Instead
Over the next couple months or so, our community will reflect together on Philippians 2:1-18. This is a text loaded with encouragement, staggering theological insight, and practical instruction for living well. In the middle of this text exists what scholars believe to be a song or poem, which creatively reveals the counter-intuitive path of the God who came to us as fully and truly human and gave His life completely for the good of the world. The NLT version of the text tells us that when God showed up, instead of being all the things we might expect, He was humble, approachable, and on our level…or lower. Instead of showing up like a boss, he came as a servant. Instead of arriving up front, he went to the back of the line and waited with everyone else. Instead of using his power to appear as a big deal, he came as a nobody. If we’re just a little in touch with the allure of popularity, comfort, and grandiosity, it’s hard to relate with why God, the one we image as glorious and all powerful, would show up this way. In our culture, it’s almost unheard of for someone with the potential to lift themselves up, to instead expend their energy lifting others.
The people receiving this letter would have also found this confusing. The community being addressed was organized around a rigid hierarchy of honor and shame. Their idea of God’s presence and way was wrapped up in the appearance of high status. In this setting, people openly perceived others as being above or below based upon their family of origin, citizenship, or trade. It would have been completely normal to talk about and treat children, servants, women, and sick people (just to name a few examples) as less valuable. Sounds brutal, right? Well, before we look down on this too long, let’s be honest. In our culture, we may not speak that way or say that stuff out loud, but many of the same judgments are quietly embedded into the way things actually work. It may not get acknowledged, but for the most part our culture values business over education, and performance over character. When a recognizable pro athlete goes out in public, people shower them with compliments and offer to buy them drinks. Meanwhile, if a fifth-grade teacher who diligently works long hours to care for kids, speaks up about their inadequate pay, people question their spending or suggest they get a second job.
Our economy and social structure applauds those who climb the ladder and mostly ignores those who don’t. Yet, we have a hard time engaging with this issue because it tends to be avoided. These things can be hard to talk about because they are surprising personal. Within each of us are dearly held stories and ways we’ve made agreements with the way of upward mobility. There are parts of this problem that feel like home to us deep in our bones. Herein lies some of the remarkable power of Philippians 2. This text has the power to help us face and begin to engage with things that often exist in hard to reach, secret places. James Baldwin was right when he said, “you cannot fix what you will not face.” In Philippians 2 we are invited to stop looking away and to face what is there. And in doing so, while we will certainly see some things we don’t like, we also see this: God / Love is very different than we thought and way better than we imagined.
I believe this text contains incredible power to help us imagine a new way forward, to help us see how the life we always wanted is on offer in ways we’ve previously missed or were perhaps not ready to see. I believe the Spirit has important gifts in store for our community as we reflect and pray together, so I’m inviting everyone to gather around this common text. Will you join me? To begin, read the text a couple times a day and begin to reflect upon it. What questions come up for you? What are you drawn to? What glimmers? After reading, spend some time in prayer and meditation. Some of our recent community practices like centering prayer and lectio might come in handy, both of which help us to slow down and enter into an unhurried, contemplative posture before God. New Testament scholar Michael Gorman reminds us that when we come to a text, we are seeking to be formed deeply by asking these 3 questions of ourselves:
1) What is this text calling us to believe about God (faith)?
2) What is this text calling us to desire and long for (hope)?
3) What is this text calling us to do (love)?
By keeping these three together (faith, hope, and love), we aspire to undergo a deep spiritual formation that actually makes a difference in our inner worlds, relationships, families, and neighborhoods. If our study is just about gathering information about God, or knowing the text, we’ve badly missed the point. Friends, may we allow our belief to shape our desire and move us to become people who are learning to love.
A prayer for our community as we begin…
God, may the life of Jesus and the work of your Spirit create in us a greater capacity for faith, hope, and love! Instead of the exhausting patterns of impressing, competing, and performing, open our imaginations and renew us into fresh ways of living charged with love, grace, and humility. Awaken us to see how right here, amidst our everyday circumstances, another life is possible.
— Josh VonGunten
