Philippians 2:1-13
Proper 21 (26) - Year A
"Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what."
One of the quick responses I once gave to my daughter when she was asking questions about what lay behind the nastiness of life, evil, if you will, was:
A key element behind each of the seven deadly sins is a sense of entitlement.
Think for a moment about these seven classic sins and their attendant virtues. How does a sense of entitlement lead to the sin and how does not claiming what is due us lead to the virtue?
SINS
pride
avarice/greed
envy
wrath/anger
lust
gluttony
sloth
VIRTUES
humility
generosity
love
kindness
self-control
faith and temperance
zeal
............
If you are interested in other lists of sins and expanding your thinking to them, here are a couple.
SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF INFORMATION DESIGN
Forgetting who your users are
Not creating a flowchart
Not organizing your content
Not using consistent navigation
Using unclear link colors
Using the TITLE tag incorrectly
Not looking aheadSEVEN SINS OF DEADLY MEETINGS
- People don't take meetings seriously. They arrive late, leave early, and spend most of their time doodling.
- Meetings are too long. They should accomplish twice as much in half the time.
- People wander off the topic. Participants spend more time digressing than discussing.
- Nothing happens once the meeting ends. People don't convert decisions into action.
- People don't tell the truth. There's plenty of conversation, but not much candor.
- Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.
- Meetings never get better. People make the same mistakes.THE SEVEN DEADLY COPY EDITING SINS
Arrogance
Assumptions
Sloppiness
Indifference
Ignorance
Laziness
InflexibilityTHE SEVEN DEADLY SINS ACCORDING TO PRINCESS NATALIE (and examples)
<a href="http://egomania.nu/seven.htm">Seven Deadly Sins according to Princess Natalie</a>WHAT ARE THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS IN YOUR LIFE? THE LIFE OF THOSE YOU LIVE WITH?
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http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/september2002.html
Let the same love be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, in the form of a human,
did not regard equality with others
as a limitation,
but filled himself,
taking the form of a teacher,
living in the image of G*D.
And being found in divinity,
he committed himself
and grew into life -
even life on a cross.
Therefore do we honor him
and give him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Learning Merciful Love
every heart shall stir,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue be thankful
that Jesus Christ is Love,
in the tradition of G*D the Lover.
So it is, my beloved, G*D the Lover is at work in you, enabling you to both desire and fulfill all good pleasure.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/september2005.html
As parents we often have to come to that point of entrusting a next generation to learn life in the same way we did, in fear and trembling, in joy and peace, moment by moment. There is no benefit for them to gather the profit of our living without their having learned the lessons that came with that accumulation of wisdom.
At some point we need to recognize our presence and our resources will not be sufficient for the next step of spiritual maturity by a following generation. They, too, will need to walk into to an unknown future. In some sense we do them a disservice to ply them with an estate beyond their learning. The whole argument about doing away with an estate tax is to play into the hands of a capitalistic class war and to avoid the wisdom of the saints regarding spiritual growth through the working out of salvation in each person and generation.
Hear John Wesley on leaving an estate:
"Do not leave it to them to throw away. If you have good reason to believe they would waste what is now in your possession, in gratifying, and thereby increasing, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life; at the peril of theirs and your own soul, do not set these traps in their way. Do not offer your sons or your daughters unto Belial, any more than unto Moloch. Have pity upon them, and remove out of their way what you may easily foresee would increase their sins, and consequently plunge them deeper into everlasting perdition! How amazing then is the infatuation of those parents who think they can never leave their children enough! What! cannot you leave them enough of arrows, firebrands, and death? not enough of foolish and hurtful desires? not enough of pride, lust, ambition, vanity? not enough of everlasting burnings? Poor wretch! thou fearest where no fear is. Surely both thou and they, when ye are lifting up your eyes in hell, will have enough both of "the worm that never dieth," and of "the fire that never shall be quenched!" [Sermon 50, The Use of Money ]
With this version of a vow of poverty we put one piece (but there are many others needed) in place that will aid folks to grow into the will and work of "good for all" (G*D and Neighbor as well as Self).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/september2005.html
Philippians 2:1-13
Exodus 17:1-7 or Ezekiel 18:1-4, 24-32
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 or Psalm 25:1-9
Matthew 21:23-32
An intriguing image of G*D is presented in Philippians -- an emptying G*D [?in distinction to a creating G*D, or are these integrally bound?] If you substitute Moses for Jesus Christ and then look back at Exodus you can catch a glimpse of this emptying G*D.
See again where G*D is - in front of Moses - where Moses will strike (unless he swats at a rock behind him). Can you see G*D facing Moses (no backside here) and saying, "Strike through me." Would you have the courage and humility of Moses to strike G*D to strike water for the people? Whether anyone else could be witness to this or not, Moses understood he was to strike G*D that the waters from beyond (that had been pent up at Creation and again in Noah's time) might surface through G*D, through Horeb, through a suffering and emptying of G*D.
