Having just finished teaching a two-week intensive course on the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, my mind is full of the difficult yet necessary call for the church to be united – of the same mind – in love and humility. I don’t know about you, but I have found that “humility” is a word that is often thrown around – in both churched and unchurched circles – without much thought as to the significance and enormity of how we are actually being called to live our lives – both with one another and in communion with God. Perhaps in this Lenten season, we should, as the Body of Christ, stop to reflect on what humility actually means and looks like in our lives; but more importantly, we should not only reflect upon what humility is, but who true humility is, namely, Jesus Christ our Lord.
In Philippians 2:5-8, we encounter the great Christ-hymn that the Early Church knew so well: “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.”
This passage is so well known and familiar to hearers of the Word that, sometimes, we are in danger of its familiarity insofar as we no longer think about the gravity of what is being said here. In the Letter to the Philippians, Paul’s entire message is centred and rooted in the Gospel of Christ. Through the entire letter, Paul is basically directing the Philippians to what Christ has done, what Christ is doing, and what Christ will be doing until the end of time. Particularly in this section, Paul identifies the basis of this work as being established upon and within the preexistent Christ: he who was God did not consider his God-ness something to be benefited from or taken advantage of; instead, he emptied himself of all the rights that come with being God and, out of his deep love for us, took on a finite human form in order to be one with us. It doesn’t stop there. He then willingly humbles himself to the point of a finite human death in order to save us. In other words, he dies the death of the very same humans that he humbled himself to become in order to save and, not only that, dies by the hand of these same humans. Further still, Jesus not only humbles himself in obedience to die for us and our sins, he dies the most humiliating, atrocious death: a death that was bestowed upon the most violent of criminals and the severely outcast. In polite Roman society, death on a cross was extremely taboo and never talked about in conversation; the word “cross” was actually considered a curse word!
Yet, because of God’s intense and persistent love for us, God willingly took human flesh upon himself in Christ Jesus and in his death was taken to the limit of humiliation so that all of creation might be redeemed and reconciled to himself. The pure irony of this is that it is exactly in this humiliation that the pure love of God is demonstrated for us and it is this pure love that sustains us. The incredible knowledge that we can ascertain from this is that divine equality means complete and utter humility and self-sacrifice.
So, perhaps in this Lenten season, God is calling you to reflect deeply upon the ultimate example of humility found in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Something that struck me in the above passage was that maybe God is calling us to give up our individual “rights”: to be first in line, to be heard, to be seen, to be known, to be right, to be given proper accolades, to be publicly credited for something. Maybe you have already decided what you are giving up for Lent: chocolate or coffee, candy or Facebook. Those are all helpful exercises, but maybe we could heighten our Lenten experience by giving up our “rights” as we reflect on the great Christ-hymn. I think Paul was onto something when he tells the Philippians that all the confidence that we could place in ourselves is worthless in comparison to knowing our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who willingly chose to traverse to the outermost human limits in order to save us from our sins and to reconcile us to himself. How deep is the Father’s love for us!
Prayer: Lord of death and of life, we are humbled by your own humility and the extent to which you willingly humiliated yourself in order to accomplish, and continue to accomplish salvation in us. Help us heed the words of the Apostle Paul to look to the interest of others over our own, regarding others as better than ourselves. There is no one who knows what this means and how difficult this is better than you; thus, we appeal to the Spirit’s aid and guidance. Father, we ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
