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There are so many words today. You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by them all. Here are just three more. Three little words from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, words we have just heard. These three words may help us make sense of all this. The words are these: He emptied himself. He emptied himself. These words may be part of an old hymn Paul knew. Regardless, they are words of encouragement. Paul wanted to encourage that Philippian church. His 1 st century words might also encourage us, as we consider life in our 21 st century world. Palm Sundays always begin with praise. We sing of glory, laud, honor, majesty and sweet hosannas. Paul’s language is a bit like that, too: “highly exalted…name above every name…every knee…every tongue….” It reminds me of what we might now call an “old-fashioned” May Day parade. There IS good reason for the crowd’s happiness. Those who follow Jesus are happy about what looks like a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Their biblical ticker-tape – and ours, too – is a celebration. Or so it seems. Or so it seems. As one scholar puts it, “their praise is true, and it is false” (Paul Duke, Feasting on the Word, p. 173). The crowds in Jesus’ day are oblivious to what is actually happening. They’re afraid to pay real attention. They follow Jesus when it’s fun to wave palms and pretend that all is well. But they will not follow their Master when he walks the road to Calvary and his crucifixion. Have you ever heard the expression “damned with faint praise”? Truth be told, “Hosanna!” is praise that’s naïve, even dangerous. What’s really happening here? We might call it the “awful descent of love into the mindless… (foolishness) of the world” (ibid.). Jesus’ death, which is described in detail, both today and again on Good Friday, is, if we are paying real attention, absolutely heartbreaking. So we come to his passion, to the end of the road, where Jesus emptied himself. Indeed he emptied himself – while he lived and as he died. Jesus emptied himself for everyone. The multitudes and the disciples. The sick and the well. The outcasts and the insiders. Heads of state and religion and the poorest of the poor. Both then and now. Jesus emptied himself. While I was on my Lenten retreat, I took a walk to see a waterfall. The nuns at the convent where I stayed said I really shouldn’t miss it. I did miss it the first day, because I hadn’t walked far enough. But the next day I went the extra mile, and there it was. Smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood! It was far more than I expected. Towering, deafening, foaming, spilling all over itself. After looking at it for a long time, I thought: what would it be like to live here? Would I get used to it? Does that water ever stop? I came to see that the waterfall was, for me, about giving, God’s self-giving. God so loved the world that God poured out God’s own self, completely, like that waterfall. God’s self, all poured out, was Jesus. I have come to believe that Jesus was NOT a victim. No one poured him out. No one emptied him. He emptied himself. No one made him a slave. No one made him humble, although he chose humility and was humiliated and heartbroken in ways none of us will ever know. No, Jesus chose to be those things. Jesus took the form of a slave. He humbled himself. He, like God, as God, poured himself out. He emptied himself. I think the season of Lent is often misunderstood. Although Lent is about personal self-denial and self-reflection, about repentance and returning to God, it’s more than that. Lent is not all about you or all about me. This time of year is all about us, about ourresponse as a community of faith, as a church, to the abundance of God’s love. It’s about emptying ourselves as individuals, yes. But even more so, Lent, and now, Holy Week – which begins today and continues as if it were one long day, a day that lasts all week long – this time of year is, for us, all about God’s call to empty ourselves – together. It’s about us as an emptied body, the body of Christ. It’s about us as a poured-out, emptied church. Not a poor church, but a poured-out one. Not an empty church, but an emptied one. Perhaps those here today who feel the emptiest are the ones who can teach us the most. Perhaps it is those of you who feel most empty today – whether it’s emptiness from a divorce or a disease or someone’s death, from loss of employment or loss of mobility or loss of faith, even from something the church did to you or still needs to do for you. Perhaps it is those of you who really need a loving community in your life right now, a community of faith. Yes, perhaps it is you, the emptied ones, who can teach us. Perhaps you can show us as a church what it is like to be and to become the church. Perhaps your tears, falling like waterfalls, will show us the way. Perhaps you will show us what God can do with us, if and when we are empty. Because it is when we have been emptied that we can be filled. And it is when we finally choose to empty ourselves, to be emptied and rid of true foolishness, that we can receive the never-ending, self-giving, always-cascading, ever-abundant, heavenly-wise, poured-out love of God. If only we were more empty. If only we were more like Jesus. If only we were more like a servant church, more like a humble church, more like a church poured out and emptied. Let us pray. God, help us. Help us believe that we really can let our minds be of the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. Although he was divine, Jesus emptied himself. And so, help us, God. Crack open the door of our minds. Throw open a window into our hearts. Help us receive what you want to give us. During this Holy Week, pour your love over us and into us and through us, like a waterfall. Help us today and all this week, help us every day and every week to become your emptied church, so that we can be filled up with your love, more and more like Jesus, just like Jesus. Amen. The Rev. Tom Momberg |
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