Gains and Losses

Philippians 3:4b-14

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, 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.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 21:33-46

"Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.

Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance." So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?

 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

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Many times when we hear personal testimonies given, we hear people talking about the bad paths they were on, and how faith in Christ enabled them to get off their destructive path and turn their life around.

But this is not what the apostle Paul is saying when he begins our passage for today with a bit of autobiography.

No, he is giving us a list of achievements. Because the truth was, he was an overachiever. He was an exemplary Jew in every way. He was born into it – “a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews.”

He was a purebred.

He was raised into it, starting with his circumcision on the eighth day.

He was not only a Pharisee, but he was part of an small sect of Pharisees, an elite group who were faithful and sincere upholders of the law. 

He excelled in all things Jewish.

His zeal for the law was clearly identified by the efficiency and effectiveness he showed in his persecution of the Followers of the Way, the early church.

So even though Paul changed his ways from persecution of the church to building up the church, he clearly understands that his past history, his former self, was not a story of wild living that was saved by turning to Jesus, but was rather a testimony of righteous living, of numerous accomplishments, successes and gains, which became as nothing because of Christ. All these credits were transferred

to the debit side of the account for him.

And he makes it clear that it’s not that his former life was not filled with things of value; it’s that the value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord surpasses all that, surpasses everything.

He gives up all things for the sake of Christ, and regards all the former things as rubbish, as sewer trash, as excrement – the meaning of this Greek word in current day terms is not something I would share from the pulpit, but the King James Version comes the closest to doing it justice when they say

“I do count them as dung, that I may win Christ.”

Paul now understands that the righteousness he sought after in his former life, is nothing compared to the righteousness that comes from God and is based on faith in Christ.

It’s important for us to realize that Paul is writing these words from prison. The things he has given up are strikingly clear to him as he writes these words. He lives from day to day, on the run when he is free, trying to stay one step ahead of those who would keep him from proclaiming the word - those who were his colleagues, his peers, in his former life.

To me, this makes his words all the more earnest and even poignant as I listen to him speak them in my mind’s way of hearing him.

“I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings, by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Even as he acknowledges that righteousness comes from faith, he shares his desire to know Christ, to gain Christ, to be found in Christ, to make the resurrection goal his own goal. And he says he presses on to make that his own, because “Jesus has made me his own”.

So, forgetting what lies behind, all those successes of his past life, and straining forward to what lies ahead, he presses on toward the goal, for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is the goal of his life.

Let us contrast this with the goals that the tenants seem to have in our parable of the vineyard. The landowner has leased the vineyard to these tenants, and has left the country.

The common expectation would be that the tenants would live there and would work the land.

According to our story, the landowner has rights to at least part of the produce, and so he sends slaves to harvest and collect the portion that is his.

But the tenants seem to have forgotten that they do not possess the fruit of this land, nor the vines on which they grow.

Their goal is to have it all.

So they beat one slave, kill another and stone the third.

We might expect the landowner to retaliate, or at least to send the authorities, to seek justice, but instead he sends more slaves, and they too are mistreated in a similar way.

And so then, almost unexplainably, the landowner sends his son, alone and basically vulnerable, trusting that the tenants “will respect him.” After all, this is his son, his heir.

But the tenants, who are still striving for the goal of having the vineyard for themselves, seize the landowners’ son, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him.

Now Jesus uses this parable to show the Pharisees that he is talking about them. But there are numerous other messages in this parable, and some of them are closely connected to the same themes we have heard coming from Paul.

What do we gain by living in Christ? What matters in this life? Is it our heritage, or our education, or our socioeconomic standing, or the things we earn, or possess?

Is it the badge of honor we gain from our accomplishments, our holdings? Is it the size of our house, or the acres of land we possess, or the fruit of that land?

No.

First of all, this parable reminds us that God is the vinegrower. The world and all that is in it belongs to God, not to us. We are stewards of the earth. The fruit of the vine, that which we produce, all of it belongs to God. None of it belongs to us.

And so hanging onto it, stealing it, fighting and killing for it, makes no sense. This is Paul’s point. All those gains mean nothing, compared to the prize of knowing Jesus Christ.

So, where is the good news in this?

I see the good news in two places: first, that it doesn’t matter what our achievements or accomplishments or collections are – because our favor in the eyes of God has nothing to do with that. It cannot be earned. And so thanks be to God, we can do nothing to make God love us more, and we can do nothing to make God love us less.

And the second piece of good news in this is that we are the branches, we are the fruit of the vine – our vocations, our acts of kindness, our generosity, all these fruits of the Spirit combine across the whole body of Christ to produce the new wine, to fill the new wineskins, to serve in the world as the body and blood of Christ.

As so as we approach the table to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, invited here by Jesus, we can commit once again to being good stewards of all the abundance God has provided for us, and to know that we are invited to this table, just like all those who come to this table all around the world, not because we’ve earned it, but because grace has been freely given to each and every one of us.

Thanks be to God! Amen.