This reflection was written for the Sunday Devotion for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on September 27, 2020
Philippians 2:1-13
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. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 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 should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
REFLECTION
+In the Name of Jesus Christ+
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” is the invocation to what many consider the earliest Christian hymn, Paul’s poetic portrayal of Jesus as the Christ in his joy-filled letter to the Philippians.
The term Christ is a Greek word meaning the “anointed one”and was used to translate the Jewish word Messiah (also meaning the “anointed”) in the Greek New Testament scriptures, but Christ means far more in Paul’s usage.
In his exhortation to have the same mind as Christ Jesus, Paul shapes our understanding of “Christ Jesus" as a primordial creation; the created “form of God” through which all creation comes into being. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul explains it this way, “He (Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” [Colossians 1:15-17]
Although a messiah was referred to as a “son” of God in the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras [2 Esdras 7:28-29 & 12:32] and in the Book of Daniel as a prince who would restore the temple [Daniel 9:25], there is no place in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament that suggests that anything or anyone could be the image of or an equivalent to God; much less, be the purpose or reason for creation to have occurred. This comes to us as a purely intuitive revelation through Paul and was clearly shared by other New Testament writers.
What brought about Paul’s revelatory intuition is a matter of speculation, but it seems likely to have resulted from his visionary encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus; an experience that not only converted him but also transfigured him from Saul to Paul and, it would seem, transfigured his understanding of Jesus from a rebellious Galilean to the “LORD.” The experiences of Jesus as the resurrected Christ expanded the concept of Christ from the anointed to the anointing; as in, the creating force behind the entire cosmos.
This understanding of Jesus Christ eventually found its way into the first chapter of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word… All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being… And the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us…”
Christ understood as the form of God shapes our understanding of the man Jesus, and the man Jesus shapes our understanding of God in the form of Christ. As such, Jesus and Christ are inseparably connected. This inseparability has profound applications and implications in understanding who we are because Jesus is one of us, and we too are made in the image (the form) of God.
Jesus is our exemplar of who God intends us to be. This interconnectivity between us and Jesus Christ led Paul to exhort us to access and possess the very the mind that was (is) in Christ Jesus for a purpose.
At the end of today’s lesson, Paul offers some interesting advice. He writes, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We rarely think about our salvation as something we could have any possible involvement in; much less, possessing the capability of working it out on our own.
After all, isn’t that what Jesus did, when he died for us?
The answer to that is a “Yes and… .”
Yes, Jesus died for all and there is clearly more for us to do in this life.
God is at work in us just as God was at work in Jesus. Salvation is not about entitling us to become some sort of redeemed couch potatoes. Salvation involves a dynamic calling to continue the work of Christ Jesus in our lives.
Christ is in us just as we are in Christ.
Having the mind of Christ is to possess the very thought pattern that knits us together into the Body of Christ. To be true to this mindset is to be compassionate and loving to the extent of emptying ourselves, like Jesus, of any entitlement. We should never take lightly being made in the image (in the form) of God but rather, like Christ, make room for others in our lives, live humbly, and be in the service of all creation.
Above all, to have the mind of Christ Jesus is to recognize in all others their Christ-nature, as reflected in a greeting, “The Christ in me greets the Christ in you.” This greeting should bubble up in our hearts and minds in every encounter with God’s wondrous creation that surrounds us, shares life with us, and defines us.
Namaste!
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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