1.
And then her amazing family gathered around to sing the old hymns Margaret loved. Because she’d made a list; she’d insisted on a list: “I Love to Tell the Story” and “In the Garden” and “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” And we sang and we cried, and we harmonized a little and we cried, and it was as if heaven bent down close to bless an unbroken circle of love and song and wonder. And our grief and our joy joined hands at Margaret’s bedside.
When the singing was done, it was time for Margaret’s daughter to rub some cream into Margaret’s backside, where days in bed had turned some skin raw and sore. So Margaret’s son and I lifted her up, to a sitting position, and held her carefully as her daughter applied the cream gently to her back and buttocks. She smiled then, looking back and forth at the two of us. And it seemed to me that Jesus was all around us then: in Margaret’s sweet smile, in her daughter’s gentle hands rubbing cream into her sore skin, and in our arms too, holding her up and keeping her safe. What a journey death is. What a mysterious pilgrimage it is, from light to light, from life to life, from the communion of saints on earth to the communion of saints eternal. And it seemed to me that day, in Seattle, that Jesus’ hands were all over it, that his heart was beating in every moment of it. “His eye is on the sparrow,” we sang and we cried, “and I know he watches me.”
And this is what I think of this morning, when I hear the reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul urges his friends and us, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Here we have one of the earliest, oldest fragments of Christian tradition, predating even the Gospels themselves. It’s a portion of an ancient hymn sung in primitive churches across Greece and Asia Minor. You see it set aside as poetic verse in your bulletin this morning. We don’t have anything like a musical score for the hymn, obviously, but the text itself shudders in all the ways music does.
This Jesus is vulnerable and frail; and still he empties himself, he offers himself in service, he meets frailty with kindness and love. This Jesus suffers as you and I suffer, as Margaret suffered in her last days, as her family suffered around her, and as they grieve and weep even to this day. “In human form, he humbles himself, and becomes obedient to the point of death…” This Jesus dies on a cross. And he dies in a hospital bed. And he dies in his sleep.
This Jesus is 92-years-old with a broken hip and just hours to live. He’s got pneumonia and he’s slipping away. This Jesus is an underpaid and generous caregiver at a nursing home for the forgotten and poor. He feeds them Jello with a spoon and wipes their mouths. This Jesus is a prisoner of conscience, locked away without food or water, because he dared to defy the war machine. And this Jesus invests his suffering, his pain, his humanity with love and grace. He humbles himself.
This ancient fragment of a first-century hymn shudders with love and vibrates with mercy. Because the name of Jesus is love and the mind of Jesus is mercy. So “let the same mind be in you,” writes Paul, “that was in Christ Jesus.” And invest your suffering, your pain, your humanity with love and grace.
I have a vivid picture in mind of Margaret’s daughter dipping her fingers into the skin cream at the bedside that day. And I can see her bending over slightly at the waist to reach the lower part of her mother’s back, and softly, tenderly rubbing the cream where Margaret needed it most. And I see too Margaret’s sweet and curious eyes, always so curious and welcoming, looking deeply into mine. And even in her dying, even in those last hours, I recall the power of that friendship, the radiance of her presence, and the light that death can never take from us.
2.
So how does a first-century Christian hymn shake up a twenty-first century Christian church? How does its ancient witness speak to our contemporary faith? UCC theologian Mary Luti writes on a devotional site this week that “no matter the Jesus we want, there’s a Jesus we’re always just going to get—the one who draws us beyond our wants, beyond our needs. Not the one we want,” Mary writes, “but the one who wants us.” And it seems to me that Mary Luti grasps the beating heart of that ancient hymn: its witness and hope. Jesus is always stranger, always wiser, always bolder than we imagine. “Not the one we want, but the one who wants us.”
Mary
mentions in her devotional some of the many Jesus-es we tend to want along the
way. Sometimes we want the revolutionary
Jesus, the social activist Jesus, the feminist Jesus. Sometimes we want the do-me-a-favor Jesus or
the get-me-a-parking-spot Jesus or the heal-my-son-of-his-demon Jesus. And sometimes we want the send-my-creepy-neighbor-to-hell
Jesus. But Mary insists Christianity
doesn’t work that way. “No matter the
Jesus we want, there’s a Jesus we’re always just going to get—the one who draws
us beyond our wants, beyond our needs.” And
that’s the Jesus the ancients sang to life in their hymn: the Jesus who humbles
himself among little children and uppity clerics, the Jesus who bleeds the way
we bleed and weeps the way we weep, the Jesus who draws us beyond our wants and
then shines in our loving and weeping and praying and serving.
