SPEAKER_00: May I speak in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Lovely to see you here today.
SPEAKER_00: All this month, the cathedral is observing Black History Month.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is particularly frustrating to me that this sermon happening right now that was supposed to be delivered by a black woman is instead being delivered by a white man.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cruel irony to that, and I wish I was not here.
SPEAKER_00: But you'll notice that the service still draws together some of these themes that we observe during Black History Month.
SPEAKER_00: And while it's neither my experience as a white man to kind of talk into what it is to be a person of color, nor do I have any particular academic expertise in that area, I'd like us to hold that as a context that it kind of sits in the back of our minds as we reflect on the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: There is, of course, another key context for us today, which is the ongoing conflict in Israel-Palestine and in Ukraine.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I have no particular expertise, it's not my place to comment, but I want us to have it in the back of our mind as part of the context while we reflect on the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that this week you have been asking yourself, among other things, what resources do the Christian scriptures have to bear on this situation unfolding in front of me?
SPEAKER_00: As atrocities are taking place in our world, and as we reflect on systemic injustice with people for people of color, what resources do I have to think about those things as I turn to the scriptures, as I look at the tradition, as I reflect on the spirit and how it's moving through this world?
SPEAKER_00: And so that's really what I'd like to do this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Reflect on the scriptures with you.
SPEAKER_00: And then let's see if there are things to be learnt in these contexts that we draw together.
SPEAKER_00: So if you'd like to turn to page nine of your service sheet, we'll be looking not at the gospel reading but at Philippians chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll notice at the start of the second main paragraph, Paul says this I urge you, Euodia, and I urge you, Syntche, be of the same mind in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now this should strike us as a strange thing for Paul to take his time to say.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient world, letter writing is extremely was an extremely expensive practice.
SPEAKER_00: Paul did not just whip out his iPhone and knock out an email.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just send a quick text or send someone a message on Instagram or Slack.
SPEAKER_00: To write a letter in the ancient world was extremely expensive and laborious.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost certainly the case that Paul spent weeks, if not months, preparing these letters before eventually composing and uh putting them down on paper.
SPEAKER_00: Often he was in prison, and so he required the equivalent of a typist to actually write the letter for him.
SPEAKER_00: That costs money.
SPEAKER_00: Ink and paper and writing implements are extremely expensive in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have to get the letter from wherever Paul is to Philippi or Ephesus or Colossae or Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And there aren't any safe roads in the ancient world, and so you probably have to pay for a team of people to go to get the letter where it needs to be.
SPEAKER_00: And so this extremely expensive form of communication.
SPEAKER_00: Paul spends a number of lines asking two people in the congregation in Philippi to be reconciled, have the same mind as one another, become reconciled with one another.
SPEAKER_00: That should strike us as strange.
SPEAKER_00: And the way to understand it is to remember or to discover that the book of Philippians has a center of gravity, a kind of star that sits at the center of the book around which all the other ideas orbit.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can read the book of Philippians as a series of short reflections or stories about people that orbit this central theme, this big idea, this star that creates the center of gravity around everything, around which everything else moves.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the central idea, and it's in Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: This might be familiar to some of you.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality as God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave and being found in human likeness, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow 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.
SPEAKER_00: This was almost certainly a hymn that the early church sang together, and so Paul makes that the center of his letter, and then all these other ideas kind of orbit around it.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul, in this letter, um, sorry, this hymn that Paul is quoting summarizes the Christian good news that Jesus Christ was equal and is equal with the Father, sat in heaven above, and yet he emptied himself and humbled himself, humbled himself from heaven to earth, and then humbled himself all the way to death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He took on the weight of our sin and brought upon himself the death that we should experience, the brokenness of our world.
SPEAKER_00: And now he's exalted, he's been raised to new life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, did you notice at the start of the hymn and at the start of what Paul says to Eudekai and Syndechi, he uses the same phrase, be of the same mind in the Lord, Eudekai and Syndicai, Syndechi, and in Philippians 2, be of the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who though who was the very nature of God, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is inviting Eudeki and Syndicate to live the same life that Jesus lived, a life of humility.
SPEAKER_00: And this way of Jesus is completely opposed, completely backwards, completely upside down to the way of the world that was the case in the Roman Empire and continues to be the case today.
SPEAKER_00: When we are in conflict with one another, we make ourselves big and we make other people small.
SPEAKER_00: We puff up our own achievements and our own position, our own point of view, so that we can dominate and beat the other person or people.
SPEAKER_00: We grasp at our power and take advantage to keep ourselves safe and get ourselves in front of others.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when we do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus is at pains to remind us that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, that those who try to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for his sake will ultimately find new life in him.
SPEAKER_00: And that, as I have often said, resurrection is only and always found on the far side of death.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to live new resurrection life, the only life that really matters, it can only and always be found on the far side of death.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea at the center of this book, the star around which all these other ideas orbit.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul quotes the book, quotes the hymn, and then reminds Eudekai and Syntachi live like that, live that way, be reconciled to one another by living the life that Jesus lived.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a question for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: How does that work itself out in practice?
SPEAKER_00: Particularly bearing in mind these contexts that we referenced at the start of the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me introduce you to someone who I think is very helpful in this regard.
SPEAKER_00: Moroslav Wolf in uh 2002 wrote this book, and it's a book called Exclusion and Embrace.
SPEAKER_00: Exclusion and Embrace by Moroslav Wolf.
SPEAKER_00: Moroslav was born in 1956.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Croat who was born in what was then called Yugoslavia, and that means that in his mid-30s, war broke out.
SPEAKER_00: He was in his mid-30s when war broke out, a series of independent wars across Yugoslavia that lasted about 10 years from 1991 to 2001, across Slovenia and Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo.
SPEAKER_00: At the time, that war was considered Europe's deadliest armed conflict since the Second World War.
SPEAKER_00: And it was marked by many war crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, to name just a few of the horrors.
SPEAKER_00: And Moroslav was uh involved in that conflict.
SPEAKER_00: He was called into active service during the uh during the um during the wars, and he was also a theologian.
SPEAKER_00: And so he wrote this book, Exclusion and Embrace, reflecting on the wars that went through his homeland, and reflecting on what we've just been describing, the mandate to live as people who follow Jesus, who lay down their lives for the sake of their enemies.
SPEAKER_00: At the center of this book is a metaphor that I'd like to share with us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Moroslav describes an embrace or a hug in four stages.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Stage one is opening up your arms.
SPEAKER_00: In opening up your arms to the other, you're creating space for them, literally, physically, here.
SPEAKER_00: You wait, that's stage two, with your arms open wide, hoping that they will come and embrace you.
SPEAKER_00: Stage three is the act of embrace, where suddenly there are not one people but two people reconciled together, embracing one another.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm embracing you and you're embracing me.
SPEAKER_00: And stage four, the opening of the arms again, the separating out, so that we don't assimilate each other into one space, but we find opportunity for people to live independently and together.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very potent way of describing the process of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Arms open wise, waiting, embracing, and then opening up once again.
SPEAKER_00: That I think is a way of thinking about the way of Jesus, the way of humility and love in the midst of awful situations.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that as we're reflecting on these things, you are bearing it in mind in the contexts in which we live, in our hopes for our relationships with other ethnicities, as we work together for a fairer society.
SPEAKER_00: Our hopes and prayers for some awful conflicts that are in the world that are happening right now, today.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps also in conflicts in your own life, as you think about your relationship with your spouse or your children or your partner or the people that you work and live with.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, as an image of Christ on the cross, who opens wide his arms and waits, waits for you and I to draw near, to be embraced, to find a way of living with him, following him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.