Behave Yourself
The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 28, 2014
Behave Yourself
Philippians
2:1-7
If then there is any
encouragement in Christ,
any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit,
any compassion and sympathy,
make my joy complete:
be of the same mind, having
the same love,
being in full accord and of
one mind.
Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard
others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to
your own interests,
but to the interests of
others.
Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the
form of God,
did not regard equality
with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human
likeness.
I spent yesterday morning with the five students of
this year’s Confirmation Class.
We had our opening retreat here at the church.
Mary Langley and I lead the class,
and we began our retreat by telling the students that
the confirmation class is quite different
from other classes.
Our focus isn’t on facts and information,
biblical knowledge,
and on things we think they need to know.
No, our focus is on helping them think,
helping them think about
what faith means to them
what their faith means to them.
We want to help them think about
what it means to them
to be a child of God,
to be a disciple of Christ,
to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
The culmination of the Confirmation year
is a public profession of faith.
That’s what it means to be confirmed.
Yes, the students will join the church
and become members,
but they’ll first stand before this congregation next May
and profess their faith in Jesus Christ.
We want them to think about
what that means to them,
and why they are doing it.
The words they will say are few;
in fact, all they will do is respond “I do”
when I ask them,
“Do you turn to Jesus Christ
and accept him as your Lord and Savior?”
and, then, “I will”
when I ask them,
“Will you be Christ’s faithful disciples
obeying his Word and showing his love?”
“I do” and “I will”:
that’s their public profession of faith.
We Christians profess our faith in words;
we are people of the word,
the written word and the living Word.
We profess our faith using creeds
and affirmations,
those statements we find in our
Book of Confessions.
We use the Apostles’ Creed regularly,
especially when we baptize
and when we receive new members.
We use sections from the Brief Statement of Faith
on many Communion Sundays.
Next Sunday is World Communion Sunday,
and we’ll use the Nicene Creed,
which is the most ecumenical of the creeds,
one our denomination has in common with others.
Together we’ll say
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father,
through him all things were made.”
But for all our words, all our professions,
we are people of acts and actions.
We are people energized by the Spirit
and called to lives of service, lives of work.
Professing our faith doesn’t lead us
to cloistered lives of contemplative prayer;
professing our faith leads us out into the world
wherever the Spirit calls us,
to serve, to do.
We ask our Confirmands
“will they live their faith publicly
by showing their love.”
The same question is asked of all of us
Will we live our faith, you and I,
not by reciting words from creeds,
but by showing our love
in our every word and act?
Our lives tell the world who we are
more than our words.
We know there are many people
who say they follow Christ,
but don’t show love;
instead they show arrogance, judgment
contempt, even hatred.
Think of that church that pickets funerals
with their hateful signs.
Think of any church that says they welcome all,
but act in a way that says
they really only welcome some.
Our Christian history has too many examples
of appalling behavior,
violent and vengeful,
by disciples who have professed their faith,
but then fail to show their love.
The Apostle Paul understood
that we followers of Christ need help,
need guidance,
need to be told what to do, how to live our lives.
We’ve heard from some of Paul’s lists
the past few weeks.
But in his letter to the Philippians,
we don’t get a list as much as we get
almost a joyful song that Paul sings out:
be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others
as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own
interests,
but to the interests of others.
Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit:
We can do that, can’t we;
we can live that way.
Who among us thinks of ourselves as “conceited”
or as filled with selfish ambition?
Ambition yes,
but selfish ambition, surely not.
But Paul doesn’t let us off easily,
anymore than our Lord Jesus does.
Paul pushes us:
“in humility regard others
as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to
your own interests,
but to the interests of
others.
Now, really: who can do that?
Who wants to do that?
Regard others as better than ourselves?
Look not to our own interests,
but the interests of others?
Yet, this is the life we are called to live.
This is how we show our love
after we have professed our faith.
This is Christian behavior at its most elemental.
This is also behavior that, for most of us,
is well beyond our comfort zone,
But we can learn to live this way:
we can learn to make this behavior
our everyday behavior:
in time,
and with work.
This is behavior we can model and live
as we grow in spiritual maturity.
as we grow into what the Franciscan Priest Richard
Rohr
calls “second half of life living.”
In using that term, Rohr isn’t talking about
chronology,
that we’ll start to behave this way
sometime around, perhaps 40.
No, he is talking about when we move into a new
phase,
a more mature phase, of spiritual life.
In the first phase our lives
even as professed disciples of Christ,
we tend to be focused on ourselves, our education,
our careers, our families,
getting ourselves established.
We find it hard to turn outward.
Yes, we have our moments,
they are just moments.
In second half of life living,
as Rohr describes it
our behavior tells the world
we are more focused outward,
outward with love,
more focused on forgiveness,
compassion,
acceptance,
inclusiveness.
In second half of life living
we begin to understand
what it means to walk humbly,
to put the needs of others first.
We are not trying to define, differentiate
our distinguish ourselves to set ourselves apart,
as much as we are trying to build community
see past differences,
build on commonalties.
We learn to live with true compassion for others
and it shows in our behavior.
We learn, as Frederick Buecher has written
that the very essence of religion,
has to be
compassion,
behavior marked by
“a capacity for feeling
what it is like to live inside another’s skin,
knowing that there can never really be
peace and joy for any
until there is peace and joy finally for all.”
Let each of you look not to
your own interests,
but to the interests of
others.
We don’t have to be old in years,
to grow in spiritual maturity,
to behave with spiritual maturity
that reflects love.
Alicia Keys is a singer and songwriter,
an extremely successful musician;
She’s in her early 30s, but she’s already won
more than a dozen Grammys
and countless other awards for her music.
She’s taken a different approach
in her most recent release,
turning outward,
asking in one song, “why are we here?”
and answering the question with the words,
“We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here.”
She’s hasn’t stopped at just recording a song;
She’s created a website called
“We Are Here Movement”
and she has challenged her enormous base of fans,
her Facebook friends and her Twitter followers
to take action, to do something:
to feed a hungry child
help raise a family out of poverty,
support women in need.
Do something,
help another,
act in compassion,
act in love.
I don’t know anything about Keys’ faith,
but her behavior speaks loudly
that she is acting in love,
acting for the needs of others.
When the children of Israel settled on their new land,
one of the first things they were told by God through Moses
was,
“When you reap the
harvest of your land,
you shall not reap to
the very edge of your field
or gather the
gleanings of your harvest.
You shall not strip
your vineyard bare,
or gather the fallen
grapes of your vineyard;
you shall leave them
for the poor and the alien.”
(Leviticus 19:9)
Put another way,
you will see to the needs of others
by your actions.
You will behave in way that shows the world
your concern for others,
your compassion for others,
your love for others.
That is the life we are called to.
What begins with profession leads to behavior:
Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard
others
as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to
your own interests,
but to the interests of
others.
Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the
form of God,
did not regard equality
with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human
likeness.
This is the Word of the Lord.
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 11:00 AM
