NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

October 6, 200
Sermon: "Clothe Yourself With Compassion"
Scripture: Phillipians 3:4-14
Reverend Larry Gerber

One of the more discouraging and disillusioning dimensions of day-to-day life is our ever-present human weakness. But if we clothe ourselves with Christ, we find ourselves empowered and protected by an extraordinary outfit.

When David, the psalmist, wrote "For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall" (18:29, KJV), he could not have imagined what mechanical engineers and chemists are monkeying around with today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They have developed a synthetic material with properties that mimic human muscles unlike anything seen before. They believe that their innovative muscle material will be perfect for anti-gravitational suits, as well as for therapeutic and commercial devices.

The team has recently launched a company called Molecular Mechanisms to develop the technology. They expect to produce a variety of working prototypes that may even lay the foundation for a "superman suit" for the armed forces. Such a suit could enable soldiers to run, jump and lift to a nearly superhuman degree. "Imagine," says one scientist, "the psychological damage it would wreak on a foe if we had entire troops able to leap over 20-foot walls."

Just what David was thinking 3,000 years ago.

The material created from these molecules looks nothing like human muscle. The thin, black ribbon feels almost like electrical tape. But here's the good part: These materials are supposedly 100 times stronger than natural muscle.]

Wouldn't we all love to have this kind of strength? Not just physically, but emotionally, morally, and spiritually. One of the most discouraging and disillusioning dimensions of day-to-day life is our ever-present human weakness. We collapse in glassy-eyed exhaustion before our everyday tasks are finished, we break down emotionally when confronted by severe stress, we give in to temptation instead of showing moral strength and righteous resolve, and we take the path of least resistance instead of the demanding road of dedicated discipleship.

When was the last time you sat down at the end of the day and sang "Something beautiful..."

None of us is a Superman ... or a Superwoman. We're human. We wobble and wear out, we fall down and screw up.

Even the superheroes of the spiritual life have serious limits to their strength. In today's lesson from Philippians, the apostle Paul looks back over his life and boasts, "If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised 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; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless" (3:4b-6). In other words, Paul was a Super Jew!!!

But as a Christian, Paul admits that "whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him" (vv. 7-9).

Paul is ready to jettison all of his old sources of strength because - at the core - they are flawed and inadequate as a means of gaining the "surpassing value" of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. What qualities may have strengthened him in the past, he admits are worthless, and he is anxious to chuck them because they are suddenly "rubbish" in his eyes - in fact, they're far worse than rubbish. The original Greek word used by Paul is skybala, which literally means "excrement."

All the things Paul used to take pride in, he now says ain't worth a nickle. Bottom line: He wants to flush them all away.

In place of these old characteristics, Paul craves a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death," he says (v. 10).

For Paul, and for each one of us, the righteousness of Christ can be a sort of Superman suit. Indeed, Paul uses a clothing metaphor frequently throughout his writing. "Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience," he says (Colossians 3:12). This is possible when we remember that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

This sort of power suit gives us, not the ability to run, jump and lift like a superhero, sailing over 20-foot walls in a single bound, but instead the truly superhuman powers of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, love, peacefulness and thankfulness.

When we put on this G-suit - call it a God-suit if you will - we are protected not by thin, black synthetic muscles that feel like electrical tape, but by the whole armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:13-17).

Thus empowered and protected, we have a mission to perform in this world. "I do not consider that I have made it my own," admits Paul to the Philippians, "but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus" (3:13-14). Paul presses on, like a Man of Steel on a mission, determined to live out everything that Christ has called him to do: to spread the truth, to fight for justice, to liberate the oppressed, to share the gospel and to anticipate - through it all - the heavenly prize that is waiting for him at the end of his earthly mission.

The same is true for us, ordinary men and women who have been given extraordinary powers. Cloaked in the righteousness of Christ, we are called to press on toward the goal that lies before us, challenged to do the work of our Savior in the world.

Fortunately, when we slip into the strength of Jesus Christ, we can leap any obstacle. "I can do all things," Paul discovered, "through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). That's super power. And when you use it, you can say with David: "By my God have I leaped over a wall."

As we prepare to pass the bread and the cup to each other, think for a moment. What are you passing to your neighbor? What are receiving? Jesus broke his body that we might be made whole. Jesus spilled his blood that we might be cleansed with the spirit. When we partake of these elements of bread and juice physically, we are receiving the wholeness and the cleansing of Christ Jesus, our Lord. We are flushing away all the impurities that we once held onto as good, and we are being clothed with compassion, justice, liberty, meekness, humility, patience, and love.

Beginning today, and every Sunday henceforth, 2 Stephen Ministers will be at the altar after the benediction. They will be here to continue prayers for this church. They will also be available for anyone who has a prayer request for themselves, or loved ones, any other need. Please take time to come to the altar and continue to lift up prayers, and to be lifted up as well.

Let us now prepare to break bread together.......On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread............

Source:
Cameron, David. "Artificial muscles gain strength," Wired, February 15, 2002.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: slumc@direcway.com, Phone: 480.895.8766