Scoop The Poop

"Scoop The Poop"
Philippians 3:1-11

One of my best friends in high school and into college was Tim Allen.  Not Tim Allen the comedian.  This was a different Tim Allen.  Tim was one of those kinds of athletes who was endowed with natural ability but built on that natural ability with hard work.  He could master any sport, and he did.  In the Seattle area where we grew up, Tim was an all-conference and all state flanker in football.  He was all-conference honorable mention in basketball.  And he was an all-state low and high hurdler in track.

He went on to Montana State University on a football scholarship and attracted a lot of attention with his speed, agility and ability to catch any pass thrown in his direction.  It was like his hands were made out of rubber cement.  Tom Landry, then head coach of the Dallas Cowboys was personally checking in on Tim.

In terms of Tim's faith, he was a leader in Young Life, a non-denominational senior high Christian fellowship.  He went to weekly Bible Studies.  He was in church every Sunday.  He had plans to enter some kind of Christian vocation.

One of my treasured memories with Tim was at our Senior Party that followed our high school graduation ceremonies.  Tim wanted to talk, and I know this is going to sound really weird, but we found this really large janitor's closet, so we went in there and he talked about his faith and where he felt God was leading him.  And I talked about the same for me.  All the rock music, and dancing, and hubbub of our graduation party that was going on outside the door of that janitor's closet faded away in the quietness of our praying together for each other.

Tim was dating, and eventually became engaged to one of the popular cheerleaders at our high school.  She was also active in Young Life, a straight A student, and had a perky, outgoing, but not overbearing personality that contrasted nicely with Tim's shyness.

After a year at a community college in the Seattle area, I transferred over to Whitworth College in Spokane.  It is a small Presbyterian college, much like Hastings College in Nebraska, but Whitworth was better.  Tim was becoming increasingly disgruntled with Montana State because of a huge lack of Christian fellowship.  He knew I was going to a Christian college, knew a little about it, looked into it further and decided to transfer over.  I couldn't believe it.

We arranged to be roommates in the same dorm and had a blast together.  He was grinding up opposing football teams almost single handily.  And we were growing in our faith and friendship.

But something happened halfway through our sophomore year.  Once he moved to Spokane, Tim started going to a little, charismatic kind of church.  It was a church that started in China, and somehow moved into the United States.  It bordered on being a Christian cult, with a lot of weird kind of programming going on.  I went to one of what they called their "Bible studies," and it was more a shouting match.  One person was the leader; he would shout out a piece of a Bible verse and everyone else shouted it back.  They would go on like this for hours, adding a little piece of the verse until they had shouted the whole thing.  Tim would come out of those sessions totally hoarse and unable to speak.

After the Fall semester was over, Tim moved out of the dorm and into the communal living house owned by that church.  A few weeks later he moved out of my life.  And everyone else's, as a matter of fact.  He was going to get married that summer to his high school sweetheart.  But he broke that engagement off, almost unfeelingly, quickly, and coldly.  He quit football.  Then he quit school.  Then he quit his family.  And lastly he quit his friends.

The heart of his justification for his actions was the verses just read from the third chapter of the letter to the Philippians.  I can't tell you how many times he told me that everything in his past was nothing but garbage and death.  That the only thing of value to him was Christ and Christ alone.  "It's like a drink of fresh, cold, pure water," he'd tell me, trying to describe the change that had come over him and the Christian awakening he had experienced.

He saw in my eyes that I didn't really understand.  That I didn't understand anything about it.  I tried to pretend that I did, but I didn't really.

He moved back east for a time; was elevated to the position of "prophet" in that church—whatever that meant.  And then I lost track of him.  I got his address from his mom a time or two, wrote a couple of letters, but his responses were along the lines of, "You just don't understand."  I gave up trying.  I gave up trying to understand why, in my estimation, he had thrown his life away, and all the promise it represented, all in the name of his new-found religious fervor.

That whole experience gave me an inside look into what must have happened with Paul and his peers, when Paul gave up his life to become a follower of Christ.  Paul dropped his past like a rock thrown into the sea.  And it appeared he couldn't wait until it had sunk far enough as to be out of sight.

He called his past "garbage."  The King James Version uses the word, "dung," which is actually as close to the true meaning as you can get.  It was a vulgar word Paul used, equivalent to our "s" word.  He used such a crass word because he wanted to emphasize the lengths to which he had gone in terms of renouncing his past, and contrasting the total valuelessness of his past compared to his present relationship with Christ.  Likening his past to worthless sewage, Paul flushed it all away.  As did Tim.

Some people give something up for Lent.  It was like Paul, and Tim, gave everything up for Lent.

It is important that we see what Paul was calling "poop."  The opening verses of this 3rd chapter give us the picture:

I was circumcised when I was a week old.  I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew.  As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee, and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church.  As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.  But all those things I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake.

