Have this Mind in You

St Matthew 21:1-13     Philippians 2:5-11    St Matthew 27:1-54

"Have this mind among yourselves,
which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
by taking the form of a servant...”

This morning we have begun Holy Week, the culmination of our Lent and leading to the most important celebration of the Christian year – the Resurrection of our Lord, on Easter Sunday next week.

Through this coming week we will read through the accounts in the different Gospels of the Passion of our Lord –

• I would commend that sometime in the next three nights you watch at home the movie, The Passion of the Christ, which is a profound portrayal of the Passion.
• On Thursday night, Maundy Thursday we have a service here at 8pm with joy as we celebrate the Institution of the Lord’s Supper, with Foot Washing, followed by the stripping of the altar, as we experience something of Jesus’ desolation that night – Fr Jean will preach. We will hear the last part of the Passion according to St Luke.
• On Friday at 3pm, at the time Jesus died on the Cross, we will have Evensong and Litany and a reflection on the Cross. We will hear the Passion according to St John.

This week it is a time to put aside some time in our over busy agendas, for meditation, to focus our minds, so that the hiddenness of the meaning of our Lord’s Passion and death upon the Cross and His Resurrection, might be revealed and impact us at deeper levels and continue the work of transforming and sanctifying of our hearts.  The principle symbol of Christianity is the Cross, that is where we are going this week with Jesus.

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We saw in our two Gospel readings this morning – the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the Passion of Christ according to St Matthew – the different responses of the crowds, and the fickleness of many in the crowds, ready to exalt and ready to condemn.  Jesus, simply walks through these moments, steadfastly, accepting the praise, however faint and fickle, but very intentionally – moving ever closer to the heart of the matter.  His first act on arriving in Jerusalem is to go to the Temple where He shows that He came to re-establish right worship.  And His ultimate aim is not just there, in Jerusalem, but in the Temple that is the heart of every one of us.

Jesus has come to reopen the gates of true prayer in our hearts, that we might offer right worship, that is, that we might give greatest worth to what is Highest, the love of God and our neighbour.  Jesus is not satisfied if we receive the grace of God and then spend it in ways that will not bring peace to our souls, that does not build up community life, that does not glorify God.  Jesus says, “It is written [combining God’s Words from Isaiah and Jeremiah], ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

It is here in our hearts that Jesus is concerned foremost.  How can Jesus break through the distractedness and the perversions and the cruelty of the human heart?  The Cross is the only way.  The Suffering Servant of Isaiah (42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-11; especially 52:13-53:12), written 7 centuries before Jesus, speaks so clearly of it.  The Suffering righteous man of the Wisdom of Solomon (2), written in the century before Jesus, speaks so clearly of it.  We are to put the Passion of our Lord before our minds to ponder it and to grieve it and to be changed by it.

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In the Epistle today St Paul guides us to a certain kind of reflection this week, as we follow the humiliation of Jesus to the Cross.  It began with the Son of God emptying himself.

St Paul wants this mind that was in Jesus to be in us, individually and in our relations with one another.

But what does this mean?  The Greek term for “emptying” is “kenosis”.  Some have suggested Jesus gave up his divine power to become a man, and yet this is not the way this is understood in other passages of St Paul.  Rather, it is about his “giving up his status and privilege”, when he came to dwell with us.  Jesus did not assert these things foremost, but dwelt here as a servant, desiring us to see His divinity in His humble actions: in his continual stepping away when they would have made him king; in his calling on people not to speak of the miracle done; in not asserting His privilege as the Son of God, but coming in our midst as fully human, eating and drinking with sinners, washing the feet of his disciples, and submitting to the world’s injustice that it might be revealed or unveiled for what it is.

How could we have this mind in us?

There is a tradition through the middle ages and into the present, especially in Russian Orthodoxy, of the holy fool.  There is a recent novel Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin, which describes beautifully the life of a holy fool in late medieval Russia.

I have met one such holy fool, I think, many years ago in Ottawa (1990), when I was still a professional engineer working for the Canadian government.  I used to walk home from work through a market area (The Byward Market), to take in Evening Prayer at a local Anglican church (St Alban's), on my way home.  And in the market area there were beggars, and it was not unusual to be approached for spare change.  I remember it was a warm summer day, I was in my work clothes, and this rough looking bearded man approached me, and asked for change.  I reached into my pocket and was a little surprised I had quite of bit of change, so I put it all into his hands, but when I put it in, it simply spilled out of his hands all over the sidewalk.  So the two of us knelt down together to pick it up and when that was done.  He said to me, “Oh, I’m sorry, ever since I was young I’ve had these holes in my hands.”  And then he looked at me intently, very intentionally, and with the eyes of deep wisdom and love.  And then he left.

It was a powerful witness to me.  I could think of nothing else than of Jesus.  Who was that man?  And it was one of several incidents, nudges from God, that led me to desire a more radical following of Jesus in my life.  I don’t know this man’s story, but he had emptied himself, he had no privilege or status and yet he had set my heart on fire.

Perhaps that is a more radical step than any of us can take, or are meant to take.  And yet we are asked this morning to consider ways that we can empty ourselves, even temporarily, of status and privilege, to follow our Lord more closely.

St Paul writes the Epistle we heard today in the context of encouraging the people of the church in Philippi to get along with one another.  “Complete my joy,” he says in a verse just before today’s reading [2:2], “by being of the same mind…let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” [2:4]  How can your priest self-empty to be a better witness?  How can each of you self-empty before one another to be a more powerful witness?  How can we in our friendships, in our marriages, in our witness to our children, how can we self-empty to be a more powerful witness?  Seeking not to be served, but to serve?  How can we take up our Cross and follow Jesus?

Are there ideas that we must give up?  Are there cherished plans we have that we must give up?  Are there ideas of church that we must give up for the unity of the whole?  Are there ideas of God that we must have shattered so that the God of Israel, revealed by Jesus Christ, might form us anew?  These are some questions to ponder as we walk with Jesus this Holy Week.

Have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May God put into our minds His ideas of what it is to be human, of how we might be more obedient to what Jesus is calling each of us to, with our various gifts, even if it means our humiliation, even death on a cross.

And now may God give us the spiritual strength through the Holy Communion of His Body and Blood to follow in radical obedience.

Amen +