I'll press on

 Mary of Bethany washed the feet of Jesus with fragrant and costly nard

            and then wiped his feet with her hair touching her head to his feet.

This was a lavish gift of love poured out on Jesus in a very personal way

            to the embarrassment and consternation of the disciples, 

                                                                                                  especially Judas.

Did you know there is a version of this story in all four gospels?

            This is a story I have consistently been drawn to.

            The story resonates deeply with me.

At the heart of it all is the personal attraction of Jesus.

 

What I want to do this morning in this brief bit of time

            is to share with you some of my personal love for and devotion to Jesus.

 

Now this is where I take some risk, 

            when I talk about why I am still in the church,

            because I am tapping into others’ motivations also

                        for why you yourselves are here.

 

It’s okay if you are not here for the same reason as I am.

 

But there’s a risk for me

            because talking in this way about Jesus 

            is often seen as the height of evangelizing, 

                        and that is something about which 

            Episcopalians are characterized as avoiding like the plague.

Stereotypes about evangelizing and Jesus talk,

                        especially when followed up with church abuse.            

            have unfortunately given Jesus a bad name for many.

                  

This has blocked many from making for themselves 

                        incredible discoveries about just how extraordinary, 

                                    how revolutionary, 

                                    how incredibly and intimately personal Jesus can be, 

            and how enlivening, liberating and empowering this can be for us.

So it is a dilemma for me to speak about this, 

            but the fact remains that if it weren’t for Jesus 

            and his Presence revealed through scripture and the sacraments

                        I wouldn’t be here.            

For me the Eucharist is the altar call,

            coming to the altar to receive and consume the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Repentance and redemption is all there in this altar call.

 

And so I want to share with you this morning this love for Jesus,

            and the Epistle reading for today really helps me do that.

 

This is a key epistle reading well placed in the scheme of things

                                                for all the Lenten readings.

It is about a basic, fundamental relationship to Jesus,

            and identity with him in baptism,

            of being in him, in whom we live and move and have our being.

 

The Apostle Paul says, “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,…” 

            Well, that’s too wimpy of a translation.

            The word means dung, human excrement actually.

And Paul says that he not only regarded everything as loss

            but on account of knowing Jesus

                        he has lost everything.

Truly, after the road to Damascus his whole status, credibility, viability,             

                        and reputation within his religious community was lost, destroyed,                     because he now identified with the heretical sect of the followers of Jesus.

            

So Paul says, on account of the far greater value of knowing Jesus

                                    experiential knowing, heart knowledge,

            I regard all that I had valued before as in the toilet

“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.”

 

So we need to talk about righteousness.  What is righteousness?

            That’s another hot button word for many, often heard as self-righteousness.

 

Righteousness is to be in right relationship to the God who gave the Law, the Torah, 

to be in union with the wholeness of the Law Giver, 

the life of walking by the Spirit through grace 

rather than through self will 

or out of the illusion of separateness,

            but as one, in union with the Creator;

righteousness is the state of one who is as one ought to be;

righteousness is a way to characterize being a New Creation. 

            Righteousness equals the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

This righteousness is not something that we ourselves can accomplish 

by scrupulous adherence to the law.

            Paul’s righteousness, and ours, comes through faith.

            

And this faith is not faith as holding a particular belief system, or theology,

            but faith as deep trust and a surrendering to God,

                        an entrusting of self towards union with God.

 

So we have this righteousness, verse 9 tells us, through faith in Christ.

That is how most translations put it,

                        but literally in Greek it is the faith of Christ

            and in this context this makes much more sense

 

Paul tells us, “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law,” 

            “but one that comes through [the] faith of Christ,

            the righteousness from God based on faith.”

 

It is Jesus’ utter surrender, the complete emptying of himself, 

            which is the ultimate act of faith

            that brings him the title, Jesus Christ the Righteous, as in 1 John 2:1.

His faith brings us that same righteousness 

                                                            as we are found in him.

            

So this righteousness, which one could say 

                        is a process of being saved/redeemed/whatever you want to call it,

            is not about expectations by ourselves or others 

                        about keeping rules and being good, 

but for me it is the discovery of such a gift that I must respond.

 

Faith, we need always to remember, is a gift of the Holy Spirit, 

not a self-generated attitude or a focus of belief.  

It is an infusion and flowering in the heart and mind 

of the very life of our Lord.  

Faith for us is not possible without that uniting love of our Lord.

Jesus does the work in us

            bringing to our self awareness that we are indeed the child of God.

Our righteous comes not from our own effort but through the faith of Christ.

 

 And so Paul continues in verse 10:

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection …”

 

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” 

                                    What a beautiful aspiration!

I hear those words, and my heart responds with Yes!

            That is the deep desire of the heart, the pull of uniting love.

 

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection

(and Paul continues,)

            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 toward the goal 

for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

 

Paul is speaking about a spiritual process

            which he does not yet claim as complete within himself

A process of growing awareness of identity in Christ

            in which all his own sufferings – and Paul had quite a few – 

                        were all swallowed up in the Cross

A spiritual process not yet complete, a goal

            and so he says, “I press on”

            to cooperate with this process at work within him.

“I press on to make it my own, 

because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

 

So Paul is willing and open to leaving behind all,

                        seeing it all as having as much value as dung,

            leaving it all behind to the point of even forgetting – 

Can you imagine forgetting all your past accomplishments,

            all the work you have done at making yourself 

noteworthy or useful or successful or good – 

 

Pressing on toward that goal of a full realization of knowing God

            knowing God’s love,

Paul calls it             “the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

 

So for all of us, what would be included in “pressing on”?

            Prayer, and meditation, are primary examples of how to press on,

                        and offering our worship together, and studying the scriptures,

                        and serving one another in love,

                        and carrying out our various baptismal ministries,

                                    not for self aggrandizement but as selfless service,

for this all has to flow out of the Spirit at work in us,

            so that our ministry flows out of a place of grace.

 

The church is called out of the world culture into wakefulness 

            of the infinite, radiant, creative potency which is manifest 

                        in Jesus and through Jesus as the word of God.

How deeply do we feel this and recognize this?

What is the spiritual hunger of your heart?

 

Why we come here to church

            is different for each.

What keeps us here at church together

            is Jesus addressing each one’s unique needs 

whether we are conscious of his ministry to us or not.

 

So we come to the last part of Lent,

            and this epistle reading can be a key passage for entry into Holy Week.

Therefore I want to strongly encourage you, to urge you 

            to participate in the rich offering that Holy Week has for us, especially:

Palm Sunday…

Evening Prayer on Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday…

Tenebrae on Holy Wednesday…

Maundy Thursday…

Good Friday…

Easter Vigil…

Easter Day…

All of this, our Holy Week commemorations of the Passion of our Savior,                                     provides a rich source 

            here at the heart of our faith and worship.

 

These are our high holy days – please come to them all, 

                                                                                                and see what happens.

 

As for me when I leave here,

            I’ll press on 

                        as that beautiful hymn, What wondrous love is this expresses.

I am not ashamed to say that I love Jesus

            and would kiss his feet 

            and wash them with my tears and wipe them with my hair,

for in Jesus I have found life and love and joy and peace.

 

Press on,

and may we all discover more of Jesus 

            to liberate our hearts and empower our lives.