Friday, March 18, 2016

Passion Sunday Year C - Philippians 2:5-11

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” How is it that the church has failed so miserably at mimicking the mind of God? As it is we are more often the object of God’s lament. "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Selfish ambition, vain conceit, thinking of oneself to be better than the other are more often the way we think and truth to be told we suffer not as Christ but as those who looking only to their own interests cannot escape the lonely consequences. Of course we dress up our differences in doctrinal arguments and clothed in self-righteous piety are quick to claim conformity to Christ without giving an inch lest our brother or sister be tempted to take a mile. God is grieved when in claiming to defend the Gospel we fail to live it. Holding forth for whatever we hold as sacred or worth fighting over must be able to stand the litmus test of Christ. Though he was fully God He emptied himself to inhabit our flesh and die the death we deserve and therefore in the end He will be the judge. It’s not What Would Jesus Do but What Did Jesus Do that matters. If that is the mind we are to have then giving up is the only way to hold on.

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