Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

In your opinion, should a Christian be ambitious?  Is the desire to be ambitious—to be passionate about accomplishing some goal, or attaining a particular life-style, or realizing a life-long dream—are these ambitions appropriate for a disciple of Jesus Christ?  Is it okay to spend Sunday in church and the rest of the week pursing our own personal desires—whatever those may be?  Some believe that when you become a Christian, or perhaps I should say, really live life like a follower of Jesus, you have to give up your ambitions—your career, hopes, or aspirations—and simply drift through life dealing with whatever comes along as simply “God’s will.”  They see all ambition as sin—a sort of lusting after the seductive pleasures that our world offers—much like Shakespeare’s Henry the VIII in his appeal to Thomas Cromwell, “Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels…”

By contrast, in tonight’s New Testament lesson from his letter to the Philippians, Paul seems fiercely ambitious.  Ambition is defined as the “desire to succeed.”  Before becoming a follower of Christ, Paul tells us he was zealous for his Jewish religion.  He ambitiously hunted down and persecuted the followers of Jesus.  And after his conversion to Christianity, Paul certainly did not lose his ambitious nature.  In fact, it could be argued that he became even more passionate in his desire to succeed.  He describes himself in this passage, as an athlete straining forward to reach his goal—desperate to win the race. 

John Stott, an Anglican priest and scholar, writes, “Certainly no man (or woman) can know himself until he has honestly asked himself about motives.  What is the driving source in his life?  What ambition dominates or directs him?”  He continues, “Ultimately there are only two controlling ambitions, to which all others may be reduced.  One is our own glory, and the other is, God’s.”  So what is Paul’s controlling ambition?  Well he gives us the answer in tonight’s lesson, he writes, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, (and here’s our answer) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Paul’s ambition is to achieve the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Just a few verses before tonight’s lesson begins, Paul let’s his readers know what that heavenly call is.  He writes, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”  Paul’s life-long call—his holy ambition—is focused on knowing Christ, experiencing resurrection power, and becoming like Jesus. 

The Greek word used by Paul for “knowing” Christ is the same Hebrew word used in Genesis for the way Adam knew Eve.  Now, don’t take that too far, Paul did not mean he wanted to know Jesus sexually, but intimately like a married couple.  Paul did not want to simply know about Christ, intellectually speaking, but wanted to know and experience Jesus just like we know and experience the people we are closest too.  He wanted a personal relationship with Jesus.  So if we are to follow Paul’s example, as he encourages us to do, how do we, develop a personal relationship with God in Christ?  Well my answer is that we grow to know Jesus more and more intimately through the tried and true disciplines of the church.  Those disciplines, as I understand them, are fivefold.  They are private prayer, corporate worship, bible study, fellowship with a community of faith, and good works.  Think about your relationship with Christ as you would any relationship you have.  For that relationship with a loved one to be rich and meaningful, you have to be willing to give that relationship time, energy, commitment, and faithfulness.  If we want our relationship with Christ to be rich and full of meaning, the same is true.  Paul’s first ambition is a desire to know Christ intimately and personally. 

The second focus of Paul’s ambition is to know the power of Jesus’ resurrection.  Knowing the power of the resurrection is not simply an intellectual ascent to a historical event.  In other words, experiencing resurrection power is not only believing that two thousand years ago or so God reached beyond the grave to resurrect Jesus from the dead.  Though the historical event of Christ’s resurrection is the foundation of our faith, Paul is saying that he wants to experience resurrection power now in his daily life.  Perhaps you join me in desiring that experience as well.  On Easter Sunday each year, our joyful acclamation is: Alleluia, Christ is risen, not Christ was risen a long, long time ago.  Christ is risen this very day, and his risen Spirit is here among us, at this moment, as we gather in his name to give us power—power to live lives full of meaning—power to live lives that make a significant and positive difference in the world around us.  Paul is ambitious to experience that power and to use it to transform lives and even the world.

The third goal of Paul’s ambition is to share in Christ’s suffering by becoming like him in his death.  Possibly surprising to some of you is the fact that more Christians literally died for their faith in the 20th century than in the first three centuries combined a time when Christianity was both illegal and publicly persecuted.  Those who die for their faith understand, in a way most of us never will, Paul’s ambition to share in Christ’s suffering and death.  Nonetheless, we don’t have to literally die to share in Christ’s suffering and death.  There is a book on my bookshelf that I bought eight years ago and honestly have never read.  I can’t even remember who wrote the book, but I will never forget the title.  The title is what drew me to purchase the book in the first place (that and the fact that it was on the sale rack).  The title of the book is “Descending into Greatness.”  Jesus put it this way: the first will be last and the last will be first.    Whenever we give our time, talent, and personal resources for the good of the other rather than the good of ourselves we are descending into greatness.  We share in Christ’s suffering.  We give something of ourselves for the welfare of another human being; just like, Jesus gave himself completely for the good of the world on the cross.  We become great when we give completely, like Christ gave of himself completely.  Paul ambitiously desires to share in Christ’s suffering, and he succeeded.  Indeed, Paul was a man who in everyway was ambitious for Christ.

What are you ambitious about?  What goals are you passionately pursuing?  What do you desire to succeed at more than anything else?  Paul encourages us to follow his example.  He wants those who, like him, follow Jesus as Lord, to make Christ our holy ambition. 

You see Paul knows all to well, just as you and I do, that there are other options.  Remember the quote I shared earlier, “Ultimately there are only two controlling ambitions, to which all others may be reduced.  One is our own glory, and the other is, God’s.”  Selfishly seeking after our own glory is a temptation that looms before all of us—all of the time—and to be honest we all often fall prey to this temptation. 

Paul writes, “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.  Their end is destruction; their God is their belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”  When Paul writes, “Their God is their belly,” he is referring to all those people, perhaps at times including you and me, who make personal satisfaction and individual pleasure the central ambition of their lives.  Don’t get me wrong.  God wants us to experience pleasure and satisfaction.  The body is not evil.  We are created to experience pleasure through all our bodily senses—whether sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying food, drink, music, exercise, clothes, our even sex when entered into responsibly and as God desires.  What’s wrong is when these things become our god—and all too often they do.   

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