The Unity of the Church & the Humility of Christ I Recently Rejoined Facebook After Over Two Years Away
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The Unity of the Church & the Humility of Christ I recently rejoined Facebook after over two years away – two glorious, productive, un-outraged years. But like many of you, the quarantine and social distancing was beginning to wear me down. Even an introvert like myself needs to interact with people from time to time, if for nothing else than to keep myself from going so far down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts and going crazy. It was a week before Easter when I officially logged back in, and I was genuinely encouraged by so many of my friends posting about Jesus and all that he meant to them. There were countless encouragements, pictures, and posts about both the crucifixion and resurrection. Everyone was excitedly sharing what their church was doing during Holy Week. I was like, “Wow! Why did I ever leave this site? Everyone is so great and uplifting.” And then Monday came. Sadly, it was back to normal for many of us because out came the politics. Here comes the outrage, the name-calling, the straw-manning, and the bad-faith arguments. On Sunday, a follower of Jesus would say, “He is risen,” and her brother-in-Christ would respond, “He is risen indeed!” But then on Monday she would say, “This politician is a disgrace and every Christian who voted for them ought to be ashamed.” And that same brother-in-Christ would respond, “No, you’re the disgrace and your political views prove you’re not a real Christian.” What are we doing? And listen, I’ve been there, and I’ve done it, and Jesus I repent of that. Do you know what Jesus wants more than anything else from his people? The right politics… No, I’m kidding, that’s not the right answer. If you want to know what Jesus wants for his people more than anything else, take a look at what he prays for on his last night on earth. John 17:20-23 “My prayer is not for [my disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Jesus wants his people to be unified. He wants our relationships to be so united, and so bonded in love, that they resemble the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. He wants us to be one, because our unity is a message, a proof, to the unbelieving world that God the Father sent Jesus Christ into the world because of his great love for the world. Our unity is a demonstration of the character, love, and actions of God. In other words, we play a part in answering the last prayer of Jesus. Our text for today is Philippians 2:1-11. Like Jesus, Paul also took the unity of the Church very seriously. He clearly saw how important Christian unity is for, among many other things, the mission of the Gospel. Our unity validates our message. Likewise, our division invalidates our message. That’s why Paul is pleading so strongly with the Christians in Philippi. Philippians 2:1-4 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Many of us have worked in places that offer fringe benefits. Notice that it is “fringe” benefits, and not, as I used to believe, “French” benefits. A fringe benefit is something that you get from your employer over and above standard compensation. I used to work at a place that had well stocked refrigerators and candy dishes all over the office. Let me tell you, an ice cold Mountain Dew and a handful of mini Milky Ways at 10 am is a very nice fringe benefit. Also, at 1 pm. And again at 4. But anyway, right off the top of this passage Paul runs through four fringe benefits that we gain from Christ, over and above the salvation that he promises us. The first fringe benefit is encouragement from being united with Christ. We gain courage to face hard times from being with Jesus. Right now, we’re all going through a hard and scary time because of COVID-19 and all of the physical and economic turmoil it’s causing. But your connection to Jesus is meant to be a channel through which he sends you courage to face your fears. Being united with Christ means that he is near you at all times, even though you can’t see him. He is with you, and he is walking this road beside you, and the good news is that there is no road that we walk that he hasn’t already walked before. You can draw courage from being united with Jesus. The second fringe benefit is drawing comfort from his love. When you are grieving, when you feel alone, when you are anxious, know that Jesus loves you. As someone who has been through a lot of hell on earth, I can testify that the love of Christ has always been a source of great comfort for me. In Jesus we see that God has not rejected us. God has not abandoned us. God does not despise us. God loves us. He loves you. And no matter what you’re going through or dealing with, the circumstances of your life cannot take away God’s love for you. The third fringe benefit is community in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives within every individual believer, and he also dwells in the midst of every faithful congregation. We are bound to each other because we each have the same Spirit of God within us. No matter how old you are, how much money you have, what your family of origin is, or what you’ve done in your life, the same Spirit lives in every person who calls on the name of Jesus. And this Spirit binds us together in love. We have community because of the Spirit of God. The last fringe benefit is a softened heart, or as Paul says specifically, tenderness and compassion. Our family’s verse is Ezekiel 11:19, and it says: Ezekiel 11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. God gives us soft hearts filled with tenderness and compassion for others. He makes us kind and empathetic. He makes us understanding and gracious. These are four significant fringe benefits, a lot more significant than Mountain Dew and Milky Ways. In Christ, you have access to encouragement, comfort, community, and a soft heart. Those things are yours. Now, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? God has expectations for his people. The fringe benefits are great, but they also point to a responsibility that we have to God and one another. In fact, the four fringe benefits lead to four responsibilities. The first responsibility is to be like-minded. In his translation of the New Testament, N.T. Wright puts it this way: “Bring your thinking into line with one another.” To some of you that sounds like groupthink, and in a way it is. But it’s different from traditional groupthink because it’s not about what you think, it’s about how you think. People who follow Jesus need to think like Jesus. And we’ll get into that in a few minutes. The second responsibility is to have the same love. There are a lot of different loves. There are a lot of different kinds of love. There are a lot of sources of love. There are an almost infinite number of things to love. One of the things that I really enjoy about living in central Ohio is the near universal shared love that we have for the Buckeyes. I know there are some heretics among us, but we tolerate you because we are so gracious and not ever obnoxious. But there’s a real community that’s built around this quasi- idolatrous shared love, and if you have that love, it’s great. And if you don’t, you can always move. But the love that we have, the love that binds us together for eternity, is the love of God revealed in Jesus. The bond of sports won’t last forever, but Jesus is forever. The bond of politics will choke us all, but Jesus holds us in his loving arms. When you can’t hold onto anything else, the love of God in Christ will hold onto you. We need to place this love at the center of our community.