Where are you called to strike that life-giving water might flow? Does it feel like you would have to muster more strength and humility than you have, to do so? Does not G*D always need to be bruised for life to flow? Do we always need to work through our own resistance to striking G*D that we might grow the next stage of our journey?
- - -
obey this why don't you
here it comes our difficulty
work out your own salvation
not someone else's
work it out in the absence of G*D
not for G*D's good pleasure
for your own
this is G*D's pleasure too
obey this past pleasure
again a difficulty
work with your fear and trembling
not someone else's
work in the presence of G*D
enabling with pleasure
a willingness to face fear
our pleasure too
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
The love of Christ is personal in that it makes a difference in me and communal it that that difference is to be joined with others (one another in a faith community and neighbors everywhere). The humility required by this keeps us "reverent and sensitive before God" [The Message].
This communal expression of the experience of love is a measure of our soul, of salvation wholeness. Always reverence and sensitivity are on the edge of fear and trembling for experience is just that way.
To put this in the context of the current predictable economic situation eventuating from a market-only approach to life you may be interested in the first News Brief in the latest TCP Nexus -- reflections by the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
This is another passage in which it is helpful to read it aft to fore.
G*D is at work in you, for pleasure – yours and G*D's. There will be fear and trembling involved with this pleasure called "salvation". It will include being recognized as G*Dly, which is a pleasure of "glory".
Are you ready for such exaltation, such pleasure? It will be revealed to you in completing what it means for you to be in human form, filling that form with abundant living. It is as worth living as human as it is to live as G*D, there is no competition between them. Let this be fulfilled in you.
Be interested in others living their life, it will encourage you to live yours. This humility will enhance your life in community. Beware those selfish, ambitious, conceited images that would put us into competition of there being only one good. To complete the pleasure of "joy", sympathy, compassion, sharing, and love will console and encourage you to participate in Christing – revealing in oneself the joy and glory of salvation – living sacred and secular, human and divine, as one.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
A fine goal, being of one mind. A bit difficult to pull off when one or more of the minds is a religious bully unable to hold more than their own mind or allow other minds their wisdom and experience.
The Christian tradition seems to claim that all those Jesus dealt with were bullies of one sort or another, yes, even the disciples periodically fell back into that predisposition.
Without a single mindedness among us, we are left with working out salvation with fear and trembling, with redoubled energy (for self and others). Actually, single-mindedness is not very stable if we are living in an entropic world with a living G*D. I expect that even in that high holy time of unity, there is still a wholeness to be worked on - particularly if I am expected to come to it in the same way you are.
So, assured enough to be humble or cowed into submission, there are no guarantees. Obedience is not sufficient on its own to claim salvation. We seem to be in it together and so my interest is in your coming as close to wholeness as you can and my doing the same. Though probably not identical in size or ripeness, each whole fruit is important in an expansive vineyard.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/09/philippians-21-13.html
In the game of Jenga, blocks are removed from a tower and placed on top of the remaining structure. The result is a progressively more unstable structure. Even with the strongest base of communal values:
encouragement
consolation
sharing
compassion
sympathy
joy
these are not sufficient for a tower to reach to the heavens. We see our very own construction teetering and our hand shaking the more with each move.
Our imagination also teeters in stressful situations. We have accepted the limitations of our rules. Eventually our tower of life comes tumbling down. Our neighbor’s hand or our own falters. But even if we were to build until only one piece was still in its original place, the simple settling out of dust from the air will destabilize the structure and down it will come. Things fall apart, is not just the name of a great book by Chinua Achebe but our constant reality.
We attempt to corral life by hedging it in with rules as though Jenga were but a physics problem to be worked out with what we know at any given time. All we need to do is set initial boundaries of behavior and somehow we will be able to take that final piece from the bottom and successfully place it on the top so we can marvel at the space now available between tower and table. Higher and higher we go with increasing amounts of nothing below.
Our communal stability relies on common consent
same mind
same love
same purpose
same heart
only to find tensions
ambition – humility
self interest – other interest
in the middle of love and purpose that are as intractable as gravity in everyday life. An ideal game will never be played, even by robots. Something there is that doesn’t like pat answers to messy questions. And so someone usually knocks it over with intentional unintentionally or out of simply meanness or revenge—anything to move on to a different game or get away from those present.
Therefore, beloveds, your fear and trembling work is
non-exploitation
to not turn our various games of life into some fantasy of winning.
Now for the Zen of gaming. We watch with bated breath as our neighbor successfully completes their turn. And there is celebration. We are watched with bated breath as we successfully complete our turn. And there is celebration. We watch our neighbor fail. And there is mourning. We are watched as we fail. And there is mourning. Together, our celebrations and our mournings reveal G*D among us. Together, we rebuild a tower, all the fallen pieces become integral to a next opportunity to play together as we will and work for the pleasure of one another’s company.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/09/philippians-21-13.html