Preached at Peace Lutheran, Clayton and St. Peter Lutheran, Garnavillo
I am going to preach on the
Philippians hymn today, which I do with some measure of trepidation,
because I feel I should be up-front about this from the start: I don’t
particularly like this passage. Maybe
this is very familiar scripture to you, it is for me (now), but once upon a
time, I was sitting in a class at seminary and the professor told us that we
would be meditating on this scripture to begin class… every period… all
semester long. Our professor expected that we would already know this scripture
pretty well, seeing as it was so commonly read in church, which was news to me
(who had a degree in Religion at the time), but the professor also said we
would see and hear new things when we meditated on this passage over and over…
and over again.
Perhaps
you all have experienced the sensation of repeating a word ad nauseum until it
loses its meaning—a phenomena that is called semantic satiation? Well,
what I experienced with this passage is what I am going to call theological
satiation. Rather than opening up new thoughts, ideas, and possibilities, the
more I read, the less meaning I found. It began to feel like meaningless ideas
that I was obligated to nod along with, because that was what it meant to treat
the scripture with the reverence it deserved.
“What
word stuck out to you today?” the professor would ask.
“Humbled,”
I would think for the seventh time.
“And
what image do you see when you hear the text?”
“Nothing.
Meaninglessness. The void.”
These were all things I wouldn’t say, so I mostly didn’t say anything at all, which—looking back—was a huge mistake, because I was so fearful of saying what I truly felt (which was nothing) that it kept me from being honest. And whenever we are lying, or faking it, or whatever, because we feel obligated to do something or be something or think something, it is precisely then that we are not giving the scripture the reverence it deserves. I forgot in that class that all scripture is meant to be wrestled with—that’s what faithfulness looks like—not ignoring it, but wrestling—confronting what I found to be, frankly, boring.
So, today I have the opportunity to re-enter this scripture from a different perspective. There is a lot of good stuff here. My professor was right about that, but the Philippians Song (as it is called) is really a summation of everything that we hold in the faith—and it’s all very heady and theological—and neither my Religion degree nor my Masters in Divinity have made me particularly interested in theoretical theology. I suspect this is one reason why I work at camp—I’d rather be out doing things.
But
it is worth understanding why we do the things we do—and it is important to
check ourselves against our tendency to do what’s best only for us, and
Philippians 2 does help us in that regard. These are passages about being
humble, like Jesus was humble. “Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others,” writes Paul (Phil 2:4). Now this resonates
with me. In fact, after a while, it was the only line in the entire passage
that still felt fresh. I can get behind an ethos that is about putting others
before myself. This undergirds everything we do as a church and as a camp;
everything is for the sake of those who need it most—for the child who has not
known enough love, for the parent who sees growth in their camper.
90% of Ewalu
parents report that their campers see improved self-confidence after a week at
camp. 90%! Perhaps this may sound strange, but I believe that humility starts
with self-confidence. You have to be confident enough in yourself to let go.
There is this maxim, “Fake it until you make it.” That’s just about the
opposite of what I’m talking about. Instead, know that through Christ you are
able to do anything. You were created to be exactly who you are. You are
enough. Given that God created you to be you, now choose to humble yourself for
others who do not yet see it. That is humility. It is a mark of confidence in
the right things.
That is a two-part
lesson we teach at Ewalu: You are enough, now go give yourself away for a world
that needs you. And it isn’t easy! Paul writes lines like this: “Let the same
mind me in you that was in Christ Jesus” as if that is straightforward to
follow. I don’t know about you, but I find myself wondering: How exactly do I
have the same mind as Jesus? Can I really take up my cross and follow? What
would that even look like?
Asking this
question led me to a realization, which I had only two days ago. So, I guess my
professor was right—I can still find new things after so many readings
of the scripture, though perhaps this is not what they meant. I realized why I
have zoned out this passage for over a decade. In these verses, Paul is heavy
on theology and big on humility, but absent is another theme in so much of his
writing: A thing we call “grace”. And I don’t know about you, but flowery
language about faith is unapproachable for me without grace. I need grace even
more than I need humility. I need to know that when I fail to have the same
mind as Jesus (and boy, do I!), that there is something there to catch me.
