But it says in Philippians 3.1, he says,
So the next time a pastor or a vicar says,
But as he starts, he goes right into being serious,
He goes right into being serious, explaining why he was writing to the Philippians.
Teachers had come into the church, and they were telling the Gentile Christians that Jesus, that was a good start.
But if you really want to belong to God, you have to have a pedigree.
There are some hoops you need to jump through to have the right credentials to belong to God.
Paul calls those teachers evildoers. Or if you want to translate it as literally as possible, bad workers.
And he says that if anyone wants to play this credential game, he'll win.
If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. And he would know.
I mean, he's been playing that game most of his life.
In fact, the first time we see Paul in Scripture is in Acts chapter 7.
And he's not preaching. He's standing at the edge of a crowd outside of Jerusalem.
Men are throwing their coats, dropping them at his feet, so they can free their hands up for stones.
And the man they're stoning is Stephen.
And Luke explains very clearly, Saul approved of his execution.
And if you'd asked Saul that afternoon why he had every right to be standing there, he would have his answer ready.
And a few years later, he writes it down for the Philippians.
It would sound like this.
Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
As to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal of persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Now, he didn't earn most of that list.
He didn't get to pick his parents or his tribe.
And I don't think they ask eight-year-olds for permission.
God gave him all of that.
In the same way that God gave Israel everything that Isaiah lists in his song from the Oral Testament reading.
What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?
And Isaiah also tells us what the vineyard is.
He says the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.
So God's people were his vineyard and Jesus calls it the kingdom of God.
Saul and others like him held these gifts from God as if they were a deed to a property.
That if anyone threatened their claim, they had to go.
And that's the vineyard in Jesus' parable this morning.
The owner sends servant after servant.
And the tenants beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
And so the owner sends his son and they say, oh, this is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.
Well, Saul couldn't get his hands on the son, so he went after the son's people.
He asked the high priest to write letters to the synagogues in Damascus that he could go deliver.
And in those letters it would say that any followers of Jesus that he found there would be chained up and dragged back to Jerusalem.
Saul sets out on that road to Damascus and acts and says that he's still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.
No one was going to get between him and his inheritance.
But Saul never did make it to Damascus with those letters.
Continuing in Acts, it says, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus.
And suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.
And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
Saul had never personally laid a hand on Jesus.
Instead, he was dragging Jesus' people out of their homes, some of them to their death.
And the risen son of God takes every blow to his people very personally.
Who are you, Lord, says Saul? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
So think about what Saul has come into him right there.
Because in the parable, Jesus asks, you know, what would the owner do to tenants like that?
And the leaders answer for him.
They said he will put those wretches to a miserable death.
Saul would have said the same thing.
And he had been handing out that very verdict for some time now.
The truth is that light from heaven should have ended him.
But instead, Jesus sent a disciple named Ananias.
Named Ananias.
One of the very people that Saul had come to arrest.
And his first words to Saul were, brother Saul.
Brother Saul.
And then something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he rose and was baptized.
Well, for the tenants in the parable, the ones who held to their plan ended up losing the vineyard.
But the heir that they killed went out looking for them on the road to Damascus,
and he gave the inheritance to a persecutor of the church named Saul.
And so years later, Paul is now the one in chains as he writes this letter to Christians in Philippi.
And he's telling them what happened to that list of credentials.
He says, whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.
Depending on the translation, you'll get rubbish, refuse, trash, dung.
They all kind of mean the same thing.
That's what happened to his list of credentials.
He threw all of it out.
He says, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ.
The righteousness from God that depends on faith.
When Paul describes his old life, he calls himself a persecutor.
One who persecutes the church.
And when he describes this new life, he says, I press on.
I'm one that presses on.
In the Greek, it's the same word.
It's chasing.
One who chases.
And that zeal, that passion that Paul has didn't go away.
It didn't go away.
Jesus turned it around.
He was transformed.
The man who had been chasing down the church had spent the rest of his life chasing after Christ.
Because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Now, Paul doesn't tell this story so that the Philippians will admire him.
He tells this story so that they will recognize themselves in that story.
So I think it's a good idea for us to do that too.
What does our list look like?
What are our credentials that we hold on to?
I don't think anyone here is bragging about their tribe.
But if Paul were to make a list today, it might sound a little like ours.
Read your Bible every day.
Never miss a devotion.
Fasting before every communion meal.
Serve at the food pantry.
Adopt an angel tree family for Christmas every single year.
Every one of those things is good.
So please don't go home and stop doing devotions.
They're all good.
In fact, in the small catechism Luther says,
fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training.
But then he says that the person who is truly worthy and well prepared
is the one who has faith in these words,
given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Those good works are good.
They're just not a claim to God's kingdom.
And we can tell that when we start treating them like one,
when we start to keep score.
That doesn't, I hope anyway, does not usually sound like threats and murder.
But it might sound more like, well, I'm at Bible study every week.
Why aren't they?
Or, man, my kids are a handful, but not as bad as theirs.
Oh, man, I get it.
See, it's the Pharisee in the temple all over again when he prays,
dear God, thank you that I'm not like everyone else.
But the scary part about keeping score is it seems to feel like faithfulness.
Saul was certain that he was serving God
right up until the light knocked him on the ground.
And so the question that Paul's list puts to us is,
when you stand before God, what are you going to hand him?
If a Pharisee who could honestly call himself blameless
had to count his whole list as lost,
I don't think ours is going to get us in either.
In Isaiah's song, God tells his people,
judge between me and my vineyard.
So go ahead and judge it.
Every good thing on our list, the moment we hold it up to God
as a reason as to why he should take us in,
goes in the same pile as Paul's.
And that leaves us right where Saul ended up.
Face down in the dirt, nothing left in our hands to brag about.
And that's exactly where Jesus finds people.
Saul didn't get up off that road with a better list.
In fact, he got up blind.
And three days later, he was baptized.
That's how Jesus found you too.
Most of us don't have a Damascus Road story.
If you ask a group of Lutherans, I imagine you'll hear,
ask them for their testimony and they'll say,
well, I was born and then I was baptized.
And amen.
I don't think that's a boring story at all.
I think it's amazing that you were born
and immediately God was pursuing you.
That before you could even think of putting a list,
Jesus made you his own.
The tenants in the parable said,
come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.
And the ones who stuck with that
didn't get what they were looking for.
But the son let himself be thrown out and killed.
Amen.
Exactly.
Amen.
We're good? It's safe? Okay.
All right.
But it's important to look at this
and remember that the son let himself be thrown out and killed.
And that it's by his death
that the inheritance went to people who don't deserve it.
Like a persecutor named Saul or you.
So those words kind of ended up being true after all,
just maybe not for the people who said them.
Let us have his inheritance.
Not because we took it, but because he gave it.
You are, as Paul says in Romans 8,
heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
That list that you've been holding up to God, the score you've been keeping on your neighbor,
every gift from God that you've tried to claim as your own good work,
all of it is forgiven.
On account of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.
For you.
And he is risen.
The son they threw out and killed did not stay in the grave.
On the third day, the father raised him and he lives
and keeps every promise that he's ever made to you.
That's the power that Paul wants to know.
He calls it the power of his resurrection.
It's the same power that met him on that road.
And it's the same power that met you at your baptism.
Jesus said it himself, because I live, you also will live.
Which means that your grave will not be the end of your story any more than it was for him.
And so Paul presses on, forgetting what lies behind
and straining toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
And he doesn't do it to earn a prize.
He does it, he runs this race because Christ has already secured it for him and for you.
So finally, and I do mean finally, rejoice in the Lord.
Rejoice in the Lord and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.