Imitating Paul - Philippians 3: 17-4:1

“Brothers, join in imitating me…” Paul wants us to imitate him.

I don’t know. That seems a little difficult, doesn’t it? Difficult on all sorts of levels. I don't care what he says in First Corinthians, Paul was a pretty good preacher. Better than you're getting this morning, I'll bet. He preached and spoke for hours, even late into the night, and people listened intently. Well, except for sleepy Eutychus but that’s another story for another time. Paul’s writing is certainly superior. He wrote letter upon letter that were passed from congregation to congregation, the Holy Spirit seeing fit to preserve these still for you and I to read this morning. Me? I struggle for a 2-page sermon. How about you? Do you want to imitate this apostle? I don’t know. I’m not really into shipwrecks. Or imprisonment, or beatings, or stonings, and I stay away from threats of all kinds, and so forth.

Of course, it wasn't Paul's call either. It was God's Call that he read into those kinds of difficulties. And it's not our call either.

Imitation is really a very important part of human life. I taught you this a few weeks ago: imitation is the mother of learning (imitatio est mater estudiorum, if you prefer Latin). Children learn to walk, talk, read, mow the lawn, bake cookies, change the oil, paint fingernails, spike the ball, sweep the tag, do geometry, and countless other things by watching and imitating their moms and dads, grannies and grampies, coaches and teachers. Adults learn to use smart phones by imitating grandkids and YouTube videos. All sorts of bad habits are learned by imitating Uncle Earl. It’s also said imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. We are delighted when others imitate us.

This is not only true of Moms and Dads, but also of our Divine Parent also wants us to imitate Him and our Big Brothers and Sisters in the faith. It’s too bad we don’t treat them the way society fawns over so-called “social influencers.” Models of the faith are really significant parts of God's gift to us, part of the Holy Spirit's way of cultivating faith in us and the mind of Christ. Paul has a lot to say in his letters about following after the mind of Christ, and especially here in Philippians.

Paul wants us to be co-imitators. He doesn’t want us to go it alone. Imitate together with him. You never want to try imitating alone. We imitate as part of the Congregation of God's people. Remember – God saw it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, so He made a help-meet for him. He knows it’s not good for Christians to be alone, so He gathers us together into the congregation, into the Church, as the body of Christ. And, as the body of Christ, He wants us to be supporting of one another, and for the spiritually mature to be modeling the Christian life for one another in the congregation of His people. And that, being co-imitators, is particularly important, especially when we run into imprisonment or shipwreck, or being beaten, or stoned, or merely laughed at, and teased, and told to be quiet and not talk “religion,” and the like for the sake of Jesus and the faith. We don’t live alone, we don’t imitate alone.

Part of Paul’s example that he puts before us in this text involves imitating crying, more specifically learning to cry the right way. Now, I know that doesn’t sound very manly; it doesn’t sound very socially acceptable. Who teaches others to cry? Do we teach our sons and daughters to cry? I don’t think so – we usually tell them to not cry. In the words of writer Stephen Bochco, we don’t want to appear soft, lest someone mistake us for food and try to eat us. But, speaking for myself, there are things that move me to tears. Watching the continued battle-scenes out of Ukraine – I can only do that in small doses before tears form. The scenes from the forest and wildfires, and then as people return to what is left of their homes and businesses, that is heartbreaking. I do not have the words to describe the feeling I have when I am with parents who lose a child, or with a child who loses a parent – I don’t think I would survive as a hospital chaplain, especially not a children’s hospital. I’ve shed more than one tear while watching someone I love who hurst so bad and being helpless to do anything about it. Those aren’t unique to me; you have those moments and others like them. These are all true feelings and deep emptions, but none of those are what Paul means when he wants us to learn to cry.

Paul wants us to imitate his tears, to cry, because of and, surprisingly, especially on behalf of the enemies of the Cross of Christ. By “enemy,” I don’t mean the person who ate your lunch out of the breakroom fridge, or who steals your paper from the driveway, or who laughed because your clothes don’t have the right brand label on them. By enemy, we mean those who stand against you because you are a Baptized child of God and dare to confess Him and speak of faith in Jesus as the only means of salvation. That is the enemy Paul refers to.

The “because of” makes sense. Our enemies often bring tears to our eyes, literally or figuratively, and this is particularly true of the enemies of the Church and of Jesus. Paul is apparently talking about tears, not shed in anger or indignation or disgust – though we may have those feelings too - but his tears, I think, were being shed in outright, real sorrow for the people whose God is their belly. That is from a man who doesn't really seem terribly likely to be going around shedding tears.

