Giving Up
Philippians 2:1-13[1]
I would say that we spend a great deal of
effort these days trying to hold onto our expectations of what we want our
lives to look like. This goes beyond the drive to make sure we have the basic
needs of life. I think most of us enter the adult phase of our lives with an
“ideal” or a “dream” of how we want our lives to unfold. Unfortunately, for
many of us, life has a way of thwarting that ideal. Instead of living the life
we’ve always wanted, we may find ourselves sitting among the pieces of our
broken dreams. And the tragedy is that we’re taught to succeed in life, not to
lose. Most of us don’t really know what to do with ourselves when we lose.
I would say that the typical response to this
kind of experience is that we simply tighten our grip on life. We seem to think
that if we hold on tighter we can keep the pieces of our life from slipping
through our grasp. But that’s not how life works. Our lives seem to take a
course of their own, and when we try to swim against the stream, we only
succeed in making ourselves miserable. No amount of effort will enable us to
control the outcomes in our lives. But this points us to one of the deeper
ironies of life. It’s only when we take the risk of giving up our expectations
that we can truly find the peace, contentment, and even joy that we were
looking for in the first place.
I think that’s a part of what St. Paul is
trying to get across in our lesson from Philippians for today. He uses the
example of Jesus Christ humbling himself and literally giving up everything for
us to urge the Christians of his day to adopt that way of living themselves. I
believe he knew that he was asking them to do the hardest thing they would
probably face in their lives. But from St. Paul’s point of view, Jesus’
sacrifice of himself for us demands of us nothing less than giving up our
selfish and self-centered ways.
Paul puts it this way: “If then there is any
encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, … Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let
each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others”
(Phil. 2:1, 3-4). As usual, I like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: “If you’ve gotten anything
at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your
life, … Don’t push your way to the front; .... Put yourself aside, and help
others get ahead. ... Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”
That means “having the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” (Phil. 2:5, NLT). It means following Jesus like you
really mean it!
I think that the key to all of this is a
matter of being willing to surrender the illusions we cherish of being able to
control our lives. Those illusions keep us closed in, head down, and shoulders
hunched as continue chasing pavements that lead us nowhere. I agree with
Richard Rohr that surrender involves three aspects of our identity: “our
opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body.”[2] We have to surrender the willfulness of
thinking we know what’s best for us. We have to surrender the hardness with
which we surround our hearts to keep them from getting hurt. And we have to
surrender all of our efforts to defend ourselves against anything that would
keep us from getting the life we’ve always wanted.
That
may sound rather depressing to some of us. It might seem like we’re supposed to
give up all our hopes and dreams if we’re going to follow Jesus. But when we
have no more hopes and dreams for life, it’s easy to fall into despair. I don’t
think that’s what St. Paul had in mind. Rather, I think he had in mind
embracing a different vision for our lives than the one the vast majority of
the human family has always followed. Instead of seeking our own advantage no
matter whom we may hurt, St. Paul held up the image of Jesus as an example of a
life that “serves others no matter how much it costs.”[3] I think Paul knew that the lesson of the
cross is that not only is God’s strength manifested in weakness, but also God’s
life is manifested in death. And he knew that it is only by following Jesus’
example of serving others that we can find our true lives. He knew that the
only way to have the life we’ve always wanted is to give up our wants and at
times even our needs for the sake of serving others.
We’re not really geared towards giving up
anything. Most of us will keep trying as long as we can, even if it means we
wind up beating our heads against a wall. And we think of our Christian faith
as a way to get what we want out of life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that
pretending to follow Christ without being willing to sacrifice ourselves and
serve others cheapens God’s grace. By contrast, he says that the grace offered
to us in Jesus is “costly” because “it costs people their lives; it is grace
because it thereby makes them live.”[4] Following Christ demands that we give up our
own wants, hopes, and dreams in order to serve others. That may sound like a
raw deal. But in fact, when we actually make the choice to follow Jesus in that
way, we learn that we truly find what we’ve always wanted in life only by
giving it up.
[1]
©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon
delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/1/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church,
Hickman, NE.
[2]
Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water:
Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 8.
[3]
David Garland, Mark, 335.
[4]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
45.
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