Catherine McNiel—Year C Easter Preparation 5

Anthony: We’re here to talk about the lectionary text. So, we’re going to move to that. And our first passage of the month is Philippians 3:4b-14. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition (NRSVUE). It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday of Easter Prep / Lent on April 6.

… even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ 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; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. ⁷ Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸ 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 ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Whew. There’s a lot in this text. And you know, as I’m rereading it, I often hear people say, Catherine, that they want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection as we see in verse 10. Amen.

Catherine: Yes.

Anthony: Yet I seem to rarely hear people continue the statement by saying, I also want to know the share of his sufferings. You know, is that just me? As we look ahead to Holy Week, how might we become like him in his death, as Paul wrote, awakening us to the power of his resurrection and knowing Christ?

Catherine: Yeah, that is the question I think for us to wrestle with every day. We never, I think, answer that. We’re always, like Paul said, pressing on towards the goal because we haven’t attained it. But to answer your first question, it is not just you. One thing that strikes me so much as I dig into the Bible is that even the disciples who had Jesus in their midst, day after day, night after night, they gravitated to the glory parts of following the Messiah and they somehow just could not wrap their minds around the suffering part.

Just recently we were studying the Transfiguration account for Transfiguration Sunday and here they are in this incredible moment on top of the mountain. Jesus’ face and clothing has transformed. Moses and Elijah are there. Somehow, they have been caught up in this, you know, this place where heaven and earth come together in Jesus, which — who has access to that?

And they want to stay there. You know, they say, let’s build some tents here. But if we come out a bit from that one passage, at least in the way Luke tells it, right before the mountain and right after the mountain, Jesus is saying to his disciples, you are right that I am the Messiah. But the Messiah is going to suffer, is going to be rejected by all the people in power, is going to be killed, going to be crucified.

And if you want to follow me, you have to take up your cross. You have to expect rejection. You have to expect suffering and death. And I think it’s interesting that this story of the transfiguration with all the glory is sandwiched between these two stories of remember, this is a narrative of suffering. This is a life choice of suffering. And even the disciples could not wrap their minds around it.

And we are still having that problem. Like you point out, we are still raising our hands to sing of the glory that is ours in Christ and are so taken aback by the suffering that is ours in Christ. And looking at Paul here, I love keeping the storyline of his life, because it is really something. He began as he describes: circumcised on the eighth day, he has been a devout rule follower and a seeker of God. From the beginning, he has all the credentials. He was the persecutor of the church. He was blameless when it comes to righteousness.

But how much did his story change when he met Jesus? When he saw the glory of Christ everything changed. And by the end of his life, we see an axe. He’s being driven, dragged from city to city, from court to court. He’s constantly being arrested and brought somewhere on accusation. In just about every conceivable religious and civil jurisdiction. It almost becomes laughable watching as more characters come in and have a different conspiracy theory about what Paul is doing and what it all means.

And they have to bring him to a different hearing and a different court. And in every opportunity, he lays out the good news of Jesus. He doesn’t spend any time defending himself or trying to build safety or a future for himself, but to build a future for the kingdom of God. And he is thrilled. He is sitting in prison at the end, writing joyful letters to the people that he loves around the world, because he has forgotten what lies behind and is straining forward to what is ahead. He is obtaining his goal that Christ has laid out for him.

And I think taking a look at this passage in Philippians in light of the story arc of Paul’s life, I think we can begin to see that, for ourselves, as we head into Holy week, as you said, there’s not going to probably be a moment where we can hold on to the transcendent power and glory of God that is ours in Christ and hold on to the suffering that is inherent in this life and even more so if we are truly keeping our eyes on Jesus and the work he has given us to do. But we can keep going step by step. And I think reminding each other that, just like the disciples, just like Paul, we do see with our eyes, and we touch with our hands the glory of the risen Christ. And we are on a path of suffering that cannot be escaped, and there are no shortcuts, but we keep our eyes on Jesus.

Anthony: And thanks be to God. As the text goes on to say that we’re trying to take hold of something, but we’re only doing so because Christ has laid hold of us.

Catherine: Yes. Yes.

