January-25-2009-Click-Here-To-Play
Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, January 25th, 2009
While there were many high points at Tuesday’s inauguration of Barak Obama, one tender moment for me was the playing of Simple Gifts by a quartet including Yo Yo Ma and Izak Perlman. Even if it was pre-recorded, the beautiful music reinforced the ancient way music creates a bond between events and people.
Part of my Simple Gifts touched me is that when I hear or sing that song, my mind immediately goes to mentors of Tammy and mine, Loren and Ruth Halvorson, who used that song and its ethic in the founding of a retreat center in MN.
Likewise, when I see Yo Yo Ma, I almost always think of his appearance on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood many years ago, explaining the cello and playing for children. I can’t hear his music without feeling the warmth of his spirit towards children. I experience all of his music coming from that warm spot in his heart.
It is the same way with certain liturgies. A couple of weeks ago, Sara Roberts began a prayer here in worship, “Holy One, our Only Home” – the beginning of a variation on the Lord’s Prayer – one that I associate with the sisters of Holy Wisdom (formerly St. Benedicts). Every time I hear those words, I remember their devotion to the land on which they live north of Lake Mendota, their decades of service to God through environmental education, spiritual teaching, worship and community activism.
As we read this text from Philippians today, part of what we are witnessing is this same connection between a people and an early church hymn or liturgy. Paul’s relationship with the church at Philippi had been warm and cordial. This was the first church founded in Europe. It continued to support Paul and there was ongoing close relationship between them. As he writes them, however, Paul is in perilous circumstances, imprisoned and facing imminent death.
In the face of this ambiguous future – Paul remembers this community with fondness and lifts up this early church hymn. It is not clear where the hymn comes from, but we can imagine that he included it in his letter to them because it was a hymn/prayer that reinforced their strong bond and their sacred history together. .
He also uses it to begin a conversation with them about the nature of the Christian community and its relationship to the culture in which it is located.
But, as we read this, it is all well and good that Paul and the Philippians were warm and cozy – but it doesn’t remove some inherent tension within us as we receive his words today.
On the one hand, at the beginning of the text, we see encouragement for this community at Philippi with words like united with Christ, tenderness and compassion, like minded, being of one spirit and purpose, do nothing out of selfish ambition, or vain conceit, have the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. It may not be our exact language, but so far, no problem.
On the other hand, he ends his description of this Christ Jesus with the lines, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
In our experience and in our understanding of history, these lines have been used to convert others, to squelch the faith of others, to initiate wars, and to propagate religious intolerance. Many who have used these words throughout history have demonstrated very FEW of the characteristics outlined in the beginning of the passage. Paul is encouraging the early church to live with a certain amount of humility and compassion – and by extension, we assume he is asking the church universal to live the same way – and yet the end of the passage seems to give license for a very different kind of behavior.
There’s a problem here, and it is hard to know what to do with this passage.
In such cases, rather than abandoning the text or abandoning the church, it may be most helpful to return to the text with those very questions in mind. It might be helpful to poke and prod a bit with these words to find out if we can learn more about our relationship as people of faith in the world.
1. This is a letter written by a very enthusiastic person to a church he loved. It is not a dogmatic writing, but a passionate pastoral letter. It is lifting up Paul’s adoring relationship with this church. It is not “missional theology 101”. Even if we can’t figure out what was saying or why he was saying it, it is clear that the gospels and his letters include many other sentiments.
2. Paul’s context is radically different from ours. He is not inheriting centuries of interpretation and use of this text in the way we are. Because of that, we are reading and hearing it quite differently. For example, part of what amazes me is this guy is in the midst of being persecuted, he is in prison, and he still calls others to live a life of humility.
I remember stories of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, famous German churchman imprisoned by the Nazi’s for collaborating against Hitler, who became a favorite prisoner among his guards because he treated them with kindness, respect, and friendliness. Whatever their politics, he knew they were human beings, and he never let his own passionate belief get in the way of their shared humanity. He took Paul’s encouragement to be a humble servant to very end of this life.
