Philippians 2:5-11
5 Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus:
6 Though he was in the form of God,
he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
7 But he emptied himself
by taking the form of a slave
and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human,
8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God highly honored him
and gave him a name above all names,
10 so that at the name of Jesus everyone
in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow
11 and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Common English Bible)
“Imago Christi: Images
and Titles of the Living Christ,” Week Four
It
was a heartbreaking scene in Manikchak, a remote village in India that suffers
from immense poverty: a young man, only thirty-five years old, had just died of
cancer, and his neighbors were carrying his body for more than a mile and a
half to the village crematorium, to say goodbye to him one last time and chant
prayers over him before his body would be burned and his ashes deposited into a
nearby river.
There
was one twist, though, that made this scene not just heartbreaking, but
heartwarming as well: the crowd of neighbors putting on this impromptu funeral
were doing so for a friend of a completely different faith as theirs. Manikchak
is almost entire Muslim, but the man who died, Biswajit Rajak, was a son of one
of only two Hindu families in the entire village.
And
so even with their differing faiths, Rajak’s friends were determined to send
him off in a way that honored him and who he was by holding his cremation and
funeral in accordance with Hindu tradition. On top of that, as Sreyasi Pal of
the Hindustan Times notes, because Rajak’s family was so poor that they could
not afford the cremation, the town covered his entire funeral expenses:
Rajak was suffering from
liver cancer and died at his home on Monday. But when his family could not
arrange for his cremation on Tuesday, villagers gathered at his house and
requested Biswajit’s father Nagen Rajak to allow them to cremate his son.
Even the moulavi of the
local mosque also went to the crematorium. The Muslim neighbors paid the money
necessary for his last rites. The Rajaks are one of the two Hindu families in
the village of about 6,000 residents.
“I had neither the money
nor the manpower to take my son to the crematorium. I don’t know what would
have happened if the villagers didn’t come forward for the last rites of my
son,” said Rajak’s father, Nagen Rajak, with tears streaming down his eyes.
Haji Abdul Khalek, who
took the lead in arranging the last rites told HT, “No religion preaches hatred
towards others. Biswajit was like our brother. Allah wouldn’t have forgiven us
if we looked the other way thinking that the family follows some other
religion.”…
The Muslim neighbors of
Rajak also paid for his treatment and arranged to send him to a hospital in
Kolkata.
When
we think of the nature of lordship from a divine rather than a human
perspective, the establishment of such honor is always brought about by serving
and by sacrificing. As Haji Abdul Khalek conveyed, the Muslims of Manikchak did
their tradition such an honor in the funeral of Biswajit Rajak, and from a
Christian perspective, I can say that I too saw the honor in their kindness.
This
is a new sermon series for the church season of Easter, which extends for the
forty-nine days between Easter Sunday last week to Pentecost Sunday, when the
Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples as described in the second chapter of
Acts. Much like Christmas, then, Easter does not actually end on Easter Day,
but rather continues for a number of days afterwards so that we may continue
our celebration of the good news that each of these two holidays represents and
teaches us.
So
for the 2017 Easter season, we’ll be using words to explore something
visual—the images of the living and risen Jesus Christ that have been handed
down from one generation of Christians to another throughout the centuries.
Some of these images of Christ are almost as old as the church (the Way, in its
Biblical incarnation) itself. All of them are rooted in Scriptural accounts of
the Lord. And they each have something different to teach us about how
different Christian communities at different points in time saw Jesus as the
promised Messiah.
We
began this series three weeks ago by rewinding to Good Friday to the image of
Jesus the man being hauled out before the chief priests and temple authorities
by Pontius Pilate, and we remained in Good Friday for the removal of Christ’s
body from the cross, and the image of Mary holding her dead son’s body that was
immortalized most famously in Michelangelo’s (the Sistine Chapel painter, not
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle) statue of the two, called the Pieta.
Then
last week, we turned to a very famous and well-known image of Christ that Jesus
Himself conjures up for us in John 10: the image of Him as the Good Shepherd,
leading His sheep, sheep that He describes in this passage as ultimately being
of one flock, since, after all, they are all of the one God. And this week, we
turn to perhaps the most fundamental image of all of Jesus: that of Him as
Lord, which of course is a paradoxical image of Him, as He is Lord through His
lowliness.
