Proper 21 (25th of September)

G. K. Chesterton famously wrote, “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and not tried.”  I was reminded of this in reading our epistle for today.  St. Paul writes to the Philippians, “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.  Let each of you look … to the interests of others.”  It seems that this is part of what it takes to be a healthy Christian family or community.  For everyone to serve and love each other beyond what we would normally say is the call of duty.  If each of us gave ourselves completely to Jesus and trusted him to take care of us, then we could also give ourselves to serving our brothers and sisters, rather than looking out for number one.  But then, of course, we would all have to make the church the hub of our communal existence.  Our relationships with each other in this community would have to outweigh our other human relationships.  We would have to commit ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, to Christ and his church.  And that is a frightening invitation to a powerful existence.  It is difficult, and therefore we don’t try it.

But let’s step back a moment and look at the rest of what Paul says in this passage.  First of all, why should we try this difficult path of living a Christian life?  It’s a reasonable question.  Just what makes Jesus worthy of our obedience?  We don’t like humility.  Why should we do it?

In order to answer this question, we have to bring to mind just who Jesus is.  He is the eternal second person of the Holy Trinity.  Before his Incarnation, St. Paul says, he “was in the form of God”.  That doesn’t mean that he was shaped like God.  It means he was God, with all the attributes of God.  He experienced things as God.  He was self-existent and omnipresent.  He was infinite and eternal.  He was all-knowing and all-powerful.

But although he was all those things, he was also morally perfect.  And because of that, he knew his place in the hierarchy of things.  He existed eternally in a perfect, loving relationship with the Father.  And yet, on earth he will later say, “The Father is greater than I.”  And so he is perfectly obedient.

Out of obedience and humility, he gave up the eternal experience of the attributes of God.  St. Paul says he “emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.”  Make no mistake.  Jesus wasn’t merely God masquerading as a man.  He was God.  And yet he “emptied himself” in order to become fully human.  It was a staggering humiliation that was asked of him, just to be born, to deal with itches and cuts and limitations of strength, to be with people bigger and stronger than he was, to undergo temptation, to actually experience the limitations of the brain.

And then, “being found in human appearance he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”  He didn’t just appear as a man.  He fulfilled in himself the reality of the appearance.  Even though he was God, even though it was already a humiliation even to be a man at all, he humbled himself and took on the office of a human being.  He died a slave’s death, a traitor’s death, just as we all deserve.

That is a Lord you can obey without hesitation.  That is a master you can love without reserve.  That is a captain you can follow into battle, singing for joy.  And that is why Jesus is more than worthy of our following him, no matter how difficult it may be.  It is no arbitrary, despotic power we deal with in our Lord.  We cannot possibly take on any humiliation for him that he has not taken on for us.

“But,” you say, “how can we possibly follow him?  He is God.  Even if he gave up being all-knowing and all-powerful, he still had an unbroken relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit in prayer.  How are we poor sinful creatures to follow that act?  If he sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane, how am I who have already fallen to the devil so many times ever to resist him effectively?”

There are two answers to this.  One is that Jesus’ self-emptying was not merely instructive.  In going to the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, he paid out the devil.  By dying our slave’s death for us, he forever cut off the devil’s claim on us.  The enemy can no longer command us.  He must persuade us to follow him rather than Jesus.

Secondly, while it is true that we have changes to make, we are not doing it alone.  St. Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for the one working in you is God, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  God the Holy Spirit is working it all out if only you will let him.  Imagine having a boss who hired you even though you had no qualifications, who worked with you every day to make sure you had everything you needed to do the job, who did the really hard parts himself, and at the end made sure you got a promotion for the terrific job you did.  And all you had to do was exactly what he told you.  That’s what we have in God.

The only problem is that we don’t always do what we’re told.  Sometimes we’re not listening carefully enough.  Sometimes we think we can do the job ourselves.  And sometimes we feel put upon that we have to work at all.  And so we stumble and fall and totter around, instead of growing into the job.

There is a very simple solution to all this.  Repentance.  Both our Old Testament passage and our Gospel passage are about repentance.  It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what anyone else has done.  If you’re not doing what you’ve been told, all you need to do is stop, turn around and start doing it.  And the boss will still be there, helping you do the job.  That still doesn’t make it easy, because it’s hard for us to do what we’re told.  But it’s simple and straightforward.

You may be someone who has said “no” to God.  If so, all you have to do is change your mind.  If you turn around and start doing it, then you are the son that did the will of his father.  On the other hand, you may be the son who said “yes”, but never really did it.  You’ve never really changed anything about the way you live just to please God.  Or you’ve changed your ways up to a point, and then it became too hard, because no one else was doing it and your pastor didn’t expect it and … and … and ….  If that’s the case, you are being disobedient.  But the answer is the same as for everyone else.  Just start again.  Stop walking away from God, and start walking with him.

And if you can’t stand to think about the humiliation of admitting you’re wrong and changing your life, just remember that our Lord humbled himself far more than you ever can.

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