May I never boast in anything other than the cross of Christ

This week we continued in our reflections on the Philippians 2:1-13. We also included these passages in our readings during the worship service (Mark 8:29-35 and Galatians 6:14-15).

In returning to the Philippians passage we noted that there are at least five big stories that find their resonance in the poem of Jesus' portrayal of God as the one who gives himself away:
1. The story of God revealing himself in the unique God-man, Jesus, as the one who gives himself away.
2. The story of the very human Jesus who demonstrates that the way of the cross is the fertile soil from which human flourishing sprouts.
3. The echo of the story of Adam who did regard equality with God as something to be exploited as he succumbed to the serpent's temptation to snatch and grab at equality with God; yet, the other part of the Adam and Eve narrative is that humans will flourish because of God's promise to provide salvation - Jesus does not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. Jesus succeeds where Adam, Eve, and we fail.
4. The story of Israel who was always meant to demonstrate God's love to the world in the form of a servant. What Israel did not do Jesus fulfilled.
5. An anti-Emperor story. Emperors in the ancient world were lauded by their court poets as those who were pressed into the form of their leadership because of their magnanimous and humble citizenship; because they were humble they were pressed into the position of leaders. Moreover, their power was supported in the name of god and emperor worship was on the rise as Paul wrote this Epistle. This political rhetoric of the emperor being pressed into service because of his humility was, of course, BS propaganda meant to prop up a justice and peace that was justice and peace in name only. Jesus is the true Emperor. This is Paul's point.

The main point of Paul's poem, as we noted last week, is that Jesus reveals the character of God in precisely this way: to quote Rowan Williams, ""A story of a God who is the way he is by giving away: that's what it's like to be God. Jesus, in the form of God, knowing what it was to be God, does not think that being God is a matter of grasping and clinging and defending. The divine nature is the absolute opposite of this and that means that not only in time but in eternity, God is pouring out God into what is other."

The exhortation to us in the passage is that we are to take this mind for ourselves. Applying this sort of teaching can certainly be slippery. Very quickly the exhortation can feel like a moralistic challenge to make ourselves behave like Jesus which will just make us tired. Instead we find the best clue in the allusion to the cruciform pattern that Jesus' life took - "let the same mind of Jesus be in us" - is achieved by us through living our life through the cross. So, our understanding of ourselves is shaped by the knowledge that we are in the need of the daily crucifying of our egos, our pride, our hate, our envy, our lusts, our idolatrous pathologies - the list goes on. A fitting meditation for Lent, no doubt. But, is all of this crucifixion language, this challenge to die daily, this plea to see ourselves, along with Paul, as those who have been crucified to the world and the world to us - is all of this so morbid as to leave us feeling that the only way to maturity is through being forever sullen about our failures and our weaknesses? On the contrary! A Lenten disposition towards our egos and an emotionally appropriate response to our sin is a sign of maturity and that we have embraced reality instead of a parody of reality. However, being crucified to the world is meant to lead us to a happy freedom, knowing that the cross has freed us from guilt, shame, and ways of life that are based on the crushing burden of varieties of moralism and shallow and lonely attempts at self-improvement.

Questions for discussion:
1. You are having a conflict with a friend or loved one - what sort of practical application can you make of the call to "never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and
I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!" Galatians
2. What do you think Paul have in mind as things that we might rather boast in other than the cross?
3. What do you boast in other the cross and what are you more proud of than the cross?
4. In the situation at Galatia about which Paul wrote that, "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything but a new creation is everything", it was the case that a sect of Jewish Christians had argued that conformity to the rituals of OT Law was necessary to ones life as a Christ follower. This is not a struggle for us in our setting but what sorts of similar things do we embrace that pervert grace? Why does Paul appeal to a new creation as the final judgment against his Judaizing opponents?