumcised on the eighth day.

I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin.

I am a Hebrew of Hebrews.

With respect to observing the law, I'm a Pharisee.

With respect to devotion to the faith, I harassed the church.

And with respect to righteousness under the law, I am blameless.

These things were my assets.

But I write them off as a loss for the sake of Christ.

But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

I have lost everything for him.

But what I lost, I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him.

In Christ I have a righteousness that is not my own, and that does not come from the law, but rather from the faithfulness of Christ.

It is the righteousness of God that is based on faith.

The righteousness that I have comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings, and it includes being conformed to his death, so that I may perhaps reach the goal of the resurrection of the dead.

It's not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected, but I pursue it so that I may grab hold of it, because Christ grabbed a hold of me for just this purpose.

Brothers and sisters, I myself don't think I've reached it.

But I do this one thing.

I forget about the things behind me and I reach out for the things ahead of me.

The goal I pursue is the prize of God's upward call in Christ Jesus.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

Have you ever had to prove your street cred to someone about about an unusual topic?

You know, maybe you bumped into somebody at the coffee shop who worked in the same field you did.

You start using the same jargon and they're like, oh, he knows, you know.

Or uh for me, like I'm if I meet somebody who plays disc golf, we can quickly start talking about our favorite touring professionals or which manufacturer we like best.

Uh if I meet someone who marched in drum and bugle core, uh we'll talk about which years we were there and whether the olden days were better than the new days and whether we should use props or not, you know, these kinds of conversations.

And then it sort of sort of becomes a shorthand, right?

Then you and that person can sort of uh nerd out on your topic of interest, and you can root them out from like the casual fans, you know.

Or as the kids put it these days, do you have the receipts?

Right?

This is the question Paul's rivals were asking the Philippians.

Do you have the receipts?

Are you circumcised?

Do you what kinds of food do you eat?

How do I know that you're really in our club?

Once you've proved that you're really in our club, then you can belong.

You see, Paul wasn't the only one preaching to the Gentiles in those early days.

And here's how uh New Testament scholar Ryan Schellenberg puts it.

Other Christian teachers have apparently been inviting Gentile followers of Christ to be circumcised in accordance with God's command to Abraham.

Now, these teachers weren't villains, they had Genesis on their side.

Circumcision was the sign of belonging to Abraham's family.

That's how you knew.

But it was also a stand-in for something bigger.

Will you take on the marks of Israel's own culture in your body, at your table, in how you live?

And if you do those things, then you can belong.

The requirement of circumcision for Gentiles was a topic of dispute at the time, and it was a way of saying, those who required it, that to become a part of God's kingdom, you had to leave your own history and culture and dietary habits behind, and you had to assimilate first.

Then once you'd assimilated, you had proven that you belonged.

Become like us first, bring the receipts, and then you're in the club.

That's the way they thought it ought to go.

And yet, Paul understands that for a person to follow Christ, they don't have to change their body or their diet or where they came from.

These things are cultural.

And Gentiles could stay Gentiles, Paul taught.

And they could still be grafted into the promises of God that Christ fulfilled.

And thanks be to God, I bet most of us in this room would be categorized as Gentiles, would we not?

And thanks be to God that we also are a part of God's family.

Did the Gentiles have to adopt all the cultural practices of the people of Israel?

Or could all kinds of people be part of God's family now because of what God had done in Christ?

That's the question.

And so, in order to clarify the level of depth of commitment with which he comes to the discussion, Paul uh lays out his Hebrew credentials for us to read.

He's basically like, and I know, I understand where you're coming from.

I was circumcised on the eighth day, a full member, a tribe of Benjamin.

Here's my theological tradition, here's how serious I am about it.

And when it came to following the rules, I was blameless, he says.

Now, this is probably overstating.

Uh much of what he says here seems like a bit of overstating for the purpose of revealing the depth of his argument.

Because there are other places where he acknowledges he struggles with things, he's not blameless.

But he did follow all the rules, he says.

He was a stickler and observed them in his personal life.

And he says all of that to create a common ground with the hearer of his letter, who might be where he once was.

They might look around and say, uh, I'm like you, I did all the right things, I believe all the right things, and I think everyone else should have to also, before they can be in the club.

But then in verse 8, Paul sort of pulls back the curtain and reveals his real argument here.

He counts all of that stuff as a loss.

Rubbish, even.

Not because it was bad, but because it is not the foundation.

What holds him is not his own faithfulness, but the faithfulness of Christ to live his life and his death and his resurrection.

Christ's faith has freed me, Paul writes, from cle and helped me to see, right?

