“States of Being”
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
25 September 2011
Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church
Berkeley, California
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-8
Philippians 2:1-13
St. Matthew 21:23-32
INI
Lessons in Humility
I’d like to begin this morning with a quotation that seems to embrace notions of humility, if not outright depression. It is a quotation from Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, a semi-autobiographical recounting of his family’s history, and a model of what we need to talk about today.
Everything passes away – suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
I think that the basis of our prayer may actually be a reflection of our various states of being. When we are high, full of life and of love, appreciative of each day and of creation itself we greet God with thanksgivings. And when we are low, brought down by the world or by those around us, full of Bulgakov’s suffering, pain, blood, hunger and pestilence, then we greet God with petitions and laments. Our life seems to be a journey between these two points, manic, depressive, or some point somewhere in the middle. On that journey we greet God with meditation and reflection, listening for answers.
In the second lesson for today, a reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, Paul would teach us some lessons of humility. His purpose in writing these people is to commend to them behaviors that are fitting of the Christian life, and that will serve them well in their life together. They, these people of Philippi, are his prize, and Paul wants to further their Christian education, and their life in community. He has already commended to them the value of steadfastness, and our reading today begins with a recommendation of the value of harmony and unity:
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
This will be followed by lessons on obedience as well, as Paul wishes to take the lessons of his own life and apply them to his fellows in Christ. The gem of his teaching, however, is in something that he borrowed from an unknown source. It is an ancient hymn that follows the trajectory of Jesus own life, and this Paul proposes as a model to the Philippians.
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 should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In the first three strophes of this hymn we become of aware of three states of being for Jesus. The hymn proposes a “Divine pre-existence” much like John proposes in the prologue of his own Gospel. This is followed by a strophe on the Humility of the Incarnation – that God (here Jesus taking on the morfe Qeou, the form of God should deign to become flesh, or as the hymn states it, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. It is a rather stark view of something that we take as charming and compelling – the Babe in the Manger and all of that. Paul, in using this hymn, understands the deep humility of the crèche. But there is more, as we all know, having followed Jesus on this path many times before. The final of the three strophes is the humiliation of death itself – a shared fate, and a final outcome.
I could go on and preach in this vein, as many others have. It is standard fare, this humiliation stuff, and we become quite familiar with it in Lent, indeed in Holy Week, during the Triduum, perhaps even in Advent. I wonder, however, if we all can afford this sense of Humility. Perhaps we do ourselves a disservice if we remain only here holding the wonderful mystery of the Humiliation.
The other half of the hymn
How powerful are you? How rich are you? Where in the human hierarchy do you stand and take your place? And here we need a corrective, for in the eyes of the majority of the world we are powerful. We are indeed rich. But I wish to press further, to a deeper thing, and to a place that we don’t often acknowledge. It is a place that we seem to be unable to see in our own lives, and that we find off-putting in the lives of those around us. I want us to look at ourselves from an emotional or from a mental perspective. I want us to begin to understand our powerlessness. Edna St. Vincent Millay put it well:
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you
All through my life? – sharing my fire, my bed,
Sharing – oh, worst of all things! – the same head? –
And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too.
Perhaps this is indeed the starting point for many of us. Humiliation we know quite well, and in spite of all that we have and are capable of doing, it is this sense of pain and humiliation that defines us in some sense. We are, all of us, beggars asking something of life, hoping for a release a sense of redemption.
This last week at the clergy conference we did some studying with Eric Law, who took this humiliation – exaltation trajectory to a new place for me. Paul wants to teach humility, and that is well and good. However, might our message be from the last three strophes? The exaltation of Jesus by God, The power of the Name, that Jesus is Lord – that he has suasion and power in our world? Yes, let us start at the nadir, and not assume that we are at the zenith. Let us start at our low point, recognizing that we share in the suffering of Jesus, and that it does not end there.
What is the Good News for you? Forgiveness, nourishment, being made clean, healing, fellowship, mutual care and understanding – these are all the things that we can do for one another if we move from humility to exaltation. It would do us well to share these resurrected states of being, so that the resurrection is not just a far off tale, but rather embodied in our own rise to all that God intends for us. Pain may be always with us, but the resurrection abides there as well. It is God’s promise to lift us up and to bring us to God’s presence. John reminds us, in the words of Jesus, “and I when I am lifted up will draw the whole world to myself.” And this being lifted up is not to the central point of the cross, but beyond that – to the tomb and to the resurrection.
Like the lamp on the hill, our lives of both humiliation and exaltation – modeled on the life of Jesus – can speak powerfully to our world. Even more so, we need to hear and listen to those whose lives seem to be only humiliation and distress, and remind them of the power of God lifting them up. And to those who seem to be gorged on the feast of greed and self-aggrandizement in our world today, we need to remind them of the grace of humiliation. Wherever we are on this cycle, the movement to Calvary, or the opposite movement out of the tomb, it is something to be shared. Paul ends our reading with power – the power that we all have as we walk and journey with Christ.
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you.”
And as Bulgakov beautifully stated:
. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
SDG
