Leaning Into Lent | Week 5 | New Testament (3-25-26)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hey everybody, we are back. It is the final week before Holy Week. We've got Palm Sunday coming up on Sunday. Hope that you'll be with us for worship as our kids process in. We have one service we'll be combined this week. Um we've been going through our lectionary all. We do our Old Testament lesson on Monday, our New Testament epistle on Wednesday, gospel lesson on Friday. We've had pastors be with us this entire season. We're so thankful that the Reverend Jennifer Preck is with us. She is the pastor at Springhill Avenue United Methodist Church, currently meeting at West Side over in Mobile. For those who don't know, uh her minister of worship is the brother of Margie Walters. And so we'll uh she's got Chris Smith over there. And so we're so grateful that uh we make these fun Methodist connections. Um let's go ahead and uh dive into our reading from Philippians. Um we're gonna be in Philippians chapter two.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Tuttle beggar.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

And it is one of those that uh is is Paul at his finest. You know, we've done a lot of, I mean, it's it's well, if you're gonna do epistles, it's hard to say you don't do a lot of Paul because Paul wrote most of the paper. Um but I do feel like there's been a lot of common themes from our Pauline letters this uh this season. But here we go. In your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father. Thus ends the reading from Philippians chapter two. All right. So uh we read the passage. Um, what kind of struck you in this first pass? What do you what stood out? What do you want to mention? What was some uh contextual words for us?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

One of the first things that made me think of obviously we're talking about like the humility of Christ, and and I had to look up the exact quote because it immediately made me think of a C. S. Lewis quote um where he he said, if you want to get the hang of the incarnation, just imagine how you'd feel if you woke up one morning to discover you had turned into a garden slug.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

And that's one of the most viewed probably.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Except for C. S. Lewis. But because you know, it's so not like most of the stuff that he writes, but it's so like I think that's powerful, and that's why uh I thought of that when I think of the humility of Christ, I think of this language of him becoming nothing. Like, think of you wake up and you're a slug. Like, just about like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

It definitely uh makes me curious how C.S. Lewis understands hands humanity. Um I hope that God doesn't see us that way, but you know too far too. Okay, the met every metaphor breaks down at some point, right? Every analogy and some like what else?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Oh no. So for this one, that I had uh a professor in seminary who was so big on uh the the Greek specifically of this passage. And he would always talk about how, and so I have to go back to verse one, even though we didn't read it. Um but verse one begins if then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the spirit, any compassion and sympathy. Um, and then it goes on to say this whole beautiful thing, let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Um, the way that that Greek is constructed, if then there is any encouragement, um, it is meant to have a like you would have understood the way it is written. If then there's any encouragement in Christ, and there is, so there is, right? Like absolutely you have within you the ability to have the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Um and so I always um hear this one as uh Paul at his most uh um he's like the the best coach at halftime, right? Like the most inspirational, right? Like you already know this. You already have this. That's good. Yeah, this Paul is halftime coach.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Uh this is a good text for us. Um for if this is you if you understand this is Passion Sunday. Correct. So for those who don't know, um, as we look at the lectionary, it gives us the instructions to use this for either Palm or Passion Sunday. Um you can do Palm Sunday or you can do Passion Sunday. I don't know if this is to be true. The way I've always kind of talked about it is like it kind of I kind of think the lectionary assumes people aren't going to come to church on Thursday and Friday. And they don't want you to miss the Passion of Jesus. And so because if you go to church this Sunday and not again till the next Sunday, it goes from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and you miss the Passion there in the middle. And so the lectionary gives the readings for Palm Sunday and or Passion Sunday. This text doesn't really we're doing Palm Sunday. I almost always do Palm Sunday because I think you should come to church on Thursday and Friday Holy Week. Now, I'm biased, it's my job, but to me, they are two of the greatest and most meaningful services of the entire year. Um Good Friday service. Um we do a contemporary version of Good Friday here. We have a traditional service here for Monday, Thursday. There is no other service the entire year like Good Friday, because it's the only one that doesn't end in hope.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

There's no you leave in darkness because they're at that moment where they are, there's no hope. So please come for Passion Week because we're not doing Passion Sunday, we're doing Palm Sunday, which is why this gospel lesson, I mean this uh uh epistle lesson is good, but throughout Lent we've had all these lectionary texts that all match up together, they give us these themes. And this one doesn't really do that for the gospel. It's not bad per se, but it seems very uh independent of what we're preaching about on Sunday with Palm Sunday of our next text we're gonna read on on Friday. And uh, but it does work when you start thinking about the passion for you start re when you start thinking about next week. When you start thinking about how God um became human and how that human chose not to lord it over anybody else, but chose to die. Um I think it it it gives us a chance to make connection this particular text with next week's experiences.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

What um what up some context of this? Anything about Paul's writing of the Philippians, anything that is just um in addition to reading this text that you want to apply before we go through uh any of our tensions that we felt?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

I think when you think about context and you think about the division of the church, that this language and this message that Paul is giving is one of unity and it combats the message of like pride and selfishness that divided the church in the first place. And it's about unity and humility and and this oneness in Christ instead of pointing fingers and pride.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

