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March 15, 2009
First Friends
Philippians 2:1-11
‘Atonement and Alignment’
Doug Gwyn
In these last weeks before Easter, I want to reflect on the end of
Jesus’ life, the meaning of his death, and the mystery of his
resurrection. This is my sixth pass through this season with
you. Instead of looking again at those final chapters of the
gospels, this year I want to look at some of Paul’s reflections
on the meaning of Christ. Paul viewed the cross of Jesus as the
pivot-point of history. And he advanced a new movement that
indeed profoundly changed the course of human history.
But more than that, Paul writes that when we stand at the viewpoint of
the cross, we see things in a new way. We see through human
institutions and customs. We see through – we even see
beyond – history itself. Standing at the cross, we see into
and through people. We hear them better. But that
doesn’t lead us to judge or condemn other people. It leads
us to love and forgive better, to reconcile with others, and to start
over. Seeing and hearing more clearly, forgiving more generously,
reconciling with one another, starting over together – all these
meanings are packed into that one big word we never fully understand
– atonement.
Atonement seems to stick out like a sore thumb more and more in our
modern world. If we could just look at Jesus as a great teacher,
alongside the Buddha, or Mohammed, the great yogis of Hinduism, and
others, then we could say, yes, one of the great wise men. And
then we could put them all in a nice box and put them on a pedestal in
some place of honor and then get on with life as we know it. We
could draw from that box when we need to or feel inspired to do
so. But the gospels tell us that, while Jesus was a remarkable
teacher, the most important thing was his life and the way it
ended. For Paul, the gospel is not just another new
religion. It’s not even the greatest religion.
It’s the end of religion. When we try to pin down Jesus on
a set of human coordinates, it’s the same as the Romans
nailing him to a cross. And once Jesus is out of that tomb,
he’s outside every box we can think of. So the meaning of
atonement, the meaning of Jesus’ death and raising from the dead,
is always bigger than anything we can grasp.
But Paul does offer some poetic ways of describing the atonement that
have stirred our hearts and our imaginations for 2000 years
since. This passage Chris read for us is one of those great
ones. Part of it may be an early Christian hymn the Philippians
sang together. But Paul develops it here, to make it practical
for our daily lives. Paul loved the congregation at
Philippi. You’ll remember from a few weeks ago that
Philippi is where the purple cloth merchant Lydia lived. She
opened her home to Paul and the Church he gathered in that town.
In this passage, Paul rhapsodizes about the consolation, encouragement,
compassion, and humility that we discover in Christ and learn to share
with others. These are attributes of the mind of Christ –
he exhorts them and us to be of that same mind – to think with
the mind of Christ.
The mind of Christ is the mind of one who was in the form of God but
didn’t regard equality with God as something to be grasped or
exploited. Instead Christ poured out in human likeness, in the
form of a servant. That image makes me think of the movie
Terminator II, where the robot assassin from the future comes and pours
himself into various human forms – all for the sake of
terminating the boy who will otherwise grow up to save the human race
from extinction. The Terminator is a negative image of
Christ. I guess we could call Christ the Reconciler, the Atoner,
the Peacemaker. Ah, but who would pay $10 to see that?
But where was I? Oh yes, Christ poured himself out in human form,
in the person of Jesus. He humbled himself even to the point of
death on a cross. That’s the essence of the gospel
story. But the purpose of the gospel story is really to help us
learn to recognize Christ poured out in human form here and now.
In ourselves, in our neighbor, in the poor and rejected, even in our
enemies. Now, to be sure, these people are not all saints.
They won’t always act in Christ-like ways. We can’t
control that. But we can control the way we act and the way we
respond. And as a congregation, like that little group in ancient
Philippi, we come together to practice, to get better at being Christ
in human form, in the form of a servant. We learn to serve one
another, and then carry lives of service into the wider community.
In this way, we align ourselves with Christ and one another.
Christ was still aligned with God when he poured himself out on earth,
and as he continues to pour himself out in our lives. Christ is
like a seed crystal. In the formation of crystals, once a certain
molecular structure is present as a seed in the right kind of solution,
then the right molecules in that solution begin to align themselves
with that seed, and the crystal grows. And out of a watery
solution, something very solid and resilient grows. A
congregation is like that solution. We can’t make Christ
grow among us. But we can bring together the right ingredients
and conditions where we can expect Christ to grow. A congregation
is where we optimize the possibility that we and our children will
align ourselves with Christ. And as that happens, we gain the
solidity and resilience to live Christ-like lives out in the world.
As the crystal grows in the solution, only the right molecules move
into that alignment. They leave the impurities of the solution
behind. And that too is part of what atonement and alignment
mean. Christ came into the world to free us of our sins, our
impurities. But it only works as we align ourselves with Christ
and with one another in Christ. As we align with Christ, we will
naturally shed our impurities. We will let go of the motives and
habits that don’t fit in that emerging structure of Christ in our
lives.
Many today are suspicious of atonement because it seems so one-sidedly
about our sinfulness, our unworthiness, our helplessness to save
ourselves. And indeed, some Christianity is one-sided. It
over-emphasizes that negative aspect. It discourages our growth
rather than promoting it. We end up wallowing in our impurities
rather than aligning with Christ. But it is just as mistaken to
act as if there is nothing wrong and we’re already just fine the
way we are. We all have some baggage we need to leave behind.
Again, Christ was equal with God but didn’t count that as
something to grasp or exploit. Paul is getting at something
subtle here. It sounds like he’s just talking about Christ
and God in heaven. But he’s also talking about us on
earth. As I was saying in recent weeks, those early churches like
the one in Philippi were groups of Jews and Gentiles, women and men,
slaves and free people living in a new kind of freedom and equality
together. Likewise, if we today want to live the gospel, we need
to keep extending equal status, equal membership, equal rights and
privileges to all people. Our congregation should be a place
where all are respected and welcomed to be who they are. But it
doesn’t stop there. But as Paul implies here, it’s
ultimately not about equality. We embrace one another as equals
precisely in order that we can all be servants – servants in the
form of Christ. To put it in mundane terms, we welcome you as a
full member of First Friends, and now, what committee would you like to
join? Our fellowship thrives in our work together.
Whether it’s in the work of our congregation, or in times of
fellowship, or in our lives of friendship and service in the wider
community, servant-leadership so often plays out in our role as
listeners. Listening carefully, sympathetically, without judgment
is one of the most selfless things we can do. As Henri Nouwen
writes, spiritual listening is not just letting the other person have
their turn before you launch in again. That’s equality
– equal time, equal opportunity. Real listening goes much
deeper. It’s really receiving the other person into your
heart – it’s a form of hospitality, making space in your
heart for that other person to be real. When we do that, we often
find ourselves responding to that person’s opinion or story,
rather than launching into our own (worthy as it may be).
Finally, those last verses in the passage Chris read for us take a
strange turn. We go from equality to servanthood and then to what
sounds like world domination. Christ’s name above every
other name. Every tongue confessing Christ, every knee bending to
Christ. Well, we know how the Roman Empire ran with that
one. When it couldn’t persecute the Christian movement out
of existence, it made Christ the official god – and then every
knee had to bend and every tongue confess. But of course,
emperors tend to miss out on irony. The funny side of the Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character is his total lack of a
sense of humor. Remember that only the friends of Jesus saw him
raised from the dead. Likewise, to this day, only equals who have
become servants get to see Christ as the secret destiny of this
universe. Only the humble notice the glory of Christ.
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