Scripture: Philippians 3: 4-14; John 12: 1-8

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own…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 upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

-- Phillipians 3:12-14

After last Sunday’s sermon someone asked me why I had changed my usual message of repentance before reconciliation to one of reconciliation before repentance. In the parable of the Lost Son the father had forgiven the boy before the boy confessed his sin, and that seemed different from the usual message that confession must precede forgiveness. Today’s text gives me an opportunity to explain that last Sunday I did not change my position in that radial way but merely shifted the point of emphasis from what we have to do to what God has already done. Our repentance always takes place in response to God’s approach and offer of forgiveness. Repentance is a response to an offer not an act that elicits something not yet offered. We have to respond and accept before we experience the benefits of God’s grace, but that grace is offered freely long before we move to accept it, and if we do not accept it we experience it as wrath, the love of God forced to remain outside when it desires to be inside. In terms of today’s text, Christ lays hold of us before we lay hold of him.

This text of Paul’s is one of my favorites, because it is so human and so realistic. The Apostle has just told us how much he has sacrificed in terms of this world’s goods and status to follow Christ, and how worthwhile the sacrifice was, because it transferred the foundation of his life from the fragile security of distinctions achieved in this world, from religious qualifications, to assurances from the eternal world, qualifications of faith in the resurrection of Christ. Then he backs off and admits that he has not yet really grasped all the benefits of Christ but is still trying. The terms he uses are vivid and telling. He says, “I press on to lay hold of Christ who has already laid hold of me,” and he says that in doing this, “I forget what lies behind, in the past, and press on to the future, to lay hold of the prize, for which Christ has already laid hold of me.”

There are two elements in this statement that I wish to dwell on today. One is the idea of forgetting the past and moving into the future, and the other is the idea that we work to lay hold of Christ who has already laid hold of us. Let us take the topics in order.

Forgetting the past, is it a good thing or a bad?  Some people say that forgetting is a bad thing, a way of avoiding dealing with difficult matters. Recently Richard McNally, a Harvard professor of psychology published “Remembering Trauma,” (Harvard University Press, 2003), and Frederick Crews, a severe and relentless critic of the repressed memory theory in psychology, calls it an “object lesson in the exercise of rational standards that are common to every science deserving of the name (NYRB, March 11, 2004, p37).” You recall that beginning about two decades ago we experienced in this culture an outbreak of sexual abuse accusations based on the theory of repressed memory, during which people were prosecuted and convicted on the basis of evidence elicited from children by adult prompting, and from adults by hypnosis and other dubious means. Professionals claimed to have uncovered repressed memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse of children, repressed and recovered through counseling. Pre-school operators were imprisoned, towns were turned into mobs, and the mental health profession was carried along on this wave of anxiety and fraud. The momentum stopped rather suddenly when lawsuits started going against the therapists, and it is instructive to see how the affliction – which included the multiple personality syndrome – rose and fell in the pages of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in the 80’s. The theory rests on Freud’s category of repression, that particularly terrible experiences are too dreadful to deal with and so are repressed into the unconscious mind where they do damage to the whole person, even to the extent of generating multiple personalities. “Repressed memories” symptomology also invaded the pastoral counseling practice of some churches, especially those tending to Holy Spirit religion and pastors were healing memories by prayer; but of course to heal them one must first find them, and thus a whole atmosphere of accusation was created. We were told that we were infected with memories that needed to be healed, and the fact that we could not remember them was the sign of our spiritual sickness and our need of the pastor offering the help. 

Well, McNally shows how this whole story is a fraud, and to mention only one of the many pieces of evidence he brings, the vast majority of Holocaust survivors seems to remember quite clearly virtually every atrocity they suffered. Here is a group with terrible memories and as common sense suggests they do not repress the memories but rather remember those terrible things long after they have forgotten other more ordinary experience. Common sense suggests that traumas are especially memorable. So when Paul recommends that we forget the past he is not abetting the formation of post-traumatic psychosis, but telling us how to be healthy. Forget it! That is, don’t dwell on it, don’t stew about it, forget it and press on. So forgetting is a good thing for Paul. He would not have supported a theory of repressed memory, nor tried to persuade us that we are remembering harmful things that we cannot forget, because we cannot remember them.

Our second item is the paradox of laying hold of one whose has already laid hold of you. If the first point is pressing on the second point is holding on, and the first thing to notice is that it is not we who hold on to Christ but he who holds on to us.  I have often said that in retrospect I have seen that when I have been unsure of my hold on Christ his hold on me has remained firm and unwavering. This form of consciousness is not strange but rather absolutely ordinary. Clearly one would never ask a question if one did not already have some notion of the answer, would never search for something if one did not already know what it is one is seeking, and so would never press on to lay hold of a prize if one did not already experience the presence of that prize in one’s life. I know that this is only the logical form of the consciousness in question and that when personal relations are involved the logical form is less that adequate, nevertheless, we can all understand the point that we would never ask the question of God and God’s existence did we not already feel something of the possibility of God pressing on us. More intimately, we Christian believers press on to know Christ more and more because we know and feel Christ’s presence to us, Christ holding on to us, in all the circumstances of life. In seeking to lay hold of him we are seeking to possess the deepest existential truth of our own lives, to live life authentically and without distraction, in the midst of a culture and a consciousness that is all distraction.

 Last week I spoke also of the feeling of being away from home, a feeling deep in the self that one is always among strangers. Why does one feel that way? Well, because there really is a home for us, because our life in its depth and truth is utterly real and familiar and at home. And how do we know that if we are always away from home among strangers? We know it because Christ holds onto us, and like the father in the parable keeps willing us to come home. The belief that there is a true self and a home for that self is the sign that Christ is holding on to us, and the resolve to press on to attain it is the response the Apostle feels is appropriate to this Christ hold.

So we have two points to ponder today, forget it and press on, and grab the prize that has already grabbed you, your true self as you are in Christ. Here is the most important point of all, a third point if you like, or perhaps the one point of it all. That goal is Jesus Christ himself, a person and a relationship of faith to that person. That is the goal and the prize for whose sake it is worth forgetting everything and leaving it all behind, and reaching out to the future of fellowship with Christ.

Amen.