October 1. World Communion Sunday. Tempting to speak thematically – although for me, the discipline of accountability to a text presses me toward better preaching than vaguely meandering on a theme, even a beloved one like the idea of communion everywhere. Inevitably, the text for the day will serve well enough. I’m choosing Philippians 2:1-13, which will compel me to highlight not the world so much as the world’s Lord.
The Gospel, Matthew
21:23-32, has surely been preached upon well by a holy host of clergy. But for me, it feels like, with the end
drawing near, Jesus in a bit of a cantankerous mood. This is not his best “a man had 2 sons” story. Jesus clearly isn’t interested in the kinds
of churches we spend our lives in, which so blandly are defined by the old “a
nice place where nice people do nice things with other nice people.” It’s the kooks, the suspect, the sketchy, the
people that church people would deem irreligious: this is the band of followers Jesus would
gather. If I were pressed to preach on
this, I’d lean back toward that Tony Campolo story about
the late night diner birthday party for Agnes the hooker. Or St. Francis (whose feast day will be
Wednesday October 4) – who touched lepers and befriended Muslims.
Exodus 17:1-7 is
rich with possibilities. Back on
September 10 I preached on Exodus 12, the Passover text – and we used the
occasion to teach our congregation about Judaism’s practices. Same here: by luck of the lectionary draw,
this Wednesday is the beginning of Sukkoth – the Feast of Booths, commemorating
the wilderness wanderings. Jewish
families create little shelter-like structures in their homes. Fascinating.
Talk to a rabbi. See if you can
get invited over for a glass of wine. In
the sermon, tell about your visit.
This business of
demanding proof should draw many people in.
Anselm, Aquinas and a host of brilliant people have devised proofs for
God’s existence. Logic can’t bend the
will, or the heart though. As we’ll see
in Philippians 2, Jesus ‘proved’ God by utterly ungodlike actions: humbling, debased, being abused and
killed. There. That’s the only proof you get.
Like the Samaritan
woman at the well (John 4), the people are thirsty – and then they also are
thirsty. This story figured prominently
in the rest of the Bible. Psalm 81 and
95 remember and issue dire warnings based on it. “O that you would listen to me, Israel! Do not be stubborn as you were at Meribah.” As C.H. Spurgeon put it, “Let the example of
that unhappy generation serve as a beacon to you; do not repeat the offenses
which have already more than enough provoked the Lord.”
I also suspect that
this story lay in the background of that mystifying moment in John
7:37-39. The festival’s climax was
reached when the people gathered around the waters from the spring Gihon
flowing into the Pool of Siloam at the foot of Mt. Zion. The priest would dip a golden pitcher into
the water and carry it at the head of a procession of singers and wavers of
palm branches up hill to the Temple precincts.
After marching around the Temple seven times, the priest would pour the
water out on the ground. Jesus, in that
year narrated by John, stood to the side and said to those who could hear, “If
anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”
Philippians 2:1-13
is one of the high water marks in all of Scripture, almost a creed-like
distillation of the entire story of redemption.
Karl Barth: “A text like this can hardly be approached with sufficient
care and concentration, for it offers so much is so few verses – a little
compendium of Pauline testimony.”
Little things
charm me here (and so does the big thing…).
“If there is any encouragement…”
A big if indeed! Clearly the if
implies what there should be, what the church should be about, what we all
crave: encouragement, consolation, love,
sharing, compassion, sympathy. From
these, the possibility of “being of one mind,” so elusive for us, even in
church life, inevitably follows. Where
in our culture will you be told “Regard others as better than yourselves” –
which is curious, since we seem quite naturally to do two weird things
constantly: we harbor dark feelings of
insecurity, suspecting others have it better, scanning Facebook with envy,
etc.; but then we pass snarky judgment on others as if we’re superior – no more
than a kneejerk reaction to our sense of inferiority. Paul wants neither, but the clarity that is
humility. Humility is simple honesty.
But then the
glorious climax: to be one with Jesus, we ponder his story in the words of what
scholars of course think was an early Christian hymn. What a terrific hymn! I close my eyes and try to picture a couple
of dozen Christians gathered in somebody home in Antioch, or after hours in the
marketplace in Philippi. What was the
tune? What did their voices sound like
together? {I like in preaching to raise
such questions – just to tease the imagination; no need to take it further.}
Translators differ
on how to render the very beginning of the thing, but I feel sure I know the
right way! Should it be the familiar “Though
he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”? or the equally valid “Because
he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”?
God didn’t temporarily suspend being God, masquerading as empty, humble,
obedient and slave-like for a season.
God, in Christ, showed us God’s heart, what it always has been and will
be like. His wasn’t to grasp (can we
picture Adam and Eve grabbing that fruit? or Prometheus seizing the fire of the
divinities?), or to consume, but to be emptied, poured out, “born.” God thought I want them to know and love me – so I’ll do this: I’ll become an infant, totally vulnerable,
dependent, the antithesis of power.
Maybe then they will be tender toward me and each other.
