A Meditation on Philippians 2:1-13
The Fifth Sunday in Lent 2018
1.
This morning I want to trace
two arcs across the six weeks of our Lenten journey. In the first, Yael has asked us to consider
what it is that makes us come alive. I
hope you’ve had a chance to do this, and that you’ll continue doing it. What makes you come alive? You know, Jesus goes out to the desert, for
forty long days, to work this out for himself.
What makes him come alive. He
meets the Hinderer there, the Satan, who tests and tempts him, tempts him to
choose an easier way, a quicker fix, even a power trip. But Jesus looks to God and chooses life and
love and deep joy. His own unique vision
and his own precious ministry.
So Yael asked you and me, you
remember; she asked you and me to do the same.
To spend this Lenten season discerning joy in our lives, and creativity
in our hearts. And there’s a bright and
glorious poster in the narthex this morning, a poster bearing witness to all
the ways you’ve responded. All the
pursuits, all the ministry, all the practices that make you come alive. As human, connected, spiritual beings. Later this week, by the way, a stunning art
show will take over this very space, this same sanctuary: and next week, next
Sunday, you’ll catch a glimpse of the wildly diverse energies that stir in our
many hearts. We come alive in a thousand
different ways! So that’s the first arc
we trace, this arc of discernment and temptation and joyful practice.
The second begins on Ash Wednesday,
in the humility of prayer and the ashes we trace on one another’s
foreheads. “Child of God,” we say on Ash
Wednesday, “you come from the good earth, and to the good earth you shall one
day return.” And this second arc extends
across the Lenten season, day by day, week to week, all the way to Maundy
Thursday. Ash Wednesday to Maundy
Thursday. As disciples of Jesus, we turn
to his own example, to his humanity, to what Walter Brueggeman calls the
“pattern and sequence of Jesus’ own life.”
He too was a child of God, a frail and hopeful, broken and joyful child
of God. He too came from the good earth
and returned, in the end, to that same good Palestinian earth.
On Maundy Thursday, then,
eleven days from today, we trace this second arc all the way to an Upper Room
in Jerusalem: where Jesus ties a towel around his waist and kneels by a basin
of water; where he washes the feet of his friends—much to their surprise and
even frustration. “If I’ve washed your
feet,” he says that night, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” We make meaning in our lives, we find purpose
in our faith, by kneeling in kindness before our friends, by humbling ourselves
as servants and lovers and prophets.
Again, it’s Walter Brueggeman
who says that “Lent is a time to face the reality that there is no easy or
‘convenient’ passage from our previous life to a new, joyous life in the
gospel.” No easy or convenient
passage. So from Ash Wednesday to Maundy
Thursday, we look deliberately, intently, prayerfully at the “pattern and
sequence of Jesus’ own life.” Preparing
ourselves for the moment we too might fall to our knees and wash one another’s
tired, dusty, human feet. The second
arc.
2.
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| Obelisks, Meteora, Greece |
As I think about these two
arcs—the one about joy and creativity, the other, humility and human
connection—I’m reminded of the moment four years ago when I fell in love with
Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. I was
sitting on a huge boulder outside a quirky Orthodox monastery in the steep
hills of Central Greece. Not far from
Corinth and Athens and Philippi, cities Paul himself had visited and served. I had my writing pad with me that day, and a
new book about Paul and his legacy to read.
It was a sweet, shimmering, sunny day in the hills, and ancient obelisks
rose up from the Greek plain, in every direction, forming a kind of holy
cathedral of rock and cliff and light and shadow. From deep within the monastery itself, I
heard monks chanting an old Greek liturgy.
“Kyrie eleison. Kyrie
eleison. Kyrie eleison.” That’s the day I fell in love with Paul and
his Letter to the Philippians.
It’s important to note that Paul
wrote this letter, and the passage we’ve read this morning, from a Roman prison
cell, somewhere in the Mediterranean basin.
Maybe Ephesus. He wrote it to
friends in Philippi to encourage them in a difficult time, a conflicted time, to
urge them to build a community of mutual care and common purpose and
collaborative spirit. He’d spent time in
Philippi sometime previously, preaching Jesus’ gospel, creating a new church,
growing leaders. And now, from prison,
he recalled an old hymn, maybe one they’d learned together, to offer Jesus’
example to his friends. It may be the
oldest hymn in Christian memory. It’s
set apart in verse form in your bulletin:
Adopt
the attitude that was in Christ Jesus, Paul wrote.
Though
he was in the form of God,
he did
not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself
by taking the form of a servant
and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore, God highly honored him
and gave him a name above all names,
so that at the name of Jesus everyone
in heaven, on earth, and under the earth
might bend at the knee
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is LORD, to the glory of God.
Remember this. Paul, writing this, remembering this, singing
this hymn perhaps, was in a Roman prison cell.
He wrote to the Philippians from that cell. I can’t imagine Roman prison cells were
anything but miserable, dark and scary. There
was no doubt, on the inside, who was in control, and who wasn’t. So Paul had firsthand experience, grim,
personal experience of Roman power and pride.
