“Craving Christ”

Philippians 3: 4b-14
Sunday, October 2, 2011   
Ordinary Time – World Communion Sunday  
First United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
My least favorite classes in seminary were theology classes. I know, I know – it seems like something a minister should really enjoy – but formal theology has never held much allure for me. I enjoy thinking about God, sure. I love that part of it. I love asking questions, wondering things, talking to others about how they experience the Holy, and looking around for glimpses of the Divine in my daily life. And those things are all theology, yes.

But when it comes to the “book learnin’” part of theology – well, that’s where it starts to fall apart for me. I grow weary of people with fancy titles telling me in their big, authoritative voices what is true about the nature of God. I am quickly bored when I’m stuck in conversations about very detailed aspects of God and Christ. I remember an hour-long classroom discussion in seminary about the Virgin Birth and whether or not it was “real.” I just remember sitting there, wondering, “How could that possibly matter?”

And yet, I recognize that it does matter – deeply – to some people. It may matter to you. And I am thankful that there are people who want to do this kind of work, because I do learn a lot from hearing what other people are pondering when they share it with me in a down-to-earth, open way.

I remember, as a teenager, occasionally getting roped into conversations with peers where they wanted me to prove that God exists. I hated those conversations.

It’s not that I couldn’t make an argument, it’s just that my argument always eventually ended with something like, “Well, I don’t know! I just know that God is real and that’s the way it has to be and if you don’t think so, then, honestly I don’t care.”

I did always like that little quotation of C.S. Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

I have always had a faith that could be expressed in words, but was better expressed by a feeling – a deep knowing – a sense that this is simply the way things are. And, I guess, because, for me, faith was not something I rationally concluded, I never spent a lot of time trying argue with others about it. It just sort of seemed like something you had or you didn’t.

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I think this is why I tend to have a love-hate relationship with Paul.

Paul occasionally makes me bonkers with his carefully-crafted theological arguments. His complicated vocabulary, his need to spell it all out, and his authoritative voice make me want to run and hide. I get especially frustrated with his my-way-or-the-highway attitude – his tendency to think that his opinions are fact and his inability to listen to anyone else.

But there are things I love about Paul, too. I love his story. I love the beginning of this passage from Philippians,

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

And, more than almost anything else, I love the very nature of Paul’s relationship with Christ. Because when Paul says, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” he doesn’t mean that he and Jesus were best buddies who liked to get together at the local tavern and share a drink on Saturday night. And he doesn’t mean that he was there when Jesus died on the cross. And he doesn’t mean that he followed Jesus around listening to him teach.

Paul never knew Jesus, the person. He only knew Christ, the Eternal Spirit. Everything that Paul has to say about Jesus Christ is based on that encounter en route to Damascus. A vision. Some would say, a delusion. He had no “real world” experience of the one he was following.

This used to bother me a lot. I thought, well, just who are you? Saying all these things about someone you’ve never really met with your holier-than-thou tone of authority? Where do you get the idea that you have the right to tell me what to do when you have no more of a connection to Jesus than I do?

More and more, lately, though, I like this about Paul. I like that he is, essentially, like us. He didn’t know Jesus in the flesh and blood. He didn’t listen to him teach. He wasn’t there when they crucified our Lord. And that doesn’t stop him. He is so wildly, completely, head-over-heals in love with Christ that he just moves ahead – proclaiming the love of God found through Christ to everyone he meets.

Did he get some stuff wrong? Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did. I’m pretty sure some of the stuff I say from this pulpit is wrong, too. I’m pretty sure lots of ideas that we humans have had about Christ have been wrong.

I’m also certain that even those who knew Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh got it wrong from time to time. We can never fully know another person. We will always be coloring our interpretation of them through our own experiences and desires. Eyewitness reports aren’t necessarily more accurate than divinely-inspired historical reflection.

Paul didn’t know Jesus in the flesh, but this never stopped him from loving him fully in every sense of the word. And I can get behind a guy who loves Christ with complete abandon.

When I was in high school, I went to a regional youth event and one night, during worship, a young woman stepped up on the stage and did the most amazing thing I had ever seen. In front of thousands of people, she stood bravely on that stage and gave us an incredible gift. A Jars of Clay song played over the loudspeakers and she communicated the lyrics through sign language, using her hands and her whole body. She looked positively enraptured. As she signed the words, “I want to fall in love with you” over and over again, it was clear to me that she truly did want to fall in love with Christ. She was already in love with Christ, yes, but she was also longing for something more.

I felt my heart swell as I identified so strongly with the girl on the stage. Like her, I felt devoted to Christ, and sometimes it seemed to just flow out of me. But I also wanted more. I loved Christ, but I wanted to fall even deeper in love.

Years later, I can’t say that things have changed much for me.

I still find myself craving Christ. Like Paul, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him.” I can’t rationally explain to you the source of this desire. I can’t logically outline what I believe to be true about who Christ is. I have some guesses. I have some deeply held beliefs. But I do know that I absolutely long to fall more deeply in love with Christ.

It’s a craving. It’s something I can’t get rid of. And the more I find opportunities to satiate my craving for Christ, the bigger the craving becomes. It’s like being in love when you’re a teenager. When you fall in love, you just want to be around that person all the time. You want to know them. You want them to know you. And the more you’re with them, the more you want to be with them. It’s kind of a beautiful thing.

There was a time in my life where I wasn’t so enamored with Christ. I was annoyed that some of my ideas about who Jesus was didn’t line up with the tenants of traditional Christianity and I began to question whether or not I was really a Christian.

If you’ve never done this, I highly recommend it. All of us who were raised “in the Church” owe it to ourselves to question whether or not this is really the place for us. That’s one of the things I love about doing Confirmation with youth – it’s an honor to witness these youth struggle mightily with the question of whether or not they are Christian.

My biggest struggle hit me when I was in seminary in Texas. I began to think that I might be more comfortable making meaning of my faith through a Jewish community. After weeks of struggling, I decided the best way to know was to give it a try, so I went to a Friday night Shabbat service at one of the Reform Synagogues down the road.

I was absolutely terrified as I walked into the building because I was just certain that it would immediately “feel right” and I would have to figure out how to become a Jew….and I knew that would be complicated.

Imagine my surprise when the very opposite happened. There was nothing wrong with the service, but it just wasn’t right for me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it just felt like something was missing. It didn’t feel like home. I didn’t leave with a longing for more.

I spent the better part of the next few weeks trying to figure out what it was that just didn’t click for me in this other religion. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that the missing piece, for me, was Christ. I still didn’t fully understand what that meant, but I knew that, wherever I ended up, Christ needed to be there.

My longing to seek Christ and understand this force in the world was too large to just push to the side. I didn’t have any answers to my troubling Christological questions, but I left this experience with a renewed sense that the quest really mattered. Paul says, “It’s not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

We are on this crazy ride together because we are loved by a power that will not let us go.

That’s not to say that it’s all some intense love fest where we obsessively think about Jesus all day long. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t. More often, it’s like a good marriage or partnership – something that you take for granted, even though you know you shouldn’t; something that you love to come home to at the end of each day. When I bless marriages and same-sex unions, I say, “May your arms always be home.”

At its best, I think our relationship with Christ, with God, with the Holy is meant to be like that.

It’s meant to be the place that feels like home. When words fail and we can’t describe exactly why it is that all of this matters to us, this craving – this desire to seek the face of God – is enough. Like Paul, we are pressing on towards the goal of knowing Christ and being known by Christ. It is my sincere hope that this craving is never satisfied.