16 Sunday after Pentecost
Philippians 2:1-13
28 September 2014
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Someone once said, “Every
thought is a seed. If you plant crab
apple seeds in your mind, don’t expect to harvest golden delicious
apples.” Our minds are full of
thoughts. The question is how much
control do we and can we exercise over what thoughts we give most attention. Here’s a little experiment: right now, try to
quiet your mind for 60 seconds. Just close your eyes and try not to think about
anything.
Well, how did it go? How many thoughts did you have in that minute? If you’re like most people, there may have been a few moments of complete quiet in your mind, but unless you’ve had a lot of practice at this, you probably weren’t able to completely silence your thoughts.
Well, how did it go? How many thoughts did you have in that minute? If you’re like most people, there may have been a few moments of complete quiet in your mind, but unless you’ve had a lot of practice at this, you probably weren’t able to completely silence your thoughts.
In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts’s character tries to quiet her mind to meditate - only to have a variety of random thoughts fly through her mind. Instead of finding peace in her meditation, she starts planning to build a meditation room in her mind. Frustrated, she drops her head to her pillow, exasperated by how hard it is to calm her mind for even one minute.
It’s called “monkey mind”
— when our mind jumps from thought to thought like a monkey jumps from tree to
tree. Our brains come up with all sorts of things to think about. It’s
estimated that the average person has around 70,000 thoughts per day. That’s about 50 per minute, almost one per
second.
How many of those
thoughts have anything to do with our seeking to be more Christ-like? More Christ-like you say, “Oh, I’m just
trying to stop thinking so many negative thoughts about that family member who
makes me so angry! Another says, “I’m
just trying to stop thinking about the chocolate in the kitchen cabinet, or
about all the things I need to do this afternoon.
Paul says we should have
the mind of Christ, thoughts that are focused on doing God’s will, that we are
willing to humbly sacrifice as he did, for the sake of others. I don’t know about you, but my mind is so
full of my own thoughts, needs, aspirations, I don’t have enough room for God
in my head. Christ, our God, is too
all-encompassing to fit into the cracks.
I have to do some mind-clearing, quite literally, to gain the mind of
Christ. If my mind is full of worry, full of pride,
full of negativity about myself or others, there is no room for God’s grace,
peace, mercy, and love to fill me up and make me the person I am meant to be. Hear now Paul’s challenge to have the mind
of Christ.
Philippians 2:1-11
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my
joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord
and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but
in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of
you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though
he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being
born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 9
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every
name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in
heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always
obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is
at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (NRSV)
Paul begins with a ridiculous
set of four conditional clauses. If
there is any encouragement in Christ, if there any consolation from love, if
there’s any sharing in the Spirit, if there any compassion and sympathy…Of
course Paul knew that all of these do exist in abundance, so writing from
prison, with his own life hanging in the balance, he is pushing his readers to
fulfill that encouragement, that consolation, that sharing, and compassion and
sympathy by being in full accord, by loving one another. Again, he speaks in four’s. Have the same mind, the same love, the same
unity, the same purpose.
Then he goes on to explain what it means to love: not being motivated by selfish ambition but
in humility, putting others ahead of yourself, looking to what matters to them
before concerning yourself with what matters to you. Paul could have been worrying over his
predicament imprisoned as he was, but instead he is concerned about them. He is living out this key verse by his
joy-filled letter to them from prison, when he says, 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each
of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Here’s the best quote I know on this verse: “Paul is not
asking to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.” So this is not an invitation to criticize
yourself, to be self-deprecating, but to become a fuller self in Christ.
People who are always putting themselves down are actually totally
focused on themselves, waiting for someone else to give them an affirmation. “Paul is not asking you to think less of
yourself, but to think of yourself less.”
We actually need to think highly of ourselves, in that we need to see
that we are treasures of God, beloved by God, belonging to God, having great
meaning and purpose. Only when you
appreciate yourself fully as a child of God, like Jesus did, can you be the
empty vessel filled with God’s grace, peace, love, hope, and joy.
“Paul is not asking you to think less of yourself, but to
think of yourself less.” It is our
needy self that needs to keep frequently thinking of self. Do I feel secure? Do I feel loved? Do I have enough? With Christ in you, yes, you are secure, you
are loved, and you do have enough.