3. Whatever the part about every knee should bow means, it is clear the main focus of the passage is humility before others. He encourages the Philippians in this way, and he lifts up Jesus in this way. Not long ago, as we read last week, Paul was “dragging followers of Jesus bound back to Jerusalem.” His conversion was to both to the love of Jesus and away from the militancy and arrogance of his terrorist ways.
The change in Paul’s life is from seeing God as the one to whom he brings human ‘captives’– to seeing in Jesus one who would could have claimed certain powers, but lived as a servant. It is this same word, servant, that he uses for himself.
4. But then what about this last section. What does this equality with God” and “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” mean? How do we make sense of this foreign, and parochial sounding religious doctrine? What does it mean to follow one who claimed to be non-exploitative and not exploit some for greater ends?
William Loader, progressive pastor from Australia – suggests that Jesus is ‘Lord’ now not he is dominant over all other religious teachers, but because God names him as representing the way of divine being. The important point is not that he is given the name Jesus. Rather it is that Jesus receives another name. That name is none other than the name that is above all other names: the unspoken name of God, represented by the word, ‘Lord’.
In the ancient context, bearing someone’s name was like bearing their responsibility and being recognized as able to represent them. It is with this ancient Hebrew understanding that Jesus is called “son of God” or “son of righteousness.” These are not exclusive titles, but titles that reveal how people experienced him – as living in the way of God, the way of righteousness. Therefore, bearing the name of God, or Lord, was a way of saying that Jesus really does reveal God and the way God is
In pointing out the need for communal humility and lifting up Jesus’ humility, Paul seems to asking, are we seeking to live in a way that reflects the unspoken name of God? Are we seeking to live in such a way that represents our understanding of God’s way in the world? Do we bear the name “God follower” or Christian (Christ follower) as a cloak of humble seeking or do we use it as some kind of elitist inheritance that allows us to abuse others?
And so we come to the question of if, and how, we use our religious inheritance and in what name we live. Many of us live uncomfortably with the name Christian or any other religious descriptor for ourselves. However, to be honest, we probably struggle not because of what Jesus did and said, but what other followers of him say and do. The early church hymn invites a reflection not on misguided or unfortunate history or the interpretation of others, but on the faith in God demonstrated by Jesus, a faith rooted in humility and service?
Another shorthand way of asking the question comes from the bumper sticker my sister sent me yesterday, “Are you following Jesus this closely?”
Whether or not we are ready to embrace the actual name “Christian” or follower of Jesus, how might that name shape us as we encounter others in our culture?
One of the realities of our day that is different than Paul’s day is the reality of serious and long term ‘culture wars.” Paul might invite us to consider our own behavior in that context.
What is it that is guiding us as we seek to live the truth we know? Have we succumbed to the language and tactics of the very ones we criticize? Do we seek to embody Christianity in the world that looks like Paul’s invitation to the Philippians’ community, or are still so angry at those who have used the name of Jesus in other ways that we either won’t engage or worse, seek to treat others as badly as we have been treated? In that regard, tolerating or even affirming public presence of a Rick Warren at the inauguration is just the beginning.
“The problem with the culture war,” say the editors of The Christian Century in their January 27 editorial, “is not that it is wrong to fight for one’s beliefs. Rather, the culture war is a problem because in an all-out war, opponents become enemies to be defeated at all costs. In a war there is little incentive to search for middle ground or to make alliances on other issues.”
The culture war has been especially debilitating to Christians, who make the unusual claim that those united with Christ are also united with each other in Christ’s body, the church.
That same Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote: “The church is the church only when it exists for others. . . . The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. . . . It must not underestimate the importance of human example which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus.”
Ultimately, Paul seems to recognize that the way to authenticity – within ourselves, our families, our communities of choice, and our culture – is recognizing we are not in charge. Like Jesus before us, like Paul and Timothy in Philippi – we are servants. We serve a God who seeks those who will follow as Jesus followed – not seeking to get others to bow down to us or our way of living – but those who live with the awareness that the God of grace touches us in so many different ways.
We are blessed to know we have been touched by the Spirit. We are an even greater blessing when out of that “touch” flows the very likeness of the God we serve. Amen
Today’s text from Philippians 2:1-11
Imitating Christ’s Humility
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