I've always appreciated about Paul. Uh he never I think so often we take uh theological arguments and think they are just the the venue for a seminary student or a bunch of clergy that's sitting around talking about the Bible together. Um, but Paul answers this very real division between two people or two factions in this church and Philippi and says, Let me let me tell you a hymn about Christ. Let me sing you a song about Jesus and this very theological argument about who Jesus was, pre-existent, current incarnational, and post-resurrection, and that should tell you who you're supposed to be. And that every bit of our lives is meant to be governed by who Jesus Christ is, because after all, that is who we understand ourselves to have become in our new creation. Um that's a good word. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Well, how about when you read this text? Is there anything that you either come up against, anything that reminds you of any other text, anything that was convicting in a way? Um I think for me, when I when I think of this, it's could this is a convicting text for me. Sure. Um and and not because it I don't agree with it, um, but because I know that it is a thing that I'm like farthest from in my own personal faith journey. Um no one would ever uh I think uh laugh or uh accuse me of uh being the world's most humble person. Um I always say there's a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and nobody wants to follow follow somebody that's arrogant, but nobody will follow somebody that's not confident. And so sometimes I do struggle with trying to make sure that we're living into the humility because Christ had all the reason in the world to be confident, and even to the point of arrogant if he wanted to be, but he chose not to be. He chose to be humble and chose to and so the the humility here of he is God, but did not consider the quality of God something to be used to his own advantage. It's not even that he's saying like that he doesn't have that, right? It's not even saying that he doesn't have some level of um uh uh of recognition of who he is. He knows that he is the son of man. It's that he's not using it to his own advantage. And I think that was a key there uh for me is that humility is not re not pretending you're something you're not. Yeah, it's trying to make sure you're using what you have for the others.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

That's right. Uh there's this quote that uh reminds me uh it says, uh golly, I'm gonna misquote Bart. Don't let me do it. Um but Carl Bart talked about how Jesus saw the death, like saw the grave as a as a cave, not as a tunnel. Like he's treating it not as if it is this, we're just gonna pop down here and come up to victory on the other side. Jesus dies for real. Yeah. Um, and our challenge as Christians is to not, I mean, that that's the beauty of Holy Week. Um, that we do get to end that ten of ray, that that Good Friday service in a moment where we reckon with Christ's death. And we know there's there's victory on the other side. Um, but that is not the lived experience in that moment. It there is a humbling to death, even to death on a cross, as Paul says. Um and it is um yeah, that's the hardest word. Um that dying to self being up there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Anything else? Tension, conviction, things that you push back against before we go to like application for our own lives. So as I was reflecting on this, I couldn't help but think of our United Methodist understanding of Christian perfection, which is something that we don't talk about a whole lot because a lot of people don't really understand it. And it's hard to articulate. It is. It is something that we can get accused of as being um uh you know far-fetched. It's the far-fetched thing to believe. Maybe we're being too um either big on what humanity's possibilities are or we don't really understand. But but here's how I uh having the same minded Christ is the best way to describe how we understand Christian perfection.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

And so this this language here from Paul about who Jesus is and how he is calling us to have the be the same mindset as Christ Jesus, for us, being made perfect in this life doesn't mean you won't ever make a mistake. Correct. It doesn't mean that you won't accidentally participate in corporate sin. It doesn't even mean that um you might not uh uh that you understand everything perfectly. It means that your will is fully in line with the will of God and the conscious decisions you make are intentionally the ones that God you that God would want you to make. And that's what it means to be in the same mindset as Christ Jesus. I think that helps us reframe what Christian perfection means for you and I Methodists, and how we can embody that in our lives.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah. Uh this idea of being made perfect in love and that you make these the choices that you make, even if it turns out the choice itself was wrong, you made it from a place that you were perfect in love and he uh humbling yourself uh to the other person in the situation. Um, yeah, no, I was just gonna say, um there's this idea, and especially I think reading it in the same week as Palm Sunday, where we've had this big triumphant moment. Um it's really, I think, interesting to hold that triumphalism in tension with this humility.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

That's a good word. Let's get rid of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

And to think through what it looks like. Um to be so confident um in who we are in Christ, and to also let that like it is that confidence, that assurance that we have in Jesus Christ that allows us to humble ourselves to one another, to our neighbor. Yeah. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Uh offer. All right. Well, I think that's a good place for us to land for today as we uh conclude our conversation about Philippians as we do our uh New Testament lesson for this week. Uh Jennifer, thank you again for being with us. Um I hope that you all will join us on Friday as we conclude this week's um sessions, talking through the gospel. Um, we will be in uh Matthew going through the triumphal entry. So uh would you might say in prayer for us, Jennifer? Not at all.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Gracious and loving God, we praise you that you did humble yourself, that you came to be among us as one of us, uh, that you are present among us even still. And we ask as we go throughout this week that you would give us the mind that was in Christ, that you would allow us to comprehend the height, depth, breadth of your love, and that that love would empower us to love our neighbors as you love us. In your holy name and in the power of your Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Amen. Thank y'all so much. We'll see you on Friday.