Exodus 17:1-17
Philippians 2:1-13
It has been a big week for milestones – it started with a wedding on Monday, a birthday on Thursday, and a funeral on Friday. All through it I have heard conversations about “what is important in life”, and the answer has always been “people”. I think we can all agree that people are more important than work, and stuff; but it was also noticeable that people are more important also than places and experiences. Weddings – people coming together. Birthdays – people around us. Funerals – people we miss. Every time people spoke about other people. Everyone, Christian or not, puts people as the most important thing in life.
As we continue our readings through Exodus (the book of grumbling) and Philippians (the book of joy), we should keep our spiritual ears and eyes open for lessons on our relationships with other people. For, as we recall every time we worship, the two great commandments of our Lord are to love upwards, and love across: love God, and love one another.
Both books describe a time of contextual trials – Exodus is about people wandering through the wilderness, and Philippians was written while St Paul was locked up in a dingy ancient Roman prison. Exodus is almost more believable, since it is filled with “grumbling” and, according to today’s reading, “testing” and “quarrelling”. These sound like natural responses to a trial. But they are not good for relationships with other people.
St Paul, meanwhile, certainly has plenty of cause to grumble, test and quarrel with God. And yet he does not; in fact, this letter is positively dripping with joy. In the depth of a prison cell, his eyes see a glorious picture of a beautiful human existence. Look at the words he uses at the start of this chapter: encouragement, comfort, love, affection, sympathy, and joy.
So while the tribes in the Exodus were grumbling about being thirsty, St Paul was waxing poetic about the best humanity has to offer. What was the difference? And where can we set our hearts, so that we may see what the apostle sees?
St Paul always gives a core doctrinal reason to base his specific instructions for living. He always says “here is what you should do in a certain situation, because God in the big picture is like this”. And so in the midst of trials and dangers, he says the Church should be seeking all those wonderful things: encouragement, comfort, love, affection, sympathy, and joy, because there is something about God’s character that drives us towards it. It is like when you are walking down the main drag and you smell a delicious bakery – follow your nose and you will discover the source.
1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
The reason why St Paul can sit in this picture of heaven on earth while physically sitting in the opposite is because of his humility – and he is being humble, because Christ was humble. He “followed his nose” to the source:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Here is where his mind went. He thought to himself “who am I to grumble, test and quarrel? My Lord did none of those things. While I, Paul, went from being a tent-making missionary to a Roman prison, Christ Jesus went from heaven to the grave!”
One way of looking at this is to think “Jesus had it worse than me, so what do I have to complain about?” But I want to push it even further: it is not that we need to just “put up with it”, but rather we rejoice in it, because we are following Jesus’ footsteps. Do you want to be like Jesus? Jesus came all the way from heaven to the grave – our trials are a small taste of what he went through, yes. But what grace that we may share a little of his journey! What joy that God would conform us after the pattern of his Son! We read elsewhere that, after the first Pentecost, when the disciples were locked up for preaching about the Lord Jesus, they rejoiced for being counted worthy to suffer for his sake. It is the scandal of the cross, the foolishness of our preaching, that there is glory when we suffer for doing the right thing according to God’s Law and the cause of Christ.
And this scandal (scandalous according to this world, but glorious according to God in heaven) makes us humble. St Paul continues talking about Jesus,
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Our salvation came about by Christ’s humility. By not grasping or snatching at his heavenly glory, by reason of his great humility, Christ was able to die on the cross and win for us everlasting life. More than that; it is not only for our sake that Christ died, but for the glory of himself:
9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We are talking about people and relationships; we are talking about rejoicing instead of grumbling; we are talking about how we approach God and one another. And the key to it all is to be humble. Nothing ought to make us more humble than this passage about Jesus and his humility.
Why did he die on the cross? Was it for our salvation? Yes. Was it because God so loved the world – out of his great love for us? Yes. But what was the ultimate reason? Did Jesus die on the cross for us, or for God? Look at the passage: Christ humbled himself, came to earth, died on the cross, therefore – and St Paul loves a good therefore – therefore every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The ultimate purpose of Christ’s humility is to the glory of God. All benefits we receive come out of that.
You may have been listening to this reading earlier and heard a phrase that stuck out: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. After all this talk about love and humility, where does fear and trembling come in? It is because God’s great work in our salvation is to his glory. The love he shows us, the grace and mercy he bestows upon us, is not because we are so wonderful. It is because it serves the glory of God to love us and show us his grace and mercy. Christ did not have to die for us – but he is glorified in doing so. Let us remain humble – let us work out our salvation in fear and trembling. We may assume God’s love, for the Bible teaches it is guaranteed to us. But let us never be presumptuous about God’s love, for it comes from his glory, not ours. God does not have to love us – he chooses to, and has chosen to love us eternally, from a great bottomless wellspring of love that never ends. And this love for us comes about because it glorifies God the Son as Lord of all, the crucified, humble Lord who gave himself for our sake and for his glory.
Let us therefore live in the type of love that does not presume, but is humble. God’s love does not depend on us – because we are not dependable – but rather on God and his eternal glory. Let us remain humble, of one mind in this one great purpose – the glory of Christ as Lord of all. It is not about us, it is about him: but by his great loving mercy he has brought us into himself, and so we may rest in him securely as we humble ourselves and glorify him as Lord.