I don’t get there
in Philippians 2. And that’s OK, there’s plenty of other scripture about grace
if I just keep reading, but it struck me that perhaps some of you are in the same
shoes as well. And I know that many of our campers are in those shoes. They
need grace not every so often, not just on occasion, but ALL THE TIME, because
our awareness of our inadequacy never goes away. I believe that one of the
primary reasons our campers see such growth in self-confidence is because of
grace—because (perhaps for the first time) they come to understand that they
are loved whether they are perfect or not—and that frees something in their
souls. That self-confidence is born from the cross where all our brokenness is
put to death. But next, like Easter morning, they rise! Our campers become
Easter-people, and Easter-people are humble people because they know that they
are dead, yet through Christ they live.
Which brings me to
the final realization I had about this passage, which came to me also just this
week: This is not an Easter passage. Which is OK, again not every passage in
scripture needs to be about the empty tomb, but for those of us who are
Christians in the year of our Lord 2023, we must be Easter-people. We must
proclaim not just the law that drives us to Jesus Christ, but also the full
power of the Gospel that is marked by the cross and the empty tomb. And I
wonder if this passage has any room for we-Easter-people. Or is this just more
hedging of the law? Because, ultimately, the good news is not only what Jesus
Christ has done—dying on the cross, rising on Easter morning—but also what his
death and resurrection mean for you.
This is why I’m
going to quarrel with Paul one last time about how this passage ends. I do not
believe, as Paul says, that you need to “work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling.” Or at least I believe we all do that anyway—that’s like telling
a worrier to worry. OK, check! Rather, we need to know that our fear and
trembling is met by a God who gathers lost sheep and says, “I got you!” And who
preaches “The first shall be last and the last shall be first,” and all those
other parables of grace that we have been reading these last several weeks.
I wonder now if
that isn’t the best lesson that this scripture has taught me. After a dozen
years in ministry, I now have context for what was once theory. There is value
in the law as a tool to drive us to Jesus Christ, but to leave anybody with the
impression that God is only going to meet them halfway—that they need to try harder—to
become humble like Christ is humble—well, that’s just nonsense. Worse, it makes
a mockery of the cross. After a dozen years reflecting on this passage, I realized
for the first time that it needs way more context, because for many folks it might
be the only chance to hear the good news and I’m not going to waste it!
I am acutely aware
of this both when I go into congregations and preach (and let me tell you, I
was handed a preaching text on divorce last January that was not the one
impression I wanted to give to that congregation), but also I am aware of how
this works for campers who come to Ewalu for the first time. It is OK for
campers to hear about their need for a Savior if we deliver on the promise that
there is one for them. And it is OK for campers to learn that they are sinners
(which they already know, by the way) if we help them meet the God who takes
away their sins. But it is not OK to leave campers with the impression that
their salvation depends on their own holiness, or that there is something
broken in them that cannot be fixed, hoping that someday down the line they
discover that that fix will come in Jesus Christ. We do much better than that!
At camp, we seek
to embody grace, because Jesus does too. So, I’m sorry to Paul with his
beautiful Philippians hymn, but I am going to make even this about grace.
Because I need it. And so do you. Because I do not believe that God is
interested in us spending any more of our time working out our salvation with
fear and trembling than we already are. Because Jesus Christ didn’t die for us
to meet him halfway. Because the power of the resurrection is the power that
inspires campers and their parents, camp counselors, and every person who steps
foot at Ewalu to understand why Ewalu as a place apart matters. Because we are
Gospel-people. We are Jesus-people. We are Easter-people. And if I get one
chance to preach with you, I’m not going to spend a moment saying anything
else.
And that’s maybe
the best lesson I’ve learned since seminary.
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