Family Resemblance

Delivered April 22, 2012  Video

I John 3:1-7

When you have grandkids you notice the family resemblance that they bear to people in your family. We just celebrated our grandson Noah’s third birthday yesterday; he looks exactly like our son Isaac did when he was that age, and he also looks a lot like his mom! Our grandson Jonah looks a lot like his mom and also like our son Ernie, and I modestly think he looks most of all like his grandfather. Our newest grandson Elijah has the hair and facial features of our daughter, but he has large feet and hands like his father.  My daughter looks a lot like my wife, and my wife looks a lot like her mom. My brother is the spitting image of our great-grandfather who died before we were born. I have an old photo of my great-grandfather taken a hundred years ago in Tamworth and except for the goatee, I would swear that that is my brother standing there in front of that barn. I am sure you have the same type of observations about your family. Family members bear a family resemblance to each other. The Bible says that this is also true of the family of God. We resemble, or at least should resemble, our Heavenly Father. Jesus is called our older brother in the NT, and so it is reasonable to think we would resemble him. That is what the apostle John is talking about in our epistle reading today. There are three points in this regard.

          I. First, we are children of God. The first verse in our passage says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” Many manuscripts add here the words “and we are!” What does it mean that we are children of God? Is everyone a child of God?  In one sense, you could say that we are all children of God.

         In the Book of Acts the apostle Paul is speaking to Greek philosophers in Athens, and he approving quotes a Greek poet as saying that “we are all his offspring.” In arguing here against idolatry Paul says, “For in Him [God] we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.”  Paul is clearly stating here that all human beings are the offspring of God. We are all created by God and made in the image of God. In that way we can say “we are all God’s children.”

We all are born with a family resemblance. To say that we are created in the image of God literally means we look like God. Of course this does not mean physically. God is not a corporeal being. To call God Heavenly Father does not mean God is a bearded male in the sky. In my opinion it doesn’t help matters to make God into a Goddess by using female pronouns or to try to be neutral by avoiding all gender specific pronouns for God. That just confuses matters. We are made in the image of God spiritually speaking.

That family resemblance may be difficult to see sometimes. Some people these days get plastic surgery to alter parts of their bodies that they don’t like. Sometimes it is just a face lift to take off the effects of the aging process.  But others don’t like certain traits they have inherited from their ancestors. They change their nose or their chin or other parts of the body. Sometimes this makes it harder to see the family resemblance. Spiritually speaking, the image of God in us can be just as difficult to see. We alter ourselves. We are born spiritually beautiful in the image of God, but we have changed.

Sin mars the image of God. Like the novel, the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, through the indulging of our sin we can spiritually become grotesque caricatures of ourselves. It can get so bad that we bear almost no resemblance to the way God created us. There is a scene in the Gospel of John where Jesus is arguing with some Pharisees. They say they are children of Abraham, and also that God is their father. Listen to what Jesus says in response. “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” (John 8:42-44) Jesus calls them not children of God, but children of the devil. That is strong language.  By this he means that they had become spiritually disfigured by their sin and rebellion against God; now they resemble Satan more than they resemble their heavenly Father.

For them to be restored to their original condition something dramatic had to happen. They had to be transformed if they were once again bear the family name and be called children of God. The apostle Paul speaks about the need to be adopted into God’s family. Jesus speaks of the need to be spiritually born anew into God’s family. These are the same concept using slightly different metaphors. The apostle John talks about having the right to become children of God. He says at the beginning of his gospel, “¹² But as many as received Him [Christ], to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: ¹³ who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

We all are the offspring of God, but we rebel against our Father and Creator. We sell our birthright like Esau did. We run way from home like the prodigal son.  We deny our family heritage. We divorce our Heavenly Father. We can become so estranged that we no longer recognize family. John says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” You can get so far away from God that you do not even know those of your own family. You don’t even know God or the children of God.

But God calls us to return home. He extends to us the right to become children of God again. Our place at the table and in the family is waiting for us, just like the Father waited for the prodigal son. All we have to do is claim it by accepting our family connection by faith in God and in his son Jesus Christ. Then we become once again what we were born to be – children of God. That is John’s first point in our passage.

II. His second point is that we shall become more than children of God. Verse 2 of our passage says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” John is talking about sometime in the future. He is speaking about the return of Christ or perhaps the moment of our death. Once we start talking about areas like this we are in unknown territory. I don’t even know what language to use to explain to talk about the afterlife. But one thing is sure, John says we will be different.

People have all sorts of ideas about what comes after this earthly life for us. Some say there is nothing – we simply cease to exist – that the only immortality we have is our legacy here on earth. Science is trying to achieve physical immortality – treating aging as a disease to be cured and perhaps one day extending our earthly physical lives indefinitely. Christianity has historically talked about the immortality of the soul. The Bible talks about resurrection and spiritual bodies. Do we continue to exist after death, and if so in what form? The apostle John says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be….” He says he doesn’t know. Only God knows, and he has not revealed it. Yet he goes go on to say that we know a something about it through God’s revelation in scripture. He goes on to say in this verse, “but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” 

I have had people share with me their near death experiences. In fact people in this congregation have shared their experiences with me of what they have seen beyond death’s door. These are stories of light and people waiting for them and a figure of light. People from different cultures identify this figure of light differently, but Christians tend to identify him as Christ. Jesus Christ died, but is not dead, and one day we shall see him as he is. We say that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. He continues to exist spiritually but not physically. If we will be like him, that means we will continue to exist spiritually. I can’t prove that to you. I don’t believe in any sort of communication between those who have died and those who are still alive. I think that séances and channeling and automatic writing and all that stuff are hoaxes. If life after death could be proven, then it would be proven scientifically by now and it has not.

I cannot prove to you that after you die you will still exist in some conscious form. But Jesus believed it and taught it. And his apostles believed it and taught it. And I believe it and teach it based on Christ’s and the apostle’s testimony. I trust Christ’s knowledge is greater than mine in this area. What it will be like I do not know. “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” We shall see him as he is. I freely admit that everything I believe and say rests on Christ himself. If Christ did not rise and does not now live, then our hope is futile. The apostle Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 15. “For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. ¹⁷ And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! ¹⁸ Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.²⁰ But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹ For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. ²² For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” We shall be more than we are now. We shall be like him.

III. The third point is that we should live as children of God. John says in verse 3, “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” In other words, if we believe this, then we will do something about it. If we are going to be like him in the end, we should strive to be like him now. We will purify ourselves just as he is pure. This is not a call to works righteousness or self-salvation. It is simply saying that if we are serious about our status as children of God, then we will act like children of God. We will act like Christ, the Son of God. Our behavior should bear a family resemblance to our Savior’s behavior. We should practice what we preach. If we don’t act like children of God, are we really children of God?

You have heard about Sergeant Robert Bales, the American soldier who last month went on a nighttime shooting rampage, killing 16 Afghan civilians, nine of them children. When his wife heard of what he had done she said that it is unbelievable. She said that those actions bore no resemblance to the man she knows. She said “he loves children and would not do that.” But it seems pretty clear that he did do it. What he did is going to affect the victim’s families, him and his family for the rest of their lives. It affects the reputation of the US military in Afghanistan and make our mission their much harder  - maybe impossible now - to accomplish. This is an extreme example and does not take into account PTSD that is associated with repeated tours of duty in combat. But the fact remains: People don’t believe words; they believe actions.  It is true of nations, armies, religions and individuals. When it comes to Christians, it doesn’t matter what we say; it is what we do that counts.

John says a little later in this chapter, ⁹ Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.¹⁰ In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.” He says in the next chapter, “⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The children of God are recognizable by their behavior. If it doesn’t look like a duck, swim like a duck and quack like a duck, it is not a duck. If a person does not resemble Christ in his behavior, the person is not a Christian, regardless of what he says. It takes more than just quacking to be a duck, and more than yacking to be a Christian. John says in our passage: “Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.”

John is not saying that we need to be perfectly sinless in our every thought and action. He makes it clear elsewhere in this letter that anyone who says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him. None of us are perfect. Christians are certainly not perfect. But we should bear a resemblance to our Savior.  We have been talking this morning about family resemblance. The question now is: Whom do we resemble? Not whether we resemble your mom or dad physically. But do we resemble our Heavenly Father? Do we resemble Christ? Whom would people say we resemble in our words and actions? Would they say that we remind them of Jesus? And if not, what are we going to do about it?

How to Approach an Empty Tomb

Delivered April 8, 2012

John 20:1-18

This sermon can also be viewed as video at this link: YouTube

In the Bible the Easter story takes place mostly in a graveyard. It has to do with a missing dead body and then appearances of the dead person to his friends. It is really kind of strange, which is probably why our culture has sanitized it.  American business doesn’t know how to market something like this. So they have tried to repackage it as having something to do with an Easter bunny, Easter baskets and Easter eggs. Or we talk about banalities like butterflies and flowers blooming. Some folks try to remake it into a Spring equinox celebration (the way people make Christmas into a winter solstice celebration), but that is tough to do because Easter often falls nowhere near that day. Consequently Easter is one of those days when if you aren’t religious, there is not much to do at Easter. 

Easter still attracts people to church. Not as much as Christmas my more but more than an ordinary Sunday. I am grateful for that and happy to see people, especially when families come together to worship. I know that people come to worship on Easter for different reasons and from different perspectives. That is what we are going to be looking at this morning. Today we are going to look at how three different people approached the tomb of Jesus on the first Easter morning: the disciples John, Peter and Mary Magdalene.

I. First we will look at the apostle John. He is the one who wrote this gospel and refers to himself in the third person in this manner throughout the gospel as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” or “the other disciple.” Mary Magdalene, the most prominent of the female disciples, came to the cemetery very early. She got close enough to the tomb to see that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She may have even looked inside and seen that the body was missing. We don’t know that for sure, but she concludes that Jesus’ body is missing. Verse 2 says, “Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”

At this shocking news Peter and John ran to the garden tomb. John, being the younger of the two, outruns the older man, but waits respectfully at the tomb entrance for the elder apostle before going in. While waiting, John took a peek inside the tomb but did not go in. Verses 4-5 say, “So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in.” Peter arrives and immediately enters the tomb and sees the burial clothing and how it is all positioned, but he did not see Jesus anywhere. Then verse 9 says that John went into the tomb and saw the same thing as Peter, but it says “and he saw and believed.”

Peter and John saw the same evidence in the tomb; perhaps Mary did also. They all saw that Jesus’ body was missing and the burial cloths lying in the tomb, but only John believed. In this story John is the BELIEVING DISCIPLE. What did he believe? He believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, even though the next verse makes it clear that “For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.”  John believed without seeing the risen Christ and without knowing that the OT Scriptures taught that the Messiah was to rise from the dead. This is really a remarkable thing! Why did John believe this when no one else did? It had not entered into the mind of Mary Magdalene. Her conclusion drawn from the evidence of empty tomb was that someone had stolen the body.  Peter, as we will see, was not willing to jump to any conclusion yet. But John immediately believed.

How do we account for this? I think that God revealed this truth to John’s heart. There is a scene earlier in the gospels where the apostle Peter made his famous confession of faith in Christ. He proclaimed at that time: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Jesus replied to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” God had revealed this to Peter. I think that John knew that Jesus had risen from the dead in the same way that Peter had known that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. God revealed it to him. I believe that many people today believe in Christ and his resurrection in the same way. I might go so far as to say that the only way that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and has risen from the dead is if we have been convinced by the Holy Spirit. I don’t think the physical evidence alone can convince us of the resurrection.

I subscribe to a weekly email newsletter published by Skeptic magazine. The editor is the well-known atheist Michael Shermer. I enjoy the articles because they are often true. For example, last week’s edition was on debunking the evidence for UFOs, and I agree with them on that. I think UFOs are a bunch of malarkey. (Now don’t start sending me emails about how real UFOs are.) In fact I agree with Skeptic magazine on many issues, which the editors would probably be very surprised at. But a couple of months ago they had an article on the resurrection of Jesus. Gary Whittenberger argued that the most reasonable explanation for the early Christians belief in the resurrection of Jesus was that it was a mass hallucination experienced by the disciples. He actually argued a convincing case. He related how today people who have lost loved ones often report seeing their dead loved ones. I have had people tell me ghost stories like that a well. But I don’t think that is what happened on Easter. Not because I can produce a more objective rational explanation, but because the Holy Spirit has convinced me otherwise. Of course skeptics would dismiss the testimony of the Holy Spirit as imaginary, and I understand why. But I cannot dismiss the Holy Spirit.

When it comes down to the wire, we can explore all the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and not be able to come to a conclusion. After all, the resurrection of Christ happened 2000 years ago! Talk about a cold case! We cannot possibly expect find any physical evidence of the resurrection. You can visit the site of Jesus tomb in Jerusalem today, and you aren’t going to find anything. You can scientifically examine all the relics of the Roman Catholic Church having to do with Christ and not find any evidence. Even the Shroud of Turin (which purports to be the burial shroud of Jesus) has been proven to be a fourteenth century forgery, regardless of what the television documentaries say. There is no physical evidence remaining for the resurrection of Jesus.

The evidence is all based on the written accounts of the gospels. We have to decide whether or not they are reliable. Skeptics can come up for all sorts of reasonable theories for why these documents can’t be trusted. On the other hand biblical scholars make a convincing case for the reliability of the gospel accounts. If you don’t want to believe in the resurrection, you can find many reasons and theories to support your case. If we keep an open mind we can also find lots of literary and historical reasons to believe in the resurrection.  In the end this approach doesn’t convince anyone. It comes down to something much more personal and spiritual. John believed in Jesus resurrection, even though the only evidence he had at the moment was an empty tomb, because God worked in his heart to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. I think he works in people’s hearts today in the same manner. He might even be working in your heart today in this way.

II. The second person I want to look at is the apostle Peter. I called John the believing disciple. I will call Peter the CAUTIOUS DISCIPLE. To understand Peter’s perspective at the tomb on Easter morning we have to remember everything he had been through the last few days. He was Jesus’ right hand man - one of the three leaders of the apostles: Peter, James and John. He was the first to recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. He expected Jesus to be acknowledged as the Messiah by the Jewish people, and that seemed to be happening on Palm Sunday. Peter pledged that he would always be at Jesus’ side no matter what, even if it meant dying with Christ.

At the Garden of Gethsemane when the temple authorities came to arrest Jesus, Peter tried to defend him with the sword. He even wounded the servant of the High Priest. But he was told by Christ to put his sword away. As Jesus was taken away by the temple guard, Peter followed at a distance and waited in the courtyard while Jesus was on trial. There in the courtyard Peter was asked three times if he knew Jesus, and three times he denied Christ. Then the rooster crowed; Peter realized what he had done and wept bitterly. Then his Lord was convicted, whipped brutally and crucified. But Peter was too ashamed and afraid to even show his face at the cross.

Peter had been on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Jesus was dead and buried, and Peter thought the whole adventure of that last three years was over. Then early on Sunday Mary Magdalene came knocking on his door with the news that Jesus’ tomb was open and his body missing. He ran to the tomb to see for himself, and found the tomb as Mary had said, with the body gone and the grave clothes still in the tomb. What was Peter to think?  It is difficult to get into someone else’s mind, but I think that Peter was being cautious now. He had been through a lot in the last couple of days. Now he didn’t know what to think about Jesus, so he was taking it slow.

People today are in this same situation. There are a lot of people who have been through tough times with religion and the church. They have been burned. They have been disillusioned. They have been disappointed in church people and church leaders. They don’t know what to think about church, Christianity or even Christ any more. I have met a lot of people like this during my ministry. In fact I have been one of them. I have been burned. I was burned out, and I left the ministry intentionally for a year. I took a year Sabbatical, and ended up being away from ministry for a year and a half. During that time I reexamined everything about my faith - every doctrine, every belief. I examined carefully everything from my belief in God to my faith in Christ. I came out of that year convinced of  the gospel – and in fact I am a much stronger Christian for having been through it. Although I am much more wary of religion than I ever was before. I am still much more cautious than before about everything religious.

Perhaps some of you are in this same situation.  You have been through an emotional or spiritual rollercoaster ride when it comes to your faith, your relationship to the church, or even your belief in God. You don’t know what to think any more, just like Peter did not know what to think when he came to the tomb that Easter morning and saw it empty. Maybe empty is the best word to describe your feelings. I am here to tell you this morning that it is alright to feel this way. Easter was about the empty tomb before it was about the risen Christ. In fact many scholars think that Mark’s gospel originally ended with only the empty tomb and no resurrection appearances. All the Easter accounts in all four gospels start out with a period of time when there is just the empty tomb. The empty tomb is space to think, space to question, space to ponder, space to explore the possibilities. I hope that this church is also that type of place – that here you would feel free to be cautious like Peter. I also hope it is a place where eventually your questions will be answered in the risen Christ. But that might come later. At the empty tomb we do not hear any exclamation of faith from Peter, as we do from John. Peter at this point did not see and believe. He just saw and wondered what it meant.

III. The third person at the tomb in John’s account of Easter morning was Mary Magdalene. She is the most important character in this account. I call her the LOVING DISCIPLE. I could call her by other titles. I thought of calling her the weeping disciple or the grieving disciple or the waiting disciple. But I have decided to call her for this message the loving disciple. That is because the reason she weeps is because of her love for Jesus. The reason she grieves so strongly for Jesus is because she loved him so much. The reason she lingers at the tomb is because of her love for Jesus. After Peter and John left the grave to go back home, Mary remains at the tomb. That decision made all the difference. If Peter and John had not been so quick to go home, they would have seen what Mary saw. But they couldn’t wait around for no reason. They did not see the point of sitting around crying, so they returned home. But Mary stayed at the tomb, and she wept.

After a while she took a second look inside to see again where Jesus had lain; this time the tomb was not empty. This time there were two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had lain. “They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” Notice that Mary did not yet believe that Christ had risen. She still thought he was dead. She was simply grieving the loss of her Lord that she loved so much. The scripture says, “¹⁴ Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,^[a] “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).

She sees the risen Lord. The reason she got to see him whereas the men didn’t was because she waited. And the reason she waited was not because of her faith but because of her love. There is a message here for us. Love is more important than faith. The apostle Paul said in the faous love chapter of I Corinthians 13, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three. But the greatest of these I love.”  Such love will lead to faith. This morning we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is unbelievable to many people. Even good church people struggle with the idea of a physical resurrection of Christ. That is alright, as long as you love Jesus. That is what matters. I believe that if we love, then the faith will come. Mary did not believe Jesus had risen when she waited at the tomb. She was not even thinking about such a possibility. It was so far from her thoughts that Jesus stood right in front of her and she didn’t recognize him. But she loved Jesus, and so when he called her name, then she knew him.

It is the same with us. That is why I do not try to argue anyone into believing in the resurrection of Christ. I figure Christ can convince people that he is alive, just like he did with Mary. I don’t need to do that. The Holy Spirit can convince people that Christ arose like he did with John. But I do encourage you to love him. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and to love others. If we love God we will love his Son. And if we love his Son, then one day we will turn around and hear him call our name. Then like Mary, we will know that Christ is risen.

Divine Mathematics

Delivered April 1,2012

Philippians2:5-11

 See the video of this message at this link on YouTube

We all had to take arithmetic in school. Some of us were good at it and some of us weren’t. I don’t know how far you got in math. I was pretty good at it at first. I even enjoyed algebra. But when I took geometry, for some reason I had some trouble with it. Then came trigonometry and calculus, and I was out of my depth. Fortunately in religion we don’t have to use math much. The most I use numbers these days is when I balance my checkbook, monitor my retirement funds, and do the Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. When you run across numbers in the Bible, most of the time they are symbolic or hyperbolic. Unless you are into calculating years in biblical prophecies until the end of the world or the return of Christ (which I am definitely not into doing) then the only time a pastor needs to use mathematics is when it comes to church budgets. So why entitle a sermon “divine mathematics?” Just to allay your fears, I am not going to delve into the murky waters of numerology. There was a book in the 1990’s entitled “The Bible Code” which purported to discover secret messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Bible. I think that type of stuff is a bit crazy. Even though numbers have regular symbolic meanings in the Bible, I don’t believe in secret messages or mystical formulas.

Today I am going to explore a famous passage of scripture in Philippians 2. It gives an overall view of the movement of Christ from heaven to earth and back again. I still remember how a New Testament professor of mine in seminary used to graph this divine descent and ascent by putting a parabola on the blackboard. I don’t know if you remember parabolas from math class. I will give you the official definition of a parabola: “In mathematics, a parabola is a conic section, created from the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface.” If you are like me, that is as clear as mud. Let me put it in words that even the mathematically challenged people like me can understand.  A parabola is like a big U. That is all you need to know to understand this sermon. That big U – that parabola – graphs the movement of Jesus’ life and our lives.

I. I have two points to this message this morning that follow this mathematical theme. The first one I am calling the PARABOLA OF GRACE. In our passage today the apostle Paul traces the movement of Christ from the heavens to the earth. In another passage he even takes Christ even further down into “lower places of the earth” and then back up to the heavens again. But this is much more than just a tour of the ancient three tiered universe, like Dante’s Divine Comedy. Paul speaks about the spiritual journey that Christ took, and then he invites to take a similar journey.

Our scripture passage today begins with the preincarnate Christ in heaven. Christian theology, following the direction of the apostles John and Paul, teaches that Christ’s life did not start in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. It teaches us that before Christ became a man in Jesus of Nazareth, he was God. Paul say in verse 6 of our passage that “Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God….”  In short this means simply that Christ is divine. This is where it gets tricky, because we are talking about the doctrine of the Trinity here, and that can be really confusing. That is where you really get into divine mathematics. If you think trigonometry is bad, just try to figure out Christian theology!  1 person of the trinity plus another person, plus a third: 1+1+1=1. One God in three persons.

Christ preexisted as God in heaven – one of the three persons of the Trinity. But he did not stay in his exalted position in heaven as God. Paul writes: “Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, ⁷ but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”  The NRSV translates it: “but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Those who know Greek much better than I do say this translation “emptied himself” is more accurate. God emptied himself in Jesus Christ. The eternal God emptied himself to become a human being. Exactly what that means is the million dollar question. How can God became man? It is impossible, and yet we confess that the impossible happened in Jesus Christ. In geometry it is like saying you can have a round square or a two dimensional cube. The words divine and human do not go together. Yet that is exactly what the gospel says happened in Christ.

Then it goes on to say that as Christ made this downward trajectory to earth that he went even further. Verse 7 says he took the form of a servant. Verse 8 of our text says, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”  Not only did Christ become a man but be became a servant. He made that clear at the Last Supper when he washed his disciples’ feet, something only the lowest household servant did. And he died like a man, even though he was God. Not only did he die like a man, he died the worst death a man could die at that time and place. He died a disgraceful torturous death on a cross.

So we are at the bottom of this parabola now – the lowest of the low. In the trough of this U. Elsewhere the Bible takes us even further than Paul’s words here, talking about him being buried. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul talks about Christ in death descending to the lowest parts of the earth. This is the doctrine of the apostle’s creed where it says that Christ descended into Hades. I don’t want to run down that rabbit hole here today, but you get the point. The almighty eternal God lowered himself to the lowest level possible. The almighty became powerless. The immortal died. The King became a servant. The sinless one became sin. You can’t get any lower than that. The Bible says that the Holy One became sin for us. Again what that means is beyond my understanding. The holy God cannot become sin. Yet the gospel proclaims that is exactly what happened on the cross. He became sin, suffered the consequences of sin, and bore the punishment of sin for us. Theologically speaking this parabola of grace traces Jesus’ journey from the highest heaven to the deepest hell.

Then Jesus begins his return journey to heaven. That begins on Easter morning when the impossible happened again. The dead came back to life. Jesus rose from the dead. People hear this, and they scoff because we all know this can’t happen. And they are right! It can’t happen. Just like God can’t become a man, and 1+1+1 cannot equal 1. It is all impossible. In this same way the resurrection of Jesus is impossible. But Jesus said, what is impossible with man is possible with God. Scripture says that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples over a period of forty days and then bodily ascended into heaven. That is impossible also. How can a physical body go into the sky. Where would it go? We don’t live in the ancient three tiered universe. We know that heaven is not up in space somewhere and neither is hell at the core of planet earth. We are using earthly language to describe spiritual truth here. We use spatial language – up there and down there - descending and ascending – to refer to spiritual dimensions.  Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.  The traditional language says that he sits at the right hand of God the Father. Verse 9 says, “ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name…” So the parabola of grace is complete. Jesus has returned to his heavenly place.

II. But our passage is about more than just what Jesus did. It is about what we do. That is my second point. To carry on this theme of mathematics, I am calling this point the EQUATION OF SALVATION. But I am not going to be giving you any algebraic formula. What is important is that we follow the path that Jesus has already taken – the descent and the ascent.

Paul starts in our passage: “ ⁵ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus ….” We are to have the same mind as Christ. The path that he has trod, we are to trod. This attitude that he had is to be our attitude. The mind that he had is to be our mind.

We are to take this admonition very seriously. Being a Christian is not just admiring Jesus. It is not just having him as our model and example. It is to have the mind of Christ. There is another passage where Paul uses the same phrase. He says in 1 Corinthians: “For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” We are to be Christlike in our thinking, our attitude and in our behavior.

This means that just as Christ humbled himself, we are to humble ourselves. Christ got off his throne in heaven to come to earth to take the role of a servant. So are we to do. To get off our high horse, as my mother used to say. When I was a kid and was acting arrogantly, she would scold me and tell me to get off my high horse. I never understood what horse she was talking about, but that was the expression. To humble ourselves means to get off our high horse, get off our high thrones that we sit on judging everyone and everything, and humble ourselves and take the form of a servant – to be a servant of God and a servant of others. That is what the church is about. We are to be a community that serves God and serves others in the name of God. That is our mission.

If we think we are better than anyone else we do not have the mind of Christ. If we think we are more righteous then others because we are Christians then we do not have the mind of Christ. Even on Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem he did not come in on a white horse as a mighty king. The gospels describe his attitude as lowly riding on a donkey, and not even an adult donkey but a foal. He could not have appeared any more humbly and still made his point on Palm Sunday that he was Messiah. We are to have this same mind.

I think that as a church it means that we go to people rather than expect them to come to us. A lot of churches want people to come to them. But Jesus came to us, and called his disciples to go out to others. Our mission is to go to the people outside of these walls. And when we do, then people will want to come in to see what makes us go out and serve others. It is humility that draws people. We naturally resent the proud and haughty and arrogant. We are attracted to the humble and loving and caring. An arrogant Christian is the worst advertisement for the gospel. And I have known my share of arrogant Christians, and I am not innocent of exhibiting my own type of arrogance as well. But the mind of Christ is to empty ourselves of ourselves. My mother also used to regularly tell her kids that we were ‘full of yourself.” It is a good expression. We are often full of ourselves. The solution is to empty ourselves as Christ emptied himself and took the role of the servant.

Our passage says: “⁹ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” One of the ways that we humble ourselves and empty ourselves is by exalting Christ. We don’t humble ourselves by putting ourselves down; that is false humility. We don’t humble ourselves by denigrating ourselves or thinking we are worthless. That is just low self-esteem. We humble ourselves by acknowledging that there is one higher than ourselves, and putting ourselves under him by calling him Lord. When we bow the knee to Jesus Christ we humble ourselves.

And Jesus tells us that those who humble themselves will be exalted. And our ultimate exaltation is heaven, the end point of this parabola of grace. We don’t get to heaven by climbing the ladder to heaven - getting everything right, putting all our ducks in a row – right doctrine, right behavior, right worship, - get everything right and we are righteous and our reward is heaven. No, that is self-righteousness. That is not the equation of salvation. We are exalted in God’s eyes when we have the mind of Christ and humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself. Then “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and  every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”