Palm Sunday C (
Philippians 2:5-11,
Luke
Pr. George L. Murphy
St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church, Akron,
DOWN TO EARTH
I’d heard that this was a big day, and I guess the beginning of a big week, for you Christians, so I decided to come to your church and find out what it was all about. And yeah, I can kind of see from that long dramatized reading why the story about Jesus’ arrest and execution could have a powerful effect on people. On the other hand, there doesn’t really seem to be anything all that special about it.
I mean, history is full of stories like that. There’s a society that has a whole lot of evil and injustice – what society doesn’t? There’s a reformer with great ideas about improving the world. He denounces the evils in the world – political oppression, religious corruption, economic injustice, prejudice – and paints a picture of a better world. He has a dream! And he’s an inspiring leader who rallies the oppressed and the people who are sensitive to their sufferings.
But of course this movement is a challenge to those who are in power. And since those who are in power have the power, they win out in the end. Sometimes the would-be reformer is just discredited, sometimes imprisoned, and more often than not he’s killed. Maybe his memory lives on, maybe not.
It’s a
common story - Socrates having to take poison, Martin Luther King getting shot,
idealistic Chinese students getting mowed down in
So sure – it was an interesting reading. I think you people did a good job with it and I have to confess that I was even kind of moved by it. I’m also moved by reading Plato’s account of Socrates’ death in the “Phaedo.” But why all the “God” talk surrounding this very ordinary story about a dirty little plot to kill a good man? Why gather in churches to hear it every year?
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It’s true –
the arrest and execution of Jesus of Nazareth is not the only time in history
that something like that has happened.
It’s a typically human, a typically worldly, story. Paul said that in our reading from
Philippians. “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. And being
found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross.”
What we just read about in the
Gospel of Luke did not take place in heaven.
The scene was the streets and courtrooms and place of public execution
of a crowded city in the
The passion of our Lord is the story of the God who dares to be human in the fullest sense. It is the revelation of the God who is so free that he could let go of the privileges of divinity to take a place in the history of the world, “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” And living as a human being in world of sinners – no, it’s not surprising that he was rejected, and condemned, and killed.
The Son of God emptied himself, limited himself to the human condition. It wasn’t in some ideal human condition but in the real world of people who cling to their rights, and worship security, and try to get as much power and wealth as they can at the expense of others, and betray their friends, and resent anyone who criticizes them, and run away in times of danger, and – all the other things that Pilate, and Caiaphas, and Peter and Judas did. All the things we do.
He does not look like God, being arrested and condemned to death and hanging on a cross. “There is no beauty that we should desire him.” He is not here to look good. He is here to take on our lives and our dying in order to transform them, to bring about a new creation. He is here to make us the kind of people God always intended for us to be – people like himself.
Paul didn’t quote that hymn in Philippians just because it’s great theology. He did it to show us what we can be. He introduces it by saying, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” And then he goes on: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.” “What would Jesus do?” the bracelets and T-shirts ask. Here is Paul’s answer.
“Therefore God also highly exalted him.” The story doesn’t end with the cross.
But let us not rush on to Easter too quickly. God has not accomplished the work of new creation by power as the world judges power, but rather by strength made perfect in weakness. It is by his death that he destroys our death. The cross is God’s victory. And the one who is risen and present in the Christian community as its Lord is the one who always bears the marks of the cross.
“Let this same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus.”