Anthony: So, he has us in his, his grip of grace, even as we participate in his sufferings. And I don’t know about you, Catherine, but for me I’ve learned so much more about God’s love, his tenderness, his presence through suffering than I ever have through the fluff of life. And that doesn’t mean I’m asking for more suffering, right, at all, but there is good there. And we so quickly label something as bad in our lives, but he intends it for good. Something good and beautiful is emerging from that.

And so that kind of leads to the question I wanted to ask you next. And I’m going to invite you to be personal if you’re willing. And, you know, Paul wrote about, regarding everything is lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. Have you experienced loss of something that at the time it just felt, and maybe you labeled it as bad and just something, ah, gut wrenching, but out of that came this knowing of Christ more intimately and in such a way that you look back on it somehow, some way, mysteriously, with joy?

Catherine: Yes. I want to begin by saying what you said, you know — we don’t ask for suffering. I don’t think we are asked to ask for it. But it comes to us, and I think the posture with which we receive it is what makes the difference. Suffering can break us, make us bitter and brittle, or it can be the soil in which God plants his seeds, I think, in the soil of the death of our lives.

The personal question? I actually have been thinking about this quite a lot recently because I have a book coming out this coming June called Mid Faith Crisis. And in this book, I tell more personal stories than I’ve maybe told in the past about my own life, my own faith, my own journey with God. And I do tell quite a few stories of suffering and loss there because I want to be honest about the difficulties that we face in life and we face in faith, but while never believing that God has abandoned me.

One of the primary stories that I tell is of when I was very young. I was 12 years old. And, out of a set of circumstances that is definitely difficult to summarize briefly here, my family was literally asked to leave town. So it was, my dad was a pastor and the church that he pastored preferred for us to kind of disappear. So, we were given a very short period of time in order to disappear and were not able to really have any support as we went to restabilize us and into our future or to retain any relationships going forward. And so, in a very real way, I lost everything at that time. I lost everyone I had known, everyone that I would have considered a community. Not just as loss, but as rejection.

And I lost everything that I had on a material level as well. But even on an identity level. When the community that formed you chooses not to know you or give access to themselves to you, then it’s — I don’t think I could explain the depth of that loss on an identity level. So, I was 12, obviously not at fault in any way.

And that has been, I think, the driving story of my life for a long time in a way that was painful and death. But as the decades have turned and time has gone by, I have seen God bring new life from that death. And I have seen that all the most beautiful and strong parts of my life are directly connected to that, to the deep gash of pain and death that that situation was.

And not in a way that could be turned into a formula, not in a way that would cause me to look at someone else in pain and say, “Oh, yes, you know, this is all for God’s glory and goodness.” Because pain is painful, and suffering is suffering. But as I wrote about in another book, some of the most beautiful flowers that we can find on this planet come in the desert after a long, long, long wait.

All that I grow in my garden comes from the compost that is the death of last season’s life. And I have found without a doubt that the greatest deaths in my life, the deepest valleys of suffering have been where in time, and not with ease and not with silver linings, but with deep journeying and wrestling, God has brought new life most vividly, most beautifully, most strongly in the areas of my greatest loss.

And so, I do say with Paul, that I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. And while I don’t ask for more suffering, I do acknowledge that becoming like him in his death, we do somehow attain the resurrection from the dead.

Anthony: So beautifully stated, and I’m humbled that you would share that with us, Katherine. And I’m just trying to imagine being 12 years old, which is already a difficult time of transition …

Catherine: Yeah.

Anthony: … between the teen and finding who you are and exploring identity and to have all that taken away. And yet you know, this is one of those things when you talk with people about loss and suffering, it’s not like you’re ever happy it’s happened to them. But yet, you’re you, and that was very formative, it sounds like to me. And so, you can call it joy because the Christian life is death and resurrection and those deaths, it’s like every day there are tiny deaths and then there are deaths that we put in books because they were so significant to our life. But how you praise God that he, his resurrection is real. Yeah. And your life speaks as a testimony to that reality.

Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. God’s goodness I think becomes evident when we find that somehow, we have persevered, and we have found love, and we have found goodness even in the valley of the shadow of death.