"Loss and Gain" (May 10, 2026 Sermon)
/Loss and Gain
Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing
Guilford Park Presbyterian Church
Sixth Sunday of Easter — Sunday, May 10, 2026
Text: Philippians 3
Scripture
Philippians 3
The Ledgers We Keep
We all keep ledgers, both literal and emotional. Ways of measuring worth. Internal scorecards that track what we’ve done, what we’ve achieved, and how we stack up against the people we’ve been taught to envy. And those ledgers can become dangerous things, because while they may offer a little short-term gratification, they often leave behind long-term resentment and a diminished capacity for gratitude and generosity. Walter Brueggemann, the recently deceased titan of biblical scholarship, called this “the rat race.” It is a never-ending marathon where we take one step toward the finish line only to watch it move two steps farther away.
The danger of the rat race is that when we’re caught up in it, we usually have no idea we are. And that is part of what makes Philippians 3 so powerful. Paul takes a long, honest look at the ledger he once trusted — and discovers that Christ has changed the math.
Paul takes a long, honest look at the ledger he once trusted — and discovers that Christ has changed the math.
Christ Changes the Math
Paul had a lot of time to think. Such is the case when you’re a prisoner of the Roman Empire. From the isolation of his cell, he has been pulled out of the rat race by forces beyond his control. And he takes this opportunity to take stock of what he has relied on so far in his life to feel “righteous,” “successful,” or “accomplished.”
“Look at me,” he says to his friends in the Philippian church. “I bear the sign of the covenant. I belong to the people of Israel, and am a member of the tribe of Benjamin, to boot! And my spiritual credentials don’t stop there: I’m a Pharisee and, therefore, know the law of God inside and out. Some might even call me ‘blameless’!” Paul knows how seductive this self-congratulatory “liturgy of ledgers” can be. After all, such ledgers sound pretty good in our own heads, but they often sound very different to those around us. One can imagine the first hearers nodding along, maybe even feeling a little impressed, before realizing that Paul is about to tear down the walls of self-righteousness that people like us are always so tempted to build.
And that’s exactly what he does. And it all starts with that dangerous little word: “yet.” “Yet” is the trapdoor word. You think Paul is building a platform beneath his accomplishments, when all along he’s cutting a hole in the floor. And in verse seven, he pulls the cord. “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 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….”
All those things, Paul says, are “rubbish.” Now, in the interest of sermonic modesty, I will not give you the literal translation of the Greek word for rubbish; let’s just say the original meaning was a little more “earthy” than most English Bibles present. Paul wants his hearers to understand in no uncertain terms how Christ has reversed the calculus in a world where comparison is its favorite pastime. “All that other stuff,” he says, “is insufficient compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Résumé We Trust
Now, to be sure, all those ledger items he calls insufficient in comparison to what he sees as the most important thing: knowing Christ and, perhaps more importantly, being known by Christ. It’s not that all those things are bad, useless, or unnecessary. We must remember that Paul was not mocking Judaism or dismissing covenantal practices as meaningless. He is saying that even the holiest parts of his own résumé cannot do what only Christ can do. Circumcision is not the problem; trusting any identity marker, achievement, or badge of belonging as the basis of righteousness is the problem.
While circumcision may not be, for most of us, a particularly relevant modern example, we do not have to work very hard to imagine our own versions of Paul’s ledger. Ours may look less like tribal belonging and Torah-observance and more like résumés, reputations, bank accounts, degrees on the wall, children who perform well, opinions we’re proud to hold, or a carefully curated sense that we are one of the “good ones.” We all have our own ways of saying, “Look at me. See why I matter. See why I’m righteous. See why I’m enough.” And Paul says: be careful. The things we use to prove ourselves can quietly become the things we trust more than grace.
