Oct 8, 2017
18th Sunday after Pentecost
Philippians 2:1-13
There
was an inspirational trio of sentences that gained popularity a few years ago,
that started out in a country song. The original lyrics were: “You’ve got
to sing like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ll never get
hurt. You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’. It’s gotta come
from the heart if you want it to work.”[1]
Those lines were condensed to the more popular: “Sing like no one’s
listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like no one’s
watching.” They’re encouraging because they’re a reminder that it doesn’t
matter what others think of your singing voice, you should sing, anyway. In
John Wesley’s Directions for Singing in the front of the hymnal he wrote to not
be afraid of your voice “nor ashamed of its being heard.”[2]
Sing like no one’s listening; when it’s hymns you’re singing, it’s music to
God’s ears, no matter whether you can keep a tune or not. Love like
you’ve never been hurt may be hard, also, because it’s taking a risk that you
might be hurt again, and yet being bold and courageous enough to love again,
anyway. Love like you’ve never been hurt. And many of us are
self-conscious enough, that it can also be hard to dance like no one’s
watching. Unless you’ve trained for “Dancing with the Stars,” most of us
don’t really want an audience when we dance. When we don’t have an
audience is when we feel the most comfortable cutting a rug. So, what do
you do, how do you act, when you don’t have an audience, when you stop being
self-conscious and worrying about others’ expectations and just let yourself be
free to be you? Who are you when no one’s looking? How do you live?
How do you “work out your
salvation”, to use the phrase from Philippians? Whether anyone’s watching or
not, the way Paul describes it is “with fear and trembling.” That’s one of
those verses that is the same in practically every bible translation. “Work out
your salvation with fear and trembling.” I only came across two that said
something different. Eugene Peterson’s The
Message paraphrases, “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and
sensitive before God.” And the New Living Translation puts it, “Work hard to
show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.”
How do you “work to show the results of your salvation”? How do you live out
“your life of salvation”? Just to be clear, this is NOT works-righteousness,
this is not what do you do to be saved or works that earns you salvation. We’ve
been talking about that in the Galatians Bible Study, with that famous verse that
so deeply touched Martin Luther and triggered the Protestant Reformation, “we
are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.” Paul isn’t suddenly
changing course from what he wrote to the Galatians to what he wrote to the
Philippians. Working out your salvation is how we who believe live out our
salvation. How do we live as a result of being saved? Hint: It should be
different than before you knew Jesus. It should be different than if you didn’t
know Jesus. Jesus should be making a difference in your life. If you’re living
the same way you’d live if you weren’t a Christian, then, well, there’s a major
disconnect there. What you believe affects how you live.
Living
out our salvation is a direct result of how Jesus lives and who Jesus is. Working out our salvation is a result of
Jesus. That verse begins with a therefore, it’s directly caused by the
preceding verses, which are often called the Christ hymn. It is considered to
be an early hymn in the church that Paul simply included in his letter, not one
that Paul composed himself. And it primarily talks about how humble and
selfless and obedient Jesus is. He “did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing.” And
being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to
the point of death.” This is who Jesus is. Therefore, God exalted him and “gave
him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Amen.
Yet Paul doesn’t stop there. He continued writing, “Therefore, my dear friends…
continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Therefore. Because
Christ is humble and obedient and selfless, it means that we live out our
salvation with fear and trembling.
Yet
Paul doesn’t even stop there! “…Continue to work out your salvation with fear
and trembling, for it is God who
works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Live out
your salvation… because God is at work
in you. Now, as good Methodists we know this and we have a term for it,
grace. God at work in us is pure grace. Prevenient grace, the grace from God
working in our lives before we even know it or recognize it. It’s why we
baptize babies, because we recognize that God is already at work in their
lives, that God already loves them, and so when we baptize a baby, we are
affirming this grace on behalf of the child and promising to raise the child in
the faith until the time that the child is able to accept God’s grace for
themselves. Justifying grace is
salvation; it’s saving grace. It’s being justified by grace, being made right
with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Because Jesus
is humble and selfless and obedient, we are saved. Thanks to Jesus’ work, we
are saved. The third grace we Methodists talk about, which I think is what
Paul’s getting at here, is sanctifying grace. This is the sustaining grace as
“we continue to grow in the likeness and image of Christ through the perfecting
work of the Holy Spirit.”[3] You see, we never stop growing. Life isn’t over or on cruise control once you
accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. God is never done with you. You may at times feel that you are done with
God, or need a time-out, but God is never done with you. Sanctifying grace empowers us for holy
living. It is God working through us to make us more like him, more humble and
selfless and obedient like Christ. “We continue to working out our salvation as
we grow in faith.”[4] We
become co-laborers with God in his work of saving the world. God stays at work
in you, sanctifying you, making you holier, not holier than thou, but holier
like Christ.
So, then,
how do you live? Whether anyone’s watching or not, how do you work out your
salvation? What’s it mean to do it with fear and trembling? Carefully,
reverently, intentionally. If you want to live the life God has for you to
lead, then you have to do it on purpose. You have to be intentional about it.
You have to be intentional about joining with a faith community for worship.
Otherwise, Sunday morning will roll around, and oh, well, I slept in if you
don’t set an alarm, or it’s such a beautiful day, I’d rather be outside. If you
don’t make your spiritual life a priority, then it won’t grow. We do it
reverently, with respect, in awe, not so serious that we can’t take a joke, but
recognizing that this is a holy place and a holy time. We are on holy ground:
are you going to take off your sandals? Or are you going to sit and pluck
blackberries and ignore the holiness around you? Living a life of salvation is
one of humbleness, selflessness, and obedience. It includes respect for what’s
going on around you and for fellow sojourners, who may or may not be in the
same place on their journey, who may or may not see things the same way you do.
And that’s part of what’s wonderful about the church. Folks from all different
walks of life are part of our family. I work out my salvation with fear and
trembling, alongside you, working out your salvation. How we do it will vary
some. Yet the same characteristics should be true of all of us: humble,
selfless, and obedient to God. Not considering anyone better or worse,
respectful of each one’s journey, because God is at work in each one of us.
So,
because Christ is humble and selfless and obedient, because we are to pattern
our lives after him, therefore, we are to live out our salvation with fear and
trembling, carefully, reverentially, intentionally, yet with the reassurance
that God has been, still is, and will continue to be at work in us. That’s good
news. God at work in us, even when we mess up, even when we say the wrong
thing, even when we don’t do what we should have done, even when we don’t
agree. God is at work in us, giving us the desire and the power to do what
pleases him. We can’t do it on our own. We cannot sanctify ourselves. Only God
can make us holy. Only God can make us more like his Son. Only with God’s help
can we live out our salvation, with fear and trembling, recognizing holy
moments and holy conversations and holy places, whether anyone else is around
or we have to do it on our own. God is
with us, through everything. Even sermon-writing. And we have to trust that.
Trust God is moving and acting and working through us, whether we see the
results or not, whether we’re in the midst of a storm or calm waters. Fear and
trembling is a holy place to be, and it’s only by God’s grace that we ever find
ourselves there at all.
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