What Defines You?
Philippians 3:17 - 4:1
March 7, 2004  (Year C, Lent 2)

One part of the lectionary text from Philippians grabbed hold of me this week:

For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.  Philippians 3:18 - 19 (NIV)

These words speak to what is going on in our culture and what is going on in the church and in our personal lives.  Now let me give you a “head’s up” right at the beginning.  While this passage applies to many situations I think that it has direct application to what is going on in the culture and the church regarding homosexuality.  I want to let you know that ahead of time because so many people just can’t hear a word you are saying when it comes to that topic.  So before you pigeon hole me or this sermon I want to let you know where I’m coming from.

APOLOGIA:  Homophobia is real and it exists in the Church.  Homophobia is evident when the same people in church who seem able to tolerate gross heterosexual immorality – sex outside of marriage, serial divorce and remarriage, abandonment of the children you help create, etc. – feel justified in singling out homosexuals for special judgment and condemnation. 

Recently a friend of mine in the Transforming Congregations ministry was doing a workshop in the NE at an evangelical church.  She was shaken by the blatantly hostile and hateful attitudes expressed by the youth group towards those struggling with same-sex attraction.  I wonder if they felt the same moral outrage and anger about themselves or their friends who engage in pre-marital sex or viewing pornography?  Older adults in the church who were affiliated with certain right wing political organizations expressed similar homophobic reactions.  Evidently they thought the best approach was “hate the sin, but especially hate the sinner.”

A.    Now don’t misunderstand me.  The clear teaching of God’s word and the authoritative tradition of the Church reveal that homosexual practice is innately sinful and a grievous disordering of God’s plan for human sexuality.

·        But then so are marital infidelity, pornography, divorce and remarriage without biblical grounds, sex before marriage (yes, even with your fiancé) and “shacking up.”  So if you are going to throw rocks at those who struggle with same-sex desire and acting out because it is grievous sexual sin, then you may find yourself bruised and battered when the same standard is applied to you.

B.    You also need to know that the Church has NOT been a safe place for those struggling with homosexual temptation.  Many who long to be in a Christian community that will love and support them in their battle for sexual purity have experienced harsh rejection and vitriolic anger from the followers of the Crucified One.

·        I want you to know that Cornerstone United Methodist Church IS A SAFE PLACE IF YOU STRUGGLE WITH THESE ISSUES.  You will find a group of fellow strugglers (including me!) who battle their own set of temptations, sins, and manifestations of human brokenness. 

C.    But you will NOT be “safe” from the TRUTH.  I will not shade or twist God’s Word to suit the current trends of sexual permissiveness in the culture or the church.  Paul spoke of the present situation when he warned Timothy:

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4:2 - 4 (NIV)

I will not join the ranks of those who offer accommodating lies to suit those with itching ears.

·        And yes, the Truth has an antiseptic quality which can sting and burn the conscience wounded by sin.  But, there is also a sweetness and wholesomeness that accompanies authentic Truth.  In the search for wholeness, meaning, and fulfillment in life the Truth of God’s word is a friend, not an enemy.  As the Proverbs say, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.  Proverbs 27:6 (NRSV)”  So if God’s word stings us today, please don’t interpret that as an attack, but as the loving correction of a Friend.

I.   With that in mind I want to get back to the passage from Philippians.  Here is the bottom line: Something is going to claim you.  Something is going to be your god.  Why?  Because we are created to serve and worship and love the living God.  And even though we are fallen and broken because of our rejection of God, that capacity to serve, love and worship something is built into what it means to be human.  Human beings are by their created nature WORSHIPERS.  Bob Dylan said it so well back in the 1979: You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
 

A.    Paul, writing in prison with his heart breaking and tears flowing down his cheeks tells his readers that some in the church have exchanged the worship of the living God with the worship of their appetites. 

B.    What you truly worship is what defines you.  Speaking of the appetite for wealth, Jesus said: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21

C.    We see this clearly today especially in connection with the promotion of homosexual practice.  Recently I read a letter from a woman in a lesbian relationship who illustrates this.  Responding to Christians who take the biblical position that homosexual practice is immoral she wrote:  How would you feel if you had to defend the very nature of who you are to people who think that there is something fundamentally wrong with you? [J. Budziszewski, “Homophobia: The Fallout,” Boundless Webzine, April 26, 2000] 

II.  Did you hear that?  For this woman her sexual attraction and relationships were “the very nature” of who she was.  She was DEFINED by her appetite.  This is what Paul means when he says “their god is their stomach.”

A.    The sexual revolution of the 1960s succeeded in convincing people that you cannot be your true self unless you expressed your sexual appetites without boundary.  Beloved, our sexuality is indeed an important part of being human.  BUT IT IS NOT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

B.    Our sexual identity is NOT the very nature of who we are.  And yet, in the homosexual community this has become an article of faith.  Recently a young man in a Christian group at a local college told his friends that he had finally found peace in accepting that being gay was just “Who I am.” 

