Easter 7 (NL4)
May 13, 2018
Philippians 2:1-13
INTRODUCTION:
Last week we
started working through the book of Philippians, and I told you a bit about the
Philippian congregation, telling you that Paul really loved them, and was
grateful for them, and that they had actively supported him while he was
imprisoned. In fact, the part of the letter to the Philippians that we read
last week even takes time to commend the Philippian Christians for their faith
and service. Yes, Paul loved the congregation in Philippi – but that doesn’t
mean they were without their problems! The part of the letter we hear today
speaks to that.
One thing I
really like about Paul’s letters to the various Christian communities he starts
is that they show us that the Early Christians had some of the very same
challenges and spiritual and personal struggles that we have today. Every
single Christian community since the beginning has had their challenges because
every single Christian community has been a collection of sinful people in need
of God’s grace. After all, that’s why we’re here, right?
In today’s
portion of the letter, we see that the Philippians were struggling with some
selfish behaviors, and Paul urges them to be more humble. Selfishness and a
need for humility… I can think of a time or two when these issues have come up
in my life, and yes, even in the life of the church – can you?
So listen to
the advice that Paul gives to this fledgling Christian congregation. Think
about when you have needed to hear that same advice. Listen to the beautiful
hymn that Paul includes in this letter, about how God “emptied” himself to
become like us, and why such a move would matter to the particular struggles
the Philippian church faced – and the struggles we still face, as the church,
as families, and as friends.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well it’s
finally springtime, and with spring comes that itch to do some spring-cleaning!
In particular, I always get the itch in springtime to do some de-cluttering –
all this stuff I have been collecting over the winter… okay, over the past
several years… I am motivated to get it out of my life!
But it never
fails: no sooner have I decided, “Today is the day!” than I start looking at my
stuff and thinking, “Oh, but I don’t want to get rid of that because… And I
can’t rid of this… And this I might need, you just never know…” Sound familiar?
This is a challenge for a lot of us, I think: even though we have a desire to
get rid of the junk in our lives, it can be really hard to let go. We want to
hold on tightly to what we know, to what is familiar.
I’ve been thinking about all this in
the context of Paul’s words to the Philippians that we just heard. He starts by
urging them toward humility, telling them to “do nothing out of selfish
ambition, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” He says to
“let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” then quotes a
beautiful, ancient hymn about how Christ obediently “emptied himself,” giving up
all his godly glory to come down and be with us in the dirt and grime for a
while, and, in the utterly selfless act of dying on the cross, brought us
salvation.
This hymn
Paul quotes is called the kenosis
hymn, named for the Greek word meaning “empty.” As in, Christ’s self-giving
humility was expressed when he “emptied himself.” So I started to wonder, is
self-emptying the way for us, too, to find this humility that Paul encourages
the Philippians to strive for? Is it a part of the Christian life?
Think again about that de-cluttering
image. Getting rid of our physical stuff (emptying our closets, so to speak) is
difficult, but even harder is letting go of the junk in our hearts – the
emotional and spiritual stuff that bogs us down. Do you know what I mean by
spiritual junk? Spiritual junk is… that thing that we just can’t forgive that
someone did, or that thing we did to someone else for which we can’t forgive
ourselves. It’s all those regrets we carry around with us – those things we missed
the chance to do right. Spiritual junk is all the guilt – for not being a
better parent, or son or daughter, or spouse, or friend, for the ways we’ve let
down people that we care about, guilt for not being the Christian we think we
ought to be.
Really, a lot of the spiritual junk
we have crammed into our hearts comes down to one thing: pride. Pride is what
keeps us from forgiving people – because we think as long as we can hold
something over someone, we maintain some control over the situation, and keep
ourselves safe from future pain. Pride is what makes us think that our actions
or inactions are more powerful than God’s own mercy and grace. Pride is
believing that God wouldn’t be able to take these broken vessels that we are,
and use us to do extraordinary things in the world. Pride keeps us focused on
ourselves – whether our best traits and moments, or our worst – and keeps us
from turning our eyes toward God and toward the world to see God’s own
marvelous hand at work.
What would it be like to de-clutter
our hearts of all this spiritual junk? To kick pride to the curb?
“Let the same mind be in you that was
in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality
with God as a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant.” Having thought about how hard it can be to empty ourselves – of both
our physical and spiritual junk! – makes this statement all the more
remarkable. Jesus had every reason to “grasp,” to hold tightly to all that he
had. A seat at the right hand of God, a heavenly existence, pure bliss… yet he gave
it all up, and for what? Us bunch of sinners?
Yes, us bunch of sinners! Even though
we did nothing to deserve God’s self-giving love! This, God shows us, is what
obedience, and humility, and above all, what love look like. This is what it looks like to live a Christian life:
it looks like letting go of our judgments of others, our resentments, our
regrets and guilt, all those things that would keep us from living a full and
generous life. A Christian life looks like letting go of our assumptions about
who deserves our help, love and
generosity, and simply giving it, because that is what God commands of us. Being
of the same mind as Christ Jesus means that we also practice self-emptying,
doing our best to rid ourselves of all the pride that keeps us from kicking our
junk to the curb. Once we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, there will be
even more room then for us to receive
Christ’s joy, to be filled up with that instead of with our pride.
But there’s another important part of
the Christian life. Thanks be to God, that living a Christian life also means
knowing and trusting that when we fail to do this – because try as we might, we
will sometimes fail – God’s grace and mercy are bigger than our failures. It is
absolutely worth the effort to clean out the closets (in our house and in our
hearts!), but the reason we can even attempt this work with confidence is
because we know that God is with us each step of the way, holding us up,
empowering us, and forgiving us when we just can’t let go of some things quite
yet.
God is at work in us, brothers and
sisters, enabling us both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure. Let us
lay aside the junk that keeps us from living the fullness of a life in Christ,
so that we might serve our neighbors without judgment, forgive without
resentment, give without regret, and love without guilt. And let us be confident
that in doing this, we are indeed confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father.
Let us pray… Self-emptying God, we hold onto so much junk that doesn’t at all serve
us, or our neighbor, or you. Help us to let go of it, to empty our hearts of
all that would keep us from you, so that there would be room instead to receive
your grace and your joy. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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