The Ledger Was Not Kind
Last week was one of those weeks when I felt, as Tolkien once put it, like too little butter spread over too much bread. I was juggling the ordinary chaos of family life, preparing to preach at Tricia’s grandmother’s funeral in Richmond, navigating my own grief, and staring down the particular madness parents sometimes call “May-cember,” when the end-of-school calendar starts to take its toll on your sanity. The girls were having a rough time too, and all of it left me feeling stretched thin. But what I realized was that what made the week so heavy was not only the busyness itself. It was the ledger I kept pulling out in my own head. No one else was telling me I was failing. No one else was giving me a hard time. But I was quietly measuring myself against all the standards I carry around for what a good pastor, a good husband, a good father, and a reasonably functional human being ought to look like. And the ledger was not kind.
Paul is not just talking about ancient religious credentials. He is talking about the deeply human impulse to build an identity out of achievement, performance, and self-justification. And I know that impulse because I carried it around all week long.
Grace as Gift
And a beautiful thing happens when we stop carrying that ledger around. We discover that Christ does not love us because we have managed to keep all the plates spinning. Christ does not claim us because we have finally become impressive enough, productive enough, or put-together enough. Christ meets us not at the end of our accomplishments, but right in the middle of our need. And that, I think, is what Paul means when he says he wants to “gain Christ and be found in him,” not with a righteousness of his own, but with a righteousness that comes from God as gift.
Christ meets us not at the end of our accomplishments, but right in the middle of our need.
And the gospel message is that this is not only a truth we receive for ourselves; it is also a truth we get to share with others.
Run Your Own Race
Forgive me if I’ve mentioned this episode of Bluey before. If I have, too bad, because it’s really a gem. It’s called “Baby Race.” The episode begins with Bluey and Bingo arguing in the present over who is “best” at something, and that prompts Chili to remember Bluey learning to walk. In the flashbacks, Bluey starts rolling over, then crawling, and every new milestone is accompanied by Chili’s joy — but also by comparison. Other babies seem to be getting there faster. Other moms seem more relaxed. And before long, Chili is carrying around a parenting ledger.
By the time Bluey still isn’t walking, one of the other moms can see the weight Chili is carrying. She sits beside her, looks her in the eye, and says simply, “You’re doing great.” And those words are enough to loosen Chili’s grip on the ledger. When the story returns to the present, Chili tells Bluey and Bingo to “run their own race.” In other words: put down the ledger. Stop keeping score. Don’t let comparison steal the joy that belongs to love.
“You’re doing great.”
I love that episode because once Chili lets go of the ledger, she becomes freer to encourage the people around her to do the same. And that, I think, is part of the good news Paul is trying to share with the Philippians. Because Christ is our salvation, we do not have to keep searching for it in our performance, our accomplishments, or our ability to keep up. We can let go of the rat race. We can be found in Christ. And we can help one another do the same.
Put Down the Ledger
So maybe the invitation this morning is not to balance the ledger one more time. Maybe the invitation is to let Christ close the book, so to speak. To let go of the need to prove we are enough — righteous enough, productive enough, faithful enough, good enough — and to trust that the One who has laid hold of us is not waiting for us at the finish line with a red pen. Christ is not auditing our accomplishments. Christ is not measuring our worth by the columns we so carefully keep. Christ is gathering up the whole messy account of our lives — the gains, the losses, the griefs, the striving, the places where we have run ourselves ragged trying to be impressive — and saying, “You are found in me.”
And when that good news begins to sink in, it changes how we live. We still press on, yes. We still love, serve, work, parent, preach, pray, forgive, and try again. But we do none of it to earn God’s grace. We do it because grace has already found us. We do it because Christ has already laid hold of us. We do it because the ledger has been replaced by love and the rat race has been interrupted by resurrection. So, friends, run your own race. Put down the ledger. Be found in Christ. And then go help someone else hear the words they may be longing to hear: “You’re doing great. You are loved. And in Christ, you are already enough.”
Run your own race. Put down the ledger. Be found in Christ.
In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s children, say: Amen.