Sermon

Obedience and love

Scripture Text:

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon:

The passage we heard this morning from Paul’s letter to the Philippians was almost certainly not written by Paul: we think he was quoting a hymn, one of the first Christian hymns there were.

The hymn says that Jesus “became obedient to the point of death –
even death on a cross.”  That phrase can be tough, because it sounds as though God had a big clipboard and was setting up a checklist of commands for Jesus to obey… and Jesus obeyed them all the way down the list, to his death.

This image of God as a cruel camp counselor or abusive father is not one that I want you to have.  God is love.  God is more merciful and wise than we can ever understand.  God is the only perfect Parent.  And if God is the only perfectly loving Parent, that’s the starting place for us to understand what this obedience stuff is all about.

Benedictine monks and nuns make a vow of obedience. But in the Rule of St. Benedict, obedience doesn’t mean “doing what you’re told.”  Obedience for Benedictines is more like listening: listening with such full and complete attention to God and to the other nuns and monks that your whole life is shaped around them.  To shape their lives in that way, Benedictines have a lot of rules in their monasteries: but the point of the rules they follow is to help them put God at the center of their lives and to follow in the way of Jesus.  And so, they try to see each visitor as Christ and to see the other monks or nuns as Christ.  They try to take on the mind and heart of Christ, themselves.

They’re being obedient to what they love and what they seek after.

We don’t live in a monastery.  But Holy Week begins today.  In this service, and in the services on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we walk in the steps of Jesus through the last week of his life.  We don’t just talk about them, we re-enact them:  we walk in a procession and wave palms around, we share a special meal, we can have our feet washed, we sit in a garden and pray, we draw near the cross.

Maybe, by doing all these things, we are practicing obedience, in a way, because we are seeking to shape our lives after his.

And so, maybe “putting on the mind of Christ” is like saying “obedient to the point of death”?  Holy Week does end with Jesus’ death, and so will our reading of the Passion story today.

But the story doesn’t end there; obedience to God doesn’t end with death.  Being obedient to love, mercy, and wisdom doesn’t lead to death, at all.

Let us go then, and follow in the way Jesus walked.   Let us be obedient to what we love.

Amen.

 

Uploaded on April 17, 2011 in by RevHeidi

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