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Printer Friendly VersionCountry artist Vince Gill records a song that asks, “Which
bridge to cross, and which bridge to burn?” It speaks of a man struggling
in regard to his relationships (all good country songs have some relationship
struggle to talk about). He is struggling to remain faithful and going through
the agonizing process of asking which bridges he should cross and which ones
he should burn. The dangers of not making such a decision causes us to become
like Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, who according
to Beatrice, “. . . wears his faith but as the fashion of a hat; it
ever changes with the next block” (Act 1, Scene 1).
We struggle with influence: who or what is going to influence
us? When we make this commitment to Christ, we have exciting new bridges to
cross, but we also have some bridges to burn between us and our past ways
of thinking, relating and living. The discernment God gives us as we grow
in His grace allows the freedom and the ability to choose which is which.
Burn bridges between ourselves and those influences that are
“enemies of the cross.”
The people at Philippi are being warned here not to fall under the influence
of those who “live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” At first
glance, in our contemporary culture, we might read this as a warning against
radical terrorists or against mystical pagan religions seeking to pull us
away from our true faith in Christ. However, these are not the culprits Paul
warns them (and us) about!
These “enemies of the cross of Christ” are not just
the false teachers and radical sectarians whose theology is in opposition
to the teachings handed down to us. They are also those “whose god is
their stomach,” and whose “glory is in their shame” (v.
19). In other words, these enemies of the cross of Christ are people who look
just like some who work with us, go to school with us and maybe even sit in
church with us. They seek their own walk instead of the Jesus walk we’ve
begun talking about during this Season of Lent. They are motivated by whatever
fulfills their immediate needs (“their stomachs”) instead of by
what fulfills the call of God. They are shameless when it comes to flaunting
their own wealth and worldly wisdom.
In the movie A River Runs Through It, Norm Maclean (the narrator
and protagonist) states that his father was a Presbyterian minster, which
meant that the world was “a [darn] mess,” and that the grace and
beauty we have lost must be restored. The mess we have gotten ourselves into
is the result of our own selfish desires and of our shameless arrogance. These
choices make us enemies of the cross. When we receive the grace of God and
enter into a relationship with Christ, we are called to burn bridges between
that old way of living and where we are now, so that our focus is on Christ.
This does not mean burn bridges between ourselves and other
people entirely. We are not called to separate from those people who need
Christ, we are called to reach them. However, as far as their influence goes,
we are to use discernment and not allow those whose main concern is their
own selfish ambition, or those whose focus is upon feeding their own hedonism,
to affect our behavior.
Cross the bridge into full trust in and dependence upon Jesus
Christ and His grace.
Throughout Paul’s writings we are reminded of our “real citizenship”
(3:20). We are not alone in this Kingdom. We are born (again) into a community
that is doing some bridge burning and building as well. We assist one another
in the architectural process of bridge building and bridge burning, benefitting
from the discernment of those who walk this journey with us. In The Last Battle,
the last book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the “real”
Narnia (an allegory of Heaven) is a place where its inhabitants are always
shouting: “Higher up and further in.” The invitation of the Kingdom
of God is just that, and as we cross bridges into a deeper walk with Christ,
we become people who are transformed into what we have been invented to be.
We live out our baptism. We become true citizens of the Kingdom of God together.
There is this kind of radical commitment involved in Christianity that says, “All I once held dear, built my life upon” is nothing compared to this: knowing Jesus! Paul reminds us that when we begin with this commitment, God, through His Holy Spirit, is able to help us to begin burning the kinds of bridges that would only lead to our demise in the long run. “Standing firm in the Lord,” as Paul writes in 4:1, means making choices to burn bridges with those idols we once held dear. This frees us up to fully embrace the way of Christ; to cross bridge into eternal life by faith and walk deeper and further into God’s Kingdom!