Philippians 3:13-14
(May 8, 2004)
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Introduction
Most of you who are graduating tomorrow arrived on this campus in the fall of 2000 as the first class of the new millennium. During your years here at Olivet, the world has changed. Who could have anticipated the razor-thin presidential election that took place during the fall of your freshman year; remember Florida and the hanging chads and all of the drama that accompanied the election?
Certainly none of us could have ever imagined what the day would bring when we left for class on the morning of September 11, 2001, your sophomore year. That Tuesday morning, against a backdrop of sunny, blue skies, a very dark day dawned upon us as a nation. Then came the war in Afghanistan and now the war in Iraq.
Along with those and other geopolitical changes, various crosscurrents of culture—the push for gay marriage to name one—have shifted the social and moral landscape of our nation. As a result, you are going to live in a different world from the one you left when you first came to college.
But then not only has the world changed, but you have changed as well. You are older, wiser, better educated, more widely traveled, and more deeply in debt.
On the Sunday evening before classes started your freshman year, you came to our backyard for a picnic. The following night, at the annual freshman dinner, I spoke to you for the first time. At the end of those remarks, I shared with you a couple verses of Scripture and promised to use them for the baccalaureate message in 2004. And now, here we are, on the eve of your graduation. The past four years have come and gone, and it is time to turn our attention once more to those verses from your first week on campus.
Do you remember the verses? I am sure you do, but for the guests who are here this evening, let me just mention them once more. They were Philippians 3:13-14: “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
From these verses, I have selected three words for our focus.
Three words to take with you as you pack the car
and head for home or on to some distant destination.
Three words to give you focus as you pick up your life,
not where you left off four years ago,
but at a new starting point.
Three challenging words
with which to meet the challenges of life.
Simple words for a not-so-simple world,
a world of strife,
a world now filled with terrorism and uncertainty,
bear markets and corporate corruption;
an unsettled world—one that brings
disappointment as well as joy,
fear as well as contentment.
We need a word from the Lord for such a world. The three words I have in mind are these: “Remember to forget.”
Paul says, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on.” Remembering, forgetting, and pressing on—that strikes me as a good formula for life. Let’s think about it together for a moment.
I. Remembering
This commencement weekend is filled with remembering.
Remembering moments … some of them life-changing moments that occurred on this campus in days gone by.
Remembering people … some of them life-changing people, faculty members, students, staff, friends, and classmates—individuals with whom you have shared your life for these years.
Remembering decisions … some of them life-changing decisions.
Remembering plans … dreams and hopes embraced; some now being realized—others still out on the horizon, waiting to be fulfilled.
Remembering is a wonderful thing. It is upon our ability to remember that all learning rests. It is the capacity to recall that allows one to function beyond a mere stimulus-response level.
Remembering lets us …
relive days gone by,
recapture special moments in life,
and recall friends and family
from a former day.
Take away a person’s memory and you take away a great deal of what it means to be a person. So I say to you tonight, “Remember.” Remember the lessons learned on this campus. Henri Nouwen observed, “Burying our past is turning our back on our best teacher.”1
I understand that some things, many things really, will fade with time. As these days turn into years, then stretch out into decades, you will not be able to remember your Olivet days quite as vividly as you do tonight. You will forget some of us. You may not remember your password or your mailbox combination. You may not be able to recall the name of the girl or the guy down the hall.
But I hope, I sincerely hope, there are some things from these bright college days you will always remember; perhaps it will be a chapel service, a moment of spiritual decision, or maybe the advice and kindness of a faculty member who went out of her or his way to touch your life. I say to you tonight as you pack up your belongings, be sure to store away some memories.
There are two ways of remembering. One way is to travel back in time to a moment in the past, linger there for a while, and replay the images and feelings that surround that moment, as if it were happening even now. The other way to remember is to bring an event, a moment, or a decision from the past into the now so that something significant from your past becomes part of your enduring present and part of your future as well.
Many of you know that my older brother died suddenly just a few weeks ago. It has been a difficult adjustment for our entire family, but among the things that helped light our way as we walked “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps. 23:4, KJV) were the memories of all the good times. It’s odd, isn’t it, how even in a moment of grief one can move from tears to laughter in an instant sitting around the kitchen table remembering.
