power in weakness

This week we took up Philippians 2:1-11. The portion that tells Christ's story in poetic language is regarded by some as a likely hymn of the early church. It is hard to know for sure but what we do know is that this story of Christ's "downward mobility" is the story Paul tells that controls his remarks in this entire letter and, arguably, his broader theology of salvation.

For many, this story presents a Jesus who, for a period of time, humbled himself and because he humbled himself became exalted. The implication is that the way up is down for Jesus; and for us, as we imitate him. This view has been promoted for a long time by those who took the verses, "he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself", as meaning that Jesus set aside his divine privileges (also, attributes?) so that he might become humble, live a humble life and die on the cross. In response to this humble servant-hood and obedience, God has exalted him. There is another way of reading this story, though, that represents the approach we took in the homily. We understand this story not to be about a parenthetical period in Jesus' life where he showed radical humility but to be a story about God and the way he is.

In the cultural context in which Paul wrote deities were understood to regard being god as a matter of exploiting, helping themselves to whatever they would want. Moreover, the despotic rulers of Rome and other ancient regimes branded themselves as gods in their own right and certainly regarded this power and status as privileging them to exploit whatever and whomever they wanted. Also, since Adam, humankind had done a very good job of using power and privilege to our own advantage. Against this attitude of exploitation Paul tells a story not just about Jesus incarnate, as if his servant-hood was a parenthesis on his way back to exaltation, but he tells the story of God in stark contrast to the "normal" way of thinking about deity. New Testament scholar, Michael Gorman, puts it this way: "Jesus' exaltation is not the divine reward for his incarnation and death as God's suffering servant (as this text is normally interpreted), but divine recognition that is his suffering servant behavior is in fact truly 'lordly', even godly, behavior. C.F.D. Moule renders the beginning of 2:9 as follows: 'And that is why (i.e. the fact that Jesus displayed the self-giving humility which is the essence of divinity is the reason why) God so greatly exalted him....." Or, as N.T. Wright puts it: ".... the real theological significance of the hymn.... is not simply a new view of Jesus. It is a new understanding of God."

To put all of this another way we may say this. The omnipotent God, the creator of the universe, in the gospel reveals his power in weakness. What would surely have struck a Roman listener of this hymn of Christ would have been the incredibly absurd idea that God would manifest his majesty in the "downward mobility" pictured in this poem. At the top of the heap in the Roman world was the emperor who was regarded as quasi divine. Near the bottom of the heap were slaves, but at the absolute bottom was anyone who was crucified on a cross. Yet, this is where God revealed his power to save. As someone has said, God is not the God of power and weakness; in the gospel he is the God of power in weakness.

I would suggest that all of this carries with it the strong implication that we are to find God's power in our weakness. Now, I know that is no novel idea but I also think that we don't really understand what this means with regard to our spiritual formation. As we grow we soak in God's transforming grace most profoundly when we are stripped bare of our attempts to make a good show of our lives.

Our friend, Chuck DeGroat, at City Church San Francisco talks about spiritual formation and growth in this way: "the road of downward mobility actually leads to glory..... Now, for some of you this might raise a red flag. Many of us have been taught that faith leads to victory. Popular authors sell books promising blessing to those who commit their way to the Lord. And we buy them, because (truth be told) we’re all looking for something to give us quick relief for life’s pain. I was sitting with Laurie several years ago when it dawned on her that her bookshelves were lined with popular writings on the successful Christian life. She had tried to find the answer to her depression for a decade or more, but she said to me, “I feel like they’ve only set me up to fail, and feel even more low in the end.”

The New Exodus way is paradoxical precisely because it requires suffering. As I often tell my classes, if God wanted the Israelites to avoid the wilderness, he would have given them the miracle of a helicopter in order to fly them over it. But we’re all looking for helicopters. In fact, it’d be strange if we liked pain and craved suffering. Even Jesus said in the Garden of Gesthemane, “Lord, if it be your will take this cup of suffering from me.” This is a natural response for all of us. It’s why a good portion of Scripture is taken up with lament and complaint. The problem is that, despite our complaints, God doesn’t give us a helicopter to fly over the wilderness, but invites us to find Him in and through it."


While many of us may welcome this insight with regard to the suffering we experience when we wrestle with illness or the loss of a job, we are not usually encouraged to tie this line of thought to the way we think about our experience of pain as it relates to our depravity. As Christians we wrestle with our depravity until we are made whole in the world to come but too often we imagine the opposite - that we can skip over the wrestling and move right into victorious life, whatever that is exactly. I am going to quote from Chuck again here - this time he is talking about our tendency to deal with our depravity by trying to control it either through denial or behavior modification. Instead, he suggests that we should follow our ache that leads us to sinful behavior (that is sometimes addictive) - follow it until we meet God where our desires are most naked.

Chuck: "We grow and mature (note: stop using the language “we get healed”) as we step more deeply into this ache and find beneath it desire. In this, we find that whatever our drug of choice might be, it is only a false or momentary panacea. One of my drugs of choice is reading. I’ve always hoped to find myself in a book, and I’ve spent hours with dead writers drinking their medicine. The journey has not been futile, as I’ve found that the books or words themselves don’t satisfy, but stir in me something more real. C.S. Lewis said it best in The Weight of Glory: "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." What Lewis doesn’t say is that we should give up looking at our pasts, or reading books, or drinking wine, or enjoying sex, though in some cases we know these things can become self-destructive (addictive). What he proposes is that we take a look beneath them. If we do this, our hearts are inevitably broken, as we’ll need to grieve the loss of our false gods. But out of the brokenness, new life will come. Our hearts – constricted from our idols and addictions – will beat stronger and grow larger, longing more freely and fully for real life. Honesty will grow. Hope will grow. Relationships will grow, because we’re no longer looking for final satisfaction in them. Our pasts will stop enslaving us, as we stop trying to re-create our lives in the present (forgiveness). Out of the darkness comes light."


What we must learn to do as Christians is stop pressuring each other to be anything other than works in progress. We must, in our community life, put the emphasis on recognizing in the pattern of our brokenness, a pattern of downward mobility that resonates with God's revelation of his power in weakness. We must learn to count as victory our experience of love and forgiveness in the moments where our deepest pain meets God's restorative love and forgiveness. Our categories of what counts for holiness need redefining in light of God's manifestation of power in the ignoble cross of Christ.


Questions for discussion:


1. It was suggested above that looking beneath the surface will lead us to brokenness, leading us to new life, characterized by honesty and a deeper experience of forgiveness which is transforming. Can you think of struggles you have wherein you are not inclined to look beneath the surface? What keeps you from looking beneath the surface? What sort of encouragement do you need to look beneath the surface? What role does your Christian community need to play to encourage you to look beneath the surface?


2. What do you think Chuck means when he says that our pasts will stop enslaving us when we stop trying to re-create our past lives in the present? Can you think of an example where you felt freedom from your past ? What helped you get to that point?


3. What do you think it means when we say that our categories of what counts for holiness need redefining?