Expressing Humility and Service to Others

Philippians 2:1-12

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
August 14, 2022

You and I being human, we’re drawn to a good fight like moth to a porch light. I remember in Junior High School, we would be out during lunch out on the playing field and two guys would get into it and they’ll start to duke it out and the whole group and everyone else would gather around them like that.

You would think that is junior high student behavior, but grown-up people pay lots of money to watch two boxers or wrestlers in a ring try to knock each other out or knock each other down. Talk radio and presidential debates pull us in and we want to take sides pretty quickly, root for one side or the other to prevail. We just want a good fight, that’s just what it is about us being human.

I was a staff member at a church in south Texas that every month hosted a business meeting and invariably the gatherings got quite heated. People who did not like the pastor or a church leader or a church member would look for opportunities to complain and feathers were ruffled rather quickly and before you know it, the event would turn into a verbal fight. People came to our business meetings to watch a good fight.

We would hope that people who follow Jesus Christ could find a better way of dealing with our differences than to fight or to separate or to attack, but our relationships don’t have a good track record over the past 2,000 years, do they? They really don’t.

We get crossways with each other. That’s a word we learn from our parents, they talk about getting crossways with people. We get crossways with each other and we tend to do each other in and prove that we’re right. Congregations fight and divide and split, whole denominations fight and split, all these people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.

But sometimes that divisive spirit is in a much smaller scale. All it takes is two people, two of us who get crossways with each other. Two former friend who are no longer speaking to each other, because of something that has come up in between them. A husband and wife get crossways and they spend the rest of their marriage in an icy distance or intense conflict or maybe even in a contentious divorce.

But even these small fights tend to draw a crowd. People take sides and the pain get spread around a good bit. Surely, there is a better way for followers of Jesus Christ to handle and manager our relationships when we get crossways with each other’s.

There are four classic passages in the New Testament that deal with exploring this mystery we call the incarnation. God becoming flesh and coming among us. A mysterious thing happened once in all of human history. God’s only done this one time and it is a mystery, beyond imagination and there are four passages in the New Testament that deal with that. John, chapter one, verses one thru eighteen. Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews, chapter 1:1-4, and Philippians, chapter two, verses one thru eleven.

Two the of the passages, the ones in John and Colossians deal with that mystery of God coming among us, deal with that in a conflict over doctrine, over truth, over who Jesus really is. There were some of these Gnostics they were called who would say that Jesus was not really human, he appeared to be human, but he was only divine. And there were others who would say, “No, he was not divine at all, he was only human and the divine spirit came upon him on his baptism and left him before he died on the cross.”

Both of these were considered heresy and John, verse one thru eighteen, and Paul in Colossians, verses fifteen thru twenty, are addressing this false teaching that had grown in the church and was dividing the church.

The passage in Hebrews, chapter one, verse, one thru four, is dealing with the church’s persecution. Jewish Christian believers are facing persecution and are considering leaving the practice of the Christian faith and going back to the Judaism in order to avoid the persecution and the book of Hebrew is written to call these people to persevere persecution and to hang on tightly and to follow Jesus Christ faithfully and it’s in that context that we’re told that Jesus is the final revelation of God, there’s nothing to get back to.

And then there’s this passage in Philippians, it’s got a very different context. It is one of the loftiest, most beautiful poetic passages in the New Testament, dealing with any subject, but particularly dealing with the mystery of God becoming human and living among us. It has echoes from the Old Testament, from the book of Genesis and from the book of Isaiah. And there are many interpreters of the New Testament who think that Philippians, chapter two, one thru eleven, contains an ancient Christian hymn that was actually sung in congregations about Christ, being in the form of God, becoming human, dying on the cross, to being exalted as Lord.

Let’s listen to verses one thru eleven. I’m going to read the first four and then I’m going to ask you to join me in verse five.

If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, 2 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 empty conceit, 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[a] in Christ Jesus;

Then read together, please.

who, though he existed 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 earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

You see, it was not a raging theological debate in Philippi that led Paul to write this beautiful passage about God becoming human and living among us, dying on the cross, and then being exalted to the right hand of God and given the title, “Lord, Jesus Christ.” It was not a raging theological debate, it was not the threat of persecution, it was something that is much more familiar to you and me, and that’s the context of ordinary relationships, it was getting crossways within the Christian community, the church.

We have reviewed this on the weeks we’re talking about Philippians, but just to keep reminding: Paul founded this church on second missionary journey, when he was led to Macedonia by a vision by night and he and his team went there and they preached, first to some women gathered by the riverside, and then on the streets, then in other places and gradually a church was formed.

He continued his relationship with this church over the years that followed, they would send money to support his ministry and he would make visits there on occasions to reunite with them. But now he was in prison in Rome and they have heard of it in Philippi and they sent one of the key leaders, a man named Epaphroditus, to bring an offering to help support Paul because he was under house arrest and living on his own expense.

They brought an offering, but Epaphroditus also came with information about the church on how things were going in the church, among Paul’s friend in that community. And one of the things he sadly had to report was the beginning of a division in the church.

There were these two women in the church. Euodia (you-oh-dee-ah) and Syntyche (seen-tee-key), and somehow, they had become crossways with each other and people were taking sides and it was the beginning of disunity.

