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”

(www.weareheremovement.com)

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