The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Today, as the church reads from the Letter to the Phillipians (who lived in what is now Greece, FWIW), we hear again a passage we hear every Palm/Passion Sunday: the great Christ Hymn At the Name of Jesus. Scholars think it was already in some sort of liturgical use, possibly in Phillipi, when Paul quoted it to his companions there. In and of itself, its awesome and majestic and one of the earliest instances of how liturgy affected theology, as it was the hymn that came first, and then Paul quoted it and drew from it, possibly the first example of Lex orandi, lex credendi. But its far more than that. Paul is using this hymn as the quintessential paradigm of how the Phillipians should act one with another: with humilty toward each toward even the point of death. And that, for us humans, can be incredibly difficult. Paul is soo concerned about the unity of the community at Phillipi that he deliberately invokes the strongest possible example of behavior he can think of - that of Jesus himself, who became human, who was God from God, Light from Ligth, True God from True God, and then allowed himself to be executed. To him, and it should be for us too, it;s amazing, and rather terrifying. Few of us can actually do that, after all, especially when it seems no one else is. that makes it a true sacrifice, and that can be incredibly hard. But Paul in the last line of todays reading assures us that it is God himself who implants in us the desire to act like Jesus and also gives us the grace and ability to do it. There have been any number of times when all Ive got is the assurance that even the shadow of the desire to be of one mind with my fellow Christians is enough for God to work with. And thats all God needs. Heres a stirring setting of Crown Him with many Crowns from Westminster Abbey in London: https://youtube/watch?v=3kPkjghup8E
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:03:36 +0000