God’s Vulnerability
Philippians 2:5-11
Emmanuel Baptist Church
April 7, 2024
Image: Entry into the City by John August Swanson
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRuY9awx0AE
Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Here we are, just one week from Easter. Did you spend the last seven days working out the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus? If you have it all figured out, then, sorry, this sermon is not for you.
I wonder what the disciples were thinking one week later. I wonder how all the pieces came together for them, how they would explain it to us if we could hear it in their own words.
I also wonder how we understand it or even what we think the possibilities are. There are so many aspects we could focus on. Competing or contrasting ideas exist alongside each other and we probably carry them around without too much internal distress. But there is one way of interpreting the death and resurrection of Jesus that has dominated Western Christianity for the last thousand years. It is so pervasive that even if we don’t personally hold this theology, it will inform the way we hear hymn lyrics or understand scripture.
I’m talking about something called penal substitutionary atonement. Those words almost never get strung together in ordinary conversation, but you are undoubtedly familiar with the concept. The idea is that God is so pure and holy that God cannot abide human sin. Sin is offensive to God. It creates a gulf, a n insurmountable distance between God and human beings. God is incapable of forgiving sin without sacrifice; the distance cannot be overcome without the shedding of blood. That’s how this theory goes. Therefore, God sends Jesus to the world in order that the sinless Jesus will be killed. That appeases God’s need for a sacrifice and enables the forgiveness of sin.
We are a mixed crowd here. Some of us endorse this understanding. It works for us. We would say it is life-giving. For others here, this does not work. It does not fit with our other deep understandings of God. And when abused, it has been used to justify violence in the name of God. Some of us are somewhere in the middle. We may find this understanding problematic, but we don’t really know of an alternative.
Most of you already know that I no longer find substitutionary atonement the best way to think about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Most of the time, I would rather speak about what I am for rather than what I am against. But because this concept is so pervasive, everything else gets filtered through it. I am calling attention to it because it is the lens we often look through without even being aware of it.
This understanding was first articulated about one thousand years after Jesus. It was amplified by the Protestant reformers and has dominated the Western Christian world for the last millennium. But still, I wonder, what did the disciples think a week after the first Easter? Or a year or two later? How did they put the pieces together?
Some of the earliest Christian writings we have are Paul’s letters. The letter to the Philippians was probably written between 55 and 65 AD. That’s before any of the gospels were written. And in this letter, scholars believe, Paul quotes one of the earliest Christian hymns, something that existed before he began to write.
This hymn says that Jesus is God, full stop. Jesus is not subservient to God, not less than God. Jesus is co-equal with the God who created the world and the God who led the Hebrews out of Egypt. The Jesus God has the same power and is the same being as that One. But the Jesus God does not hold onto that power. They do not claim the use of that power. Instead, the Jesus God becomes human. The Jesus God takes on human fragility. On their own initiative,
the Jesus God crosses the distance between us. The Jesus God does not keep themselves separate from the presence of sin to preserve their holiness, but enters into the brokenness, even becoming susceptible to temptation to sin themselves.
So far, so good. We’re probably comfortable with that interpretation. Then comes verses 7-8 which read “and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross.” We read the word “obedient”, and the substitutionary atonement lens filters the meaning for us. We read the word “obedient” and our notions of hierarchy kick in. We interpret this to mean that Jesus is obedient to God who requires his death.
But this very early Christian understanding of the cross does not mention sin or salvation or forgiveness. If we read the text without that lens, on its own terms, we might understand that Jesus is being obedient to the laws that govern human existence. He does not throw off his human form and take on his God form in order to escape death, because no other human being has that option. One scholar says “Finding himself in human form, this Jesus, who had been in the form of God, humbles himself to obey all the aspects of being human: to be in only one place at one time, to submit to the law of gravity, to fall asleep after an exhausting day, to hunger for food, to desire companionship, to become embedded in the systemic forces of the day, and yes, to be mortal.”[1]
In another letter, the one to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” If we think back to the story of Adam and Eve, we might recognize that they were not content with being human. The serpent told them that if they ate from the forbidden tree, they would become like god. They did eat from it, and the story says, this is how death came into the world. For Adam and Eve, death was the result of disobedience, of striving to be like god. But for Christ, death was the result of his obedience in identifying totally with the human condition.
“Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” The hymn describes resurrection as exultation. “To give someone a name is to give them status and power. The name bestowed on Jesus is ‘the name that is above every name’, which is clearly the name of God.”[2] The resurrection is vindication. It reveals that Jesus was God all along.
This hymn may be the earliest surviving Christian statement about the cross. It reveals a meaning to be found not only in Jesus’ death but in his lifelong act of giving up the privilege of being in the form of God.” [3] Perhaps, if we let it, it can speak to the human need to be saved from the addiction to power, from our captivity to hierarchies and oppressive systems of status and self-worth, from our striving for control and domination of each other and creation. I hope to explore that more in a future sermon.
For today, I have one last point: in the resurrection, Jesus is exalted, restored to the place where he started, which reveals that Jesus is God all along. Jesus does not grasp for equality with God because that grasping is not in God’s nature. Jesus does not stand apart, maintaining a holy distance from creation because that is not who God is. Jesus does not embody a God who is consumed with fury at human sin, who requires sacrifice for forgiveness. Jesus embodies a God who eats and drinks and laughs and has a good time with humans, aka sinners. Just as Jesus has been God all along, so also God has been Jesus all along. “God enters the depths of our vulnerabilities because vulnerability is inherent to the nature of our God.”[4]
Presbyterian theologian William Greenway offers a compelling picture. He writes, “If a single image could capture the character of God in [Genesis], it would be a gracious bow. All of God’s acts, blessings, and delights in creating are for others. In the Hebrew scripture, this is typical of God, who is intimately concerned with justice, peace and the flourishing of all creatures, [the One] who is ‘on high’ but never remote, who is ‘over all’ but faithfully and dramatically invested in life on earth.”[5]
Greenway concludes, “This is love -- that God was, is and always will be Immanuel, God with us and for us. Every creature is bowing to the Three-in-One who bowed first and still bows. . . . This is a stunning, joyous, inspiring vision.”[6]
This message about the cross is foolishness to some, but for us, may it be the power of God. Amen.
[1] F. Timothy Moore, “Giving up privilege: A sermon on Pihlippians 2:5-11, Review & Expositor, Vol 118, 2021 pp 118-123 https://doi.org/10.1177/00346373211002109
[2] Morna D. Hooker, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 11, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 510
[3] F. Timothy Moore, Giving up privilege: A sermon on Philippians 2:5-11
[4] Willie James Jennings, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 127.
[5] William Greenway in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011) p. 112
[6] Greenway, p 114.