Philippians 3:4b-11
“Loss”
April 3, 2022 – Fifth Sunday in Lent
“Tin fiddle” is an expression I picked up from Robert Farrar Capon’s marvelous theological cookbook, The Supper of the Lamb. In one chapter he waxes eloquent about the deficiencies of cheap kitchen knives, the kind you buy at the dollar store. Their handles come loose, they will not hold an edge, and they certainly won’t slice cleanly through a fresh tomato or a warm loaf of bread.
“It is as if,” says Capon, “there were a conspiracy… to provide the public only with violins made of metal… Nobody who remembered having heard a wooden violin would think the tin one as good. No professional violinist would willingly play a tin fiddle… All that notwithstanding, however, the tin ones would sell.”[1]
The term “tin fiddle” applies well to all the cheap and unreliable tools and devices turned out by the millions and sold for practically nothing to unsuspecting and unknowledgeable consumers. For those who might wish to use earbuds with our hearing assistance there are a few cheap ones from the dollar store there at the back. But I’ll be honest. Don’t expect much. If you really need ear buds, bring good ones from home.
Yet it’s not only cheap and unreliable gadgets in which we foolishly put our confidence. In our text, Paul writes to Philippi to warn against confidence in qualifications and marks of spiritual identity that are only tin fiddles which will fail us when we need them most. Back up in verses 1 to 3, he warns us against people who want others to rely on the tin fiddles they are selling.
And, if you want to talk about tin fiddles, Paul continues in verse 4, he’s got a drawer full of them. If you think human accomplishment can make you right with God, he’s nailed it. He’s got it all: circumcision; Jewish heritage; religious righteousness; passion for straightening out sinners. Paul has every reason, by traditional Jewish standards, to be confident in himself and in his own righteousness. He’s got a whole set of two-bit, plastic handled, stainless steel knives that look just fine until you try to use one.
Paul identifies tin fiddle spiritual identity markers like circumcision as being “confident in the flesh.” That term “flesh” clearly evokes the human organ involved in the rite of circumcision. But the larger meaning of “flesh” for Paul, as I said last Sunday, is a sinful, fallen human way of looking at things more than it is literal parts of the body.
That’s why Paul listed in verses 5 and 6 all the spiritual accomplishments which he accumulated “in the flesh,” prior to encountering Jesus: his circumcision; his Hebrew heritage; his careful keeping of the law as a Pharisee; his zeal even to persecute the church when he thought Christianity was contrary to God’s will. Only the first and maybe the second of these has anything to do with the human body. For Paul, his confidence in “the flesh” is a confidence in tin fiddles built out of a flawed and sinful way of seeing ourselves in relation to God and to others.
So in verse 7, Paul opens his junk drawer and dumps out all his tin fiddles. “Yet whatever gains I had, I regard everything as loss because of Christ.” He no longer trusts his heritage, his accomplishments, nor his own ability to be a good person and do the right thing. He says it again in verse 8, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He’s not going to shop for anything important at the spiritual dollar store anymore. He’s going to seek that which is truly valuable.
“I regard them all as rubbish,” says Paul at the end of verse 8. That word “rubbish” is a really polite translation. It means dung or excrement or something else nasty your dog would love to rub its nose in. I think of recipes I’ve heard for catfish bait, like blending ground cheese and chicken livers, sealing it in a jar, and leaving it out in the sun for a few days. That’s the sort of thing Paul calls his best accomplishments. Honestly, a good translation, which captures the way we sometimes talk about worthless junk, is “crap.” It all goes in the garbage bin or down the toilet, says Paul, so he may gain something far better, “that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” He wants Christ instead of all the crap.
Paul doesn’t want a righteousness of his own, says verse 9. That’s rubbish, that’s… well, you can fill it in. He wants the righteousness of Jesus, the righteousness God gives us when we trust Christ in faith. That’s the real thing, that’s the blade which will cut through all the deadness of our hearts and make us truly alive. That’s a gift you can trust, a sharp edge in which you can truly place your confidence.
That’s why we often talk about giving something up for Lent. It’s to remind ourselves that the Christian life is a constant giving up, a constant loss of other less important things so that we can follow Jesus Christ and be, as Paul says, found in Him. We saw Mary doing that in our Gospel reading this morning. She took what may have been the most expensive and precious item in her house and poured it out on Jesus’ feet. Mark tells us she broke the jar open to do so. She also wiped His feet with her hair, sacrificing her dignity. It was a total loss, for the sake of honoring Jesus.
An old form of Christian spirituality says that we need to die to all that seemingly valuable but actually useless junk in order to live with Jesus. In verse 10, Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”
Do we really take the end of verse 10 seriously, “like him in his death?” Are we living, like Paul says in Romans 8:36, as if we are for Jesus’ sake “being killed all day long?” Are we really willing to suffer loss for our Lord, even tiny or inconsequential losses? Or are we desperately trying to hold onto all sorts of stuff which will do us no good in the end?
