Sermon from December 13, 2009
"Jesus Christ: He Stooped Down to Make Us Great"
Philippians 2:5-11

Last month, I saw a documentary on the day President Kennedy died. The documentary highlighted the bad feelings between the Kennedys and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. The President’s body rested in the back of Air Force One, and all the Kennedy supporters sat with it. Johnson and his entourage sat in the front of the plane.

Johnson would not permit the plane to leave until he had been sworn in as the new president. The Kennedy people were furious but could do little about it. Johnson said he had called Robert Kennedy in Washington about being sworn in, and Kennedy had agreed it should happen in Dallas. It’s not clear if Johnson was telling the truth. In any case they didn’t leave until Judge Sarah T. Hughes swore Johnson in as President.

Air Force One arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. Robert Kennedy was the first person up the steps into the plane. He rushed past the new President without speaking. At the back of the plane, another door was opened, and the Kennedy people took the dead President’s body down the steps and loaded it into a waiting hearse. The rest of the Kennedy people left by the same steps, got in cars, and sped away before President Johnson came out of the plane.

There was no show of unity that would display to the world an orderly transition of power. The animosity between the Kennedys and Johnson defined the moment. It also reminds us that Washington politics then and now is a contact sport. Ambition, hubris, and power play out every day in the governance of our nation. It is the way of the world.

Christianity offers an alternative way. Jesus Christ showcases that alternative. I want to look lovingly and patiently at what He did. Then, I want to consider the authority His actions have for our lives, and how reasonable it is to expect anyone to live that way.

The sermons today and next Sunday are part of a series called: Who We Are. They present what defines Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. In the first two sermons I told the story of this church’s 40-year existence, and I described this church as a safe haven, a training center, and a base of operations.

The third and fourth sermons talked about who we are by describing this church as a community of faith and also a community of holy sinners. The sermons today and next Sunday are about Jesus Christ. I have entitled today’s sermon: Jesus Christ, He Stooped Down to Make Us Great. We will focus on one biblical text, Philippians 2:5-11, the Christmas story according to Philippians.

Stooping Low
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. The apostle wanted the Church to imitate the attitude of Christ. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.

Equality with God! Some of Jesus’ peers once tried to kill him, because He was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God – John 5:18. What does it mean to be equal with God? The answer Paul gives in verse six is that He was in very nature God. What that means belongs to another discussion. Let’s assume it’s true for the sake of this sermon and see where the apostle takes us.

Verse six: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Nothing is more natural than to hold on to what’s yours. That’s why retailers are worried again this Christmas. People don’t want to spend as much on gifts and entertainment as they did before the recession. They want to hold on to their money. Verse six is not about money; it is about equality with God.

Our Lord did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. He opened His hand and let it go. What does letting it go mean? Listen to the rest of verse six. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.

Let’s be patient here and put two phrases side by side: being in very nature God and taking the very nature of a servant. His stooping down to make us great had begun. But in what sense did He take the nature of a servant? Verse seven: He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

It may not suit your egalitarian taste to equate being human with the nature of a servant. Oh, come on! Let’s get off our high horse and admit the obvious. Your range of free choice is actually quite limited. You didn’t choose your genetic code or your place of birth. You are subject to irresistible biological, social, and psychological requirements that you don’t choose, barely understand, and scarcely control, and which govern most of your existence. Even your free choices limit subsequent free choices, because choices have consequences that are also hard to resist and hard to change.

All that makes us servant-like. Now, I don’t know about you, but there seems to be an impossible gulf that separates our servant-like nature from being equal with God. Yet Christ bridged that gulf. And Paul wasn’t through yet. Verse eight: And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death.  

Death is the ultimate servitude. We stave it off as best we can. We like to say we cheat death from time to time. But in the end, it is dominant. We call it the last enemy, and it is far removed from equality with God who doesn’t die.

And there is one more descent in this gigantic stooping. Death itself is humiliating enough, but we can retain shreds of dignity in how we die. Not here! And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Death by crucifixion was especially humiliating, painful, and lingering. It seemed to negate everything Jesus ever said, or people ever thought about Him. That’s how far down He stooped to make us great. 

An Urgent Question of Authority
Now, we come to an urgent question. Is what we have just read somehow normative for humanity? If not, then what I have said today is a most interesting reflection on a most interesting idea and nothing more. We can safely walk away from here today and dismiss what we have heard from our practical affairs.

But if what we have just read is somehow normative for humanity, then we ignore it at our peril. On what basis could we construe it as normative? The answer lies embedded in the next three verses. Again, patiently, let’s read through them.

Verse nine: Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. I don’t often pause to talk about a single word, but the first word in verse nine links verses 6-8 with verses 9-11: Therefore. I would paraphrase the connection like this: Because Christ descended freely from equality with God to death by crucifixion God exalted Him. What does it mean that God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name?