So you can empty yourself of all that striving. You can empty yourself of all that
worrying. You can empty yourself of
self-oriented behaviors – seeking too much the attention of others either by
your neediness or your strength. You
can stop all the striving for self-oriented goals because you are secured and
completely full of the love of God. It
is yours. You have nothing to prove to
anyone. You are accepted and
loved. So your self can be set
aside. Your self is fine. So stop thinking of self. Don’t think less of yourself, but think of
yourself less, less frequently. That’s
where real love begins. That’s where
real unity of one human to another is possible. It begins with humans knowing themselves to
be loved and secure, so they begin to think more of the other. Then love can transcend the divide between
us.
When we stop worrying so much about self, we can actually
care for another. When we stop fearing
that the other will take advantage of us, not listen to us, terrorize us, put
us at risk, take our stuff, belittle us, disrespect us, then we can get on with
loving the other, which ironically, makes our healing, wholeness, peace,
salvation come sooner, nearer. The text
says, Christ emptied himself. We fear
being emptied, because we think there will be nothing-ness or worse, someone
will dominate us or criticize us for being a nothing. Christ emptied himself to make room for more
of God, to be the channel the God and human connection. Christ makes it clear that when we empty
ourselves to make room for God, there is nothing others can do to take that
power and strength and grace away from us.
They can argue with us, mock us, or even kill us, but we are not
gone. We are alive in God – more alive
than we would be, trying to protect ourselves and fill our lives with
self-oriented passions.
Think of the transformation of families, communities, and
churches if each person is seeking to meet the needs of others. It is not what you get out of worship, but
what you give to someone else in worship.
It is not whether you feel welcome and comfortable during fellowship
time but whether you make someone else feel cared for. It is not whether you come to Wonderful
Wednesdays or Sunday school because you enjoy it, but whether you are encouraging
others to grow. It’s not about
you. It is about people voluntarily
putting others first. This is a radical
notion of being mindful of others over self.
Jesus modeled that mindfulness.
As Christ-God, he was fully God and fully able to avoid all suffering,
but he chose to take the form of a slave.
He chose to limit himself, limit his own power, in his humanity, to be
just like us. He could have rescued
himself from the suffering and become the overpowering Messiah the disciples
imagined him to be, but he humbled himself and became true to his identity and
calling. That’s obedience – to be true
to who you really are.
And who is Christ truly?
He is love, a love that cannot let us go. God is love, and for God to demonstrate love
means to suffer for and with us, to walk alongside us, to feel our pain and
loss, our loneliness and isolation, our fears and hopes and dreams so that he
can redeem us, save us, give us new life, having lived our life. Notice that every act of sacrifice is an
active verb – emptied himself, took the form of a slave, humbled himself,
became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, the lowliest form
of death. And having actively given himself
up, Christ is restored as he becomes the object of God’s uplifting
actions. Therefore, God highly exalted
him, gave him the name above every name.
In Jesus Christ, God is humbled and humanity is exalted. In that leveling is our unity, our oneness
in God’s love.
And this earliest Christian hymn ends with all of humanity
getting on board with Christ’s love – every knee bending, every tongue
confessing – Jesus Christ is Lord. In
both his majesty and his lowliness, the greatness of Christ is made known. And
Paul goes on then to challenge us to work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both
to will and to work for his good pleasure.
To be saved in a Biblical sense is to be
healed, to be whole, to be at peace. But
how? By knowing, by actively filling
our minds with the thought, and our heart with the trusting faith that it is
God at work in us, giving us both the desire and the energeo (that’s the Greek
word) the power or energy to be saved.
So salvation is a free gift of God, yes it is, but not a passive
gift.
We are to actively put on the mind of Christ,
knowing that God is working in us to give us the desire or will to be like
Christ, and God giving us the power and the energy to be like Christ. If the desire and the will, the power and the
energy are there, there’s nothing needed but my active cooperation with
that. Active cooperation means full
submission to God. Serving God
faithfully will always involve both suffering and being lifting up or
exaltation. Suffering is simply an
opportunity to draw near to Christ, to develop the mind of Christ, to take on
some of the pain of the world to become more like Christ. Successes are simply opportunities to draw
near to Christ – to not think more highly of yourself than you should
think.
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