In his book Subversive Witness, Covenant writer Dominique Gilliard asks those of us who are white and relatively well off in society to consider our privilege and how we might let go of it or make use of it for Jesus, for the sake of caring for and helping sisters and brothers who do not have privilege like ours. Yet talk about “white privilege” immediately raises hackles for some of us. We may fear someone is trying to take away something which rightfully belongs to us. I don’t think that is true, but what if they are? Isn’t that the sort of thing which Paul is doing when he regards “everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?” Shouldn’t we rejoice, even aim at the prospect of losing something for Jesus?
Paul aims that direction in the remainder of our text, starting with the goal of it all in verse 11, “if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” We evangelicals are often apt to talk as if the story is all done. “Christ has died and Christ has risen and I’m saved.” Yet turn back a page to Philippians 2:12 and Paul tells us to “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling.” In his letters to the Corinthians he talked about Christians as “those who are being saved.” Here in our text he applies that same understanding to himself. He knows he’s not quite saved yet. He hasn’t been raised from the dead yet.
He makes it crystal clear in verse 12, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal…” Paul fears we may think that loss for Christ means immediate gain. He has thrown his prior life to the dogs. So you might think his new life in Christ is complete and perfect. “Not so,” he tells us. “I press on to make it my own, because Christ has made me his own.” There’s the key. It’s not what we own or what we lose. It’s that Jesus owns us, body and soul.
“Brothers (and sisters),” he says in verse 13, “I do not consider that I have made it my own…” There it is again. He has not arrived yet. He’s lost everything for Jesus, but what he hopes to receive is not yet in his possession. But that doesn’t stop Paul. “…but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the prize of God’s call from heaven in Christ Jesus.”
This may be Paul’s favorite picture for his life as a Christian. Maybe he had also been a literal athlete. He certainly had physical stamina. Or perhaps he just loved to watch the ancient athletic games. But in Christ Paul saw himself as a “runner” in a great contest for which the stadium is the whole world. He strained every muscle and nerve for the sake of completing a good race for Jesus.
As you read these verses you should hear music from “Chariots of Fire.” You should see a man racing confidently over brown hills, through green valleys, down a sandy beach. You should feel his heart pumping in a rhythm that is not just exertion, but the beat of sheer joy at being able to run. He is running, Karl Barth says, with empty hands because he has not yet taken hold of anything. He runs because the grace of Christ Jesus has taken hold of him, calls to him, and draws him forward.
Going forward means leaving that which is behind. There is the loss again. There’s all that rotten, stinking garbage tossed over his shoulder and forgotten. Paul’s hands are also empty as he runs because anything he might try to carry along will only hold him back. Try to run carrying a box of all the possessions you hold most dear. You probably won’t get very far.
That old film “Chariots of Fire” is a good story to remember here. It follows Christian athlete and later missionary Eric Liddell as he prepares to run the 100 meter race in the 1924 Olympics. Just as he was getting ready to leave for the games in Paris, he learned his races would be on a Sunday. He decided to give up all his hard sprint training and withdraw from the 100 meter race.
Liddell was able to compete in the 400 meter race of those Olympics after another runner gave up his spot on a Thursday. That morning someone handed him a paper with words drawn from I Samuel 2:30, “He that honors me I will honor.” Liddell won that long distance race by treating it like a sprint and running as hard as he could all the way.
With the World Athletic Championships coming here in three and a half months, I could go on and on about what track and field champions give up in order to succeed in their events: their diets, their long hours of training, their time away from family and friends. Yet I’d rather keep talking about Eric Liddell and tell you how he later gave up more than he ever had as an Olympic runner.
Liddell went on to serve as a missionary in China. The Japanese invaded that country and British citizens were advised to leave. Liddell chose to stay while sending his wife and children to Canada. When the Japanese got to his region, he became a prisoner. He became a leader in the prison camp, helping the elderly, teaching science and leading games for children, and offering Bible classes. Eric Liddell died there in that camp. He had an inoperable brain tumor. His reported last words were, “It’s complete surrender.” Like Paul, he had run and won the more important race.
As we draw now to the end of Lent, our Gospel readings show us Jesus drawing near the end of the race He ran for us. Jesus didn’t just say Mary honored Him. She anointed Him for His burial. Our Lord was about to lose His life for us. So let us run down that road after Him, losing whatever we must to stay in the race. Even if some of your time or some of your money feels like a small loss in comparison to His, those losses are real and sometimes painful. God will honor them like He honored Eric Liddell’s sacrifice.
Then let us remember that, in Jesus, loss is gain. What you give up for Him is all worth what you will receive. God from heaven may call us toward loss and death, but it’s ultimately toward life eternal, toward resurrection from the dead in Jesus. May we all lose what we must in order to attain that resurrection. That’s no loss at all.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] The Supper of the Lamb (Garden City, NY: Double Day & Company, Inc., 1969), p. 58.