That
lowliness is no small demonstration from God, either. The same God who
fashioned heaven and earth from mere words, who was able to create light simply
by uttering, “Let there be light,” that God was dedicated enough, and devoted
enough, to humanity to decide to send a vestige of that divinity to us in the form
of our own flesh. As Paul conveys in this hymn, it was a humbleness, an
emptying out of power and splendor and wonder the likes of which the world had
never seen either before or since.
It
is an extremity—obedience as a slave even unto death—that might make us a bit
squeamish, but it should not precisely because it illustrates the extent to
which God’s devotion, and Christ’s devotion, to us reaches. It certainly made
Peter squeamish, when Jesus took on the task of a slave in washing the feet of
the disciples in John’s Gospel, yet after learning that he must allow Jesus
this humbleness, Peter insisted on Jesus washing not just his feet but his
hands and his head as well!
So
we admire that lowliness and humbleness of Jesus, in part precisely because we
are aware of His divine origins. Jesus gave up so very much to become human in
the first place, even before giving up His own human life as well on the cross.
So we would be right to look upon the very existence of Jesus, not just His crucifixion,
as a sacrifice.
And
it is right for us to admire such sacrifice, especially from a place of
lowliness, whether from Jesus, or from His earthly mother Mary, or from a small
village of Muslim Indians halfway around the world from us. But if all that
Paul’s words evoke for us is a sense of admiration of Jesus (or of Paul, for
that matter), then Paul has not taken us nearly far enough—and I think Paul
would be the first to point that out to us.
For
where this becomes an obstacle for Christians, then, is that as Bible scholar
Ernest W. Saunders is keen to point out in his own commentary on Philippians,
we are more apt to *admire* such lowliness rather than to *emulate* such
lowliness. Saunders calls Christ’s lowliness “the scandal of the Gospel,”
writing: “But how are we to make it real for our world where self-sufficiency
and success are the most prized goals? People like Mother Teresa of Calcutta
and Martin Luther King Jr. may evoke admiration from us, but less likely
emulation.”
Examples
of selflessness and humility may evoke admiration from us, but less likely
emulation. If there is a single sentence to sum up the existential crisis that
Christianity has found itself in honestly probably ever since it went from
minority religion to the state faith of the Roman Empire, this is it.
We
are no longer willing to be Christian from a place of lowliness because
lowliness, especially on a global scale, is no longer our starting or default
position. We live in the wealthiest country in the world, even if we ourselves
do not partake of the lion’s share of its riches, and we see in where we live a
divine exceptionalism, an almost special-child status in the world.
But
God is not an American. Jesus was not an American. And we can find in people
like the citizens of Manikchak, who on paper may seem to have nothing in common
with us but our humanity, a far more profound emulation of the ministry and
values of Jesus Christ than what we see lived out in our own communities on a
day-to-day basis.
This
is a village of immense material poverty, that is already empty and devoid of
so much financial wealth that we take for granted, and whose spiritual richness
was put on display not for the sake of its own dominant tradition, but for that
of a son who, much like Jesus Himself, died far, far too soon.
That
is the scandal of the Gospel. That is why the Good News, good though it is,
should scare us so—because it should remove from us any ability to claim
exceptionalism before the throne of God. The same grace and mercy that covers
me as a pastor covers you as a layperson. I don’t get special treatment either
just because I’m a Christian who has gone pro.
So
today’s mandate is a simple one: try to take some of your deep admiration of
Jesus and transform it into emulation of Jesus. And not just in a schlocky,
“WWJD?” sort of way. But in a way that is capable of fundamentally changing
your very self into a vessel that more clearly and lucidly than ever reflects
the One who has recognized you for who you are: a sinner called and redeemed,
and who has since called you to go forth to help save and redeem other sinners.
So
like Christ, empty yourself of those higher pretensions to which you might
still cling. Empty yourself of those conceits that may guide you towards
selfishness rather than empathy and ego rather than connectedness.
And
in their place, let the need to not just admire but emulate the life of Jesus
Christ burn brightly within you, lighting your way forward towards that God who
highly honored Jesus as a result, and who highly honors you with an attention
so caring and so loving towards you that you will never, ever be without it.
May
it be so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
May
14, 2017