Not too long after the horror of 9/11, a day we would surely like to forget and yet should always remember, I read these few lines from a writer and editor named Philip Zaleski:
When the dead have been buried, the rubble removed, the sirens silenced, the requiems sung, the innocent avenged, the guilty punished, when memories of the event have finally cracked and faded, what will remain of September 11? I’ve put this question to a hundred people and received many answers. The responses all translate into one: memento mori. Remember death. Remember that I too shall die. From this answer flows a second: not carpe diem (seize the day), but carpe deum. Take hold of God. And in so doing remember that life counts, your life counts, and from this flows another thing to remember: with God’s help you can make a difference.2
Remembering even the darkest moments of life can, in the end, add significance to life. I sincerely hope you will hold tightly to God and to the memories of your college years, particularly those seminal moments when God spoke to you and you made certain promises to God. Remember those decisions and the commitments you’ve made. Let them be part of your ongoing walk of faith.
Point number one: remember to remember. The second thing I want you to remember is to forget.
II. Forgetting
Graduation is a time for remembering but also for forgetting. I know that sounds odd, but that is the exact sentiment of these verses before us tonight.
Some forgetting—most forgetting, I suppose, is unintentional. We just lose track of things. Once, when I was a kid, I lost a trombone on my way home from school and I only lived four blocks away. I just got preoccupied. I put it down and walked away not thinking, not remembering, to take it with me.
Sometimes, as you know, a bit of information, perhaps a name or a number or some other detail, never really takes root in such a way that is sufficient to guarantee recall. Have you ever been introduced to a person, and then five seconds later you can’t remember his or her name? In that case, you forgot it because you never really got it.
On other occasions, we hold some bit of information for a time, maybe even for an extended time, but then because we seldom need to access it, our mind buries it or releases it to a realm now beyond our willful recall. This is the “use it or lose it” phenomenon. Either way, forgetting is part of life and for the most part is unintentional.
But that is not what the Bible is talking about in Philippians 3:13. It is not the unintentional forgetting that is our focus here. This verse challenges us to purposely forget—to deliberately leave the past in the past. “But one thing I do,” Paul says. “Forgetting what is behind …”
Do you hear the intentionality and determination in those words? There are two dynamics at work here.
A. There Are Some Things We Ought to Leave in the Past
I know some people who cannot move on in life because they are plagued by bad memories; they are tethered to some moment from their past. They get fixated on some hurt or disappointment. In one sense the past is dead and gone, never to be repeated, over and done with. But in another sense the past is not past or, at least, not done with us.
In addition to being the president here at Olivet, I also serve as the president of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene. Because of that, I travel to Kansas City often. Sometimes I’m on the first flight out in the morning and the last flight back that night. Often a staff member from Nazarene Headquarters or a seminary student is sent to pick me up at the airport. On one of those trips the driver was constantly looking back in the rearview mirror, not occasionally as you would and should normally do, but constantly driving forward while looking backward.
It made me nervous, so I finally said, “Is someone following us?”
“Oh, no, no,” he replied. “It’s just that I was in an accident last year; I was hit from behind and my car was totaled. So I just want to make sure no one is coming up on us too quickly.”
Now that makes sense in a way, but in reality, a person cannot drive a car safely by always staring into the rearview mirror. In the same way, you must not let some moment from the past rule your present thinking and behavior.
Nonetheless, we all know that there are those moments when, whether we like it or not, our memory is triggered and suddenly we are overtaken once more by our past. On occasion these are moments of serendipitous delight. We will hear a song on the radio, we’ll see a person from our past, or maybe some unknown stimulus will transport us to a wonderful moment that has added meaning and significance to our life.
But at other times it is a bad memory that springs upon us and we are engulfed in guilt, anger, or depression. When that happens, Paul’s counsel to us in Philippians 3:13-14 is to forget what is past and “press on.” The question, of course, is how. We can’t just flip a switch and have the memory disappear.
When an unpleasant memory returns, don’t simply try to suppress it or ignore it—face it. Hold it up to the light of the here and now and commit it fully to God. His grace can heal the past. His love can wash away the stain of regret or bitterness. Let me be very candid with you for a moment. It is sometimes difficult to get through four or five years of college without some hurt, some disappointment, or some misunderstanding either here, with your family, at work, or elsewhere. Don’t let such a thing become the defining moment of your life.
Tonight is the night to close the door on those things so that you can move on. Letting it go does not mean it didn’t matter; it simply means that by God’s grace, you are to forget it—to let go of it and take hold of God instead. We are called to forget, because some things need to be left in the past. But there is another reason as well.
B. We Can’t Live in the Past
This forgetting, of which Paul speaks here, is not limited to forgetting the pain of the past; it also includes yesterday’s achievements and joys as well. Paul is suggesting that we cannot rest on our accomplishments from the past; we must still “press on” (Phil. 3:14). Our focus is forward.
