on our list of achievements

“Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem, but they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.” So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said: “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness. And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his course, he said, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’”

—Acts 13:13-25

When the first emperor of ancient Rome died, he was a happy man. At least he said he was happy. It’s possible his wife poisoned him to death, but that’s another story. On his tombstone, the emperor proudly tells about all the great things he has done for Rome: he took revenge on the men who’d killed his father, he brought peace to Rome, he built dozens of fancy new temples, he made sure his people were well fed, and he left behind lots of money. This was his way of telling his people “Remember me!”, because he’d done such a great job. 

That’s the way the world works — we matter when we do stuff and achieve stuff. And we don’t matter when we fail to achieve stuff. Ancient emperors knew this. Modern Hong Kongers know this. Anyone here who’s had to write a cover letter or applied to a programme will know this. Applications make us brag about what we’ve done. “Pay attention to me!”, “Accept me for your programme!”, because I’ve done such a great job.

You can see why this is a useful way to do things. Get everyone to compete, and pick the most impressive people. You get to enjoy the impressive people’s talents, the impressive people get a place and position — it’s win-win…

…except for the people who get left behind. Like we said, the world tells us that we only matter if we achieve stuff. You can kind of see why things have to be this way. But it can be pretty heartless. What if I don’t achieve anything special? Well, better make sure you do. And better have a list of your achievements ready, you’re gonna need it.

Let me show you another way of being. In many ways an upside down way. The gospel way, the way of the Kingdom of God.

In today’s passage, Paul is trying to convince his audience that Jesus is the Son of God, and that they should believe in him. At first, it reads a lot like God bragging about all the great things he’s done. He saved his people, he settled them in their homes, he gave them kings, he sent them Jesus. It’s like he’s saying “Look at all the things I’ve done for you! Be impressed, and believe in me!”

But no, read between the lines and we see that God isn’t bragging about his achievements. He saved his people from slavery in Egypt and stuck by them, even though they started complaining and saying they wanted to go back; he looked after his people for hundreds of years, and in the end they rejected him and said they didn’t want to be his people, they wanted to have kings like everyone else; and when those kings messed it all up, God still stuck with his people through hundreds of years of them rejecting him, and finally he sent Jesus to save them, just as he had promised. But of course in the end, they killed Jesus too.

Is God saying “Be impressed, and believe in me”? No — “Remember who I am, believe in me because I’ve always stood by you.”

Is God saying “Feel guilty, do what I say”? No — “I know how weak you can be, but I have loved you all the same. Trust that I’m telling you this because I am faithful.”

Is God saying “Look at how good I’ve been, you’d better pay me back”? No — “Look at what I’ve done for you though you’ve never deserved it. Just trust that I’m enough for you.”

Do you see how the gospel way is different? The way of the world uses a list of achievements as a tool to brag, or a tool to intimidate. It’s all about what I’ve done and achieved, and if you ignore it, you’ll regret it. But the gospel way is different: any list of achievements points us back to God, what he has already achieved for us, how much he has loved us though we can never deserve it, and so we can rest easy in that. It’s not about what we can do to earn our place, it’s what he has already done to give us a place.
It’s not an easy way to accept. It’ll sound like hippie nonsense to a lot of us here. It’ll sound like the opposite of what Hong Kong is all about. And it is, in many ways, crazy. But it’s about as crazy as the idea that God came to earth as a man and died to save us from sin and death. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a better way to be. Maybe it’s a realer, truer way to be. Maybe, even though achieving stuff is a good thing, maybe that’s not the truest thing out there. Maybe the gospel way — that we are loved beyond our highest heights and lowest lows, and that’s what pushes us forward — maybe that way is truer.