26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Preached at Assumption Parish in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/humility-and-obedience-1696225613/
Transcript
[Thank you to an Assumption parishioner for her editing help.]
A brief note on the gospel and then the second reading. We would do well in Christianity to be clearer with ourselves and others that we are here in church because we are sinners. Like the first son, we are those who have said “no” to the Lord and are actively working to try to say “yes” to Him. Sin is saying no to God, and we’ve said no to God. We have sinned. But we’re trying to get to the point where we say, I can do better. And by the grace of God, I will eventually go into the field.
Unfortunately, many people regard us as the second son, the one who says yes. We publicly live a perfect life, and we endeavor to say everything that God wants us to say or everything people would expect us to say. We are like, Yep, everything is great. And then we’re not doing the work. We should just have in our minds—the Christian life is the work. It’s the work of being a sinner, knowing we are a sinner and working to get to a place where we’re willing to say yes—which is to say Christianity is living in the tension, allowing God to pull us closer and closer to Him and His will and His heart. As long as you are living in the tension, as long as you are open to the Lord and are allowing him to continue to speak to you, you’re doing great.
Now to Philippians. This is one of the most important passages in all of the letters of Paul. It’s called the Canticle in the Philippians because the second section that we’re going to dive into deeply seems to have the structure in Greek of a hymn. We think that Paul here is actually quoting a Christian hymn, but let’s contextualize it first.
Every functional society has something that it holds in common. If we don’t have something in common, then we cannot be a society. We can’t live together. We can’t work together. We can’t have the same goals and the same aims and the same ways of being. To use our country as an example, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the things that we are supposed to have in common—the thing that we say, yes, this is what every American shares, what every American values. It’s the thing that gives us a center point around which to frame our different debates. And it’s okay to debate things, as long as we have a foundation that’s shared. Unfortunately, you hear a lot of talk today that the Constitution has been politicized. We deeply disagree about what it means. We have living constitutionalists, and we have originalists. As a consequence, the foundational document of our country isn’t serving as a point of unity. None of us can agree what it says or what it’s supposed to do, which is why we see so many things falling apart today.
Well, the same is true with Christianity. Our center is Jesus Christ. If we can say that we are all following Jesus, that we are all giving our lives to Jesus, that we are all living our lives in accord with the teachings and example of Jesus, then we have a foundational unity in the church. It should allow us to have diversity within that unity in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, in Christianity, and this is particularly true between different denominations of Christianity, we can no longer agree on who Jesus is. It is the human tendency to make God in our image, which is a reversal of Genesis. We make God into who we want Him to be, which is to say, whoever our heroes are. Whether our heroes are on the left or on the right, we say, “Well, Jesus would have done that.” Jesus is the guy who agrees with all of my politics and all of the things that I want to happen in the world and with my view of economics and society and everything else. If I can make up my own Jesus in my head, then Jesus is whoever I want Him to be. It is very easy to turn Jesus into that.
As Christians, in order to avoid that and so that Jesus can be a source of unity for all of us, we have to go to the scriptures. Why the scriptures? Because the Scriptures are the Word of God. The scriptures are God describing Himself. If I have to confront the scriptures, if I have to say, “Who do the scriptures say that Jesus is?”, which is to say, “How does God describe Himself?”, then there is an objective measure outside of me and outside of you that we hold ourselves to. And that objective measure becomes the source of our unity. We should note, for example, that nowhere in the Scriptures is Jesus presented as a guru, as a guy who just has wise sayings, and yet many people believe Him to be that. We should note that in the Scriptures, nowhere is Jesus presented as just being a nice guy. He’s merciful. He’s absolutely merciful. But He requires contrition for that mercy. Tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of heaven because they are repenting at the preaching of John the Baptist. And yet everybody talks about Jesus as a nice guy. What do the scriptures say? Well, our second reading gives us an excellent image into what the early Christians knew about Jesus and then what Saint Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recorded in the Scriptures for us.
First, note that Paul says the same thing I’ve been saying about society. He says to the Philippians, Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart thinking one thing. He wants this local church in Philippi to be united in heart and mind, and he gives them a list of what that looks like. He says, Do not do anything out of selfishness or out of vainglory, rather humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Okay, this is what Christians are supposed to do. Very good. But if Paul says it on his own authority, then suddenly we break into divisions again.
So that middle part of our second reading is the most important, because Paul says, Be humble by having in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus. There’s our source of unity—having in us the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus. And whatever Saint Paul says next is vitally important for us because it gives us a true image into who Jesus is. Who is this guy that we’re supposed to follow? Saint Paul says Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Now that word grasp is less intense in English than I believe it is in the original languages. Think instead of a violent action, a violent taking—like Eve taking the apple from the tree. It wasn’t given to her; she grasped it; she took it for herself. It is a selfish move. So, when we read, Jesus did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, we might interpret that to say “violently taken.” The role of the second person of the Trinity is receptive. Everything He has He receives from his Father. He’s not grasping his divine nature. He’s not taking it for himself as a power move. He is humbling himself so that He can receive everything that He has from his Father.
