you're my grain of sand, and,

buddy, i'm your oyster 

a sermon on paul's more excellent sermon that rhymes: 

This is the beating center of Saint Paul’s epistle to First Lutheran in Philippi. All that's preceded this has been building to it. And everything that follows is the consequence thereof. But here, at the heart, Paul burst out into this absolutely lovely lyrical praise. 

Praise that is indeed songlike. Recite these words to yourself. You’ll find they have a rhythm to them. A cadence that helps these words stick. 

But that isn’t all! This praise is also quite sophisticated, too! In these metered phrases, Paul charts out what transpired by Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension! With these words, Paul peels back the curtain to offer a glimpse of how the structure of reality itself changed when God Thyself stepped into it in the person of Jesus of Nazareth!

Now, in case you can’t tell, this is my very favorite kind of theology. I love it when Christians let their words soar. I appreciate it when believers have enough sense to know they need to deal in poetics if they’re going to even try to express what God has wrought in Christ. Needless to say, I get a bit miffed when stuffy theologians drone on and on about something as sublime as the incarnation, as if they’re talking about nothing more than how to get dirt out of an old rug.

…However, there is also a trouble with this sort of theological musing. Isn’t there? After all, exalted sentiments like this can seem far removed from our day-to-day existence. Can’t they? 

As pleasant as Paul’s prose may be, as it is pleasant, that’s not how we tend to experience life on this mortal coil. Is it? No, honestly, life is regularly confusing and disjointed. 

In this slapdash old world, not only does it appear as if Christ is not lifted high, it all too often seems as if nothing is grand whatsoever. In the crush of life, we’re all just trying to get by. Aren’t we?

The cold hard fact is when life comes at you fast and furious, this sort of steady and serene theological reflection can exacerbate that apparent divide between worship and the rest of life. Can’t it? 

It’s all too easy to feel as if there’s what’s said in here, and then there’s the real world. And whether we want to admit it or not, if we had to choose which side we’d get our money on, here or out there, it wouldn’t necessarily be in here. Would it?

…Of course, it goes without saying, but there are no sure bets. And all it takes is a phone call out of the blue, an unexpected bill, an unwelcome diagnosis, a pink slip, or even just the routine creep of age to call the wager on all the chips you’ve put your money on. What’s more, we all already know that! Don’t we?

Ironically, I believe this is why we’re wont to put all our chips on a losing hand! We can all sense the precariousness of life. Can’t we? As such, we tell ourselves that if we’re going to have any chance of beating the house, we have to go all in. 

We may want to put more stock in what happens in here, but the futures the church trades in strike us as too theoretical, far-flung, and wishful for this cruel ol’ world. Whether we like it or not, we tell ourselves we’ve got to live in reality. Church may offer nice bromides of some pie-in-the-sky future. But in the meantime, we’ve got to get through this week from you-know-where.

So if that’s where you’re coming from today, you should know you’re not alone. For heaven’s sake, if your pastor who gets paid to work in the church can feel this pressure, God help the rest of us. More importantly, though, I want you to know this is nothing new. 

It’s easy to wish for the good ol’ days, back when faith came a bit easier, and the world turned much more smoothly. But the bad thing about the good ol’ days is that they never existed! Sure, times may have changed. But it’s always been hard out there. And don’t kid yourself on that, either!

I won’t bother to try and prove this self-evident point. I’ll simply point to these altar rails worn smooth. Go ahead and try and tell me our forebears in the faith didn’t fall upon these beams as something sturdy while the rest of the world shifted under their feet. Or take a look at that window. Try and tell me our predecessors didn’t gaze upon that image of Christ open-armed without more than their fair share of tears. 

You can’t. Can you? No, of course you can’t. 

…Now, curiously, like these altar rails or that window, when Saint Paul employs that rapturous stanza to Christ, it’s decidedly not in service of some highfalutin theological speculation. Is it? No. On the contrary, Paul evokes this wondrous Christology to address how a person might navigate this rough and tumble world.

In fact, Paul is utilizing this Christ-hymn to describe something like mindset, a relatively popular concept nowadays. Furthermore, Paul is clearly all too aware of the pressure to put our noses to the grindstone to just try and get by. Paul obviously already knows all about that. 

He’s just insisting we’re no longer doomed to it, either!

The Thirteenth Apostle directs our attention to Christ so that we might behold another perspective. But, and here’s the deal, Paul isn’t holding up Christ as an alternate vision of reality. No, he’s insisting that he’s holding up the true one! 

As far as Saint Paul’s concerned, it’s all those other ways of trying to get by that are speculative, quixotic, and altogether fantastical. And the reason for this is that when Jesus Christ, God clothed in humanity, when he descended into this benighted sphere, he lifted it! On account of the incarnation, existence itself now crackles with divinity! When Christ emptied himself, he crammed creation itself with himself!

Go back and listen to this hymn again. This time, though, pay attention for the beats of the Adam and Eve story. Whereas Adam and Eve grasped at godliness and lost paradise, Christ refused to do any such thing. And in the process, Christ not only proved what kind of God he is, but he ALSO reopened the path to paradise, AND he reintroduced the dignity lost in the garden, too!