He's he's basing his uh his truth on what Jesus did, not on anything he's done or earned.

It freed me to see what I thought gave me worth and authority and clout, did nothing to change my value in God's eyes.

In fact, what actually gives me worth is simply the unveiled reality that I am freed from sin by what Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection.

That which the world tells us is gain, friends, it doesn't hold up in the light of Christ.

And we know this in our hearts, but the pressures of the world make us forget so easily, so easily we forget and we slip into believing that we are what we produce, that we are how tightly we follow to the rules, that we are our our net worth, maybe our net worth is our worth, that others are our enemies, and that losers and winners are defined by the power to force people to be like me instead of the power of love that reveals that all are claimed in Christ by his faith.

I was thinking about the way Paul ends this passage.

He says he wants to know Christ and to share in the power of his resurrection.

You see, power for Paul is always power to life, power to greater things.

And he says, uh, he admits that he's not there yet.

He's not there yet, living and fully in the power of resurrection.

Verse 12, he says, Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached this goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ has made me his own.

Paul isn't pressing on to earn his place.

He's pressing on because he already has one.

He doesn't need the receipts because he's already been claimed.

And that changes what the pressing is.

We don't uh press on in our journey in order to belong.

We press on out of our belonging.

So when he says in verses 13 and 14, brothers and sisters, I myself don't think I've reached it, but I do this one thing.

I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead.

The goal I pursue is the prize of God's upward call in Jesus Christ.

He's not describing someone running a race to earn the victory.

He's describing a victory lap that we are running alongside the real victor.

And there's a freedom in knowing that we live our lives as beloved children, not in order to become them, not in order to accomplish our own righteousness, but freed by Jesus' righteousness.

Has there been a moment in your life where that fog lifted for a moment?

Uh, that totally upended your priorities or made you question what you thought was valuable.

Maybe it was the loss of a loved one, maybe it was the birth or adoption of a child, the loss of a job, achieving a dream only to realize that it didn't fix you the way you thought it would.

When we think that once we achieve what the world sets before us, then everything will be made right.

But Paul points out that this is exactly backwards.

The peace we have in Christ, it doesn't prevent us from facing hard times, but it does help us to persevere in the struggles of life in the meantime, because we know that the ultimate race has already been one.

I asked some friends this week as I was reflecting on Paul's words, and I'll I'll ask you too.

Um, what helps you uh persevere when it's all piling up?

When you're not sure you're gonna make it?

What helps you persevere uh when you when you don't know where the energy is gonna come from?

Where do you find some inner strength or peace or calm in the midst of life's twists and turns?

And I got a lot of responses, um, and almost all of them fell into sort of two camps.

One responder said um something about unplugging and re-reconnecting.

They would say things like, Well, I go on a hike, uh, or I sing a uh I sing along with my favorite songs in the car, uh, or I call a close friend or family member and I lean on their wisdom.

And as one friend put it, these things remind me that life is more than work.

And the second was just as kind, um, but it was a little more practical.

Other people responded to that question saying, um, I make a to-do list to help make the task seem smaller, uh, or I ask myself, is this really my responsibility?

Is there someone I can delegate this to?

Uh, one suggested the timer method of setting a timer for 15 minutes and then just doing the next thing you have to do.

And that's also a deeply compassionate answer, right?

Because some things do have to happen, right?

We have to eat, we have to rest, we have to hold on to a sense of who we are even as we work and create and strive.

And so I was thinking about these responses, whether they be to unplug or to dig in.

And I noticed that so many of them uh were not solo activities.

Many folks said I rely on friends or family.

Many of them involve connection with others.

And both types of answers also have this in common.

Um, whether you're uh unplugging or digging in, the the advice was to help reconnect ourselves to our priorities, to prioritize what's most important, keeping the main thing, the main thing.

It's a lot easier said than done for sure, but it is vital for us as Christians, because if we don't keep the main thing, the main thing, uh we're headed down paths that can lead us to places that we're not being called.

Paul says, even though we cannot lay hold of it, we can press on toward Christ, which I read as toward deeper knowing and participation in the divine life, in the resurrection life.

It's like oxygen when we press on towards it.

It it's the spiritual nourishment we receive when we ground ourselves in the truth, uh, not of our awesomeness, uh, uh, but of God's uh holding up of the world in Jesus.

And that's what happens at this table.

That's why we celebrate World Communion Sunday.

And when it feels like there are things that are trying to keep us under, we come to a table where Christians all over the world uh are breathing the same air, receiving light from the same sun, and are receiving the same grace in the form of a bread and cup, with no receipts required.

We are claimed, we are held, and we press on together.

May it be so many.