In 2 Corinthians 4 we read, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (v. 18).
Our focus is to be forward: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (Phil. 3:13). The truth is, if you have had a great college experience or a very trying and difficult time, either way—it is over. You can’t undo and you can’t relive the past. The challenge here is to remember it but also to let it go so that you can move on.
Remember to forget, and then … “press on.”
III. Press On
These words appear not only in Philippians 3:14, which I read, but also in verse 12, which says, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.”
These words reverberate with purpose, determination, focus, and confidence. At those moments when life becomes most difficult, God’s grace becomes most apparent. You see, these words, “I press on,” are not willpower words. I am not talking to you about trying harder; these are words that can only find their fulfillment through grace—through God’s empowerment. “One thing I do … I press on.” Paul puts it like this: “straining toward what is ahead” (v. 13).
The imagery here is of an athlete reaching for the goal. It was fifty years ago yesterday, May 6, 1954, that a young
Englishman named Roger Bannister did what some believed could never be done. He ran the first sub-four-minute mile. At the time, he was a twenty-five-year-old medical student at Oxford University. This is how he described the end of the race.
I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride. The air I breathed filled me with the spirit of the track where I had run my first race. The noise in my ears was that of the faithful Oxford crowd. Their hope and encouragement gave me greater strength. I had now turned the last bend and there were only fifty yards more. … the tape seemed almost to recede. Would I ever reach it?
Those last few seconds seemed never-ending. The faint line of the finishing tape stood ahead as a haven of peace, after the struggle. The arms of the world were waiting to receive me if only I reached the tape without slackening my speed. I leapt at the tape like a man taking his last spring to save himself from the chasm that threatened to engulf him.
Then it was over and I collapsed almost unconscious, with an arm on either side of me. The stopwatches held the answer. The announcement came—3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.3 Roger Bannister did what no one else had ever done. He accomplished what many thought was simply impossible, and he did it by forgetting what was behind. He had lost a very significant Olympic race not many months before; but he put all of that in the past and strained for the goal. We are to do the same thing.
I have found that true in my life. I came to Olivet as a student over thirty-five years ago. I walked this campus with only a faint vision of the future. I lived in the residence halls, went to class in these buildings, and attended chapel, hoping along the way to find out what my life was going to be. Let me bear witness this evening that step by step, day by day, year after year, now decade upon decade, God has proven himself faithful. I could have never imagined the plan God was preparing for me. And as our chapel theme last fall underscored, God has a plan for your life as well.
Conclusion
As you graduate tomorrow, be assured that just as God has been with you during these college days, he will be there in the days to come as well. In fact, God is already there …
in that distant city where you will move.
He is there in the office, school, or hospital
where you will be working.
God will sit beside you in graduate school.
He already lives in the neighborhood
or apartment complex
where you will be living.
My counsel is to center your life in Jesus Christ, who through his grace can enable you to forget what is behind and press on to be the person God is calling you to be.
The hymn writer puts it like this:
Fight the good fight with all thy might.
Christ is thy strength and Christ thy right.
Lay hold on life and it shall be
Thy Joy and Crown eternally.
Run the straight race through God’s good grace.
Lift up thine eyes and seek his face.
Life with its ways before us lies;
Christ is the path; Christ is the prize.4
As you leave Olivet, remember the blessings, forget the failures, and press on.
Presidential Charge to the Class of 2004
I would like for the graduating class of 2004 to please stand.
Tomorrow morning one important chapter of your life will end and another will begin. It is my prayer that you will take with you from this campus not only a great education and a wonderful set of friendships for life but also a deep, personal faith in God.
Your future will be filled with opportunities and obstacles as well. Remember, as each day begins, “Christ is the path; Christ is the prize.” Therefore, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, … press on … to win the prize for which God has called [you] heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14).
May your focus be forward. Set your gaze on God alone. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33). “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).
The world needs you to be men and women of faith. Live large! Don’t settle for less that your best. Seize the day and “let your light so shine before [others] that they may see your good works and glorify” God the Father (Matt. 5:16, KJV).
I am proud of what you have accomplished during your time at Olivet, but I am even more pleased with who you are. Congratulations and may God go with you.
Prayer
O God of life’s endings and beginnings, we give you thanks for these young men and women. We ask that through your grace none would be lost to the kingdom. Bless them tonight and tomorrow and in the days to come.
Lead them in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. Give them inner strength and hold them steady in the grip of your grace, and may they bear the marks of a transformed life. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.