…Now, to talk about redemption like this makes it sound as if it were all a foregone conclusion. And in a way, it was. It was from all eternity that Christ decided to leave heaven so that you and I might have a place there.

But prior to that, if you can imagine such an instance, Christ could have done otherwise! Christ could have turned his nose up at redemption. Christ could have stood on his right as a person of the godhead in good standing. In other words, Christ did not HAVE to become human. 

Instead, in a love that can only be described as godlike, because we would never come up with it, Christ chose otherwise. Christ took 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. 

You and I, you understand, cannot be obedient to the point of death. Death will come as a necessity for us. Not Christ, though. No, Christ is God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, NOT made. Christ could have walled himself off in eternity and never tasted death. 

Rather than do that, though, Christ freely chose death. He obeyed its terrible command. And he did so so that not even death itself would be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus! In fact, now, when you feel the cold breath of death upon you, you will be closer to the fullness of Christ’s redemption than you’ve ever been!

On account of Christ, life is no longer one darn thing after another. No, now it is all covered in God’s fingerprints, from top to bottom! There’s not one instance of your existence that’s beyond the reach of Christ’s wounded hands. And neither is there a circumstance in your death and life, in that order, that’s too far removed from the gravitational pull of his redemption!

…Ok, I know. I’ve flirted with my least favorite kind of sermon. I’ve been talking about redemption in abstractions and generalities. And that has to be one of the least interesting ways to bring the power of what Christ has accomplished to bear. 

But the Holy Scripture has brought us to the pinnacle of existence itself. Words fall short here! 

What’s more, to deal exclusively in practicalities is not only to diminish what Christ has done, it’s also to diminish the rest of your week, too! Honestly, the most boring sermons are the ones where the pastor considers no greater horizons than headlines and likelihoods.

 

So instead of all that folderol, let’s try doing a little theology! Let’s let grace fly and let the chips fall where they may! It may sound simple, but in the glory of redemption, it’s really the wildest gambit there is!

So here goes: Christ has determined to mix it up with you! He’s held nothing back from you. In fact, he’s offered you something as lofty as his own raison d’être!

You are no longer consigned to that cramped skull-sized kingdom of yours! No, now you have recourse to Christ’s own mind! Christ has altered; he’s expanded your mind! 

You are now free to consider the interests of others! You are no longer a slave to your own predilections and preferences! In fact, you can now do something as miraculous as get out of your head and into the perspective of those you most care for. And even more miraculously, those you least care for, too!

Furthermore, you are now empowered to consider others as better than yourself! And that’s not all! Because you can do this without any risk to your own self-worth! When you know Christ has given you everything AND eternity, too, you finally and truly have nothing to lose!

But that’s not all! In Christ, you also shine like a star in this veil of tears! You have the light of Christ! It’s yours! Hang onto it for dear life! 

Rest assured, though, this is not just a matter of salvation. No, it’s a matter of splendor in this fading world Christ has determined to redeem, come what may. As Dostoevsky said, “Beauty will save the world.”

The trick ISN’T to take the rest of life more seriously. No, on the contrary, it’s to take it for the divine lark it is! Creation is not some necessity. No, rather, it’s God’s idea of a good time! And so are you!

…To be a Christian is simply to know something about creation that creation doesn’t know about itself! Namely, that it is infinitely loved from all eternity and back!

And the way God has elected to let the rest of creation in on the laugh is through you! And me, yes! And all of us together, doing something as foolish and unnecessary as daring to praise GOD as this world spins madly on!

Christ has more in store for you than just getting by. No, he’s come to let you in on the joke! In fact, he’s told you the punchline ahead of time. And he’s done so so that you might let others in on the setup, too!

And not because you have to, either. No, that’s old world thinking. On the contrary, what you GET to do is share the divine chortle with anyone else you darn well please, friend and foe alike!

After all, a fine way to make a friend out of an enemy is to share a joke with them! Furthermore, we all know one of the best parts of a joke is telling it to others! And Christ, in all the wisdom thereof, has thought of no better jokester than you! 

After all, it’s God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his GOOD pleasure! His good pleasure! Get it? It’s all for fun!

And it all starts right here. Here. Not out there. This is truly capital T the truest thing you will do. And not just all week, but perhaps in all your life!

May today be the hinge of your existence. May this be the moment the Holy Spirit takes you by the ears and turns your world on its ear! May Christ come alive to you in these words—because he is! 

And in so doing, may Christ plunk you into the wild whereby of grace, mercy, and love that your existence has always been! And will be forever and ever, too! May you be set free from those cheap imitations of life! And in the process, may you discover the gateway to the true, authentic, and downright lovely life Christ has come to hand over to you!

It’s all YOURS! NO one is stopping you! And nothing is holding you back, either! In fact, the Holy Spirit thyself is doing nothing less than shoving you into it all!

…What else is there to say? Nothing. Just this; Our hymn of the day is hymn 815, I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light. Could there be a better hymn?! No, there could not! 

As such, let us do something as audacious as it is humorous! Let us sing! Let us sing to God! 

And let us do so in the full assurance that God is doing something even more foolish! God is stopping everything to listen! In fact, God is even sending all of heaven to join along and sing with us!

I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, 815.