Poolesville Presbyterian Church
10.02.11; Rev. David Williams
Hi there! I’m David!
I'm new around here, so let me tell you a little bit about where I'm from. I've spent pretty much my whole life in a town about forty miles East-South-East of Poolesville. I was born there, went to school there, and met my wife Rachel there when we were in high school. We got married there, have both worked there, and are raising my kids there so they can be near both sets of grandparents. I don't know if you've heard of it.
It's a little South of Olney, pretty much due East from Centreville?
Washington? Washington DC? You guys know where that is? Cool. You can never be sure.
Every town has it's own character, and Washington is no exception. I don't know if y'all get this here in Poolesville, but as someone whose lived almost his entire life inside the Beltway, I come from a city where everyone seems to have an impossibly, intimidatingly stellar set of credentials.
Washingtonians are, as the Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey reveals, among the most educated people in the United States. And Lord Have Mercy, are we going to let you know about it. We have the most college educated folk, and the most people with advanced degrees. You can't swing a cat in my home town without hitting someone with a Masters degree. That's actually kind of a fun way to pass the time at DC parties, although in my experience it does make it less likely you'll be invited back.
We are deeply, deeply proud of our accomplishments, of our learning, and of our credentials. Our children go to the best schools, and get the best grades. If you spend more than twelve seconds in conversation with a Washington Parent, you'll be amazed at how tippity top notch our kids are, and how impossible it is to keep us from telling you about it. If you talk to me, for instance, I'll probably start babbling about how my 13 year old Sam did such a great job in the lead role as MacBeth in his school's performance of MacBeth this last year, or about how my eleven year old Elijah's bongo stylings helped his group rip out a surprisingly tight and funkalicious rendition of "Play That Funky Music White Boy" in a recent battle of the bands.
It's a universal parental compulsion, this bragging on our kids, but it feels particularly potent in the town where I grew up. And don’t even get me started on how hard my wife works.
We DC folk are so fixated on superlatives that we even take a perverse pride in our traffic. A study by Texas A&M University released last week noted that Washingtonians spend more time in traffic than the denizens of any other metropolitan area. We spend three entire days a year sitting on our tushies at a dead stop. To be honest, I think there's a part of us that, upon hearing how appalling our traffic has become, smiles smugly and says, "Oh yeah. We're number one." If we dropped from the top of that list of woe, I think we'd actually be disappointed. This may be a sign that we need to consider changing our meds.
We are all about our credentials, about our degrees, about our accomplishments. We're proud that we got into the best schools, that we graduated summa cum laude, that our resume is one great soaring arc of attainment, from that very first White House pre-school internship to our current appointment as Vice Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Protocol in the Office of Widget Measurement and Enforcement.
There's nothing wrong with attainment. But in my home town, I think folks would have a bit of trouble hearing what the Apostle Paul has to say about his own attainment in his letter to the church at Philippi this morning.
At 10,000 inhabitants, Philippi was a town roughly twice the size of Poolesville. It sat on a major East-West thoroughfare in the Roman province of Macedonia, just about 10 miles from the seaport of Neapolis. While it was not close to Rome, it was a Roman colony, and had deep connections to the center of Empire. The language there was Latin, and the citizens there had the same privileges as full Roman citizens.
Paul really loved the church at Philippi. It was a church that he himself had founded, likely in around the year 50 in the Common Era. The letter he wrote to them was a manifestation of that love, an expression of the deep bond of affection that he felt for the community there, particularly as they supported him through times of challenge. This letter was written during one of Paul's many imprisonments, most likely written from jail in Rome in the early 60s.
The letter is both warm and deeply personal, thanking the Philippians for both their material support of Paul in his time of imprisonment, but also thanking them for their prayers and care. What makes this little missive so interesting theologically is its focus on expressing the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, and particularly the humility and self-giving nature of Christ. That's the focus of the well known hymn to Christ in Philippians 2:5-11, in which Paul encourages his readers to empty themselves of themselves, and be humble even in the face of their newly found connection to God.
The purpose of today's reading is similar, but with a more pointed focus. Paul frequently had run-ins with groups of Christians who were convinced they were superior to other Christians. Some were the hyper-spiritual and some were the legalists, but both were convinced that they grasped Jesus in ways that rendered other Christians their inferior. In the verses right before what you heard today, Paul is responding to some of the legalists.
Those folks argued that their adherence to the laws of the Torah made them better Christians than those who did not. Paul’s response was taut and aggressive. In his blood, his training, his passion, and his life, he was completely in obedience to Torah in every way. And yet, he did not for a moment let himself succumb to the delusion that this meant diddly-squat to God.
It was not his upbringing or his flawless credentials that mattered. What mattered was the transformative relationship he had with that odd man from Nazareth. Paul’s faith in the justice, grace, mercy, and love of Christ was what defined his life, and what gave him value. It is that relationship that allowed Paul to endure, and to press on through the considerable trials and difficulties of his existence, certain that there was a purpose to his life. The other stuff? It was just...stuff.
As we move through our own lives, we need to keep this in focus. There’s nothing wrong with all that effort we put into advancing ourselves, or in learning more. It’s good stuff, up until the moment we allow it to be the thing that defines us and our value in this world.
If we have the boldness to claim ourselves as followers of Jesus, what defines us is our willingness to be humble, no matter what we know or who we are. What defines us is our willingness to set aside place and station and training and credential, and to care those around us with the same grace Christ showed us. It’s that heart and mind that lets us set aside our pride, and turns us to serving both one another and those who are most in need.
So...I’m David.
I’m looking forward to working together, and moving forward together, and getting to know one another, and living out the love, justice and peace of Christ together. That’s what lies ahead. Let’s press on towards that goal. Let it be so, for you, and for me. AMEN.
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