Living Ego-Overdrive

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
September 28th 2008

“Living Ego-Overdrive”
Ps 78:1-4, 12-16; Phil 2:1-13
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller

Since we have been told by the powers-that-be, that we stand on the precipice of economic Apocalypse you might assume that I would toss out my plan for this weeks’ sermon. I considered looking for scriptures that would speak directly to this crisis and come up with a new sermon all together. I considered that for about five minutes and decided against it. My decision was based on two reasons: 1) The passages read this morning are relevant and 2) the current crisis, while real, is nothing new. Folks in the middle and the bottom of the economic spectrum have been in crisis for years. Health care has become a privilege, housing is precarious, education is savagely unequal, and one out of every ninety-nine people in this country is in prison, but politicians and the nightly news only seem to notice when folks who have over 100,000 dollars in one bank start to feel the trouble. So, I hope you can understand why I chose not to follow their lead since we have been talking about this crisis for a long time. So let us go back to our ancient, yet relevant scriptures so we can place this current crisis in proper perspective.
“Listen, up!” The teacher begins a lesson directed to parents, grandparents, and all adult figures in the community. That lesson is clear: If you don’t teach the coming generation, if you do not make sure the coming generation learns the stories how will they know? How will they survive? Do not hide the story that was passed along to you. Do whatever you need to do to make God’s work and Word known.’ How can we, as a people of faith share hope in the midst of these difficult times? The psalmist makes it clear. Remember. Remember what God did in Egypt. In Egypt, God made some things clear: Empire, particularly those built on the backs of slaves will not stand. The great army of Egypt found itself in a Red Sea quagmire destroyed because their leaders’ heart was hardened. The psalmist need not mention the details but only mention Egypt and the divided waters and everyone remembers that whatever we face in the future, God is with us.
The psalmist continues to recount God’s action. Nothing ends at the Red Sea, except the Egyptian chariots. God not only held back the waters to save the ancestors, but God brought water in the desert places. This is the story that we know, this is the story sustains us; this is the story which the next generation must know. We cannot continue to keep it a secret. This teaching, this instruction, is an antidote to despair. Because we know that when the powers-that-be claim that the world is neatly ordered and there is no other way, we know it is simply not true. We know the world is not fixed because we remember that water can come from a rock and the world’s greatest military is not invincible. The psalm opens up these places that are closed and enable us to get up and continue when faced with the next crisis in our lives.
But the story we have to share, that we must share does not end there. When faced with a community facing struggles, or dare I say; crisis, Paul employs the same strategy as the psalmist. “If there is any encouragement… any consolation,” follow the example of Jesus. Remember! Remember that all we do and all we are, is based in him. The community at Philippi was faced with changing times. The privileges they once received being part of the Roman Empire were being eroded as they followed the way of Jesus. So for the first time, in many of their lives they faced a loss of privilege and began to share in suffering faced by others, including Paul.
With a community facing struggles the natural tendency was to turn inward and cannibalize themselves. This is why Paul must appeal to the followers of Jesus in this way:
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus
For Paul to speak in this way, we know that the Philippians’ community faced challenges and that they were at risk of not being of the same mind. Ambition, conceit, and selfishness were the orders of the day. And at its root, this type of splintering in communities is a sign that humility has been lost. Instead of focusing on the good of the community folks begin to, overtly or more often covertly, work to remake the community in their own image. (This is probably one of the greatest sins of most clergy. I mention that so you know I am not exempting myself.)
Humility is a spiritual discipline that is often neglected. There are others which are neglected but truly humble people are rare. Most of us, and I am including myself, feign humility even if we really attempt it. That is the hard part about humility, when we attempt to become humble we have already started off on the wrong foot. It is not possible to sit down with our daily to-do list and say: “Ok, today I will master humility.” Instead humility is actually a byproduct of a holistic approach to our faith. In other words, the focus of our faith is directed in the service of others, in this community and the outside world.
Now I am not saying we shouldn’t seek humility but what we should do is approach it from a different angle. Instead of trying to check humility off our spirituality check list we need to instead measure our life, and accomplishments through the life of Jesus. This is a big task and can leave us feeling overwhelmed but the good news is that the work is not solely our responsibility. It is a helpful reminder to know that God invites us, to not only leave our egos at the door, but to make sure we don’t pick them up on the way out. Whenever we forget, who we are and whose we are, humility is the first thing to suffer.
This is why Paul reminds the fellowship at Philippi to remember the whole enterprise is centered on Jesus. While Jesus was equal with God, he did not exploit it. So, if we are to maintain our faithfulness in the midst of changing times and in the midst of crisis we have to begin by remembering. We remember that it did not begin with us. God has been at work long before we got here and God will continue to be at work long after we are gone. And all along the way God has never left us alone. God is as work in us and through us. So as we face the next crisis, as we wait to see what Monday brings, let us remember and keep it in a larger perspective. Amen? Amen.