Wednesday, May 6, 2009

"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,
but emptied himself,
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.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus,
every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father."

I've been thinking about this great hymn from Paul's letter to the Philippian church for a while now. And most of my thinking has had to do with what is fashionably called the "pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus" question. There is a pervasive attitude that, largely thanks to Paul, Christianity is based on the whim of a few evangelists who turn Jesus into something more than he really was--made him divine when he was really just a great guy. This attitude is not limited to the unchurched, or historical Jesus bent.
And while it is generally accompanied with a less-than-vague disdain for orthodox Christianity (in particular the doctrine of the Trinity), I admit that it is not entirely unfounded. There are places in Scripture--in particular the Gospels, though in the Hebrew Scriptures too--that must give even the most orthodox among us pause. Passages that almost seem to deny Jesus' divinity; even John, the gospel most devoted to Jesus' unity with God ("If you know me you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." [Jn 14:7]), also quotes Jesus as saying: "If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I" (Jn 14:28). In the same passage, no less. And thus the debate rages on.
And yet, if we remain fixated on what appears to be a contradiction, or simply ignore it, we miss out on something profoundly important to the Christian faith. Fortunately, the hymn from Philippians 2 can bring us back to this point. (It also stands, I think, in glaring opposition to the notion that Paul made the whole thing up, if it is indeed a hymn that he borrowed from an outside source). Here's the point: Jesus himself wasn't all that concerned with divinity, one way or the other.
To take a step back, put the hymn in conversation with the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the apple. Regardless of whether or not we read this story literally, or as a complete fiction, it's meaning comes out at rather the same spot: things went wrong when the temptation to be like God entered in (Gen 3:4). The relationship that worked in the beginning, where God was God, and we were people--the relationship that is still the completion of our Joy (I Jn 1:4)--was damaged. From the third chapter of Genesis, a consistent thread throughout Scripture is God's people choosing to do it differently than God; people putting in God's place either themselves or some other idol.
From a theological standpoint, that is fallen creation in my mind. The creation that is unable to be in relationship with God, because of our inability to recognize, or allow ourselves to be who we are in that relationship. Our own self-idolatry is, as far as I can tell, the foundation of sinfulness. It is not that we are inately bad--in fact, as someone who believes that we are indeed created for holy relationship with God and creation, I have to conclude that we are, at least at the start, good--but that we don't understand who we are. We rail against the idea of submission, we loathe the idea turning our lives over to God's plans, we cannot abide the possibility that we aren't in control, and so we cannot be the people we are meant to be, in relation to the God who is.
Here is where the hymn finds it's footing. Because Jesus, the one who was with God in the beginning, who was equal to God shrugs at that power. Disregards it completely. While we, who are meant for holiness but not divinity, struggle to grasp at and work hard to feign equality with God, Jesus lets it go. Lets it go so completely that we sometimes have to look awfully hard to see the remnants of it. Even those closest to him had a hard time seeing it. Jesus embraced the human part of the relationship, entered so fully into our experience that he reconstituted the relationship that was in the beginning. And only the one who was/is divine could have made that happen; only the one who was divine could completely disregard divinity in favor of obedience, even unto death on a cross.
In that humiliation we can come to recognize what is so easily missed. The way to God is through the proper relationship. We're going to keep getting it wrong, but God is Grace, and so we can try again. But Jesus got it right, and so he is exalted to the name that is above every name--for a Jew like Paul that can only mean one thing: Jesus is co-equal with God. And yet it is still to God's glory. The Trinitarian relationship is one of constant submission and Lordship, just as Jesus revealed the paradoxical relationship between servitude and power.
If we could stop grasping after equality with God, if we could get the relationship right--not begrudginly like whiny children, but gleefully because it is right--our Joy would be complete. In the moments that we manage it, fleeting as they may be, we see the Kingdom of God. Thanks be.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Indeed, he is going ahead of you

But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raise, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.'" Matt 28:5-7

In his formative book (which I recommend to any and all pastors and pastors-to-be) "Under the Unpredictable Plant: Explorations in Vocational Holiness," Eugene Peterson writes of the importance of this verse from the end of Matthew for his life as a pastor. When setting out on pastoral calls, he repeats to himself, "He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to ----------- ; there you will see him." This is profoundly perspective-altering--at least, I have found it to be so.

It occurred to me when reflecting on this, that I rarely--if ever--have managed to act in this hope. Whether approaching the bed of a sick person, or the couch of one serving me cookies and tea, my mind has all to frequently been focused on what I'll say, on keeping track of things to pray about before I leave, on looking and sounding the part of the pastor. Even in my attempts to live out the all important sheep-goats passage from Matt 25, I am not sure that I have very often expected to see Jesus; I have been more concerned with what I'm going to do than whom I am going to meet. Instead of going to meet the Christ, risen and working in the life of the one before me, I have secretly been trying to impress Jesus--making sure I have some good work to remind him of the next time I slip up.

How much different the pastoral approach would be if I always anticipated that Jesus had already gone before me, that Jesus has begun to work long before I show up, long before I offer sage advice and spiritual guidance.
Even acknowledging that pastors have a job to do, have been called to minister in particular ways, acknowledging first that Jesus works first, we could live out our vocations in the hope that we work with (not simply for, or sometimes in spite of...) our resurrection God.