Now, when we think of someone trashing some aspect of their lives we can imagine all the immoral, lowlife, back alley kinds of characteristics.  Those kinds of things should be pooper scooped out of our lives.

In a little devotional book titled, My Heart, Christ's Home, Robert Munger likens his heart to a house with many different rooms.  When he invites Christ into his home, Christ begins to walk through each room transforming it.  This cleaning is almost complete except for one room:  the hall closet.  Here is how Munger tells it:
One day I found Him waiting for me at the door.  There was an arresting look in His eyes.  He said to me, "There is a peculiar odor in the house.  There is something dead around here.  It's upstairs.  I think it is in the hall closet"  As soon as He said the words, I knew what He was talking about…In that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little things that I did not want anybody to know about and certainly I did not want Christ to see.  I knew they were dead and rotting things.  And yet I loved them, and I wanted them so for myself that I was afraid to admit they were there.

Munger went on to explain how, after choking back anger and fear at the demands of Christ, he handed over the key to the closet door and allowed Christ in to clean it out.  "I haven't the strength to do it," Munger wrote.

We all have locked closets, don't we, with a few or many things that need cleaning out?  They are full of dung heaped things that are better scooped out by Christ for Him to cleanse from our lives.

But, that is NOT what Paul was describing when he was talking about scooping the poop out of his life.  Alarmingly, Paul was talking about scooping some fairly fine qualities.  He was retelling the flushing away not of a sordid past but a past decorated with accomplishment.  His was not a life that people wagged their heads and shook their fingers at.  Instead it was a life that brought Paul admiration and respectability from community and peers alike.

Paul's past was not one of a destitute, skid row bum.  Nor did it resemble anything close to a mafia racketeer boss, nor was he in any way, shape or form an immoral scoundrel.  Instead, Paul was an up and coming Jewish yuppie wonderkid, who advanced quickly through the ranks of religious stardom!

It was that kind of admirable past that Paul was calling poop.  Here is where the roads of St. Paul and my friend Tim converge.  Tim's early life was a string of success stories that seemed to be leading him to a bright future.  It was something you'd read in a storybook.  And then he gave it all up.

This trashing of life is even more puzzling when we see what it was that Paul really wanted for himself.  At verse 10 he states:
All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of His Resurrection, to share in his sufferings and become like Him in His death, in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.

Put those two lists side-by-side.  That is what he was in the past, and this is what he is trying to attain in the future.  Which would you choose?  Really.  Wouldn't we go for the Paul who was full of growing power and influence rather than be like the Paul who was emptying himself towards a weakness and vulnerability that is epitomized by a man suffering, crucified and dying on a cross?  Wouldn't we?

Wouldn't we be standing with all of Paul's friends shaking our heads in disgust down at the Toga Kosher Bar, wondering what's come over our old friend Paul?  How he's gone off the deep end?  Wouldn't you, likeI did, just stand more than a little baffled about a best friend who just told you his total past was death and poop, knowing that you were a big part of that past?

This is difficult stuff, because that kind of total sacrifice and expulsion is certainly scary and maybe it is just beyond most of our abilities to comprehend.  But let me attempt to bring this all home for you.

It's about the long road of faith we are on, and how to get on that road, how to stay on that road, and what it means to be on that road.

The on-the-road advice Paul is giving us for our journey, by retelling some of his story, is that we need to travel light.  If we don't, we will be forced to.  Or, at least we will be forced to decide if we want to go on in the journey scooping out the poop; or, never go any further with Christ because we would rather carry around the poop we think is so important.

There is the story of a hiker who came too close to the edge of a cliff.  He lost his footing and fell over the side.  Clawing and scratching to stop his deadly slide towards a vertical drop, he caught a shrub with both hands and held on for dear life.  Filled with terror he called out heavenward, "Is anyone up there?"
A calm, powerful voice came out of the sky and said, "Yes there is."
The hiker pleaded, "Can you help me?"
The calm voice replied, "Yes, I can.  What is your problem?"
"I fell off a cliff and am dangling in space, holding on to a bush that is about to rip out of the ground.  Please help me!"
The voice from above said, "I will.  Do you believe?"
"Yes, yes, I believe!
"Do you have faith?"
"Yes, yes, I have a strong faith!"
The calm voice said, "Well, in that case, simply let go of the bush and you will be saved."
There was a tense pause; then the hiker yelled, "Is there anyone else up there?"

In order to have Christ, in order to go through the Cross as we journey, we must be willing to scoop not only the things that really are poop in our lives, but also those things that may represent our security and respectability.

Paul realized, as maybe did my friend Tim, that there comes a time in one's life, if you are on the road of faith, journeying "in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life," when you come to that Cross, getting past it always means that we gain by scooping the poop, we attain by relinquishing all, and we take hold by letting go.