This is a funny sermon because it’s about thinking which quickly wrapped me up in a vanity project of my own brilliance. How smart can I show myself to be, how profound, how witty, how pious? Blah blah blah. Of course, none of that is what it means to think Christian. In fact, it’s far more simple and challenging than that. To “think Christian,” the Apostle Paul invites us to be of one mind to be a blessing, and to have condescending mindset of like God for every knee.
Be of one mind (to encourage, to comfort, to fellowship, to mercy) to be a blessing.
To think Christian is not some mandate to be brilliant or know your Bible backwards and forwards or to become a success. The first four verses of Philippians 2 reveal that to think Christian is fundamentally a “y’all project” about blessing rather than brilliance. It’s about thinking encouragement, comfort, sharing, and compassion. Do you want to think Christian? Then ask yourself, “Do my thoughts encourage? Do they provide comfort? Do they promote sharing and connectedness? Do they extend mercy?” These are the topics, the courses, the syllabi of thinking Christian. These are the thoughts that motivated Jesus, this is sermon-on-the-mount thinking. But here is the thing – these kinds of thoughts require a “for others” If your thoughts of blessing won’t acknowledge others, if they only involve yourself, they are terribly dangerous. The plight of poverty and environmental degradation in the West comes from individuals thinking only of their own blessing. If my mind, my thoughts, are only used for my own encouragement, my own comfort, my own connection, my own mercy, then they are not the thoughts of Jesus and will not create a world where people can live.
We’ve forgotten that we must be of one mind because we are made to be one. There is no escaping being connected to people and sharing in their plight. I learned this week of the new Pope Leo’s motto that captures this perfectly: “In the One, we are one.” Paul isn’t merely interested in personal beliefs, or mere self-talk. In fact, he will use a hapax legomenon - a word that only appears once in all of Scripture – to make his point. Many scholars believe that the phrase “one in spirit” or “united in spirit” is a word that Paul is actually inventing on-the-spot. The word is σύμψυχος [σύν - with and ψυχή - soul], which literally could be translated “co-souled.” Paul asserts that Christian thinking is always co-souled thinking, which demands that we “not look only to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” So we must think with others in order to be for others. We must share our thoughts, we must seek to be encouraging, comforting, connecting, and merciful to others because we are co-souled. If we think negatively, if we think only personally, then we are mentally investing in our own destruction. When we approach a problem – that demands a mental rigor – we must begin with the mindset, “What will benefit others?” because we are – others. The Christian project is always co-laboring with others – the origins of collaboration.
But more than simply blessing others, Paul says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” What mindset is that?
Have a condescending mindset like God for every knee.
So we are to think always – about others because we are interconnected. But Paul goes even farther to say something that is amazing. We are to do this because God is like this, God thinks like this, God’s mindset is this – to encourage, comfort, connect, through a condescending story [not a list of rules or philosophical platitudes but of descent and service] in which God became like us, to serve us, in order to reveal God’s self and God’s glory.Condescension gets a bad rap but it originally didn't mean haughty or proud but to willingly lower oneself to another's level
So we look to Jesus, who was “very nature God” and who didn’t just become a human being, but became a servant. Who didn’t come to merely conquer death but did so through a painful and humiliating death. And friends, he didn’t do this in contradiction to God’s own nature but to actually reveal it. Be amazed by that. The God of the Universe, the God who made everyone and everything. The God who is always good, isn’t vain or conceited. I would be. I get conceited when I do a chore or a simple task that Marianne has asked me to do. “I’m the best husband ever. No one waters the plants as good as I do.” I’m not saying that God can’t be mysterious at times, but always remember this: the God – who came as Jesus, a poor Galilean, who spoke about the kingdom of God and invited everyone to it, telling stories of love and inclusion – emptied himself to reveal himself – fully and truly. Jesus wasn’t a lesser God or less-than-God but the very image of God. He didn't come to change the mind of God but to reveal it fully. Condescending is who God is! So what might this mean for us? How should we think and live?
Think small. If this is who God is then we don’t have to think big. If this is who God is then we don’t have to be famous or well-known to do good. God himself saved the universe by becoming a backwater peasant on the fringe of an empire. So we don’t have to think grand. Cliff shared something quite extraordinary in staff. Each kid in Community Corner is given a fun survey to take home so that they can talk about themselves – what they like, don’t like, etc. One of the questions is: What would make the world a better place?” One kid wrote: “If everyone had a Cliff.” Cliff said, “That’s the thing. What I do is so small but what has surprised me about retirement is hearing people say I made a big impact.” That’s the way of God as well. God changed the world by revealing that God is small – one who came as a servant through humility and died a humiliating death. God revealed God’s self as small. The greatest miracles are small, generous, undivided, acts of attention.Take 20 seconds and think, "Who thought small for you?"
Think every knee. Perhaps you can’t be an “every knee kind of thinker” but you can at least remember that God is and wants you to think that way – that every knee is deserving of blessing, every knee is to be included. There is an important tension here that we must not let go of. The creative challenge of Christian thinking is a radical love that seeks to bless each of us and all of us. That is deeply personal but resist an algorithm of worthiness where I say, “God loves me” and stop there. I want to finish with one analogy and one story that aims to convey the tension of “every-knee-thinking.” First, the analogy – I’ve shared this before but it’s too good to not share again. In Psalm 139, which is about God’s thoughts and actions towards each of us, in vss. 17-18, it says: How amazing are your thoughts of me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—Well, I discovered that the University in Hawaii took 1,000 hours to count over 1,000,000 grains of sand inside a bowl, then from that they estimated there are approximately seven quintillion five quadrillion grains of sand on the earth. That’s 700,500,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand.
Think about this and let this guide your thinking: If every grain of sand was a second, that God thought about each of us that would mean that God would be thinking about you, your neighbor, your enemy, your spouse, your child, with encouragement, comfort, connectedness, and compassion, for 22 trillion years (22,197,961,324,021.41 years to be exact). Think about that and with that!
And now an “every knee story.” We have four children and like all children they wanted to know where they stood. Was there a hierarchy of love? How did they measure up? And my wife, Marianne, approached this issue with wisdom and grace. I like to think that she answered the children with the mind of God. She didn’t say, “I love you all equally.” No, she would always end each conversation with one of our children, each moment on the phone, each snuggle on the couch or moment of discipline with the child by saying, “Always remember. You’re my favorite.” And sure enough the others would hear this declaration of love and know that it was true. It was true when they worked hard and made great accomplishments. It was true when they utterly failed, acted pridefully, felt ashamed or were lost or afraid. It was also true for their brothers and sisters. Every-knee-thinking is an acknowledgement that each of us God’s favorite.
Friends – think the thoughts of Jesus, think the thoughts of God – always others, always condescendingly, in small ways, so that every knee acknowledges that Jesus is Lord. Amen.
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