"Does It Sing To You?"

 

Dave Schneider

Central Presbyterian Church, Russellville, Arkansas

Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008

 

Philippians 2:1-11

Dorothy Hyatt is a good friend. She loved to collect Story-teller dolls when she visited a Native American Pueblo.

One day I was in a shop in Albuguerque with Dorothy and her husband Paul, where there was a large collection of storytellers.

But Dorothy left the store without buying a doll.

When I asked her why, she replied, "If it doesn’t sing to me, I don’t buy it."

I think that is a good philosophy of life. With regard to appreciating something, ask yourself, "Does it sing to me?"

This is what our text is about this morning, about a faith that sings to us.

In 1927, Ernst Lohmyer identified this passage as an ancient hymn.

Since that day Philippians 2:6-11 has been "the best-known, most influential piece of literature" from Paul."

It is an unusual hymn. It does not follow the typical rules for a hymn or poem in either the New Testament or the Old Testament language.

Did Paul borrow this song from someone else or write it himself?

It may have been a popular piece which folks in Philippi sang. So Paul rewrote it into a powerful and delightful affirmation about Jesus Christ who is our "...Lord, to the glory of God the Father!"

This morning think about what makes for a favorite hymn or sacred song:

Is it the words, the language and the theology?

or the catchy tune, the beat?

some personal connection, like your mother’s favorite song?

What makes it sing to you?

Here’s one praise song I really enjoy. I had been on a 3-month pulpit exchange with a pastor in Plimmerton Parish, New Zealand. The day I was to fly home, I had friends drop me off at the local Presbyterian Church in Henderson. The pastor greeted me warmly, and an elder noticed I was sitting alone. She asked if she might worship beside me. We sang a hymn that immediately struck my liturgical fancy. I asked the elder how I might get a copy of that song, and she promised to drop it in my friend’s mailbox by 2 in the afternoon. A week later I was back in my church in Alamogordo. I took the paper with the hymn to the choir rehearsal, and I asked if the choir might learn the song. It was then that our choir director called my attention to the banner on the back wall. The banner had the words to this same praise song, "He Came Singing Love," by Colin Gibson. I had never paid any attention to it before.

He came singing love and he lived singing love;

he died, singing love, He arose in silence.

For the love to go on, we must make it our song;

you and I be the singers.

b. I will teach it to you -maybe next Sunday. [Pause]

This hymn does not change Paul’s thought pattern. These 6 verses are an culmination of what he has been saying from the start of the letter.

The second chapter begins with a Greek conjunction, "IF."

He hypothesizes a conditional relationship with Christ Jesus.

It is not a matter of doubt, but one of absolute truth!

"If there is any encouragement in Christ..." and there certainly is!

Paul builds upon his joy in this congregation and his thankfulness for "their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now."

He uses this joyful note about their wonderful relationship as an incentive to move them forward into even greater maturity in Christ,

ultimately to become sacrificial servants.

It is Paul’s foundational belief that his ministry cannot be validated only because he saw the Lord in a vision on the road, but by the evidence that these churches have become his full partners.

If they fail to live by faith in God’s grace, then he also fails.

His labor is totally wasted.

Then he has no song to sing.

Just this past week I overheard one of our good members saying to another good church faithful: "When my spouse died, this church, they became my family because I had no family here. I love them so much–everyone who walks on both sides...It hurts me so, I lose so much sleep. Maybe one or two of them are like an injured gorilla in the middle of the field that I saw in a dream, one that is unlovable...I wanted to help him but I was afraid he would hurt me....

When I asked this member for permission to quote her, she told me "Later it did happen to me. I saw a bull tied up to a tree, and it was a hot day. That bull could not get to his water because he had wound his rope around a tree. I went over, even though I was shaking, and I moved the water where he could reach it. Later on that bull would follow me up and down the fence when I walked by."

We do not know what the controversy is in that church, why these people were hassling one another.

But Paul is a wise pastor, he rejects laying on a guilt trip.

Instead he lifts up their "unused resources" of faith.

Now he says, "Please complete my joy."

Here is how Eugene Peterson in the "The Message," renders our text,

"If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference to you ..., if being in a community of the Spirit means anything, if you have a heart, if you care– then do me a favor..."

Paul’s joy is not his alone. Neither is our joy or sadness ours alone, but is shared by our church group. Our joy depends on the faith community to be made complete.

Paul now gives them two lists of three things each: the first is a list of positives to do and be–which make you full of Christ’s joy,

(again, from Peterson) #1, "agree with each other,"

#2, "love each other"

#3, "be deep-spirited friends."

He uses the word "mind" two times here.

Paul insists, "Have this same mind-set, among yourselves that you have in Christ Jesus–to the point where can may know you each share the same ideas, goals and thinking about a church matter.

This is followed by 3 negatives, 3 conducts to always avoid:

"Don’t push your way to the front."

#2, "don’t sweet talk yourself to the top’"

#3, "Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage."

Because these negative keep your life empty.

Recall in the hymn Christ empties himself totally.

