Full Court Press
Philippians 3:4b-14
To know Christ and his resurrection
3:4b If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:
3:5 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;
3:6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
3:7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
3:8 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
3:9 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.
3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,
3:11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 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.
3:13 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,
3:14 I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Throughout most of my years in public school, I was a bookworm and a science geek. As I’ve stated before, I grew up in the generation of the space program and Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but my interests in science went far beyond Neil Armstrong, into chemistry, astronomy, electronics, and the general study of physics. I was reading about Albert Einstein’s work when my classmates were reading Superman comics and collecting baseball cards. Even when I finally started noticing the opposite sex, I went for the smart ones, asking out the two highest ranked girls in my class. I loved to talk about life, the universe, and everything, and while this made me a safe date for the women I dated, and they offered great conversation about these esoteric subjects, it didn’t really engender lasting relationships, which was probably a good thing. My longest lasting relationship in high school actually started during my senior year, when I noticed a new sophomore girl in the clarinet section of the band, and we began dating. We shared the band experience, and while she was no Alberta Einstein, she had other “qualities,” shall we say, that caught my attention. After all, even we geeks have hormones. We did break up, though, just before I went off to college. I figured she should be cut loose to date others in her class, and I fully expected to resume my “smart girls” pursuit in an institution of higher learning. There is an epilogue to this “coming of age,” story: I wound up spending my life with the smartest of all of the girls I knew, and we DO like to talk about life, the universe, and everything! Wasn’t the only thing that caught my attention about her, though…
I tell this story to lead into another story: part of my “coming of age” also involved a sudden interest in sports, something I really had never had much of, other than growing up in a family of Pirate fans, and throwing a baseball around in the side yard with my brothers. I played in the “swing band,” as our jazz ensemble was known at Oil City High School, and this peppy team became the pep band at our school’s home basketball games. This led to an interest in the games, themselves, and Oil City put a pretty good team on the floor in those days, winning the section title every one of my three years, and the district title in at least one of them, as I recall. The basketball “Oilers” claim to fame was a really good and relentless “full-court press,” which is a basketball defense that pressures the other team when it has the ball, hoping to turn the ball over. Our coach, Bob Lynch, was an advocate for this defense, and we had quick, very athletic players who made it work very well. The full-court press enabled us to beat teams that were better shooters than we were, AND who had taller players. There was one game, when we played a weaker rival, that “the press” worked so well that the other team hardly scored—21 points, as I recall, to our 100 points—and the resulting turnovers were fed to our top scorer, who set a school record that night. Anyway, having to be there for all of those games not only got me enthused about basketball, but whetted my appetite for a wider variety of sports. I would later try actually playing baseball on a Colt League team, but found out that I couldn’t hit a baseball to save my life. I did become a distance runner, and lost 40 of my “bookworm” pounds the Summer after my senior year. I also became a decent tennis player. I guess you could say my continuing interest in certain sports I owe to the full-court press?
One of the Apostle Paul’s most celebrated phrases of all of his epistles occurs in today’s passage, and it is HIS “full-court press,” so to speak. It is in the last verse of this pericope: “I PRESS ON TOWARD THE GOAL…the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” I don’t know how many sermons or teachings I have heard about this challenge to “press on,” but it has been a lot. So many times when life deals a hard hand, I have urged friends, and parishioners, family members, and even myself in the mirror, to PRESS ON toward the goal. And every time I hear the phrase, I think of that high school basketball team and their full-court press, for “pressing on” is not just a defense, or a shield against the “attacks,” but it is a “turn the ball around” tactic that makes something positive out of a negative happening. “Pressing on” means not just “getting through” the muck of life, but also still focusing on the goal ahead and finding a way to use even the “muck” as fuel for moving forward.
Paul’s text also reminds us that once we “steal the ball” from the opposing forces, we do best to feed the hot hand! Now, I’ll be honest—my sudden interest in basketball in high school DID lead to me learning to play the game a bit. Not having played it while growing up meant that I really never learned the art and coordination of “ball handling,” although through much practice on the neighbor’s driveway where they had a hoop set up DID help me become a decent shot. Of course this meant that when I tried to actually play the game, I tended to be a “chucker,” as they call it, meaning I liked to shoot, rather than to pass the ball off to someone who is closer to the basket. There is a lesson in this, and Paul’s text touches on it, for sure.
You see, Jesus is the hotter hand, to use the basketball illustration. Paul makes a case for why it would be easy for him to become a “chucker”: he was a legitimate member of the Jewish community and upheld its beliefs and doctrines, even to the point of engaging in the persecution of Christians, because he believed them to be a threat to “legitimate” faith. He would later allude to his superior education under Gamaliel, an outstanding teacher of his day, to defend his “credentials.” However, he tells the Philippian Christians that he counts it all LITERALLY as “garbage,” compared to the life he has found in Jesus Christ. God’s acceptance of him means far more than any recognition he could earn with his book-learning and accomplishments.
Jumping back into the sports metaphor for a moment, I must say that I have come to value more the players on any team who don’t make the game all about themselves—you know, the ones who are “unselfish” on the court, the field, or the ice—the ones who “feed the hot hand,” with the goal of winning the contest. This is EXACTLY what Paul is talking about here. And the “hot hand” is Jesus Christ AND the “team”—the BODY of CHRIST, or the gathering of Christ-followers we call “the church.” We have come to put Paul in our faith “Hall of Fame” precisely because he fed the church. Some would even say he was its architect. Paul didn’t make it about himself, but constantly played a “full-court press” for Jesus!
I guess my main point in this message is to suggest that “pressing on” is much more than just “gutting it out,” which is the usual rendering of what some think Paul meant. When we keep our eyes on the goal of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, we don’t just “make do” or persevere. With each passing of the ball, we are looking to turn things around and score one for the home team. Right now, as United Methodists, our “team” is undergoing a huge restructuring, due to the disaffiliation we have experienced. The church I serve—Faith Community UMC in Rochester, PA—lost its pastor, its partner church in the charge, AND its full-time pastor, not to mention a good portion of its own congregation. They were told by some that they wouldn’t last three months. Yet, here they are, over two years later, still alive, still engaged in meaningful community ministry, AND about to receive a full-time pastor again, in July! They are proud of what they have accomplished as a “team,” and have continued to “press on” against the opposing, or at least denigrating, forces. They have a gospel-oriented mission and a Christ-centered goal. As their pastor over the past year, I’ve done what I always did best—I played in the pep band for them. And while Dara and I must move on, we will continue to be their prayer partners and rooters (Dara was, after all, a cheerleader!). I know that with God’s help, and the tremendously sacrificial and capable leaders they have at Faith Community, they can “swing” it!
How about you? Are you resigned to just “hang on,” or will you take up Paul’s challenge to run a full-court press when the “competition” looks ominous? I remember our high school team going up against our chief rival back in the day—Meadville High School. As the game began against them, the Oilers laid back to see what Meadville’s game plan would be. Meadville always had a team of very fast players, and they moved the ball around extremely well. When it was evident that this would be their tact, Coach Lynch signaled to “begin the press,” and Meadville didn’t know how to handle Oil City’s quite effective full-court press that not only slowed the game down, but began to turn the ball over to Oil City’s scoring advantage. It’s a great metaphor for what Mr. Wesley called “organizing to beat the devil.” Don’t just “press on,” but make it a FULL-COURT press! I believe that if the United Methodist Church heeds Paul’s advice here in Philippians 3, it will also “turn the tide” and thrive as a church by realizing the goal of the gospel as set forth by Jesus, our “leading scorer.” I can still hear the cheer in my head: “Here we go, Oilers, HERE WE GO!” Amen.
