Isaiah 45:21-25
Psalm 98
Philippians 2:[1-4] 5-11
John 12:31-36a

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen. 

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ON THIS DAY four years ago my family sat right off to the side there in the back and visited ASA for the first time.  At the end of the service, when we came up so my baby boy Patrick could press his little lips against a relic of the true cross, I was home.  I grew up around good Baptists and Presbyterians, and they always talked about the cross, but here these Episcopalians actually had a piece of the thing the whole time.  So this is an anniversary for me.  It’s also a day to think about the cross.  We display it in the center of our sanctuaries; we wear little crosses around our necks; but we forget sometimes why the cross is at the center of our faith and why, if we really live out what we believe, our lives will look very strange indeed. 

The text the church in her wisdom chose for this day is Phil. 2, which puts at the center of our worship a song.  Some of your bibles will have the verses we read today offset like lines in a poem because most scholars believe Paul was quoting a poem or a hymn about Jesus.  When Paul wanted to talk about the cross, he reached for liturgy.  Tim Keller says:  “If the bible were a mountain range, this would be one of the two or three highest peaks,” and Phil. 2:6-11 has been called the most Christological paragraph Paul ever wrote, his clearest explanation of who Jesus was.  So what does it say about him, and what does that say about us? 

First, it gives us three glimpses into who Jesus was, and each glimpse has something astounding about it.  It starts with Jesus’ pre-existence – he was in the form of God.  (Phil. 2:6) The astonishing thing that sets Christianity apart from other world religions is that it claims its central figure wasn’t just a prophet, wasn’t just a miracle-worker, wasn’t just a great teacher or a man who was really, really close to God; he was God.  The doctrine of the incarnation teaches that God, who is “wholly other,” took on flesh and became one of us.  The word we translate “form,” morphe, really means essence.  Jesus’ essence was God’s essence, or, as the creed says, he was “of one substance with the Father.”  This is astonishingly high Christology. 

The second astounding thing is that “the incarnation was but the beginning of [Jesus’] self-giving”[i]:  Though Jesus was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited [grasped or held on to], but emptied himself – a phrase the KJV weakly translates as “made himself of no reputation” – taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.  (Phil. 2:6-8)  The word for “emptied himself,” kenosis, really means Jesus emptied himself of his “God-ness.”  Paul isn’t saying Jesus was God at first and then ceased to be God; rather, he was God who chose to pour out his divine prerogative and voluntarily lay aside his power to become weak just as we are.  So weak, in fact, that he died, and on the cross when he died, God died.

Which leads to the third astonishing thing – Jesus was God, he became a man obedient unto death, and because of his obedience God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend . . . and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  (Phil. 2:9-11)  The hymn draws on God’s words through Isaiah the prophet we read today:  “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God . . . unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”  (Isa. 45:21-23)  The divine authority and status Jesus wouldn’t rob the Father of, the Father gave him because of his obedience to redeem the world.

Now, if that hymn is true, then the giant implication of Paul’s words for us is this:  Jesus did that; now you do that.  Today’s reading was supposed to be just verses 5-11, the body of the hymn itself, but I asked Michael to stick in some extra verses at the beginning to give us context.  Paul is writing to the church at Philippi, his first church plant in Europe, friends he loves deeply but who have begun to experience discord and dissension.  Maybe it was because someone was watering down the gospel, or because a feud arose between Euodia and Syntyche, two women who had worked with Paul, but the Philippian church was suffering from jealousy and pettiness that tore at the fabric of their community.[ii]  Paul writes to tell his friends, and he’s telling us, to imitate Jesus’ own humiliation described in the hymn.  Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.  (Phil. 2:2)  We are to cultivate the “Christ-mind,” to have the same mindset that led Jesus to empty himself of his deity and become one of us, becoming obedient to the Father even to the point of death on a cross.  What would it be like for us to have that mind in us?

We would live by a completely different principle of life, one that inverts the world’s values.  My friend Tom Howard puts it this way:  The principle of the world is “your life for me,” but the principle of Jesus is “my life for you.”  The comparison is stark in Paul’s Greek.  He says do nothing from “empty conceit” or kenodoxia – empty glory, personal gain, reputation – but imitate Christ’s kenosis, empty yourselves, and let that be your glory.  Value humility above ambition, and laying down our rights more than demanding they be recognized.  When tempted by self-interest, the Christ-mind gives us the courage to die to personal gain and value others more highly than ourselves. 

One quick example:  Friendships – My wife, Renee’, and I have opposite philosophies of friendship.  I tend to “friend up,” trying to hang around people who are more interesting and cooler than I am.  Renee’ often “friends down,” befriending people she believes might need her help.  When you think about it, both philosophies can be contrary to the gospel.  When we “friend” people, we’re expending capital, expecting a return on our investment when either their coolness rubs off on me or she gets to feel all snugly for having helped somebody out.  Jesus came to befriend people who offered him no return, who couldn’t repay his investment.  How much time do you spend with people who can offer you nothing at all, loving them simply for their sake, not your own?

To the untrained eye, that opens us up to what one commentator calls “the apparent failure of the gospel.”  It’s not a coincidence that we only read Philippians 2 on two Sundays of the year – today, when we exalt the Holy Cross, and Palm Sunday, when we remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem toward an ignominious death.  But in the apparent failure of his death, Jesus’ cross became the instrument of the victory of God over sin and death itself.  The Christian life might appear to be a recipe for failure; after all, how do you get ahead by laying down your life?  But remember the last words of the hymn – every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  Jesus’ obedience glorified the Father, and our lives can do that too.

Wendell Berry is, in many ways, exactly what I’m not.  He is an academic, a farmer and staunch defender of the values of agrarian life.  I’m nowhere near smart enough to be an academic; I don’t want to know where my food comes from, much less actually grow it myself; and I love life in the city, not on the farm.  But Wendell Berry’s poetry speaks to my soul.  In his oddly titled poem “Manifesto:  The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” Berry gets at something of the peculiar inversion of the Christian life: 

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.
Love the Lord.
Love the world.
Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it . . . .
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it.
Leave it as a signto mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.
Pr actice resurrection.[iii]

We are a community gathered around a cross.  What appears to many as a symbol of futility and defeat is, for us, the symbol of our ultimate victory and the source of our life and joy.  Dare to confound expectations.  Dare to live inverted lives, dying to self-interest and ambition and living life for the other.  Taking up our crosses is what makes us Christians, “little Christs,” and it is how God draws the world to himself. 

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.