“Starved for Attention, Found In Christ”

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on Oct. 2, 2005
“Text - Philippians 3:4b-9

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.


What I find fascinating in our passage is that, first, Paul makes a big deal of his impressive resume - his Jewish credentials, his zeal, his righteousness, under the law, his intellectual and moral status as a Pharisee. He was “confident in the flesh” as he puts it. But then he says, I count all of this as loss, as rubbish, compared to what it means to be found in Christ. The status wasn't enough, apparently, but Paul sort of brags about it anyway.

In spite of his claim that he was confident early in his life, Paul is really talking about a basic lack of confidence that we all have. There is a discomfort, a dis-ease, that we feel. We're not entirely at peace in the world. We feel a little alien among all the other confident-looking people who do appear at home and at peace. We do grow out of this to a large extent, but this is part of all our experience.

This passage makes me suspect that Paul was a person who liked attention. He's like those preachers who brag about how lost and what terrible sinners they used to be, to emphasize how saved and virtuous they are now, and this sermon is going to have a little bit of that character.

We all crave attention of some kind because this is how we a part of the world. I suppose we can get too much of the wrong kind of attention, but we want people to notice us. We don't want to feel invisible. This is why being in a room full of people you've never met is so painful. This is why going to a church for the first time, especially alone, takes a lot of courage. If you are here for the first time today, you deserve a lot of credit for having the guts to walk through the door of any church for the first time.

I'm going to tell you a revealing story from my own past that I knew would show up in a sermon one day and today is the day. Like other kids in school, I found ways to get attention - both from my teachers and my classmates.

For my teachers, I was a pretty good student. Not in the top ten or anything. My motivation varied a lot, but when I threw my heart into a subject I had a few shining moments that made my teachers like me.

From my classmates, I got attention by disrupting the classroom in minor ways. I didn't set any filing cabinets on fire, but I made wisecracks and challenged the teachers in silly ways that I thought made school more fun.

So my niche, my place, was on that very narrow edge between being the teacher's protégé and being teacher's headache. I loved that attention, and I confess, I still do. This is why I have a job standing in front of people, wearing a strange costume, and having your attention

One subject in school that I felt quite confident about was analytical geometry. That's the area in math that has to do with formulas for curves and parabolas so on. In my junior year, my algebra and analytical geometry teacher was Mrs. Bailey, Jacqueline Bailey.

She wasn't much older than we were and she was a very cool and playful teacher who jousted with the class and talked with us about a lot of things, not just math. She had an attractive, sophisticated look, and my friends and I talked about her a lot. We called her Jackie. And the reason we talked about her was - how shall I put this? - let's just say she was enjoyable for teenage boys to look at.

Another fact about Mrs. Bailey that added to the mystery was that she was married to an Episcopal minister. We never saw her husband, but the big question was: what was a young woman so pretty and lively as Jackie Bailey doing married to someone as dull and un-virile as a minister had to be?

So, for all these reasons I looked forward to math class and I enjoyed pleasing, and occasionally teasing and staring at the teacher.

Toward the end of the year, there was going to be a competition among all her classes based on a special exam. On the day when she was talking this up, someone asked, “What's the prize?” She didn't have a prize in mind. The prize would be the honor of winning. So I blurted out, without raising my hand, “The winner gets a kiss.”

This drew hysterical laughter from the class, which pleased me. It was well known that many of us would consider a kiss from Mrs. Bailey a worthy prize. And then to my amazement, she said, as a counter-challenge, “Okay. It's a deal.”

Suddenly, this math contest became a serious topic of discussion among my little circle of friends. I can tell you that I got rather psyched up for this exam. I wasn't the best math student, but for this one exam I was inspired and I actually won the contest. And on the day she announced the results, Mrs. Bailey, I can see her now, reached into her purse, took out a tube of bright red lipstick, applied it thickly on her lips, came to my desk, bent over, and placed a kiss on my cheek that left the mark of her lips, a mark that I wore proudly for the rest of the day and showed to my parents after school.

Today, this incident would be investigated by the department of child welfare. Back then it was harmless fun. It was one of my glorious moments in a high school career that wasn't very glorious otherwise.

Of course, I love telling you this story and getting your attention with it, but I don't want this story to overshadow the main point. We are all hungry for attention. A lot of what we do in life is to get that attention and to feel that we do have a place in the world. But we never get enough attention, or the kind we want. Or if we get it, we need more again, soon. Movie stars and celebrities are probably neediest in this regard.

Spiritually, our challenge is to make peace with this fact. We're always hungry for attention, for confidence, for peace, for companionship, for many things.

So what does it mean to be “found in Christ” as Paul puts it? I think it means to find a way to live with our hunger, and to trust that we are recognized by some larger mind or part of a larger meaning to this creation around us.

We never know exactly what we mean to others. We never know exactly how our lives fit in the big picture of where this is all going. But to be “found in Christ” means to have confidence that that there is a big picture and that we have a place in it.

The bread and wine we eat and drink today doesn't completely satisfy our earthly hunger. It's not supposed to. We will need more food later. But the bread and wine serve as a reminder that our deepest hunger is satisfied by a source we can't see and can't locate exactly.

It's okay to feel hunger of all kinds. Hunger doesn't mean something is wrong with us. It's just the way it is. And we can be at peace with that.

The mission of First Church is to engage and support people in worship, learning, fellowship, and service, so that all may find in our community the Spirit of the living Christ.  We are an Open and Affirming Church: All are welcome into the full life of our community regardless of their race, age, gender, nationality, marital status, economic situation, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation.