Sermon Title: "Regard Others as Better Than Yourselves"
Date: September 28, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Philippians 2:1-13

When I was a young boy growing up at Community Congregational Church in Los Alamitos, I was an acolyte—charged with walking down the aisle in a robe at the beginning of worship, lighting the two altar candles, then sitting in the front pew, right in front of the pulpit and the minister, and was challenged to stay awake throughout the service until I went up to extinguish the candles at the benediction.  And mind you, this was after I had already spent an hour in Sunday School during the first service.

What is more memorable for me, however, and something I’ve never forgotten, was something the minister told us junior acolytes, and at least one future minister.  It was what the two candles represent.  Did you ever wonder about that?  He said they could represent either the Old and New Testaments, or the two natures of Christ—divine and human.  And for either of those representations, we were always to light the left candle first, for the Old Testament came before the New, and Christ was divine before he became human.

Jump ahead a decade or so, and a word I learned in seminary was “kenosis”, from the Greek root meaning the action of emptying.  The definition of kenosis is the relinquishment of divine attributes by Jesus Christ in becoming human.

Today’s passage from the letter to the Philippians offers what might be one of the oldest Christological reflections in the entire New Testament.  Because of the poetic beauty of these verses, there is considerable suggestion that these texts make up an early Christian hymn, which Paul has skillfully incorporated into his letter to the church at Philippi. 

Both theological scholars and ordinary Christians like us can have two different views of today’s letter.  On the one hand, it is an “incarnational” hymn describing a divine being, a pre-existing Christ who sets aside divinity to take on human form.  Hence, kenosis, or emptying of his divine nature, or, why I was taught to light the left/divine candle first.

It seems simple when reading these verses to understand them as referring to a pre-existent Christ (existing as and with God).  This is the Christ of whom John in his Gospel writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  This Christ relinquishes his divine status to become a human being and experience life as we do, with all its joys and sorrows, then goes to the extreme of suffering death and then is exalted once again by God in his resurrection. 

Yet a second interpretation, understood by some of the earliest church fathers (Origen and Cyprian) in the third century, is that this text really points to the emptying of the soul of the human Jesus, not the divine God.  They saw a link not with John’s powerful prologue to his Gospel, but John 13, where the human Jesus takes on the humble servant task of washing his disciples’ feet.

I still remember the pain of getting back my first essay in seminary in a church history class in 1970, when we were asked to reflect on several early church treatises on the pre-existence of Christ versus the human Jesus becoming God’s Son.  I began my paper, “I must confess that I have never thought of this.”  Some sarcastic teaching assistant, a doctoral candidate, graded my paper and began his critique, “I must confess that I can’t believe you’ve never thought of this.”

It doesn’t matter whether you have thought of it before today or not, for it has been argued both ways since the time the Gospels were written.  Some, like John, believed in the pre-existence of Christ.  Others, like Mark, believed the human Jesus became the anointed Christ at the time of his baptism.  Whether today’s passage from Philippians is in praise of the pre-existent Christ who entered earth’s time as a human, or the sacrifice of the human Jesus, the point is that Jesus did live a human existence—a simple, humble one at that, with none of the trappings of royalty that rulers have claimed since time immemorial.  He referred to himself repeatedly as the Son of Man, not the Son of God.  Where do you ever remember him proclaiming, “I’m the Son of God!  You had better listen to me or else.”  He epitomized the words of Paul after which I titled this sermon:  “regard others as better than yourselves.”

This doesn't mean only to regard the late Mother Teresa as better than yourself, or Billy Graham as better than yourself, or some other member of the contemporary communion of saints as better than yourself, but to regard great numbers of generic “others” as better than yourself.  This means welfare moms and the smiling fellow we see every day up at 7th and PCH, those with tattoos and rap stars, residents of rusty trailers and folks who push grocery carts full of their worldly possessions on the streets of Long Beach.

When we “do unto others”—with grace, generosity and good humor—for people such as these, we find our own lives enhanced:

• Tutors of low-income schoolchildren find that they are energized by the enthusiasm of their students.
• Visitors to the sick and shut-in discover that they are inspired—not depressed—by their time at the bedside.
• Teenagers who built a house for a poor family in Tijuana during Easter vacation found that they LOVE their work—although don’t expect them to bring that same spirit to chores at home!
• Donors to hospitals in the Third World know that their money is going a long way toward immunizing children against a host of deadly diseases, and no one has ever said that they wished they had spent that money on something for themselves!

Perhaps the greatest benefit of such concern for the interests of others is that it builds community:  between adults and children, the well and the sick, the rich and the poor, the First World and the Third World.  Paul wants us to be in community with one another, “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (2:2).

Isn’t that what Christ did when he came to earth?  Didn’t he build community between people, at the same time he acted out the love, care, compassion and acceptance of the God who sent him?  And after he made the ultimate sacrifice, humbling himself and becoming “obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross . . . God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name...” (2:8-9).

Here is a way to understand the humility of regarding others as better than yourselves, demonstrated both in the divine Christ’s humanity and expected of us as Christians.  Pastor Johann Christoph Arnold (b. 1940) wrote:  “Humility is not just gentleness or meekness.  It demands vulnerability, the willingness to be hurt.  It is readiness to go unnoticed, to be last, to receive the least.  Humility offers nothing in the way of peace as the world gives—and plenty that destroys it.  Yet it describes the way of Christ better than any other word.  [Humility] is the way of Christ.  And as such it brings the deepest and most lasting peace.” (from Seeking Peace, Farmington:  The Plough Publishing House, 1998, 123.)

Paul wrote the letter we heard today from prison, to the church at Philippi, which was fractured and split.  He wanted to remind these believers that they follow a God who is truly sovereign and whose actions in exalting Jesus offer hope to those who are in the midst of opposition and suffering.  The same God who exalted Jesus is at work in them “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13).  Paul reminds them in the first century, and us in the 21st, to remain faithful to this Almighty God who is more powerful than any power than they or we might face.