All Else is Rubbish

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians has long been my favorite of all his letters. I suspect that this is partially due to the fact that it was this letter that I first studied in my first year of theology school. The passage that we read today is also a favorite of mine because of St. Paul’s obvious eloquence in speaking of his relationship to Jesus Christ. In her book Preaching the New Lectionary, Dianne Bergant writes: “One way Paul extols the unparalleled excellence of his relationship with Christ is to contrast it with the life he led and the values he championed before his conversion. It is not that he denies the worth of such things, but he proclaims that knowing Christ is the supreme good and everything else is loss, and more than that, it is rubbish. Paul is quite emphatic here, using a vulgar Greek term that might be better translated ‘dung.’ Why does he see no value in them? Because as noble as they might be, they cannot bring him to Christ.

“The desire Paul expresses in this reading is twofold. He wants to be made righteous through union with Christ, and he wants to share in Christ’s sufferings in order to attain the resurrection from the dead. By the grace of God, Paul came to realize that it is union with Christ and not obedience to the law that makes one righteous. Laws set standards and determine whether these standards have been met; true righteousness depends upon Christ.” As you may have heard me say before, “righteousness” means right relationship when it is used in the Scriptures. We are righteous when we realize who we are and who God is. If we submit ourselves to God’s governance as our Creator, our Lord, and our master, then we are righteous. By taking on the day-to-day struggle with the realities of life that conforms to the example set by Christ, we can then take on the identification of being a righteous Christian.

First of all, let us admit that it is a struggle. So many other things, so many other issues, so many other attractions try to lead us away from that struggle. Paul sees this struggle is ongoing. He realizes that he has not yet taken hold of it; he has not attained it; he continues his pursuit; he strains forward. If this is the case in this man who has committed his entire life to Christ, then we must admit that it is also true for us. Throughout this reading Paul rejects any thought of self-achievement. He realizes that the only way to triumph in this struggle is through the grace of God. Paul frequently harks back to the time before his conversion and confesses his guilt as a sinner, but he places his trust in God’s mercy.

The story we hear in the Gospel today which appears only in St. John’s Gospel confronts us with the extreme nature of God’s mercy. Jesus treats the woman with compassion while the Pharisees are simply using her as bait for a trap in which they hope to catch Jesus. There are those who even suggest that the Pharisees set the woman up in order to use her in this way. However, Jesus does not fall into the trap. Instead, Jesus reminds the Pharisees of the fact that their ancestors had fallen into idolatry at the foot of Mount Sinai. Not even a day had passed since God made a covenant with them through Moses before they fell down in worship before a golden idol. In anger Moses had destroyed the tablets on which God wrote the Law. Moses had to go back to God and ask God to forgive this stiff-necked people whereupon God carved yet another set of tablets. When Jesus scoops to write in the dirt twice during his encounter with the Pharisees, he is reminding them that just as God forgave their ancestors, the God of mercy would not condone stoning this woman. Jesus dismisses her with the admonition to stop sinning in this way.

We all have a hard time understanding God’s mercy. It simply is not reasonable or logical. Our sense of justice demands punishment, but God’s ways are not our ways. We usually use this quotation from the prophet Isaiah when we are baffled by miraculous events in the world. However, Isaiah uttered these words when speaking of the depth of God’s mercy. St. Paul realized this even though he viewed it as a mystery beyond human understanding. For those of us who are still engaged in the struggle to conform ourselves to the death of Jesus and the power of his resurrection, we join Paul in striving forward in pursuit of the goal, the prize of God’s upward call, in Christ Jesus.