From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts–
Philippians 2:6-11, our second reading, is divided into three parts below:
Our long Gospel reading for today takes us through the final days of Jesus earthly life, beginning with his Last Supper with his disciples and ending with his death from crucifixion. In this brief excerpt from his letter to the Christians at Philippi, Paul uses an early Christian hymn to explain how Christians understood Jesus’ entire human life, death, and Resurrection.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped. (or “exploited”)
Status was immensely important in Jesus’ day—social rank was a key marker of identity: were you an owned slave? A bonded (temporary, perhaps for years) servant? A freeborn person? A citizen or an alien? Poor? Rich? Above all, a Roman citizen or not with all the other elements of status also in effect in that level? The normal tendency, of course, was to make your status work for you as best it might. Jesus began above all that—and made no use of it for himself, ending up at the very bottom of the status list.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, (or “a bond servant”)
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Resulting in his death by crucifixion, a brutal, nightmarish penalty reserved for those unfortunate enough not to be Roman citizens.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those 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.
Jesus did not give up his divine nature (which would be impossible, since it was his origin) but he, in his human nature always did and taught what he heard from his Father. For this, he was eventually murdered. He was rewarded by his Father for his humility and love by being given, in his human nature, “the name that is above every name.” Jesus is LORD!
Jews used what they called “the Name” or “the LORD” in place of saying the sacred name of God. Romans used the same word for the emperor himself. Paul’s audience would have caught both references. For them, Jesus is the LORD Christians acknowledge in all things.
Here are the consequences. You and I, simply as human beings, have been given a great gift—life. God’s call is for us to do the same—give life to others. In doing that we become more and more like Him, and He will reward our gift-giving with an even greater gift: LIFE in joy without limit.
With the life of Jesus, God has been quite upfront about our current costs. We will struggle. We will suffer. We will have setbacks, enemies, hopeless feeling times, grievous failures… . He knows. Every story is a better, deeper, truer story when the story involves struggle and sacrifice. Ours, too. All this will redound to our glory. I believe his way makes sense of our world in a way nothing else does.
Let’s put our gifts to good use.
For further reflection:
Yesterday I happened to read a brief overview of the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Brief, but long enough to make clear that a simple paradigm of a saint’s life most of us have in our heads is wrong. The simple paradigm in his case would be something like “he went off to war as a young man, was seriously wounded, read the lives of the saints during his recovery, changed his life and begin the Jesuit order.” Too often we expect this same simplistic approach from God in our own lives.
In fact, it took years and years and years between his recovery and the founding: years spent trying to become educated (lots of difficult adventures involved in that alone), years to find a few supporters, to get over troubles he had with the Inquisition, years of opposition from a Cardinal who plain did not like him, years to experience begging for money, years spent trying (and never succeeding) in going to Jerusalem–all of this and more before ever founding the Jesuits. You get the idea. Most of “becoming the saint we are supposed to be” is about day-to-day, year-by-year struggles of working through what God is calling us to do, right here, right now. It is not a tidy process–it is as messy and unclear as we all know normal human life to be.