Palm Sunday, LLC

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

03.20.16; Rev. Dr. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Philippians 2:5-11

What is it that defines us, as human beings?  What gives cohesion to our sense of ourselves, and from that establishes our relationship to others?

On the one hand, there is faith.  On the other hand, there is our identity as "brand."

Brand identity is the Big Buzzy Thing in our consumer culture.  It used to be less all pervasive, less radically defining.  I mean, shoot, back when I was a kid there was Tide and Ivory, Coke and Pepsi, Chevy and Ford, but those lived in their own domain.  There were brands, and there were people, and we didn’t confuse the two unless we were actually Colonel Sanders or Walt Disney, in which case our lives were weird enough already.  Now, with the net-driven commodification of all human interaction, we're all supposed to attend to our brand.  We’re meant to build our brand, to become our brand.

But what is this identity, that brand-focus creates within us?  Brand is about the relationship between a product/service and a consumer of said product/service.  It is intended to develop a pattern of repeat or customary purchase, based on the consumer's perception of qualitative dynamics of the brand.

I use Google products, for instance, like Gmail, and my Chromebook.  I use them because Google represents, for me, innovation coupled with an imperfect but intentional beneficence.  It’s also cheap, meaning free, which warms my Scots Irish heart, and easy to use, and when Google becomes sentient a few years from now and Googlenator Drones are hovering over our neighborhood like Angels of Death, I figure having a Chromebook will be the next best thing to lambs blood on my doorpost.

Brand does more than confer corporate identity.  It "rubs off," by intent, in the relation.  The brands we consume are meant to modify our own sense of self, to be a social marker within culture as to our place and status.

Like out in my carport and driveway, we have a Honda and a Toyota, which tell us that we are a practical, reliable, comfortably bourgeois family.  The more we internalize the brands we interact with as shaping our own identity, the more we are embedded as a consistent and reliable consumer.

And so the question becomes: what is the relationship between brand identity and an identity shaped by faith?

It's an important question, because as branding becomes the defining feature of both corporate and individual self-understanding, there's bleed over into the realm of faith.  Churches need to "think about their brand" in the process of the endless self-promotion we're now obligated to pursue.  

And if you’re self-promoting, you don’t allow for any complexity in the nature of your identity.  Brands don’t tout their struggles or their flaws or their weakness.  They don’t talk about their mess.  They present an idealized vision of themselves, of their identity, a vision that’s buffed and polished by Madison Avenue.  They don’t want you to know the sausageworks of how they produce their product.  All we’re meant to see is the surface.

Our living out of spirituality together becomes both shaped and expressed in terms of the market ethic.  Is that an issue?

Honestly, it is.  Because faith shapes identity in ways that are radically different from "brand."

Brand, after all, is about ownership and possession.  It is driven by commodified self-interest.  The point and purpose of branding is to promote the corporate or individual person being branded.  While it creates relationship, that relationship is essentially grasping, oriented to benefit the brand itself.

Brand identity is about a mask, an image, a carefully constructed “reality” that presents

And in that, brand identity is the inverse of the identity created by faith.

That reality is driven home by the sweet, short passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Phillippi we hear today.  As Paul would often do when he was trying to make a significant point, he’d burst into song.  Think of 1 Corinthians 13, that well known hymn to love.  Here, talking about who Jesus was, Paul does it again between verses 6 and 11.  It’s a song, a little hymn or poem about the nature of Jesus, one Paul shared with a community that fundamentally got who Jesus was.  And sure, he’s probably just quoting lyrics, but I’d like to think that maybe just maybe he actually sang it.

Paul! The musical might not do well on Broadway, but hey...if a hip-hop musical about the father of American federalism can be a smash hit, you never know.  

This song has particular content, which speaks to appearances, power, and the new self in Christ.  What we hear, from Paul, is that Jesus “emptied himself.”  Philippians 2:6-7 are touchstone verses for the Christian mystic.   They read, in the New Revised Standard:

“who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

The two key terms here come first in verse 6, where Paul sings out about how Jesus did not exploit his relationship with God.  The word we parse as “exploit” was the Greek term harpagmon, which means “grasping” or “taking” or “snatching” or “pillaging.”  It means, whichever way you slice it, the use of your power to your own personal profit.  

In verse 7, the words from this ancient Jesus song are heauton ekenosen, which mean “self emptying.”   Jesus turns himself completely over to God’s purpose, and to the care and service of others.  Everything he was served that purpose.  His flesh, shaped and formed by God.  His every inward thought, turned over to the love of God and neighbor.  Pride and greed and profit?  Those things were set aside.

Because Christian faith, which is shaped by the identity and person of Jesus, is oriented not towards the self, but the self orienting itself towards a purpose that transcends self.  Or the organization orienting itself towards a purpose that transcends organization.   The purpose we find in faith--or at least, an existentially valid faith--challenges us to be grounded in something that will continually demand our growth.  It is relation with the other rooted in the other.

An identity shaped by faith is a different thing from a faith formed by a brand, a different thing entirely, and that's worth keeping in mind before we press that hot metal against the surface of our souls.

It isn’t about manipulation, or by falsely conforming ourselves to the expectations of other and culture.  

That’s part of the strange tension of this Palm Sunday, the tension between the false proud imagined reality of the messianic brand and the entirely different truth of who Jesus was.  The Messiah, the anointed one, was meant to be all sparkle and shine, the embodiment of the power and glory of Judah.

Those who pretended to that power presented themselves as liberators, as bearers of the proud heritage of David.  They played directly to the expectations of the crowd, who wanted nothing more than to wave their palms in the air and celebrate the coming of a perfect and powerful warrior king.

That was not who Jesus was, and he knew it.  He was there to serve, and not to rule.  Who he was was not the shallow brand of power, not the manipulative mask of brand, but the deep honest integrity of a soul that turned itself completely to the service of God’s love.

As we begin this Holy Week, let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.