Two friends grew up in the same town and went to the same school. They were such good friends they stayed in touch through the years, of marriage and children and moves into new homes. One friend Mary knew and confessed Jesus as Lord. The other friend Jamie did not.
As Jamie is over visiting Mary on a Saturday evening and they are talking about the stress of daily life. Mary shares that she is blessed to have her family but she sometimes struggles with how different things are than the imagined ideal of family life. Jamie says, what you need is a night out each week with your husband for dinner and a movie. Mary says that would be nice, but they don’t have enough money, they can’t afford that. Mary is also hanging up laundry in the utility room and Jamie says what you need is to buy a dryer.
Later that evening Jamie sees Mary put three twenty dollar bills in her church offering envelope for the next day. She knows this is a significant portion of their expendable income. As she left that evening she was wondering if Mary was out of her mind.
In a sense Mary was. She was not thinking with the mind she once had. That is the kind of transformation Paul is talking about for all of us. It’s a whole new mindset, a whole new way of thinking. Paul calls us all to have the mindset of Christ.
Paul knew well the mindset of human beings: He warns against this way of thinking: 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others
Our natural mindset is to want things our way. We think of ourselves first, it’s our human nature. We think about what can put us ahead so often instead of what could put others ahead.
The natural human mindset is characterized by sin- it doesn’t fear love and trust in God above all things. It doesn’t love our neighbor as ourselves. Instead the fruit of sin can lead to the destruction of the unity of faith in a congregation. The natural mindset also destroys personal and family relationships. Any circumstance of destroyed families you can think of relates to the human mindset at full force and as a result selflessness and kindness is replaced by strife and exploitation.
Paul was aware of this when he encouraged the Philippian congregation to live in a new mindset. He desired that they could be free from the same cycles of envy and strife that were evident in any other institution in the ancient world. And most importantly that he church in Philippi could be free from the human mindset that thinks, I can be my own god. The human mindset says, I don’t need God directing how I live my life, I have lived enough years where I know how to get by quite well on my own. Along with these thoughts is the delusion that I am so much better than the average person, I can practically punch my own ticket to heaven- without a Savior.
Fortunately for us, Christ brings us to his mindset. In order to transform this mindset Jesus lived in a way that was the complete opposite of how we would do things. Where Adam and Eve were tempted by the prospect of being like God in knowing good and evil, Jesus resisted all such temptations to advance himself, to the point of taking on the form of a servant. He took our flesh so that he could help with the very thing that we needed, to have our human flesh redeemed and made right with God again for the first time since the Fall into sin.
Christ calls us to serve as he served us. Our mindset is to serve no matter how undesirable it may feel to our human nature. Of course we cannot serve as he did. No one ever has served as he served! He left the glory from eternity of his place at the Father’s right hand. He left it out of love and service to us. He left this place knowing he would be poor, rejected, mocked, and hated.
The full extent of this service was his death on the cross. Paul writes about how Jesus humbled himself to death on a cross. Death on the cross was for criminals, and Jesus humbled himself to even experience the very suffering of a slow painful death on the cross.
And then the magnitude of his servant love for us changed the world. With his blood shed on the cross, Christ paid for all of our sins- including the sin of being self centered. The new mindset is seeing this- that we stand forgiven, possesors of eternal life by Jesus paying the full price for us.
And the new mindset worships the God we didn’t think we needed. As Paul celebrates every knee will bow before Jesus. Next week as we celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Easter we will be joining with those in heaven and earth who now confess Jesus as Lord and celebrate Christ exalted above heaven and earth.
Listen again to the wording St. Paul uses inspired by the Holy Spirit: “Have this mind among yourselves.” We look to Jesus to enable us to live humbly, to live different than what is natural for us. Living in the world we live in, it is natural for us to seek recognition, attention and validation of what we have accomplished. But as we have the mind of Christ we see that Jesus forgives us day after day- and this very day through the gospel and through the sacrament of the altar. And as a result of this forgiveness, we see that instead of recognition we can afford to care for others.
This is what it means to count others as more significant than yourselves, to realize since Christ has given you everything, you have no need to promote yourself, but instead you can share the love of Jesus with others.
In your daily prayers you can seek God’s Will to see ways to help the people who God puts in your life. It may not be apparent from one day to the next how to help someone in your life, but by talking with others in your life not with pride and not seeking recognition, by talking with others with a servant heart you are likely to see new opportunities for how to help people in your life very often.
Since we as a congregation are smaller in number than in past periods, it can be intimidating thinking how to serve as a congregation, Running a food pantry or an after school program is beyond what we are equipped to handle right now. But we can be caring and serving individuals, serving one another and serving others in our lives as we have opportunity.
The most important service we can do for the people we encounter in our life is to be able to clearly speak the hope we have in Jesus and the hope that is available to those we have opportunity to witness our faith to.
Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday with the people singing Hosannas to him. He was welcomed as king. We live our lives to his glory and praise as we uses our voices to sing our hymns and as we use our voices to speak the words of our liturgy, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creeds and all the other parts e have to respond.
This week we respond to Jesus with words of Hosanna in particular with our gathering for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday , and then Easter.
Jesus showed his humility as he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Though he is the King of Kings, he rides in on a donkey. On a lowly donkey, awkward step by step he came as a servant all of us and to save us. Thus we can sing “All Glory laud and honor to You Redeemer King.”