Saint Paul continues, Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. Coming in human likeness and found human in appearance. Jesus is God, and, as some of the early church fathers would say, He gave up heaven to be with us. Heaven is the place of the perfection of God. There is no sin. There is no corruption. There is no sadness. There is only the joy and perfection God intends for us. Jesus, living in perfect unity with his Father for all eternity, gave up the comfort of heaven so that He could come down to this world of sin, death, corruption and disease. Who would do that? All of us are trying to get there. That’s a huge sacrifice. That is massively humbling. But then He goes further. Saint Paul continues, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Not only did Jesus decide He wanted desperately to be with us—so desperately that He would give up the comforts of heaven—but He came here and then experienced death. And not just death, but the worst torture and death that humanity had to offer at the time. This is how the Roman Empire killed public criminals, the criminals they wanted to make an example out of. So, Jesus not only humbles himself in front of his Father, not only gives up heaven to become human, not only dies, but dies the death of a criminal. What incredible humility!
What are the two characteristics that Saint Paul gives us that we should be imitating in Jesus? It is His humility and His obedience. His obedience to the Father. Think of our gospel today. Maybe I said no in my heart at first, but out of obedience to the Father, I’m going to get myself to a place of yes. And then humility. That’s asking of ourselves, what would I give up for the sake of the other? Jesus gave up heaven and life and dignity for my sake. What will I give up for my brother or my neighbor?
Some examples within the home…two common things that we fight about are chores and money. Maybe both members of a couple hate doing a certain thing, but one of them just fell into the habit of doing it, and the other person is kind of excited. Oh, at least I don’t have to do that. It’s really nice that my husband/wife does that for me. Okay. Would you give that up, though? Would you give up your good fortune to take on the chore that you hate? Or what if you’re a kid living in your parents’ house? I think of my sister. My mother hated washing the dishes; it was her least favorite chore. So, of course, that’s what she gave to her kids. Makes sense. I enjoyed it; my sister did not. At some point, when my sister was in middle school or high school, she was just being an absolute pill about doing the dishes. And I just kind of took her aside and said, Look, Mom hates it too; you both hate it. At some point you just got to be humble, give up, suck it up and just do it because both of you hate it. That’s the question: what are you willing to give up for the sake of the other? Are you willing to give up your comfort or your pride for the sake of the other? On money issues, we might fight about, do we really need this thing? Well, would you give up the thing that you like, your creature comfort, the thing that you buy regularly for the sake of domestic harmony?
How about at work? There’s a very important managerial principle that a manager should be willing to do anything that somebody below him or her does. I think about myself here—if it came to it, would I be willing to answer the phones, open the doors, clean the toilets in the church? Would I be willing to do those things out of humility? As a good manager, I have to say, yes, I would be willing to do them. I pray God wouldn’t test me, but I still have to say yes, I’d be willing to do them.
All of us have to do the same. What are we willing to give up for those around us for the sake of our society? I think about the Litany of Humility. If you’ve never prayed it, it’s a very hard prayer. I recommend trying to pray it today. The Litany of Humility says things like: I pray that others would be valued more than me; I pray that others would be loved more than me, recognized more than me, honored more than me. It’s a hard thing to pray for, but would you be willing to give up your honor or your recognition for the sake of somebody else?
As a final example, we should think about Partners in the Gospel. We’ve done input sessions and about 12% of our parishioners have gone to an input session at this point. So, we have a pretty good feeling of how people are feeling. I’m aware, as the leader of this community, that we are coming into the conversation with a lot of resources. We have the only school in the county, and that’s unlikely to move. We have the tallest church in Whatcom County, or at least Catholic Church in Whatcom County. We might be the biggest; I think Saint Joseph’s in Ferndale may be able to seat more people than us. We are coming in with the biggest staff and the biggest budget and all of these sorts of things. And we can very tempted as a community to say, “Okay great! Partners in the Gospel—that means everybody else is going to get on our page. They’re going to join our community and join our ministries.” But that is not the humility of Jesus. We have to be asking ourselves not what can they bring to us, but instead what am I willing to sacrifice for them? And practically, maybe we’re going to be asked to give up some of our mass times or some of our programs. But we should desire to sacrifice so that this conversation would go better. For example, a lot of churches, when they combine, have duplicate ministries. Would we at Assumption be willing to step aside from all leadership positions for our ministries so that whoever we are joined with could be invited to lead those ministries? Would we be willing to give that up for the sake of the Christian community? Would we be willing to give up even certain ministries? Maybe when we are combined, they do this better than us, or maybe we don’t have the same space that we used to. Will we give up the room that we’ve been in for 15 or 20 years? Is that something we’re willing to give up? The source of our unity is Christ, and the Scriptures tell us that Christ is both humble and obedient. Can we be both humble and obedient in this process? My brothers and sisters in Christ, like I said, we all come to this Christian experience as sinners. All of us have said no to God, and the work of Christianity is trying to get to a place of saying yes. Humility and obedience are not popular values today. Giving up my desires is not popular. Giving up my control is not popular. But that’s the work. Are we Christians willing to unite around Jesus? Are we willing to take upon ourselves His values? Can we get to a point where we’re working on saying “yes” to being obedient and to being humble?
Fr. Moore 