As von Balthasar
wrote, “In the Incarnation, the triune God has not simply helped the world, but
has disclosed himself in what is most deeply his own.” Infancy, and crucifixion: this is God.
Paul moves into glorification – but as Barth reminds us, when the
crucified one is glorified, “the abasement is not washed out or cancelled – it is
he [the crucified one] who is exalted; it is to him the great name is given; it
is of him who abased himself that all that follows is said.”
This downward
mobility, this life as emptying, will be ours the closer we are to Jesus.
I will speak of St. Francis, not only because
he is the patron saint of peace in our broken world, but because his to-do list
every day was to be one with Jesus in this humble self-emptying. He shed his wealth, he consorted with the
lowly; he even prayed to share in Jesus’ wounds – and his prayer was answered
with the mysterious wounds he experienced in his hands, feet and side.
The eloquence of
the hymn writer in Philippians 2 (or of Paul, or both) is mind-boggling, and
inspiring – and calms you down considerably.
“At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that
Jesus is Lord.” This is what will
happen, is already happening in a partial, anticipatory way when we gather for
worship, when we imagine joining hands with fellow believers all over the world
on this communion Sunday. I’ll be
preaching and standing behind the Lord’s table on Eastern Standard Time –
and I
will remind my beloved people what I learned from a sermon by Albert Outler (in
his sermon, “The Table of Our Lord,” preached at Highland Park UMC in 1969: “This particular Sunday began twenty hours
ago at the International Dateline in the western Pacific – and the earliest
celebrations were in palm-thatched chapels in Fiji, Samoa, and Micronesia. Then, as the day fled westward round the
globe, other Christians in other countries gathered in their churches to invoke
the living presence of Christ in his sacrament and to receive his healing power
in their hearts and lives – in Japan, the Philippines, Asia and Australia; in
Turkey and Greece and Russia; in Africa, Europe and the Americas – Christians of
every race and color, of all languages, dress and custom, in every conceivable
circumstance of life and fortune.
Christians, we now know, are a minority in the world, but on such a day
as this we loom larger than usual because of our self-conscious community,
generated and sustained by this universal sacrament of God’s love in Christ.”
This lovely riff
reminds me of something Mark Noll wrote about the nature of worldwide
Christianity – and fits flawless into the way Jesus “was born in human likeness
and found in human form.” This is cool: “Christianity appears more and more as an essentially pluralistic and
cross-cultural faith. It appeared first in Asia, then Africa and Europe.
Immediately those who turned to Christ in these ‘new’ regions were at home in
the faith. When they became believers, Christianity itself became Asian,
European and African. Once Christianity is rooted in someplace new, the faith
itself also takes on something from that new place. It also challenges, reforms
and humanizes the cultural values of that place. The Gospel comes to each
person and to all peoples exactly where they are. You do not have to stop being
American, Japanese, German, or Terra del Fuegian in order to become a
Christian. Instead, they all find rich resources in Christianity that are
perfectly fitted for their own cultural situations. It is by its nature a
religion of nearly infinite flexibility because it has been revealed in a
person of absolutely infinite love.”
There are deep
political implications. When the early
Christians said “Christ is Lord,” that was politically subversive, for it
implied “Caesar is not.” And let me
suggest that this business about Jesus emptying himself has implications for
how we as clergy lead, in preaching and everywhere else. Here is an excerpt on this text from my new
book, Weak
Enough to Lead.
Hudson
Taylor, a pioneer English missionary to China, was onto something: ‘God chose
me because I was weak enough. God does not do his great works by large
committees. He trains somebody to be quiet enough, and little enough, and then
he uses him.’
The liberation in learning you are weak enough to lead is twofold. First,
it is always theologically truer to say I am weak and broken than I am strong
and capable. This isn’t self-recrimination, wallowing in self-pity, and
clinging to negative messages absorbed in childhood. It is the joyful clarity
that humility brings, and the holy bonds we discover with others. We need not
wait for the physical collapse of someone before noble things happen. We are
all broken already. Let the outpouring of mercy begin.
And second, when we lead out of our weakness, we are very close to
Jesus, who was handed over, silent before his accusers, meek before his
attackers, and inert as he was laid in the tomb. Jesus led with nothing but
love. When Jesus led in weakness, he was not pretending, as if playing out some
divine charade. What we see in Jesus is who God truly is. I’m fond of what may
be the better translation of Philippians 2:6: instead of ‘Although he
was in the form of God he emptied himself,’ we should read ‘Because he was in
the form of God he emptied himself.’ Indeed. It was precisely because he fully
was God and transparently unveiled the heart of God that Jesus came as a humble
nobody and consorted with nobodies, and laid down his life, bearing shame and
abandoning all privilege. Michael Gorman called the cross ‘the signature of the
Eternal One.’ The Christian leader, while properly interested in things running
smoothly, staff relationships, and bottom lines, is above all else obsessed
with Jesus, wanting not just to please or follow him, but even to be like him,
to be one with him.
So leaders embrace their inevitable weakness, their created limitations,
and are unafraid to share and live out of that weakness…
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** My other recent book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, is also available.
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