That can refer only to one event, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Just a reminder: When Christians say that God raised Jesus from the dead, we don’t mean that Jesus had a near death experience and was resuscitated, and we don’t believe He was a ghost. We believe that He died by crucifixion, would have been certified as dead by any competent medical examiner, and they buried him in a borrowed tomb. We believe that on Easter Sunday, Jesus came back to life with an indestructible body on which you can still see the scars from His crucifixion.

The resurrection is God’s stamp of approval on Jesus. It elevates Him beyond His interesting life. It makes His teaching and His life normative for humanity. Jesus shows us who God is and how God acts in the world. The next verses express God’s approval.

God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 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.

We can’t read what we’ve read today and dismiss Jesus as a fascinating man and nothing more. Sooner or later, we have to recognize His successive steps of humility as an example for us and come to terms with how we are going to imitate Him.

Before we talk about that, I urge you to consider two things. First, if you don’t yet believe in Him, I urge you to take seriously the words we just read: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. If God raised Jesus from the dead to eternal life in an indestructible body, then you will bow before him and confess that He is Lord freely in this lifetime, or you will do it whether you want to or not, when He comes to judge the world with justice.

Second, I urge you to believe here and now that Jesus is Lord. It begins with an act as simple as what Doubting Thomas in the Bible did. He said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” – John 20:28. You say that to Christ and mean it, and from there you will discover where your faith can take you. We here can help you to make those discoveries.

An Urgent Practical Question
Now, turning from our urgent question of authority, here is our urgent practical question. If Jesus Christ, stooping down from equality with God to death by crucifixion, shows us who God is and how God acts in the world, how are we going to imitate His humility in our day to day lives?

What is at stake here is a clash of Titans. Remember the animosity between Kennedy and Johnson, and then remember Christ on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The way of the world and the way of Christ could not be more different, and the battlefield on which they clash is your immortal being. Your place in the battle may seem very small compared to the ambition, hubris, and power-grabbing of our political masters; but how you live out the way of Christ matters.

So, what do we do? The answer takes us first back to verse four. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. I like that. It recognizes that you and I have legitimate personal interests. It calls on us to recognize that every other person also has legitimate personal interests and in significant ways to put the other person’s interests ahead of our own. We do on a small scale what Christ did on a very large scale, when He stooped down to make us great.

So, how do we do it? There are thousands of ways. Let’s take a couple of dramatic examples and work our way through them. In the 1970s people called Charles Colson President Nixon’s “hatchet man.” He went to jail for his part in the Watergate scandal. He became a believer in Christ, and subsequently began a global ministry to prisoners called Prison Fellowship. After his release from prison, a friend invited him to a group of Christian government officials in Washington that met to read the Bible and pray.

Among them was liberal Democratic Senator, Harold Hughes, of Iowa. They had been bitter enemies during Colson’s days in the Nixon White House. When Senator Hughes heard that he would be in the same Bible study and prayer group with Colson, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the same room. He still had the kind of anger that made him want to punch Colson instead of pray with Colson.

He told Doug Coe, who led the group, “There isn’t anyone I dislike more than Colson. I’m against everything he stands for.”

Colson knew it. When someone told him Senator Hughes would be in the group, Colson laughed and said, “Harold Hughes won't want to meet me. From what I've heard, he considers me the number-one menace to America. He's antiwar, anti-Nixon, anti-Colson and we couldn't be further apart politically.”

When they finally met in that Bible study group, Senator Hughes said, “Chuck, they tell me you have had an encounter with Jesus Christ. Would you tell us about it?"

Colson did. When he finished, there was a long silence. Finally, the senator said, “That's all I need to know,” he said. “Chuck, you have accepted Jesus and He has forgiven you. I do the same. I love you now as my brother in Christ. I will stand with you, defend you anywhere, and trust you with anything I have.” Do you think that’s hard?

Let’s do something more difficult. Most of us are aware of the insatiable TV coverage of Tiger Woods’ infidelity to his wife. Suppose one of you men was a friend to Tiger Woods and brought him to BVBC. What kind of reception would get here? Could we hold our criticism of him and give him a safe place here, because we are confident that the people closest to him would hold him accountable and work to restore him to God and to and his marriage? Whatever else Tiger Woods needs, he needs to be restored to God through Jesus Christ, and people like you will be crucial to that restoration.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Don’t give up your moral convictions; but don’t let them prevent you from opening your arms to someone who has been devastated by his poor choices. How else are we going to challenge the way of the world with its ambition, hubris, and power with the way of Christ? Christ showed us how God acts in the world. We the children of God must act that way.

You won’t always succeed. The way of the world is very strong. People can even intimidate you into the very behavior you know is hostile to Christ. So, don’t underestimate the power of the world.  And the closer you get to the centers of power and ambition, the greater their power to intimidate you into conformity or at least silence.

But we can resist, often with great success, if we allow Christ to define the way this congregation lives out its faith together, and if we stay close to each other.