Epaphroditus fell ill when he was in Rome, nearly died and was a long time in returning so when he’s ready to go home, Paul writes this letter, we call Philippians for Epaphroditus to deliver. It’s a thank you note, thank you for your concern and for your prayers. It’s a missionary letter, “Here are somethings that are going one in my life, so that you can pray with knowledge.” But it is a letter encouraging unity in the church. Euodia and Syntyche are mentioned by name, in chapter one verses three thru six, we read that a few weeks ago, Paul expressed his love for all of them, and expressed his confidence that God is working to accomplish his purposes in this community and will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus.

In chapter one, verse nine, he prays for them, he says, “This I pray that your love will abound more and more, that your love in that congregation would abound, overflowing.”

Chapter one, verse twenty-seven, he encouraged them, “Whether, I come and see you or whether I hear of you, I want to know that you are standing together in the ministry of the gospel one mind, as one body, that there’s unity there.

In chapter two, verse fourteen, the tells them not to argue or complain, but to let their light become an example to the dark world around them, standing out like stars in the night sky. So, he’s kind of circling around this thing, about arguing, complaining, love overflowing, unity, and now he zero’s in in Chapter four, verse two and three, he says, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche, to be of the same mind in the Lord,” that’s a phrase that he’s used lots of time already, “The same mind in the Lord.” “Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion,” probably addressing the pastor in the congregation, “help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.”

Now when we read Paul’s letters we open a book or have them on the screen, but when these letters were originally given to these congregations, the deliverer of the letters was usually the one who stood before the congregation and read it aloud, the whole letter of Philippians. They did not say, “We’re going to read the first three verses of Philippian and next week we’re going to read the next five verses,” no they would read the whole letter to the congregation so you can imagine this congregation gathered in Philippi, perhaps in Lydia’s home or some place in the city and word’s has gone out during the week that Epaphroditus has returned from Rome and he’s been with Paul and he has a letter to read, and people are there, ready to hear from their friend Paul and he’s reading this letter aloud and he’s read a good bit of it already and he gets to chapter four and names get called.

“I urged Euodia and I urge Syntyche,” I know they were sitting on opposite sides of the room, and their friends with them, “To be of the same mind of the Lord, and I urge you, I encourage you my loyal friend, to help these women, to reconcile, because they have served alongside in the gospel. There’s no point for them remaining crossways with each other.”

It’s a very personal word to deliver to that church and the passage that is at the heart of this encouragement is the one that we’re looking at this morning, chapter two, verses one thru eleven, it’s at the heart of the book, it’s almost at the middle of it, but it is also about the cross, because it is at the heart of the gospel. This is the way people who believe the gospel are called to live. This is how we’re supposed to work out our relationships. Paul understands that the gospel of Jesus Christ has this essential, relationship component to it. That the moment that we came to know God as father through faith in the son Jesus Christ, and the new birth by the Holy Spirit. The moment that became our experience we were immediately a part of God’s family so that everyone who believes in Him is now our brother and our sister, it has an inherent component of relationship to it.

When we learn to pray as Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” as soon as we can “Our Father,” we’ve already implied my brother’s and my sisters, everyone else who addresses Him as Father. So, Paul understands that God’s purpose in history is to be relational, to create a community of people who love him wholeheartedly and who love each other unselfishly. He understands that the cross has two dimensions to it, there is one that is vertically, Christ’s death on the cross, reconnects, reconciles us to God.

But horizontally, the moment that we accept the truth of that cross that forgives us of sin and become sons and daughter of God, it connects us horizontally with this community, called the church and all of God’s children become our brothers and sisters, and because the cross is connected vertically and horizontally, when we break one of those, we automatically damage the other. If we fail to love one another, we damage the connection, but at that very moment we do that we also break the vertical connection.

It’s not that we cease to be sons and daughters of God, but we’re out of fellowship, out of relation with the one who is God the father, because we are out of relationship with those who are our brothers and sisters. The New Testament tells us that we cannot love God, who we have not seen, if we fail to love those who we can see.

James Moore tells about a man named George. George was a peacemaker with a big heart and wonderful sense of humor. Everyone loved George at church, and he was respected at the hospital where he worked. The reason why so many people loved George was because he was always kind and respectful to everyone he met.

George’s children clearly remember the days George spent in the hospital before his death. The administrator of the hospital paid him a visit. They spoke as though they were old friends. A few minutes later one of the janitors came to visit George. They too had a nice visit.

When the janitor left, one of George’s children said to him, "Dad, did you realize that you treated the president of the hospital and the janitor just alike?" George smiled, chuckled and then said, "Let me ask you something: If the administrator left for two weeks and the janitor left for two weeks, which one do you think would be missed the most?"

Then George called his children around his bed. "Let me show you something I carry in my pocket all the time," he told them, "even when I mow the lawn." George pulled out a pocket-sized cross and a marble with the golden rule on it. George said, "On the cross are written these words, ‘God Loves You,’ and on the marble are these words, ‘Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do unto You.’ The cross reminds me of how deeply God loves me. And the marble reminds me of how deeply God wants me to love others.”