It's Just So Rich

It's Just So Rich: Philippians 2:5-11

There is something fantastic about fudge shops. When you go to your local Tesco's you know that you can buy fudge, but it's likely to be own brand, mass produced, only one or two flavours available. We went to the Lake District for our holidays and we stayed in Ambleside. In that town there are a couple of fudge shops. All they sell is fudge. You go in and there are wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling shelves, all stacked with locally produced fudge. Every flavour you can imagine. The choice and the richness of the food is paralysing. You know that you can't try every flavour quickly, it would be self-defeating, you'll be sick. You have to have a little at a time, trying different types on different days.

As we come to this next chunk of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, I think that this is a good image to have in our minds. This poem is scripture at its richest, with layers of meaning and depth. All I can hope to do tonight is invite you to taste some of the flavours that have struck me as I have chewed over it during the last week, and encourage you to keep on soaking in it over the coming week.

The beginning of the passage we are looking at tonight has its roots in last week's section. The phrase in verse 5, “the same mind” repeats both the words and ideas from verse 2. Paul is writing to the church at Philippi, from prison, to encourage them to be unified, to stand firm in love together against the world that is battling against them. He has told them to be of the same mind, to have a common outlook on life, and now he tells them some more about what shape that mind should be.

The mindset that they need to have, each of them and together, is to be the same as the mindset that Jesus has.

The first, and most important thing that Paul says is that Jesus was in the form of God. Now, if he had just left it there, then we might be left wondering, if Jesus is in the form of God, does that mean that he just looks a bit like God, he's the same kind of shape? But Paul goes on, he says, “did not consider equality with God something to be exploited”. This means that Jesus had equality with God. Everything that is characteristic of God, is also characteristic of Jesus. Everything that makes God, God, is also true of Jesus. Jesus is God.

This is a phenomenal statement for Paul to be making. He has grown up as a Jew, a strictly “one God” religion, in a culture with a whole heap of gods. The “one God” thing was one of the main things that got Jews, and Christians into trouble and got them persecuted. They would not swear allegiance to the Roman emperors who declared themselves to be god, they would not compromise or tolerate the worship of other gods alongside Yahweh, the Lord, the God of their forefathers, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The development of the understanding of Jesus as God, and beyond this to the Trinity including the Holy Spirit, in the early church was one of the biggest theological departures from Judaism as can be imagined. The fact that Christians continued to maintain that in some way God was still only one Being in three Persons, didn't really improve things.....

So here we have bombshell number 1: Jesus is God.

So, what does being God look like, if we look at Jesus? Well, Paul says that Jesus, did not consider it something to exploit, but he emptied himself and took the form of a slave. In this, he did not lose any of the characteristics that made him God. In fact, it was the fact that he was God that led him to take this form. His Godly love, his Godly passion for his creation, his Godly desire to reconcile creation, that led him to come to earth, as a slave.

Here again we have that word “form” and again, we might be left asking, “does that mean he just looked a bit like a slave” and again Paul's expansion tells us that it is more than that. Jesus was obedient with all of his life. The defining characteristic of a slave is that the slave's life is owned and at the disposal of the slave's master. Jesus was obedient to the disposal of his life, he was in every way a slave.

Again this is completely contrary to every cultural norm. In the surrounding culture men and women are raised up with adulation and riches. Their houses are featured in Hello magazine, and they are waited on hand and foot. The more godlike they become, the less human they are and the more slaves and servants they command.

Here is bombshell number 2: God became a human slave.

The phrase, “He humbled himself” gives us another link back into the first four verses, and reminds us why Paul is telling us this. It is all about Jesus mindset, a mindset that is to be taken on by the Philippians. In verse 3 he commends humility, and here we have Jesus humbling himself. The humility of this way of thinking is one of obedience.

Here at the end of verse 8 we have the mid point of the passage, the turning point, the focus. It is the cross. It is at the cross that the world turns. It is at the cross that this mindset of Christ is seen at its clearest. At the cross the love, justice, mercy and heart of God are seen for all time and for all people.

The cross is a shameful thing. It is the death of the traitor, of the criminal, of the accursed, of the outcast. How can we describe it to this generation? We no longer live in a culture that knows what shame is. We even have a television programme called, “Shameless”. Imagine if you would the thing in your life that you wish most of all that you had never done, that you want nobody to know about. Now imagine that the details of this thing were broadcast on the TV, the radio, was in the papers all over Littleover and Derby. The cross was not only an instrument of torture, but of public humiliation and shaming. Jesus went to that place voluntarily so that those things that we are ashamed of could be forgiven and wiped out.

Here is bombshell number 3: God hung on a cross

And so we move into verse 9. As always, we have to ask what the therefore is there for. Does it mean that all the things that follow are Jesus' reward for being such an obedient slave? Was it all for the glory at the end? No. This is God the Father's “yes” of witness to the Godness of all that Jesus has done. What it says is that everything that follows is further evidence that all Paul has described so far is truly part of Jesus' nature as God. Jesus is exalted because he is God. He has the name that is above every name because he is God. Every knee should bend at that name because that is the fitting response to the name of God, with this phrase being lifted straight out of Isaiah's reporting of what God said about God:

Isa 45:23

23 By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.'

Jesus is Lord, a deliberate challenge to the Roman practice of calling upon their divine emperor, “Caesar is Lord.”

This is a repeat of Bombshell number 1, just in case you missed it. Jesus really is God.

With it comes Bombshell number 4: Caesar isn't Lord, Jesus is Lord.

Paul's rounds it all off with a crowning glory, that it is all, “to the glory of God the Father” This also provides us with our final link back to the previous verses and to Paul's guiding argument. This glory, the glory of the Father, which is the focus and aim of Christ's mindset, is to be contrasted with the empty glory, or conceit, that the Philippians are warned of in verse 3.

Jesus, is God. What Jesus shows us of God is in contrast to what people have thought that God is like. It turns the world on its head. Many people throughout history have wanted to be like God, but they have thought that that meant rich, powerful and worshipped. Paul says that it is right for humans to want to be like God, but that we have to have a right understanding of what God is like, a right understanding that Jesus shows us at the cross.

I must admit, I feel like a bit of a vandal. This beautifully poetic summary of the good news of Jesus has been chewed up and, to some extent, pulled apart. So, having pointed out some themes and tasted some of the flavours, I want to put it back together with its introduction, and allow it to have the final word.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, and sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete:

be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or for empty glory, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Let the 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,

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.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on the earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

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