God is among us as one who weeps and bleeds. It’s a radical message at the heart of a radical gospel. This gift of grace is ours, not when everything goes perfectly, not when we win the lottery and get the good job and lose 30 pounds. This gift of grace is ours when everything falls apart. When we lie on the deathbed, at the edge of the unknown; when a kind stranger or a prodigal daughter rubs skin cream into our backside and our friends sing “Sweet Our of Prayer” and “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” God is among us as one who weeps and bleeds. God is among us in our own weeping and bleeding. And nothing can separate us from God’s love.
I want to go out on a limb this morning and say that there’s really no substitute for scripture on the Christian journey. If you’re going to grow into the mind of Christ Jesus as a seeker, as a disciple, as a Christian, these ancient texts are essential reading and strange company and necessary provocation along the way. And if we—as a Christian church, as a faith community—if we’re going to grow into the mission and ministry of Christ, these texts are powerful and transformative and urgent. Not easy always: but urgent. Taking Philippians to heart, taking it seriously, we are drawn indeed beyond our wants and needs, to an encounter with the One who wants and needs us.
3.
So the message here, at least I hope the message here, is not that you’ve got to love more, you’ve got to do better, you’ve got to try harder. Instead, the message in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians is that you’re not in this alone. You don’t suffer alone. You don’t hope, and you don’t hurt, and you don’t walk this road alone. In all of your frailty, in all of your vulnerability, in all of your humanity, Jesus weeps and bleeds and hungers and thirsts and heals. In your ordinary days and your ordinary aches, in the ordinary thrills and delights of your life, Jesus takes the form of a slave, a servant, a friend. He meets you there, and he takes your hand, and he draws you into his ever-expanding circle of compassion and grace. The name of this Jesus is love and his mind is mercy.
Once you see Jesus in this way, I think you begin to see Jesus in all kinds of encounters and places, and in all kinds of off-the-beaten-path experiences. I think you see Jesus in the bright red sun, rising like a great flame over the bay this morning. I think you see Jesus across the dinner table, in your lover’s eyes or your best friend’s smile. I think you see Jesus in children making sand castles on the beach and laughing as they wash away. And I think you see Jesus in a great painting hanging quietly in your favorite museum. It’s all a gift. And it’s one evolving, unfolding revelation of grace and beauty and wonder. And the name of this Jesus is love and his mind is mercy. And it’s all a gift. Every last grain of sand. Every sweet slanting ray of light.
But there’s more to it, even more, ever more; and this is where Paul preaches a radical gospel of God’s power in frailty, Jesus’ grace in vulnerability and the blessings of mortality itself. I think you see Jesus in the nursing home down the street, as a family gathers to say goodbye and a caregiver puts an ice chip on a dying man’s lips. I think you see Jesus in the tremors that shake your hands and the tracks your tears make and the dark bags beneath your eyes. And I think you see Jesus in the nurses who risk everything to care for Ebola patients and the kids who fix bikes for homeless friends and the man in a car wreck who donates his organs so another man can live. The name of this Jesus is love, his mind is mercy, and it’s all a gift. The ice chip and the tremor. The donated organs and the rebuilt bikes. Even the tracks your tears make. There is grace in vulnerability. And power in frailty and brokenness. And there is blessing in mortality and weakness. And every bit of it is a gift.
Sometime soon, maybe this morning, maybe this week, you’ll find yourself breaking or even broken. Or maybe you’ll find someone you love wounded and despairing—for all the pain life throws our way. It’s not a stretch, right? Sometime soon, you’ll look despair in the eye. And when you do, I hope you’ll remember the gospel message this morning, the preaching of Paul, the faith we hold and cherish together here at Peace United Church. Remember that God is among us as one who weeps and bleeds. Remember that the gift of grace is ours when everything falls apart. And remember that there is power in your frailty and blessing in your weakness and healing in your faith.
In that moment, you will be a sign of God’s grace, a living reminder of the gift at the heart of everything that is. In that moment, death will lose just a little of its sting, and breaking hearts around you will know something more than brokenness. Something like peace. Something like love. Because you believe.
To know that Jesus goes with you, to know that Jesus suffers with you, to know that Jesus’ love is constant and tenacious and personal: to know this is to know the same mind that is in him. And this is to live. And this is to live well. And this is to live in the faith that nothing can separate us from God’s love. Because, as we sing, “his eye is on the sparrow / and I know he watches me.” Amen.
