More Than A Hero--March 29, 2021

More Than A Hero--March 29, 2021

"Let the same mind be in your that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited..." [Philippians 2:5-6]

If I stop and think about it, this is really why I am a Christian.

This verse, this sentence, this idea, and the radical notion it conveys are why, for all the ways that organized religion can be such a disappointment (plus, we're not all that organized! Ba-dum bum!), this is why I continue to be a part of the community called the church and a Christian, rather than just an admirer of the teachings of Jesus.  And the crux of the matter--quite literally--is that it is no less than God who has come to us in the person of Jesus.

Look, the world is full of other role models and positive examples.  If my only reason for being a Christian is that Jesus gives me a hero to look up to, well, the glut of superhero movies and movie universes has given me plenty more "heroes."  There's a new flavor every week.  I can have my own personal favorites, my spouse can have her own, and my kids can each pick a favorite or two.  We can pore over the pages of history and find heroes to look up to as well, or to our favorite figures from literature (I've always been fond of Don Quixote and Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, and tenth-grade me was greatly impacted by meeting early Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird).  

But for whichever role models, fictional or historical or some of both, on whom we pattern our lives, let's be honest, we will always be chasing after some impossible goal of being "enough like them" to be worthy, to be good enough, to be acceptable.  And we're never going to do it.  I'm never going to have Bruce Wayne's disposable fortune or tech savvy; I'm never going to work up the never to actually fight a windmill; and I will never have the physical strength or agility to be Black Panther.  And if saving the day requires me to be adequately good enough or close enough to any of them, I will fail... and the day will be saved.

And honestly, if all religion is boils own to, "Keep trying to be good enough--here, look at another biblical role model," then we should be honest that religion is about saving ourselves with good behavior.  

But that's not how this passage from Philippians opens.  This ancient passage from the hand of Saint Paul himself, which is actually probably a quotation of an even earlier hymn or prayer, starts with God.  And that makes all the difference.  Yes, Paul's point includes us patterning our minds and mindsets on how Jesus is an example for us to follow.  But the first move is God's, not ours.  The outrageous claim of the Gospel is that none other than God came to us in Jesus, walked barefoot and homeless in Jesus, and was executed by the state as a threat to the empire and Respectable Religion in Jesus.  The radical claim of Christianity is not, first, that we have to try to be as good as God in order to get into God's good graces, but rather that God has become one of us because we are already held in the goodness of grace.  And that means, further, that at the heart of God's character is the choice NOT to maximize privilege or status for God's own sake, but for the good of others.  At the heart of who God is is decidedly NOT the motto, "Me First" or the song "My Way," but rather the choice to put others first--and a whole world full of us others, too.

Before we get to how we respond to that (and we are called to respond), it's important that we get the horse before the cart. What makes the Gospel different from every form of self-help religion in human history is that it starts with God's choice not to preserve privilege, not to pull rank, and not to stay safe, but to lose everything for the sake of what is not God--us.  It's not about us reaching "up," but about God coming close, even though that means letting go of power, comfort, prestige, glory, and respectability.

In the storytelling of the rest of this week then, just remember, it is theologically right to substitute the word "God" everywhere you see the name "Jesus," from the torture at police headquarters to the shame of the cross to being buried in a borrowed grave.  It is God who gets mocked by the religious and politically powerful (who are afraid of losing that power, while God was willing to surrender power in Christ). It is God who is stripped naked and strung up on a tree.  It is God who cries out in godforsakenness.  It is God who moves first in Jesus.

Whatever else we say about ourselves, then, is always a response to grace, never a prerequisite for it.  And that makes all the difference in the world.

Jesus is more than a hero, and more than a self-help role model.  Jesus is what it looks like when God is prepared to lose it all for the love of us.

Lord Jesus, let us recognize in your face the very face of God... even when it wears a crown of thorns.