Emptied

As Paul uses his letter to the Philippian church to describe the joy he feels at being in prison, a joy the church is struggling to share with him, he seems to perceive their will to find out how to help him. But Paul doesn’t need help getting out of prison; he’s overjoyed at the opportunity to share the gospel with the people he’s meeting there. But the Philippians can help him in a different way. The best thing the church can do for Paul, he feels, is to “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind,” as well as doing “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit” and looking “not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:2-4) The best thing the church can do for Paul is to be truly united to one another in mind, heart and loving service. This oneness has little to do with agreement and uniform opinions. It is a oneness found in compassion for each other, in seeing each other’s helplessness in ourselves. Paul’s situation in prison will work itself out one way or another; what really matters is the church embodying a self-emptying love for one another.

And this self-emptying love does not arise from within the human heart and mind, but from Christ who invades the human heart and mind. Now Paul launches into the “Philippian hymn” that poetically tells of Christ emptying himself of his glory, becoming human, becoming a slave, becoming “obedient to death, even death on a cross.” And just as the hymn makes this downward movement, it makes an equal and opposite upward movement. “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:6-11)

“Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul tells the church (2:5). Allow your mind, your consciousness to be invaded by the self-emptying love of Christ. Let that mind become your mind. Make the gap smaller and smaller between what you know and how you serve your brothers and sisters, because in Jesus there is no gap between the two at all, and that mind is giving itself to you freely.

It’s more than an example to follow. We can follow an example while remaining at a distance, but now we’re talking about losing all distance between the mind of Christ and our own mind, Christ’s love and our love, Christ’s will and our will. To be the church is to relinquish our will and desires in order to be consumed by the will and desires of Christ. So we might as well stop resisting. We might as well let go of selfish ambition and conceit. We might as well look to each other’s interests ahead of our own, because none of this is a tiresome obligation. It is a gift, the gift of Christ’s love moving into us and through us. Let us receive his mind. Let us open ourselves completely to his consciousness invading ours. And let us be emptied into each other just as Christ is emptied into us. Let that be what it means for us to be the Church.