Losing Yourself

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. David Williams; 09.28.14

Scripture Lesson:  Philippians 2:1-13

We like being self-sufficient.  There is perhaps no more primally American attitude.  We like being able to do things for ourselves, to be the master of our own domain.  It’s very practical, very real, very get ‘er done.

In the house where I’ve now lived for the longest period of time in my adult life, the home where my children have grown from being wee little spuds to the teen largelings they are today, there’s a whole bunch of evidence of that mindset.  The walls are covered with paint that I myself put there.  The grounded plugs?  I put them there.  That chandelier in the dining room?  I put that there, after a great deal of fiddling and a couple of very pointed reminders that the principles “trial and error” and “learning through play” work a little differently when you’re messing with electricity.  

The ceiling fan in the kitchen?  That it has managed to stay up for the last 13 years is one of those miracles that would have to be taken into account if I was ever being considered for sainthood.

Being self-sufficient is perhaps the greatest luxury of them all.  It’s the stuff of my book-sells-a-million copies daydreams, really, as we look to our roofs and wonder if we could generate enough solar power to get by, or look to that little patch of land we live on and wonder just how much food we might be able to produce if we really, really put our minds to it.  It’s a residual from the frontier consciousness, from those days when you either figured out how to make it work or things got all Donner Party.

Well, if we only ate a spoonful of jam a day, plus two greenbeans, we’d probably be fine.

We like being the ones who take care of our own stuff.  And it’s not just the things around us that we like to build or repair or maintain.  We like being the ones who tinker with ourselves.

We like handling our own mess, particularly if it has to do with who we are and how we’re living.  It is, in point of fact, a remarkable and thriving industry in the United States.  Self-help and the books and the conferences and the trainings?  They account for a several billion dollar industry, as we try to figure out how to make our way through vocation, relationships, our own foibles, and the challenges of parenting.  We like nothing more than a manual, a handbook with clear guidelines and handy how-to directions.

There are books for everything, quite literally everything.  There is even a self-help book out there that helps you pick out self-help books.  Meta-self-help!  It’s part of our goal to make ourselves the best selves we can, refining and improving and constantly developing ourselves, hopefully with more luck than we have the first few times we try to disassemble an old four-barrel carburetor.  

So much of our culture revolves around the self that we should, if we’re paying attention, be a little weirded out by todays reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippians.  In it, we hear Paul’s proclamation of how following Jesus impacts that essence of who we are.

Again, we find Paul writing from a point in his life when he--and his well-being--were really being pushed to the edge.  As we heard last week, this is a letter written from imprisonment, very possibly the imprisonment that ultimately cost Paul his life.

Here he is, writing to the church at Philippi from a profoundly dark place in his life, and what he has to offer up isn’t a cry for help.  In prison and facing death, he isn’t anxious, or panicked, or even evidently stressed out.   There’s no, “Hey, could you please be sure to include a diamond edged bandsaw in your next care package” in his letter.  Instead, what he offers up is a song.   

That doesn’t come first.  First, he lays out a sequence of rhythmic, rhetorical questions.  Paul, for all of his claims to be an incompetent speaker, knew his way around the soaring, purple prose.   “If then,” he begins, “There is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, and sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy…”

They read that, or they hear it read as they share that letter with one another, and they say, well, duh.  Of course there is.  Remember, this was a church that he loved deeply, and that returned the favor.

He then asks them to do what he knows they are already doing.  Focus on one another.  What matters is the love you share, and the degree to which your care for one another supports everyone around you.

Then, he gets into the song.  It’s verses six through eleven, and it’s a peculiar song.  It was written in Greek, of course, and has rhythm and meter woven into it.  But the patterns are peculiar, not like other ancient Greek songs.  They seem, some scholars of the Bible argue, more like the rhythms of ancient Hebrew or Aramaic music.  Like, perhaps, there was a song sung about Jesus, or a poem told about Jesus, in the language of those who knew him.  And Paul is translating it into Greek, which is then translated for us into English.

That message includes a phrase that’s something of a touchstone for Christian mystic practice.  In the Greek, it’s alla eauton ekenousen, and in the English we hear it as “he made himself nothing” or “he emptied himself.”  

Christ is the servant, the one who empties himself of himself.  This is not something we do easily, assuming we want to do it at all.

It’s an entirely different approach than the one we’re used to.  We’re expected to examine and analyze, to have plans and goals and strategies, to take a hard look at ourselves and pour our energies into our needs.  Oh sure, we want to help others, but as the popular saying goes, how can we help others if we don’t help ourselves first?  We need to deal with our own mess before we start trying to do stuff for other people, right?  

Problem is, we’re complex beings, and the things that aren’t quite right about us don’t get solved in an instant.  We work through the process of living a good life our whole lives long, correcting here, fixing there, triumphing here, falling flat on our faces there.

If we wait until we’re totally good, totally fine, totally set, before turning our energies towards the work of Christ’s compassion in the world, then we’re going to be waiting a very, very long time.  When the self turns to the self above all else, we forget our purpose.  It’s like being that dad on the plane with his kid, and bam....the cabin depressurizes, and those face masks come popping down.  And dad takes the mask first, just like he’s ‘sposed to...but then he sits there.  The kid looks at him, waiting, but dad shakes his head.  “I’m not done breathing yet, son.” he says.  Don’t be that dad.

Paul points to a completely different way of being.  Healing and graciousness, mercy and salvation, these things rise from finding a deep place of connection with our Creator, and turning your life not towards love of self, but love of others.  Through contemplation of our Creator and compassion lived out in community, we are ourselves made anew.

This is a paradox, but it works.  The best way to make ourselves anew is to look away from ourselves.  If you’ve forgotten who you really are and who you’re meant to be, the way to discover that person isn’t by digging through the ways you’ve failed to be that person.  Have you ever forgotten something, the name of an actor?  There was a time before Google, and before IMDB, when you could sit around in a room with a bunch of friends and no-one could quite remember the name of that guy, you know that guy, with the hair, who was in...oh, what was that film with Morgan Freeman, you know?  And the more you chased it, the harder it was to find.  The only way to remember was to set it aside, to think and talk about something totally different, and then suddenly, wham, the name would come.

How do we build that self, that person we know we are meant to be?  Contemplation and compassion, self-emptying and service woven together, are that path to that place.  It’s very practical, very real, very get ‘er done.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.