And he knew that any resistance to Roman authority, any critique of
Roman theology was met with quick and crippling force. Paul did both: he resisted authority and he
critiqued the empire’s oppressive theology.
And for this, he paid a price.
Rome said that empire was the ultimate force in the world and Caesar the
bearer of the only meaningful salvation.
Paul said, Foolishness! There’s a
better way. There’s a holy way. There’s a life-affirming, justice-honoring, community-building
way. And it’s the way of Jesus the
Christ. Paul’s preaching is clear. The kingdom of God stands against the kingdom
of Caesar.
So on that brilliant day in
Greece four years ago, I considered the old hymn and Paul’s celebration of the
hymn in a whole new way. I confess that
I’d often bristled at the notion of all knees bending before Jesus, or the idea
that every tongue had to confess his name.
As if the whole point of Christianity was uniformity of thought or
conformity of practice or the triumph of one way of life, one idea of divinity,
over all others. I’d heard Philippians
used in just this way by evangelical preachers on TV and even the great Billy
Graham himself in a college auditorium.
“Let every knee bend before Jesus,” he’d crooned that night, “because
bending knees are saved knees.”
Paul was a Jew, after all, in
the prophetic spirit of Judaism; he was a Jew through and through, and a
radical monotheist. What does that mean,
radical monotheism? It means Paul
believed in one God, one God of all worlds, one God of all creation, one God of
all humankind. As a Jewish monotheist,
Paul experienced God as a unifying force in the universe, a gathering energy
across cultures and communities, a reconciling spirit in a conflicted
world. That’s monotheism. So the last thing Paul imagined was Jesus
vanquishing other religions or humiliating other gods. The last thing he anticipated was Jesus
beating people up with theology or orthodoxy or flimsy evangelical
arguments.
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| Icon, Meteoran Monastery |
So on my boulder that day, in
Greece, I re-read the Letter and I re-introduced myself to Paul. I breathed deeply, inhaled cool Mediterranean
winds and springtime smells and occasional wisps of monastic incense. I copied Philippians word for word in my
journal. And then I looked all around
me—at great winged hawks soaring above and rising angled columns of rock—and I scribbled
down a few poems. You’ll see one in your bulletin this morning. Ask me about it
if you’re interested.
It occurred to me then, and it
occurs to me now, that the nature of the universe is Love. That’s the message Paul preaches to his
friends in Philippi, even from his prison cell.
That’s the whole point, and the reason for communities and
churches. The nature of the universe is
Love. It is not exploitation. It is not humiliation. The nature of the universe is not cutthroat
competition and crude repression and trickle-down economics. The nature of the universe is not some people
win and most people lose and you better get your prayers right or you die
forever. It can’t be. It just can’t be. Because the nature of the universe is Love. And once Jesus’ light touches your eye, once
Jesus’ hand touches your flesh, you see that Love wherever you look. Wherever you look. I saw it then, that wonderful day, in the
knobby obelisks on the plain. I read
about it in the generous response of communities to refugees arriving from the
Middle East. I felt it in my love for
family, friends, church and indeed for the whole, wide world. Jesus did not exploit. Jesus took the form of a servant. Jesus knelt before his friends. Jesus washed their feet. Because the nature of the universe is
Love.
3.
So back to our two arcs, our
two Lenten paths.
Follow the first to the place
where you come to life, where your spirit finds purpose and passion and
pizzazz, and you will almost certainly discover the path to Maundy Thursday in
all its complexity and all its richness and all its power. I have a hunch that you know this already, in
your heart of hearts. You know that your
passion is God’s precious gift, that your passion is cherished by God and
needed by God in the blessing and healing of the world.
Vocation, says Frederick
Buechner, is found at that intersection: where our own deep gladness meets the
deep needs of the world. So follow your
gladness. See where it leads you. And trust that your gladness will take you
where God needs you to go: to a place of delightful creativity, to
relationships of profound and mutual affirmation, to service that truly heals
the world.
I want to put in a final pitch
for our Maundy Thursday practice, for the washing of feet we practice together
right here eleven evenings from tonight.
I make this pitch every year—because I know that washing the feet of
strangers makes us blush or maybe even buckle a bit. But think about it. An opportunity to see and touch Jesus and
everything he meant in his life. Think
about coming that night. Maybe you’ll
grab a towel and kneel before a friend and wash her feet. Maybe you’ll choose to sit in your seat and
simply pray for the church and the spirit of humility we cultivate
together. But come, if you can, and
explore with us the intersection: where deep gladness meets deep hunger, where
passion dances with purpose.
Paul says, in effect, that the
point of our faith isn’t so much believing in Jesus as it is imitating
Jesus. We need one another for
this. We need one another’s
encouragement and we need one another’s forgiveness and we need one another’s
laughter and love. The point isn’t so
much believing in the miraculous things Jesus did as it is imitating the
tender, human, humble way he lived. This
is the heart and soul of our Lenten journey.
Let’s walk together. Let’s wash
one another’s feet. Let’s sing Jesus’
hymn on the way to new and everlasting life.
And let it be. And let it be. And Great God in heaven, let it be so.
