Sermon: Service with Dignity

[ previous | index | next ]

Service with Dignity

By Charles Rush

March 18, 2001

fore I start, this morning, I thought I would point out that scholars believe the text we are reading this morning is a hymn. St. Paul is quoting a hymn in the middle of his letter to make his point. It is one of the earliest hymns we have on record. I happen to know this because Philippians is one of the books we had to translate in Greek class in divinity school and I wrote a paper on this passage. It was one of those awful mistakes that graduate students make. I'll never forget descending into the bowels of Speer library to begin research to discover that there was a whole wall of books devoted simply to this passage. This is a passage I've ruminated over quite a while. Hear it now.

A couple of you sent me an e-mail recently. A group of professionals went and asked kids aged 4-8 the meaning of love. They had some great responses. Noelle, aged 7, says “Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.” Important discovery, Noelle. Karl, aged 5, says, “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” Danny, aged 7, says, “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is okay.” I've got to introduce Danny to a few more people I know. Matthew, aged 7, says “It's when you tell something bad about yourself and you're sacred they won't love you anymore. But then you get surprised because not only do they still love you, they love you more.” Finally, Rebecca, aged 8, says “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hand got arthritis too. That's love.”

This week Governor Pataki proposed this week to make ‘Road Rage' a specific traffic violation all it's own. NPR reports that nearly half of all auto accidents in New York state involved ‘aggressive driving', presumably acting out frustration and anger. I was coming home from Manhattan last week, merging into the Holland tunnel. Some guy in front of me had been cut off, I guess one time too many. He just laid on the horn for a good two minutes. It was a cry for Prozac if ever I've seen one… It figures, doesn't it that such a law would first be passed here. Hundreds of thousands of people driving to and from work each day with a lot of pent up frustration, letting it loose on anonymous John.

My dog Casey growls at just about everyone except me. She is actually just afraid of people but it comes out as a growl that keeps everyone else at bay. Not long ago, she was growling at a nice elderly woman and I was scolding her. The woman says to me, “What do you want? She's a New York dog, interjected a lot of hostility.” Maybe I should take Casey to a dog psychiatrist to work out her feelings towards humans.

It's a curious thing to me, and maybe to you, that the Church isn't a whole lot better than our society. For the past several years, it seems that every denomination has been embroiled in a fierce debate over homosexuality. It seems that you can split them all along roughly the same percentage of liberals and conservatives.

National gatherings appear to get nastier to the degree that they are impersonal. It is easier to step up to the mike and attack someone as a ‘Cave Dwelling Conservative' or a ‘Loosey Goosey Liberal' if you don't know them. Instead of being Fred or Sherri, these people become ‘them', as in the enemy that must be defeated if the denomination is to have a future. Battle lines get drawn and everyone involved is forced to define themselves in caricatured ideological terms that no one is comfortable with. Fiery rhetoric and sharp wit are applauded. The next thing you know, you have full-blown warfare going on and there is nothing that the Media would rather cover than a good church fight.

The impersonal really doesn't help us in these occasions. But in the church there is another phenomenon that goes on as well, that of transference. People have differences, which produce conflict, which produces anger and resentment. We just have to deal with that. But there are also times when you have about a 5 volt conflict or problem and you get about 20 volts of response from someone. When I was a young Minister, it mystified me because the church is obviously the place where we are trying to work on our higher selves, so why these out bursts, why this excrescence of emotion? I had an older Minister who explained, “look, you have people that are dealing with frustrations that they cannot fix and they cannot address directly because they are too threatening. Some one has sexual dysfunction and they don't feel sensual. Another person is under siege at their job because they don't have the competency to do it. Someone else has a sister who hates them for something they did that was shameful. For whatever reason, they can't deal with the situation directly. They can't just let go with their spouse, their boss, their family members. But this stuff builds up inside and it has to go somewhere. A church dispute is a safe place to release it, so is a school board meeting, so is the town council. It is not very efficient but it does work. And even if it isn't something that is grave, people still do this, even though they shouldn't. You just have to deal with it.” Conflict, impersonal relations and transference are the hurdles we have to jump to make love happen in the community. They just are.

Of course, it can be done. I was asked to participate in a ‘Common Ground' conference for the American Baptist Churches in two of our states in the Northeast. The conference was comprised of ministers from a dozen conservative churches and a dozen liberal churches. They met for four days to discuss the issue of homosexuality. They heard lectures from theologians on both positions, engaged in question and answer time. They had small discussion on the issue. But, the also shared worship together twice a day. They also shared meals together. They also shared their vision of ministry and were encouraged to develop friendships with ‘them'. There was even some time for ‘fooling around' together.

