Written by professors, graduates, and others in
the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary community, these reflections, prayers, and spiritual practices will take you along the journey with Jesus through the cross toward resurrection.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
• Philippians 2:5–11
Palm and Passion Sunday is the start of Holy Week, the beginning of a week that leads to the cross and, through it, to Easter joy. Some years ago it was possible to liturgically skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, to celebrate Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem singing the “Glad Hosannas the Little Children Sang.” Then, the very next Sunday, we’d return in the joy of the Resurrection singing “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.” Of course that meant we might bypass going to the cross, experiencing the suffering, the betrayal, the terror, the horror. So now we try to balance both moods in one festival day. The challenge to us from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi helps with that aim.
The passage has two essential movements: emptied and exalted. Paul encourages us to be of the same mind as the sacrificially emptied, now exalted, Savior. We are invited to live a dynamic process that tilts the creation toward knowledge of how the creator operates. Paul suggests that we Christians make the model of Jesus emptied and exalted instructive for our daily living.
To be absolutely emptied and absolutely filled is to be reminded of the in between. Our ordinary lives are lived somewhere between starving and stuffed. That is often where we hang out: between exhausted and energized. We hope that this Lenten season has helped us practice our faith beyond our norms. In Jewish tradition, the household preparation for Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, involves a search for old leavened products, (chametz) all must be swept away; not even a crumb must remain. My friend, a nutritionist in a Jewish nursing home, told of how the scouring and emptying of cupboards and bins was a spiritual discipline for her: to be emptied of the old year’s leaven enhanced her understanding of being filled with new joy in the Lord.
One of the pivotal words in this text is the Greek harpagmos. Snatch or seize. Jesus Christ did not consider his “equality with God” something to cling to and seize hold of. Christ emptied himself and surrendered to suffering even death on the shameful cross, the death row of that long-ago empire.
What have we seized upon that we refuse to let go, becoming empty? How can we practice emptiness? How can we incorporate fresh expressions of the experience of having the same mind as Christ? One balancing practice suggested in rabbinical tradition may be instructive:
One way, says Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Psischke (1765–1827), is to always carry two notes in your pockets. The one in the right pocket reads: “The world was created for my sake.” The one in the left pocket reads: “I am but dust and ashes.”
What will we keep in our two pockets this Palm and Passion Sunday as we seek to have the same mind as Jesus Christ our Lord? For me one pocket note will be: “Was I there when they crucified my Lord?” and the other “He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!”
Gracious God, in your mercy make Christ’s journey into Jerusalem and to the cross real for us today. Empty us of anything that separates us from your love and fill us with wonder in your divine salvation through our exalted Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.
– The Reverend Dr. Rose Niles
Development Officer, Houston
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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