RECYCLED

Phil. 3:7-14

Prefabricated concrete slabs. These were the preferred building materials in East Germany, beginning in the 1960s. This communist country faced a severe housing shortage, so concrete slabs were used to build shoe-box-shaped residential apartments in a quick and economical way. The buildings were called “plattenbau.”Literally, slab-building. After East Germany and West Germany reunited, the demand for these ugly but economical apartment buildings began to drop, and there are now about a million unoccupied units. Many plattenbau apartments are being torn down, and still others are falling apart. According to Fast Company (September 2006), two young architects, the Biele brothers, are looking at the plattenbau apartments and seeing more than just the dwindling remains of communist culture. They see raw materials. These brothers are taking the concrete blocks from demolished apartments and recycling them into single-family homes. These recycled slabs allow for construction savings of up to 40 percent.
The result is a house with an attractive look that reflects both German and California styles.

The story of Saul’s conversion takes on a new look when it is seen through the lens of this innovative recycling effort. Saul is as solid and strong as a plattenbau apartment when he takes a stand against the Christians of Damascus — he is “a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:5-6).
But Jesus has big plans for this persecutor of the church. He tears Saul down, but he doesn’t tear him up — instead, he recycles him into an apostle. “Go, for he is an instrument,” says Jesus to Ananias — an instrument to bring Christ’s name “before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (v. 15). The strength, intelligence, commitment and eloquence that Saul had before his conversion is preserved, and it is put to a new use.

Today’s Scripture is an invitation to plattenbau living. For some, this will mean turning a passion for contemporary music into a commitment to play in a church praise band. For others, it will mean recycling a skill for administration into a position on the board of the church or the board of local homeless shelter. For still others, it will mean taking the pain of an unhappy childhood and transforming it into a passion for youth ministry.

God wastes nothing when he is looking for people to do his work in the world. But sometimes our own past sticks to us like a chewing gum.

There’s a bit of a sticky wicket developing in the U.K, and indeed across all of Europe, costing millions of dollars to control and causing battles between officials and lobbyists in the halls of government. Chewing gum, i.e., gum that has been chewed — and eschewed, expectorated, spit and spewed, right out onto the sidewalks and streets of London and elsewhere. Ireland and other countries had wanted to impose a tax on gum purchases to fund cleanup operations but that plan was opposed by lobbyists for the chewing gum industry. They leave their marks of self-interest out there in the open for everyone else to step in — things that get uglier and harder to remove the longer they hang around.

So what does this have to do with anything?

The same situation occurs when we don’t properly deal with the stuff that sticks to us from our own pasts — those emotions, actions, memories, sins and failures that turn blacker and stickier the longer we let them go improperly disposed of, affecting ourselves and everyone around us.

But when Paul met Christ on the Damascus road, that former life began to lose its importance. “Knowing Christ” and “the power of his resurrection” became a fresh new burst of flavor for Paul that made all that he had accomplished before seem like so much “rubbish” by comparison (vv. 7-9). In fact, the NRSV translation really softens the full impact of the word skybala, which could mean something more like “excrement” or “refuse” — nasty stuff, the kind that sticks to pavement. That’s a pretty strong way to look back at a life that others would consider successful, but that’s how powerfully Paul understood the impact of his new life in Christ.

If your past keeps sticking to you, know that the only solution that can get you unstuck is the one offered by Christ, who can scrape the blackened decay of death from our lives and offer us a brand-new flavor of life!