The outcome of the conference was quite different from our national gatherings. No one walked away bitter. No one was threatened. Everyone said they grew. Minds weren't substantially changed on the issue of homosexuality. In other words, the liberals didn't suddenly convince the conservatives and the conservatives didn't suddenly convince the liberals. But an alliance was formed to agree to disagree and remain in fellowship with each other. Respect was established and understanding of others unfolded before us. There was a recognition by all people involved that they had more to learn on the subject and that the Holy Spirit had more to teach us than we had presumed. In short, it was a spirit filled occasion and that can happen among Ministers, at least once in a while.

St. Paul wrote the book of Philippians to a church that was engaged in just such a fight. We don't know exactly what the issue was from the book itself. But, the point of the letter is found in 4:2, where Paul says, “I urge Euodia and I urge Synteche to be of the same mind in the Lord”. Apparently these two women were having a fight with each other that was driving a division through the entire church. Scholars have speculated that it is likely they were leaders in the church for this reason. It is unlikely they were just having a fight with each other, they were having a fight that lined up sides in the church those for and against and these two women were the leaders in the church that were organizing sides.

Paul is trying to find a way to make some reconciliation between these two and bring the church back into harmony. It is interesting to note just how often the subject of reconciliation comes up in the letters of Paul. Surely, one of his salient contributions to the body of Christ is his persistent insistence that we Christians have to “work out our salvation” by being people of reconciliation in very concrete, daily relationships.

The letter is written from jail. Every day Paul sees the Roman army going through maneuvers outside the prison. He sees them marching in order. In the first chapter, he says that he wishes the church were more like that. Why is it, he says, that soldiers can get up and train with each other and have such an impressive formation, but the church so much of the time is fighting with each other in a way that looks more like a food fight in a High School cafeteria? Why is that? Why can't we have a little more order?

In the second chapter, Paul qualifies his wish because an army has an imposed discipline based on fear, domination, and violence. We don't need everyone thinking uniformly to be in unity; neither do we need our Ministers barking out orders to the church troops… although once in a while, I have such fleeting fantasies.

Instead, he says, what we need is for everyone in the church to get beyond their egotism. What impresses him about the army is that everyone is mutually submitted and they self-consciously try to work together as a unit, not as a group of isolated individuals. He sums up his hope in 2:4. He says, “Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.”

How can we accomplish that? Only if we are all filled with the Spirit, emulating the example of Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus washes the feet of the disciples, a ritual reserved for slaves usually. He did it to illustrate how we should behave towards others in love and service. Peter, and we may assume all of the disciples, resisted having his feet washed because it was such a radical reversal of authority. It was difficult or impossible for them to comprehend.

St. Paul is thinking of this example and to make his point, he quotes a few stanzas from a Christian hymn, presumably one that the Philippians sang very regularly in church. In essence, Paul is saying, this is what you sing every week; let's try to take it to heart.

The hymn is about the Christ who is exalted to the point that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (2:10-11). Why is that? The hymn sums up the theology of Holy Week, we will celebrate shortly. It reminds us that Jesus was exalted through humiliation. It says of Jesus that “he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross” (2:7-8). Humility, in short, is not an accidental by-product of what God was about in Jesus. It is a central spiritual reality that opens the door to a fuller, more mature spiritual awakening. It is an insight that is counter-intuitive from the point of view of spiritual common sense. And it is no easier to develop in our character today than it was for Jesus to go through the events of Holy Week. But, this is the direction that Christianity takes you, if you allow yourself to be fully immersed in its teaching.

St. Paul's vision is not selective here and a word must be said about that. It is a collective vision of mutual submission and mutual service towards the needs of others. This is not a dysfunctional relationship in which one person with low self-esteem continues to meet the needs of someone else that is quite content to exploit their kindness. It is a vision of the whole. It is everyone, thinking first about what others need, what is good for the group. Imagine thinking that way about your family, how much better it would be if everyone thought what would be good for everyone rather than how I can get my needs met from these people? Imagine if we could do that in our different volunteer boards? In certain limited circumstances, imagine it at work?

It reminds me of an older couple that I know that simply radiate love in everything they do. They had an infectious quality to them and people just wanted to be around them, hoping that some of their blessing would rub off. One time I asked the husband the secret of their relationship. He thought for a moment and said, “We give each other what we want and need.” What a simple and profound insight. How many marriages degrade to the point that the relationship is built around contention? If I give, then they get and I need to get as much as I give. There is a silent score keeping that goes on, accompanied by much grousing over chores and daily routine. Life becomes miserable.

Imagine a marriage where your first thought was the fulfillment of the other person. Deep inside, we all want to be loved like that. We all want someone understand our needs and fears like that. St. Paul reminds us that the way to unleash that spiritual energy is to reach out and start the process by attending to others needs, not worrying about our own. Reinhold Niebuhr observed that in Christianity self-actualization is a by-product of the fulfillment of others. He is right about that. Love will rebound to you but that ought not be our focus. Our focus is on serving others. The Spirit will take it from there.

Amen.