The enemies of the cross glory in their own shame. They conceive of reality in such a way that brings them down into the gutter, down into the pits of despair, where life is slowly sucked out of them. Don’t get down in the mud with them; instead, Paul says, our minds should be in the clouds, fixed on that heavenly citizenship, that heavenly society in which God cultivates us as He gives us rebirth in our baptisms, and as He renews that new life in us day in and day out, as the Holy Spirit brings us the Word of life.

And when we look at reality from God perspective, we see something unique. Our translation in verse 20 says “our citizenship” but I prefer the old King James way of saying this, “conversation.” Our conversation. Citizenship smacks of rights and boundaries. Conversation describes our way of thinking and talking about this reality and that it all comes from God. And the Holy Spirit leads us into looking at the world in such a way that we just don't understand how people can try to find their identity and security and meaning in the pleasures of this life and ignore all the signs that they're careening toward destruction. How can they miss their own conversation about the Good News of Jesus who saves? How can their eyes be shifted away from the cross? Their ears closed to Word that gives life? The spectacle of it is enough to make a grown Christian weep. Such tears flow from the eyes and the minds of people who have been freed by Christ's death and resurrection. Free to imitate our Lord. Free to imitate Paul. Free to weep for those who deny, decry, and disbelieve Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Everyone knows the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” You know, our Lord didn't cry only outside of Lazarus’ tomb. He cried over Jerusalem. In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus laments over the city, echoing Jeremiah centuries earlier, as the city that murders the prophets. He is not yet moved to tears – that comes later, as He prepares to enter the city for Holy Week. Then, Jesus weeps over the city. Those were real tears. The people who are about to crucify Him, He wept in sadness for them as He looked to the prospect of what was facing those people for whom He was dying but who, sadly, would remain enemies of the cross. They murdered the prophets; they stoned those sent to proclaim the Word of the Lord; they crucified the One sent to save.

I wonder – and I realize the danger of asking questions about Jesus that aren’t answered in Scripture – I wonder if He still weeps over Jerusalem. I suspect He does weep for Jerusalem…and Texas, and Cuero, and Goliad, and Victoria, and Mission Valley and our neighbors whom we greet and call by name, people whose god is their belly, and who have not time or interest in the One who weeps for them.

I say that because our society, our culture seems to specialize in inventing new ways to oppose the cross of Christ. It's almost as if it’s a way of life. Or, perhaps, we should say a way of death.  And our temptation is naturally to get defensive about this. Like Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, we have to do something and we draw our verbal swords and pencils and electronic devices to rail against them and to be mad at them and all that sort of thing. I hear it, too: “Pastor, you need to preach a fire and brimstone sermon about what’s going on ‘out there’.” As if a sermon I preach to you will show them, ‘out there’ who will never hear what is said, that’ll show them who's boss.

But we don't need to. The Boss will. Jesus has shown us who is Lord, showing us who is subjecting all things to Himself. That's why: because we trust that He really is Lord. The Lord who has freed us in His death and resurrection. We trust also that He has freed us to weep over our enemies. Over His enemies. Over the enemies of the Church. And to pray with those tears that those tears will flow into baptismal water. That becomes perfect vengeance of the cross. The cross they once decried, they are then marked with the cross and baptized with tears Jesus once shed over them.

And then Jesus turns them into people just like us: disciples of the Lord, following at His cross, seeing reality, no longer from the gutter, but from the heavenly in-the-clouds perspective.  

God has planted your feet and mind firmly on the good earth that he has created. He has placed us here for all sorts of purposes, one of which is to cry for his enemies. And the conversation, the citizenship, that orients our entire life, that shapes every moment of our day, at least ideally, comes from the Lord himself.

So on this day, we repent again. We repent for crying for the wrong things, and not crying for the right things, and for not crying enough for the enemies of the cross of Jesus and who, I think, we can consider as our enemies, too. As we repent this day, we look to the Lord. We think about our heavenly passports, our godly identity papers. Then we stumble along in apostolic fashion, disagreeing, of course, with Paul on who the chief of sinners really is. But, agreeing with him fully that what we really need to know is Christ. And Him crucified…risen…ascended…reigning.

Funny thing about tears – they taste salty. This side of heaven, those tears we shed over the state of the enemies of the cross of Jesus will always be salty and somewhat bitter. Yet we, who by faith are already citizens of above, we are also already beginning to taste the tears of joy that come from being citizens of the King. With tears, both salty and sweet, we rejoice, we praise His name, and we pray for His enemies. Amen.