summer's here & the time is right

for dancing in the street

A sermon on Paul's sermon on the great, ancient Christ Hymn:

Summer is just around the corner. Memorial Day is tomorrow, and with it, vacation-season. 

Ah, the summer. That lovely little season of long, lazy days. Warm summer days that break with the cool of the night into free and easy evenings. Yes, the summer, that reprieve from the regular grind. The summer with its excursions for no other purpose than fun and relaxation. 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.

Now I know that talking about vacation after the violent and senseless past couple of weeks we’ve had can seem obnoxiously trivial. But trust me, nothing could be further from the case. In fact, nothing could be more pertinent. More imperative to our survival. 

Our own survival from ourselves. Ourselves and that old compulsion of ours for self-destruction. 

And just to be clear, I don’t mean that we all need a break. Although we desperately do. And I don’t mean that rest is getting harder and harder to come by, either. Although it does seem to be.

No, I’m NOT talking about all the ways humane rest, relaxation, and pleasure are being squeezed out of life. I’m talking about how we speed this miserable development along ourselves! I’m talking about our own aversion to respite. I’m talking about the troubling reality that rest does not seem to come naturally to you and me.

Because the real problem is that our real problem isn’t OUT there. No, the call is coming from inside the house, as they say in horror movies. The source of our dilemma hits closer to home. Our real problem resides within the four walls of our ribcage. Our problem is right here, the human heart. The heart, that old factory of idols, as John Calvin once described it. 

Our real issue is not a new one. No, it’s an old one, as ancient as Eden. It’s that same urge that drove Adam and Eve to look at paradise and think they could do a better job for themselves. 

It’s that futile endeavor to try and shore up Eden, of all places. That doomed bid to improve paradise by grasping the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All so that we could be God for ourselves.

We call this scene “The Fall.” But it wasn’t doing something beneath us that unleashed this disaster. Was it? On the contrary, it was a stab at improvement. It was an attempt to reach for something above us that got us expelled from Eden.

The perennial shock for people like you and me is that what makes a mess of God’s good creation isn’t taking something from it. On the contrary, it’s trying to add something to it! Our crack as bettering Eden didn’t make anything any better. Did it? On the contrary, it threatened to crack Eden up. To turn paradise itself into a dystopia.

And this is as true of Eden as it is of everything else in your life, too. That old compulsion to add our own spin on everything we touch is what makes a hell out of heaven. It’s what makes rest so hard to come by, too. And, tragically, it’s what keeps this vicious cycle of violence a’spinning.

…Now, thus far, I’ve been trying to put my thumb to the pulse of a prehistoric mutiny. An ancient dynamic that’s alive and well within us, wreaking havoc on even our best of intentions to this very day. But after yet another senseless tragedy and a couple rotten years of mean-spirited Covid bickering, this scourge of ours speaks for itself. Doesn’t it?

This recounting of the theological history of our current malady may be interesting. But it’s not helpful. Is it? Because our problem is self-apparent on a week like this. 

The real problem is not that we don’t understand our real problem. No, the real problem is that we’re helpless about our real problem. Our real problem is all the ways we try and cure our affliction only make its symptoms that much worse. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you’re skeptical there’s any remedy to this misery we’ve created for ourselves. 

But would you believe me if I told you it’s to people just like us that Paul first wrote these audacious words? Philippians was a community beset by budding persecution and roiling with the prospect of internal conflict that had the potential to tear the congregation apart. What’s more, Paul wrote these lofty words from a prison cell! 

But Paul doesn’t speak these lofty words in spite of these circumstances. No, he speaks these words precisely because of them! Well, those circumstances, and the God who dares to descend to such wretched conditions!

…The way God works in Jesus Christ couldn’t be more at odds with our way of doing things. Instead of operating by the rules of exertion and addition, Christ works by the divine math of subtraction. Instead of regarding equality with God as something to be exploited, Christ empties himself!

Christ willingly lets go of and leaves everything that’s already his by divine right! In fact, he goes so far as to become “obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” When Christ had the full fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he didn’t cling to it. On the contrary, he let go of it. 

In fact, he went further. He became nothing. Nothing, although he was by his very nature already all-in-all. And in this self-emptying, Christ filled all those places we come to nothing with everything he has to give!

There is an alternative to our fatal way of doing things! Only it’s not by trying to overcome real life with all its indignities. Rather, it’s to dare to look for Christ in the midst of it! True spirituality is life in reality!

Where Adam and Eve fell short, Christ stood tall! Paradoxically, though, Christ stood tall by stooping low. That’s why, if you’re having trouble seeing God’s work in your life, the problem just might be that you’re not looking low enough.

…Now, this way of life is a lot easier than our way of trying to bend something like life to our predispositions. And this means, for creatures like us anyway, it doesn’t come naturally. But this internal opposition is ultimately just a sure sign that this alternative mode of existence has its origin in God. 

And thanks be to God, that it’s God’s good pleasure to work and will in the likes of us! Us, who are quickly running up against the limits of our willpower and the shortcomings of our work ethic. 

It’s when you have nothing left of your own to go on anymore that you finally have faith enough to make room for God. “God who is at work IN you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” When you come to nothing, Christ does everything! 

The soaring encouragement in Christ, the consolation from love, the sharing in the Spirit, and the compassion and sympathy are precisely for those of us who are short on them! This noble life in Christ Paul describes is not a flight from reality! No, it’s a declaration of what the downwardly mobile God does when real life gets you down!

So if that’s where you’re coming from today, you’re right where you need to be! And if that isn’t, well, it will be. It’s what’s in store for all of us. Instead of being bad news, though, this is immanently Good News! 

For it’s only the run-down and worn-out who find themselves on the holy ground of real life. Because it’s real life, with all its imperfections, that Christ really sanctifies by his descent into it! What’s more, it’s only those of us who are at the mercy of real life who will to dare to look for such a God in such ignoble circumstances. 

Turns out, everything that’s got you worried maybe you’re an unsuccessful Christian is really everything Christ is using to make a real one out of you!

And if that promise isn’t capable of getting the likes of you and me to put down our weapons and dare to rest, nothing is. Good thing Christ is even a master craftsman with all our nothing!