The Man in the Middle of the Palm Sunday Parade

Philippians 2:5-11; Romans 8:1,2

One of my pet peeves is when someone uses a text such as these to loudly proclaim that Jesus is the exclusive means by which to be in God’s grace, usually implying matching some form of good behavior that lines up, ironically, with a very human standard of having good morals and walking within a preconceived set of values that any “decent” person shares. They refuse to hear the core of the message—in the end, every human life will be in the full grace of God revealed in Christ (Philippians), and that condemnation is no longer a piece of our faithful response to God—God will not abandon anyone, nor should we. 

There is an unfortunate coterie of “angry clergy” at work within American Christianity who are more than willing to make sure that there is a very real, very deep, and very loud condemnation for anyone straying from a narrow view of God that is far more Amos than I John (read them, you’ll see what I mean) and is more heavily moralistic than the most rigid of Pharisaical practices. The tragic consequence is that now the Gospel, with its gloriously liberating compassionate core, is rejected before it even gets to speak because “Christian” equals “bigot.” 

If we are to overcome this context, we need to refocus on what St. Paul proclaims. 

The great hymn to Christ of Philippians is a celebration of Christ’s transcendence and transformation of creation itself through his selfless embodiment of compassion. He becomes the definition of love—the love Paul will delineate in 1 Corinthians 13. That love accepts others as they are, where they are, for whom they are, and claims them as children brought into being by God. The key phrase in this hymn is—

…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth…

Paul envisions a glorious moment of inclusion. There is no life, living, dead, about to be born, that is not within the confines of God’s grace. All are loved. All are welcomed. All are God’s.

But it goes beyond even that affirmation—

It means we now understand just how total the rejection of condemnation to be. Paul will go slightly crazy at the end of Romans 8 when he gushes forth his certainty that there truly is nothing real, imagined, or unknown that has the power to divide us from God. 

To me, nothing means nothing. That means that even though a person may reject the Gospel as they live, have nothing to do with Jesus, and refuse any participation in any form of religion, they cannot escape the end that God ordains for us—that we be with God, one another, and creation itself when the sabbath rest of the Seventh Day is fully realized in the New Creation. To me, this is the wonder and miracle of Calvin’s doctrine of predestination—rather than meaning that every breath, elbow bend, and footstep is planned by God in advance, it instead means that every single one of us will experience the joy of the Seventh Day in the New Creation. A human refusal to be with God now is limited. Our willfulness, even to be utterly contrary to God, cannot be more powerful than God’s grace, the means by which chooses to be with us. To proclaim such is no less than idolatrous because it elevates a human response to the level of ultimate power. That is absurd. God is God, we are not. That means every aspect of being human is as limited as we are. If God wills the Seventh Day for all creation, us included, then it will be so. 

What Christ reveals, then, is the means by which we can fully experience a foretaste of that joy here and now. Aligning ourselves with him is to align ourselves with his presence in the world as he lived. Paul includes that in the hymn—in fact, it is how the hymn opens—

Have the same mind in you as was in Christ Jesus…

—then Paul delineates what that looks like—

…though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, becoming a slave…

So, we are to follow suit. You will notice there is nothing moralistic in this ideal. The standard is not be a really good person who acts nicely toward everybody, keeps their hands clean, and never says swear words; the standard is to be self-emptying and engaged with others to the point that their needs trump anything in ourselves. In other words, to be in Christ is to embody compassion. That means disavowing judgmentalism, legalism, assumption, and any other means by which we turn our focus to our own selves, dismissing our responsibility for someone else because they aren’t good enough, clean enough, or worthy enough for us to care for them. That means accepting grace and mercy as our first response to other people. No one is worthy, therefore, all are worthy…of grace, mercy, and acceptance. 

I end with this thought—if I find myself judging someone else, declaring myself above someone else, and them beneath contempt; I usually will find that I am not very happy. Life is not a lot of fun if I am so busy devouring negative self-aggrandizement. I find it hard to feel comfortable with other people, defensiveness becomes a default position, and irritation a constant companion.

Paul leads us to a more excellent way.

Follow Christ the King into a new way of being, freed from the need to protect a carefully guarded fortress of being right, released to live in peace with the people around us, regardless of who they are. 

The Seventh Day can be now. Enjoy it.