“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
Did not regard equality with God
As something to be exploited,
But emptied himself…”
A recent trend in American culture has started us down a path of health. Remember how, through the 90s, we were convinced that if a half pound hamburger was good, a one pound burger with a healthy barrel of fries and a tanker of coke would be better? Bigger was better in the super-size me culture of the fast-food world. Playing on primal fears that less food means certain death, many of us were taken in while out pants sizes had to be let out.
However, notice that the super-sized language has stared to fall away from the fast-food industry and portion sizes can now fit within your vehicle. Something happened. A number of reports on American health and children’s health in particular (which told us that the majority of our grade school children were now obese) came out and shook us into reasonableness. The film “Super-size Me” came out and reinforced the idea as we watched a man slowly killing himself while eating only a diet of McDonalds. We learned that more is not better. There is something to be said about emptying.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
Did not regard equality with God
As something to be exploited,
But emptied himself…”
Our awareness of healthy eathing aside, I am not so certain that we have completely convinced ourselves of the wisdom of emptying. If you are a parent or a grandparent now raising a child as if you were the parent, you now know that there is a lot of pressure on you. There is a lot of expectation on you. In the past, to be a good parent meant baking cookies periodically, letting your children run around outside for hours on end, showing love by reading stories, sending them to their room when they were bad, and kissing a lot. Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t that sound semi-relaxed? Doesn’t that sound completely foreign today?
To be a good parent today you have to fill your children up with lots of good things. You have to not only cook them the correct things, but you also have to make sure they are in a sport to build up self-confidence and team spirit, you have to get them to the zoo so that they learn about caring for animals, you have to get them to a museum so that they are not culturally stupid, you have to make sure they play an instrument, you have to make sure they are connected to their friends with cell phones so that they are not social outcasts, you have to make sure they are not down about themselves, you have to tell them they are doing good even if they are not, you have to make sure they visit everyone in the family at least four times a month, you have to get them to church, eat your vegetables, eat your vitamins, take your medications, they cannot watch too much TV but they need to watch some educational TV but only certain ones that come on a 8:30, 9:30, 10:00, and 11:15. Is it possible for the TV power button to go bad? Did I mention that you have to do all of this in the three hours that you are not working your job, cooking, or sleeping? In other words, we are still caught in the supersized mentality that says we need to be filled up in order to be great people.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
Did not regard equality with God
As something to be exploited,
But emptied himself…”
I am not certain that even Christians have seen the wisdom in emptying. Don’t we feel like we need to be doing more in order to be the true people of God. To be great people we need to read the Bible more, get out and serve the poor more, get out and visit the sick more, make some more food for more church dinners, pray more, get together more, worship more, give more, give more, give more, love more, more, more, more…and if you fill yourself up with doing all of these tasks along with the normal everyday stuff, you will be worthy to stand before God and say, "Boy, wasn't I great."
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
Did not regard equality with God
As something to be exploited,
But emptied himself…”
I find it interesting that Jesus saved the world through his death on the cross, not by filling himself up, doing more, and making himself great, but by emptying himself. Somehow, in having your life cleared out, you will find life. Somehow, in trying to do less and love less, you will actually love more. God’s love is not a task. It is who we are. It is what is left when we allow Christ to clean out our lives.
There is a great difference in accomplishing tasks of love on top of everything else you have to do in the day and being love no matter where you are. Jesus walked the earth not to fill himself up by accomplishing lots of tasks. He simply gave of himself wherever he went; a healing here when asked, and shared meal there, freeing the spirit troubled prisoner who stumbled up to him. Christ emptied himself. Everywhere he went he was love; he was God.
Sacrificial love is not a task. Sacrificial love is who you are. You were made that way in your baptism, when Christ splashed sacrificial love upon you. Allow Christ to continue to use that baptismal water to clear out all of the expectations on you. Allow love and forgiveness to cleanse you. And if we are successful as a Christian community, we will have an empty congregation. Of course it will not be one that is physically empty, but it will be one that is ready to love.
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