To quote Dr. Fred Craddock from the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta: "Paul regarded as inappropriate to the body of Christ the selfish eye, the pompous mind, the ear hungry for compliments, and the mouth that spoke none, the heart that has little room for others and the hand that served only the self." (page 2)

a. Such selfish individualism poisons the community which sings of a Savior who is always the servant.

Another "Servant Song" is found in Isaiah 52 & 53. I had never considered there might be a connection between these two before last week, and before I studied Morna D Hooker’s exegesis in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary by. (Dr. Hooker is a retired Professor of Divinity at the University in Cambridge, England.)

In both songs there is that common theme of "the servant,"

the voluntary submission, emptying oneself to a life of suffering, then the reference to the servant’s death.

In both there is a series of titles, descriptive terms for the servant.

Our Christian heritage views the Suffering Servant of Isaiah as a text that helps us understand how Jesus viewed his own role as servant.

When I teach confirmation class, I use a teaching tool which was used me when I was confirmed. Pick up a hymn book and find titles about Jesus.

How do these titles help us to understand Jesus?

Which ones do you like best/least, and why?

And what do they tell us about our own ministry?

not if we will be servants, but how and why!

Have you noticed that our service is different this morning? Most of our liturgy is made up of hymns that speak of Jesus.

Paul’s Hymn has 3 verses, 3 parts: the Pre-existence of Christ; the incarnation or descent of Christ; and the exaltation, the glory of Christ.

His pre-existence–

Did you know that this is the earliest text in the Bible to raise a question about the pre-existence of Jesus by name.

Paul mentions the Son’s pre-existence again, as in Ephesians 1:4, where Christians are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

In the first stanza of our hymn, Christ who was in the form of God, may be compared to Adam who was also in the form of God.

Adam grasped at equality with God, tried to exploit it.

Christ did not.

Jesus did the one thing the gods do not. He chose to become fully human, he lowered himself to be obedient in the likeness of flesh!

In the 1998 movie, "City of Angels," Nicholas Cage is an angel who helps people get ready for death. He trades in his immortal angel soul to become human when he falls in love with Meg Ryan, a heart surgeon who works to save lives. (What male among us would not do that if we could be in love with Meg Ryan!) But the gods are cruel and whimsical. Meg Ryan is killed by a logging truck while riding her bike back from the grocery store at Lake Tahoe. Nothing Nicholas Cage can do will bring her back; he tries to die for her, but he cannot. He is a "fallen" angel. At the end his character comes to terms with being human and admits he even enjoys it.

I must confess, one good thing about the movie. It is about biking at Lake Tahoe. So I had to ride in the great ride around Lake Tahoe two years ago. And I did not get hit by a logging truck.

Verse 2, his descent–

In the Greek notion, a free person does not humiliate oneself, that is a degrading, to become a slave, to be "fallen."

Christ in his descent chose to be exactly that, Adam refused.

In other New Testament hymns it is God who sends His Son, who sacrifices Christ’s life for us. Here Christ is the one who takes the initiative to pour out himself for others, "he emptied himself" unto death. (page 3)

We are told in 2 Corinthians 8:9 that Christ became poor for the Corinthians’ sake with the result that they all became rich.

In the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, it is God by whose will the servant was oppressed and was cut off out of the land of the living.

Verse 3, the glorification–

Now we move into the triumphant mood, where God seizesthe initiative to highly exalt and glorify Christ.

In Isaiah 53, how is the dead servant finally judged?

His portion is divided with the great and with the strong.

Because he poured out his soul to death, and bore the sins of many, he was numbered with the wicked.

Some have conjectured it may have been Israel, which also fell short in her mission.

Others will immediately see the prediction of Jesus there, but that is faulty theology.

There is no glory for the servant in Isaiah. It is incomplete.

We cannot identify that servant by name, though Jesus borrows that role as his own.

In Philippians, God gives Jesus "the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

He now not only lives in glory, but He is cosmically acknowledged to be equal with God!"

Says the professor from Cambridge, Dr. Morna Hooker, Jesus now enjoys a status and a glory he has never had before. [pause]

The problem I have with so many of the popular praise songs today is that they are woefully inadequate of a praise or a joy that is full or complete.

They talk mainly of my relationship with God, how I am saved.

Such lyrics do not proclaim the pouring out of oneself to become a servant, nor the mission of the church.

Yet if Paul has it right, our joy cannot be complete without the joy of our church. Our love, our partnership with Christ all take us right into the middle of our congregation!

Thus, some of those songs just do not sing to me at all

Neither do some of the old gospel favorites, for the same reason.

I leave you with Luke’s description of Paul and Silas in Acts 16. It is midnight, they are locked in a dungeon in Philippi. They have been severely beaten; an earthquake is about to hit.

but Paul and Silas are singing, while the other prisoners are listening.

The result is that lives are saved, prisoners are freed, Paul’s wounds are washed, and the jailer and everyone in his house believes.

"He Came Singing Love... he died singing love,

he arose in silence;

For the love to go on, we must make it our own;

you and I be the singers.

...Are you one of the singers yet? Is it your song? It will be.

(page 4) (And let all of God’s people say... "Amen.")