You know, many people believe in reincarnation – in one way or another. Did you know that the car you’re driving may have had a previous life in another form?
True! Decades ago it became scary how fast the mountains of junk cars were piling up; hundreds of millions of them! Finally, it occurred to someone that there was a potential in all of these lifeless shells. So, machinery was developed that could literally chew up and shred old worn out cars that would eventually be recycled into new steel to be shaped into new forms. The bottom line is that the car, or pick-up, or sedan that you may be driving around today, might have been a Ford Pinto in an earlier life.
The Apostle Paul didn’t have a Greek or Aramaic word for recycle, but there’s no question he was familiar with the concept. The word in our Scripture, translated “rubbish,” is a word that also means “dung” (skubalo). Dung was not only animal droppings, but it was also old plant matter. Even in those days “skubalo” was recycled. It was returned to the fields and worked into the soil to make it fertile to grow wheat, figs, grapes and olives.
If there was one thing that Paul understood, it was the use of the old to create something completely new. That was apparently the story of his life for he himself had been reforged and refashioned; reconstituted through a transformative process.
He regarded all of his old past as (skubalo), as rubbish, for in his heart Paul was a new person; he experienced a new attitude, a new outlook on life through his encounter with Christ.
Here’s what happened. Paul (called Saul then) was on the road to Damascus to persecute this new group called Christians! They were heretics, and from his fundamental and strict viewpoint he knew they were trouble. So, Paul is going down the road and suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting …” Paul experienced a fundamental transformation!
However, it’s important to see here that Paul doesn’t totally throw away his past and his former life as if it never existed. What occurred in Paul’s life was that he was refashioned from the recycled materials of his past life. He was the sum of all of his life’s experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly.
As theologian J. Holub says and what we read in our Scripture, “God took who he was: his devout Hebrewness, his tribal sense of self, his zeal, his thorough knowledge of the Scripture, his self-righteousness; the whole package of who he was and, we might say, processed it through the recycler of the cross and resurrection of Jesus to be crushed, crunched, cracked, shredded, redefined and finally refashioned into a phenomenal new creation.”
Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection by becoming like him in his death.”
And then Paul put his newly created self to work:
– No longer zealously persecuting followers of Jesus, but zealously and tirelessly preaching the grace of God to all people.
– No longer puffing himself up with his own goodness and self-righteousness, but now proclaiming a righteousness that is given freely as a gift of grace through faith.
– No longer using his articulate public speaking skills to polarize people, but now preaching the love, compassion and grace of God.
– No longer living by a strict religious law that says you are either “right or wrong” – either “in or out,” but now embracing those considered outside the narrow religious boundaries.
For Paul, the cross and resurrection power were core to the experience of following Jesus – dying to an old way of being; an old way of living; an old way of thinking; an old way of doing – and being recycled, reconstituted and transformed into a new way of being; a new way of living; a new way of thinking; a new way of doing. Many of you have come to MCC with your old way of living and thinking and doing – and here, through God’s loving power, you’ve been transformed into new ways of living, thinking and doing. Thank God for this church! Talk about resurrection power!
Many biblical commentators have called Saul’s event on the road to Damascus the “conversion of Paul.” Theologian Holub says, “The problem with that is that it makes it sound like that’s all there was to it – that transformation was completed in Paul’s life in one incredibly intense moment.”
I think it’s important to understand that for Paul this transformative experience was an ongoing process. Whatever happened and however it happened, there’s no doubt that Paul was dramatically changed. We hear him speak of it in our Scripture today, “I want to become like Christ in his death … not that I have already attained this … I press on to make it my own …” “I press on …” What a beautiful mindset and a great attitude for the followers of Jesus – “press on.”
That’s process language; journey language, not destination language; that’s acknowledging that the process of transformation goes on, and on, and on, and on and we never arrive; we never grow enough; we never know enough; we never love enough; we never give enough; we never serve enough. It’s not about enough or arriving. It’s about “pressing on” and “loving excessively” as Bishop Spong has said.
I have a card that I was given several years ago – it’s one of those cards that goes with me wherever I go – and I keep it out because of the message. It’s about happiness. It says, “Happiness is a journey – not a destination.”
Have you ever had a Damascus road experience? I had my own Damascus road experience in the fall of 1997 that began a process of transformation in my life. I took a leap of faith – like I had never taken before. I experienced raw honesty like I never did before, because I opened up for the first time in my church world, with God, with myself, with my family – my friends, my faith community. On the outside it appeared I was happy and successful in ministry but way down deep inside my heart things were not so well and not so wonderful – they were downright frightening.
Haunted and secretly crippled by deep emotional wounds from my childhood; wounds that had helped create a sense of self-doubt and lack of self-esteem; that had, in turn, shaped me into a compulsive workaholic, committed to the futile endeavor of trying to please all of the people all of the time, I crashed and burned!
It was there, in what appeared to be the wreckage of my own life, that I died and was reborn – there was, a powerful process of transformation that began in my life that continues on to this very day, and this very minute, and this very second, even as I stand before you this morning; and it will continue on until I draw my last breath.
Paul says, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus made me his own”, I get it! I understand what Paul is saying. To make something one’s own is to own it; to take it to heart; to allow oneself to be shaped and molded and changed by it. What is it that I press on to make my own? It’s the incredible love and grace of God that comes in the process of dying to an old way of thinking and being born to a new way of thinking, every day, over and over with every breath.
There’s one more thing Paul said that I want you to hear. “… this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on …”
I will never forget the incidents and events that inflicted deep wounds in my soul in my growing up. But I don’t think Paul means to forget like in memory loss, like it never happened; but rather, I believe he means that a huge part of the transformative experience is not to allow past things to have power in my life today, but to let go of them and press on toward the grace that calls me and you to the transformative power that is in the cross and resurrection of Jesus that can make me and you new again and again.
If you think about it, so much of whom we are, our makeup and identity, our thinking, is a clinging and holding on to the past; so much so we can get stuck in what was. The result is who we are today is merely who we were yesterday.
Lord! That sounds depressing to me. To be trapped in my fears, prejudices, my stinkin’ thinkin’ and limited knowledge of yesterday! Who I am today can only be who I was yesterday? No!
MCC is boldly proclaiming the inclusive love of God for all people. I believe following Jesus is not just about playing church, but it’s to be about something radically and transformationally different. We cannot be who we were yesterday. We press on – not living in the past. We press on – not living in pettiness. We press on – letting go of our pride, getting ego out of the way.
Where were you a year ago? Where are you today? Where do you want to be a year from now? We have a message to tell our friends. We offer healing to the hurting and the wounded. We give our gifts and our talents to create a place for people to connect and grow spiritually. We press on!
Who I am is not who I was, but is who I am yet to be as I “press on to make it my own.” To follow the one I name as God of my life and to trust the process of death and resurrection into which I’m called and through which I am transformed.
Press on!
Rev. Dan Koeshall is the senior pastor at The Metropolitan Community Church (The Met), 2633 Denver Street, San Diego, California, themetchurch.org. Services every Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m.