·        That’s why so many homosexuals feel that Christians reject them for “who they are” even when many Christians want to embrace and minister to people who deal with same-sex attraction. 

·        Because they have embraced their sexual desires and practices as being the DEFINING TRUTH ABOUT WHO THEY ARE, when someone disapproves of these sexual desires and practices they feel that they are rejected as persons.

C.    Matt Kaufman, writing in Boundless Websize, a Christian publication for university students, points out that there is…

an attitude that’s widespread in modern America, but especially among teens and young adults. Let anyone (parents, siblings, friends) criticize the way they live their lives and they hasten to take it personally. I’m sure you know the words (maybe you’ve even spoken them): Don’t hand me that “love the sinner, hate the sin” line. If you love me you have to accept what I do. This is who I am, and if you reject what I do, you reject me. If you hate it, you hate me.  [Matt Kaufman, “Loving the Sin,” Boundless Websize]

III.  When we become defined by our appetites we become enemies of the cross.  Why?  Because by nature appetites are SELF-DIRECTED.  To order one’s life around one’s passions IS BY NATURE TO LIVE A SELF DIRECTED LIFE.  The Cross is the implacable enemy of self-directed living. THE CROSS IS THE ULTIMATE STATEMENT THAT TO LIVE IN THE LIFE OF GOD IS TO GIVE YOUR LIFE AWAY TO GOD AND OTHERS. 

A.    The cross is God’s great act to reclaim broken, rebellious humanity.  The cross of Jesus Christ has the power to claim us.  When we apprehend the love God demonstrated toward us in the cross our hearts are captured.  We are brought back to that relationship that was meant to define who we are.   When we are claimed as children of God we are ennobled and exalted.  God reaches down and raises us up and seats us with Christ in the heavenly places.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.   Ephesians 2:1-7 (NIV)

B.    Christians don’t claim to possess the truth, but RATHER THAT WE HAVE BEEN POSSESSED BY THE TRUTH.  We weren’t even looking for the truth, but Christ came and sought us and by grace claimed us as his own.

C.    O, But our appetites want to claim us too.  If we are claimed by the false god of appetite, our passions, we are possessed by something that is INHERITLY LESS THAN US.  And as a result, we are debased, not ennobled. 

a.     Beloved, something is going to claim you and once it does it will ORDER and DIRECT your life.  If you are claimed by an appetite, a passion, a desire, an attraction, then your God is your stomach.  And though this lesser god, this idol, of appetite will direct your life, it will not bring order, BUT CHAOS and ultimately (as Paul says) destruction.

CONCLUSION:  You and I were designed to be our TRUE SELVES only in a loving, authentic relationship with the God who created us.  The only hope for us who are wrongly defined and TYRANNIZED by our passions is the cross of Jesus Christ.  In the cross, the power of these false gods is broken.  Healing and transformation are available.  The way of the cross is not easy.  Some of us will go to our graves fending off the siren call of hungers and needs rooted in our brokenness.  But Jesus Christ comes along side of us in our weakness and gives us the grace to serve him even when our strength runs out.

Here is the truth we embrace when we accept Jesus Christ: when it comes to human existence, biblical transformation is not about therapy.  It is about dying.  Specifically, our transformation comes about through dying and rising again with Christ.  There is no other option in God’s economy.  There is no “Plan B.”  We cannot “manage” our brokenness through creative forms of rehabilitation and trendy treatments.  If we want to be whole, if we want to truly live, we must FIRST embrace the cross.  We have to die.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

Andy Comiskey, himself someone who has come out of homosexuality, says this in his book, Strength in Weakness: 

A homosexual struggler conveyed well the power of the cross in overcoming homosexuality.

      There’s a call going out, a cry sounding in hearts today, that is a courage, empowered by God’s grace, to seek the Lord with everything, nothing in reserve, forsaking one’s own life to attain the inheritance of God.  Sound familiar?  Men and women coming out of homosexuality are part of this new breed that truly and personally understand the message of the cross.  Die to yourself and you will live.  Jesus’ words to deny myself once sounded a bit extreme, but now I know they are the only hope of my survival.  If I die to 99% of my old ways and passions, eventually that 1% will cost me my life – the real life God intends for all his children.

      God will resurrect a new man or woman only after there has been this death.  Many people want to just bleed, enough to the be incapacitated, but not enough to die.  The cross bids you to die.  [Andrew Comiskey, Strength in Weakness, pp. 189-190]

I have to tell you that it has been in the presence of those who struggle daily with homosexual desire that I have come to realize just how shallow my own Christian commitment tends to be.  It is in their lives of daily dying to self, and taking up the cross, that I am challenged to die to self so that I might live the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

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Philippians 3:17-4:1

17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.


Philippians 4

4:1 Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!
NIV

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