Come & Be Filled


When my family moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Denver, Colorado when I was about 10 years old, I wanted to put a little sign on the back of our U-Haul trailer that said, “Colorado or Bust.”  I had seen lots of westerns with Conestoga wagons headed out west to places like Colorado and California and Oregon and they all had signs like that on them – “California or Bust,” “Colorado or Bust,” so I thought it would be neat if we had a sign like that as we headed out west on our adventure.

But, I will let you in on a little secret; I didn’t know what it meant. I just thought it sounded adventurous.  Of course, I now know, “bust” is just another word for “Kansas.” (well, not exactly, or at least not always).  But, those brave people on those trips going west knew the trip would not be easy.  They knew the stakes were high.

Especially when they got to the Rocky Mountains just before winter.  Can you imagine? Wagon wheels start squeaking and straining, trying to get over those hills, horses pulling for all their worth, and then the trail boss would come along and say, “You know, we’ve got to make some decisions.  We’ve got to lighten these loads.”  Before you know it, there is mom’s piano and grandma’s oak dresser tumbling down the back of the wagon and down some ravine.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to make any of those kinds of decisions on our trip out west, the U-Haul trailer made it intact with all our stuff.  But in our text today we did hear about a man in ancient times who tossed out some things that had been valuable to him.

His name at birth was Saul, but he came to be known throughout the church and throughout the world as Paul.  To say that Paul was an adventurer, would be a bit of an understatement.  He traveled throughout the known land by land and sea.  He traveled throughout Asia Minor, Judea, the Greek Islands, the Greek mainland, Malta, Rome and maybe even Spain.  In our text today, he wrote to some friends in Philippi in Northern Greece about some things he left behind.  Not material things, but valuable things nevertheless.

I would like to revisit our text, drawing from a paraphrase with some commentary by Dr. Fred Craddock.  Here is Dr. Craddock’s embellishment of Philippians 3:3-6:

If I were to enter a bragging contest, I would win.  Not for what I have, I’m not a wealthy man, but for who I am.  I am a Jew and I want you to know that.  I am a member of the house of Israel.  We have been treated severely.  We have been spit on in every country of the world.  We have been viciously attacked in community after community, but I would remind you that we have clung to faith in God.  We have kept the light on when darkness was everywhere.  We have given the world the Ten Commandments, the basis for all moral and ethical standards.  I am proud that I am an Israelite and that I was born a Jew.  I was circumcised on the eighth day of my life.  My family, Benjamin, the smallest tribe, did not amount to much in a lot of people’s eyes, but God used the smallest and weakest and the least known to accomplish what God wants to do, to accomplish great things.  And the first king of Israel, King Saul, came from my little tribe.  I was named after him, Saul of Tarsus—I am proud of that.

My denomination is Pharisee.  I know there are Jews who have different views, but I am proud to be a Pharisee.  Being a Pharisee means we believe in the Bible and we follow the Bible.  When the Temple was destroyed, we built a substitute for the Temple called the synagogue.  We Pharisees are zealous about the synagogue and build synagogues everywhere we go.  The one thing we do at the synagogue above everything else is listen to, and obey Scripture.  I am proud of that.  You can ask my family, I have stayed true to Scripture.  In fact, I am so conscientious about obeying Scripture, I can’t stand it if I hear someone is not.  I am a Jew. I am a Pharisee and if I were to enter a bragging contest about my status as part of God’s people I would win.

Later, down in verse seven, Paul says, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss.”  He goes on to say, “I have taken all my gains, all my status, all my achievements and accomplishments out to the garbage dump.”  And if that sounds indelicate, you might be shocked to hear “garbage dump” might also be translated as “sewer.”

But why would Paul jettison all that good stuff?  Why would he say goodbye to all those great achievements and accomplishments?

Because he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, the One who had left a WHOLE lot behind.  The One who did not see being with God or equal with God as something to be coveted or exploited.  But emptied himself and became a human being who was obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Paul met Jesus, the One who came from the eternal realm, from the very presence of God.  He came from celestial palaces and from being worshipped and adored by multitudes of angels in heaven to earth where he emptied himself of everything so that he could bring us all — that is, all people, everywhere – to God

And if Jesus gave up all that status, why should I cling to mine?  Why should I ever be concerned or preoccupied with winning some kind of spiritual bragging contest?  I just want to be like him.

I want to empty myself of everything but him so that I might know him and the power of his resurrection.  Not that I have already obtained this….I haven’t.  But the one thing I want is to be like Jesus.

This is our 175 year anniversary as a church, as people who want to follow Jesus — like Paul.  It is also the first Sunday of our stewardship emphasis and new worship series.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be looking at what it means to follow Jesus in light of our membership vows.  When we join the United Methodist Church, we promise to faithfully participate in its ministries in five ways: with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.

What I want to stress this morning is what those vows are not.  They are not a means for us to earn our salvation, or to acquire some level of status that would enable us to win a spiritual bragging contest.

The vows of our membership are means of grace so that we might be like Jesus.  They enable us to pour out our lives and empty ourselves so that others can be filled.

Here is the beautiful thing about that – when we empty ourselves out, Jesus is there to fill us again by the power of his resurrection.

It is okay to be grateful for your heritage.  We are celebrating 175 years of Methodist heritage here at Bethlehem.  Paul was grateful for his heritage.  There is no way I could fully express how grateful I am to have been invited into a little church, to have graduated from a Christian college and to have earned a doctorate degree in theology and to have been ordained as an elder in the church.

But, compared to what Jesus has done for me, none of that is anything.  There is no comparison.  I need to be filled with Jesus and not with a sense of my own achievements and accomplishments. 

Notice what we do as we approach this table this morning… We don’t say, “Those of you with the most status, who have accomplished the most spiritually, are invited to come first and eat the most.  We don’t say those of you who are the most wealthy can come first, Paul had a little problem with that in one of his churches, but we don’t.  What we do say is if you know you need Jesus, empty yourself of all that stuff, and come and be filled.”

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Bethlehem News - October 6th, 2023

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