October 8, 2023 – The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Ed Hochnedel
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the Lay Preacher Training Initiative, it is this: we don’t get to decide how, when or where the Holy Spirit chooses to speak to us. The Spirit can be experienced anywhere in God’s created universe. She greets us in the face of a newborn infant. She holds us in her arms as we question or doubt. The Spirit is there as we grieve the loss of a loved one, or the pain of a broken relationship. She is there in the beauty of a sunrise in that crimson crease between the dark and the dawn, or the astonishing images from the James Webb Space Telescope. If we listen closely we can feel the Spirit’s presence as we hear the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah” or view da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”.
It may be a bit more challenging, but I think she can be found in more contemporary pieces – songs, for example, that speak to us in unexpected ways I have a song in mind that might serve as a guide as we explore Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
The song is “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell and made popular by Judy Collins. Now I expect that half of you (the older half) have just lapsed into this nostalgic moment remembering, “Sure, I know that song, and I was doing …. (you fill in the blanks) when I first heard it”.
The rest of you (youngsters) already have your phones out and have found “Both Sides Now” on Wikipedia. When you get a chance, I would encourage you to give it a listen – in particular the 3rd verse:
“Oh, but old friends – they’re acting strange,
And they shake their heads and say I’ve changed.
Well, something’s lost but something’s gained
In living every day.”
Paul’s letter to the Philippians speaks powerfully of surrender and loss; of his and their hoped-for relationship with Christ; it speaks to their relationship with each other as a community of faith; and finally he shares with them his journey of transformation as a guide as their transformative process continued to unfold.
Paul speaks to the Philippians in unsparing terms about his surrender and loss. He was a devout and zealous Pharisee – no doubt highly regarded by his peers as he pursued and persecuted “Jesus followers”. Paul is very clear when he describes these aspects of his old or former (false self) as “rubbish”. A self that was quite content in the knowledge that his righteousness came from unquestioned adherence to the law. In that transformative moment on the road to Damascus, Paul would say, “I suffered the loss of all things, and regard them as rubbish”. He had come face to face with the plan Christ had for him. But Christ’s plan required he relinquish and surrender his old self that had defined him throughout his life. He was blind for three days in order to begin to see things and his life differently – that righteousness came not only from the law but more importantly from faith in Christ Jesus.
In a sense, Paul shares with his friends in Philippi the process of surrender, loss, and the “self-emptying” of his former self in order to accept the promise of the new life that Christ offered him. Paul might just as well have said to them, “my old friends are acting strange, and they shake their heads and say I’ve changed”. He would add it is that faith in Christ that is transformative, and to be clear, don’t expect all close friends or even family to understand. Just as Paul speaks to the Philippians, he also speaks to us and in doing so, he might ask us to examine our own journey of transformation that would lead us closer to Christ – both individually and as members of the Good Sam community.
In looking back, when I joined the church 6 years ago, I consider myself to have been a bundle of paradoxes – close to retiring from a career as a clinical social worker – work that I thoroughly enjoyed and that gave me a great sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Yet at the time, I considered myself to be a “spiritual basket case.” There was a void in my life which I was looking to the church to fill. I recognized that I had embarked on a spiritual journey but had not a clue what that involved.
I was aware, though, that if I was to fully engage in this journey, there were some very tough choices and hard decisions to make. Being half-in-and-half-out of this journey had become unacceptable. It meant that I would have to let go of some very close friends and step away from relationships that had developed over time – relationships that unwittingly had become obstacles to a faith journey. At the time, I could not have told you where that journey might lead.
I was destination oriented. But I would subsequently learn that our journeys are open-ended and populated by multiple transformative moments – moments that often come as we are in relationship with others on their faith journey. My decision was accompanied by much fear, hurt, anger, and tears. The loss was not just about me giving up old friends, but it was about me letting go of my former life. It was that sense of losing one’s self in order to gain a new and very different life – a life now filled with hope and a good deal of anxiety. The “new way” required something I was not accustomed to: a kind of “self-emptying” of the old and being open to “what comes next”!
Paul loves to use the metaphor of “the race” that defines our life of faith in Christ Jesus. I’m not sure I could equate my spiritual journey as a race considering how many starts and stops, mis-direction or no direction at all has defined my journey. But Paul might offer us some comfort if not guidance when he shares about his life: “..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”.
So maybe there’s more to Joni Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now” than she realized or even intended. And as we listen to the final verse again, think what the Holy Spirit might want you to hear:
“Oh, but old friends – they’re acting strange,
And they shake their heads and tell me I’ve changed.
Well something’s lost but something’s gained
In living life every day”
Amen