Emptied & Filled

Philippians 2:1-13 (NRSV): If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. I give thanks to God for the Divine Providence that has led me and my family here to Rehoboth. Likewise, I give thanks to God for the Divine Providence of the journey. I have spent roughly a quarter of a century living a few hundred miles north of here and roughly a quarter of a century living a few hundred miles south of here. And while nothing compares with this enchanted place, of course, I have appreciated the opportunity to experience life elsewhere in the East. One of the things that sticks with me through the changes in latitude is the changes in language. While not tremendous, there are certain accents and certain idioms - sayings - which are unique to their region. In the South, for example, there was a phrase bandied about for a person who was judged to be overly proud of themselves. "She's awfully full of herself", people might say. It had been some time since I had thought about that phrase, as its one that you don't hear much, if at all, around here. But this week's New Testament reading brought it back to me. For here, Paul is warning his brothers and sisters in Christ against this very label. "Don't be too full of yourselves", he says, and he illustrates what it looks like to the opposite in the example set by Jesus. "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,..." If any one ever had reason to be full of themselves, it was the Only Begotten of the Father, the One who was on par with God, as Paul says, the One who "had equality with God". Despite this, Jesus chose the path that leads away from fullness of self, the path that allows for one to be filled with God and His spirit. "He emptied himself", it says strikingly in verse 7. In this extreme act of humility was an extreme act of obedience. Now it may sound a bit odd - laughable really - to be talking about humility in the days and weeks leading up to a general election in this country, but, as Providence would have it, here we are, and this is the New Testament epistle reading suggested for today by the Revised Common Lectionary. Right here, smack dab in the middle of the media wars that grip our nation tighter and tighter every four years, the words of God in Holy Scripture ring out once again in a plea for Christians to be humble and obedient. Obedient not to idols not constructed in airbrushed public personas, nor those made by human hands; obedient not to the Law or a political ideology or even to the Constitution, but obedient to Christ and Christ alone. Imitating the obedience we read of in Christ is the joyful response of the sinner who's captivity has been put to full and permanent closure. I find it interesting that Scripture extends this call to humility beyond the individual, to the corporate. I mean it's one thing for Paul to say, "Hey if you are a follower of the name of Jesus, then you ought to be following the way of Jesus" - or, as translated here, "let the same mind be in you". "Act as we saw and heard Jesus act, for that's the way you live out the calling which you have professed believing". One might call this a personal path of piety. But it's another thing to make demands beyond the individual and upon a group. Yet the language the Apostle uses here in his letter to the Philippians hints at this, as his audience is the fellowship in that city, not a single person in the fledgling church there. It is the community of faith which is, together, being charged to witness to the head of the faith by being the body of Christ in a manner that most fittingly imitates the ways Christ's body behaved while he ministered among men. And, as we heard in our Old Testament reading, the call to humility is unreservedly made in the word of God to the people of God. In fact, this passage from Second Chronicles was a call for a national response on the part of the Hebrews. So, what authors of both passages in the Old Testament and the New agree on and urge God's people to do, collectively, is to spend less time and energy absorbed in the endeavors of our own world and spend more participating in the Kingdom of God as it is being brought into being here on earth. We really ought not be so surprised, as it seems that running throughout the Biblical story is a persistent theme of humility. Again and again God chooses to do some surprising things through the auspices of some surprisingly humble agents. There was the little boy David, the runt of Jesse's litter. With seven older brothers, there was nothing at all outstanding about this humble shepherd. When it came time for a lineup of potential heirs to the throne of Israel, the big, strapping specimens were all passed over for the one who had not even been invited to show his face for the lineup of potential regents. As we've been reading about recently in the Sunday School class, there was Joseph, another humble flock-tender with a slew of older brothers. His dreams displeased and scared his siblings, so they got rid of him. But God had plans to use the one who was cast off. Mary, the wife of Joseph of Nazareth was a humble woman of no particular note. A young, ordinary bride received a visit from an angel with extraordinary news and she humbled herself in obedience to serve the will of God as the mother of His Son. The author of this letter to the Church at Philippi himself was a great example of one who had been "full of himself" until God in the form of Jesus himself came to him on the road to Damascus and emptied Saul of Tarsus from him so that he could be filled with Paul the Apostle. And, of course, our greatest example is Christ himself, who put aside his robes of glory to put on the swaddling cloths of a baby in a rural cattle stall. What do you need to be emptied of to make more room for the Holy Spirit? Maybe nothing. Maybe you think you are already as full of the Spirit as you can be. But, more than likely, not so much. The holy housecleaning of humility is tough and tedious work, just in case you hadn't guessed. And, just to be clear, this kind of work is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us. Emptying oneself can bring sorrow. A little spring cleaning now and then, well that's something we can look forward to and even celebrate as an accomplishment. But when it comes to divesting ourselves of valuables that have a good deal of material worth or even significant sentimental value, now that tends to be less pleasant and more painful. We are getting rid of parts of our psyche that we have spent considerable time and effort to create. There's a sense of loss and grief that goes along with saying goodbye to something familiar. While that's true, what has been promised to those who put their faith in Jesus is that what is going to fill the space we vacate inside ourselves is far superior to that which had formerly occupied that place. When, on that first Easter morning, the women came to the place where they had laid him in a grave borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea, they were confounded and scared by the absence of their friend and teacher, the Messiah. But we know that the chamber had been emptied to make room for the New Age that was being inaugurated by the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And the same is, I believe, the same for the church. Just as there is emptying that happens before filling, there is dying before rising. I have to admit to having spent some time mourning losses here at Rehoboth. The church is not the same as she was at the start of the year. We are fewer in number on a Sunday. We have fewer gatherings and special events. The session is considering a reduction in the number of times they meet each year. But, despite all these changes, the Spirit is still at work. We have been humbled, if you like, and I for one don't like. But I truly expect that having been emptied of some things familiar to us, we are being filled and we are going to be filled with some unfamiliar yet extraordinary things, as individuals and as a congregation and as a nation. God has heard our prayers that we began in earnest 11 months ago, seeking a re-formation of His church here at Rehoboth, and He is answering those prayers in quite unexpected ways - ones that are challenging our willingness to further humble ourselves and become even more attuned to God's will for us and less our own. Though such humility seems often so antithetical to the nature of man and the way of the world , it also seems to me to be very much in line with the Divine nature as revealed in Scripture, Jesus, and the Spirit. So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, I leave you with this thought from the early church bishop from North Africa, Augustine: "The strength of Christ created you; the weakness of Christ created you anew. The strength of Christ caused that to be which was not; the weakness of Christ caused what was to not perish. He fashioned us by His strength; He sought us by His weakness". And for that we may truly say, thanks be to God. 2