Philippians 2:5-11
“Obedient”
April 10, 2022 – Palm Sunday
Monday our 18–month-old grandson fell on his face and chipped a couple teeth. It wasn’t anywhere near as serious as the trauma experienced by another grandchild of our congregation, but I think it was a sign of things to come. John is rapidly approaching those so-called “terrible twos.” I doubt it’s going to be easy to teach him to obey simple rules meant only for his own good and protection, but I’m sure our daughter and her husband will manage somehow.
Honestly, obedience is not easy for anyone. I remember vividly a conversation with a person who struggled to accept any authority. He said, “I don’t like being told to do things I don’t want to do.” All I could think was, “Don’t we all?”
At the beginning of our lesson from Luke, the Palm Sunday story, we find the disciples patiently accepting Jesus’ instructions for procuring the donkey he was going to ride. His directions must have sounded odd. Go and take a colt that had never been ridden and just tell the owner, “The Lord needs it.” But they obeyed. Yet only a few days later, Jesus asked the same group to stay on evening watch and pray with Him. Instead of obeying that time, they feel asleep.
Jesus Himself didn’t always do what He was told. At the end of the Gospel reading we heard some Pharisees tell Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop,” to stop shouting His praises as He entered Jerusalem. But Jesus declined their request, telling them that if His followers were quiet, then even the stones on the ground would obey a higher authority and begin to shout. Jesus may have disobeyed religious leaders, but He too was obeying the higher authority of His Father in heaven.
The first half of our text today, Philippians chapter 2, culminates in verse 8. Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” His painful obedience was prophesied seven hundred years before in our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 50. In verse 5 there, the figure who represents Jesus says, “The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.” Isaiah goes on in chapter 53 to tell us much more about the person he identified as the servant of the Lord, a humble, submissive, obedient servant to all sorts of suffering in store for Him.
Paul wrote about that same suffering servant spirit of Jesus to the Philippians, asking them to have Christ’s own mind in themselves. We started at verse 5, but see how it relates to verses 1 to 4 of this chapter. Paul wrote to them with great joy. His call to rejoice shows up all over this letter. Yet in verse 2 Paul asked them “make by joy complete.” How? “Be of the same mind,” he says. Then verse 5, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
He asked the Philippians to be in one accord, “having the same love,” further in verse 2. Then in verses 3 and 4 he called them to humility, to regard others as better than themselves, and to see the interests of others as more important than their own. It’s the kind of mutual submission in the body of Christ he talked about over in Ephesians 5:21, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” That reverence for Jesus, our text tells us, is partly for His example, His attitude of submission and obedience. You and I are to have that same mind, that same attitude.
It’s easier to be humble and submissive when you realize other people actually are better than you. You may listen to an accountant about your taxes because you know she knows better than you do about it all. But submission and humility are more difficult when you feel you’re among equals or even inferiors. It may be hard to listen to someone else sing when you can sing better.
An old country western song by Mac Davis goes, “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.” We laugh at that song because most of us know well that we are not perfect. But what if you were? Verse 6 says that Jesus, “though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” That word “form” means the essence of something, its “very nature,” as one translation puts it. As the Gospels show us over and over, Jesus was and is God, perfect in every way, just like the song says. It would have been hard to be humble, to submit to those less perfect, less wise, less good than He was. Yet verses 7 and 8 say that’s just what He did.
There is much to say about that phrase in verse 7, that Jesus “emptied himself,” but let’s move on to the next phrase, “taking the form of a slave.” “Form” is the same word as in “form of God.” The one who was by very nature God became also by very nature a slave, a servant, a human being whose role is to obey and submit rather than to rule and direct.
You can see that humility and submission on Palm Sunday. Jesus did not ride a horse, or sit in a chariot like the heroes of Rome would. He rode into Jerusalem on a little beast more often used for carrying loads than for riding. They hailed Jesus as king, but riding a donkey is anything but kingly. It’s not a grand gallop high above the crowd. Your feet drag on the ground. Your rear bumps up and down as the beast meanders along. Your nostrils are filled with donkey stink. It’s a low, slow way to go. But Zechariah 9:9 says, “your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey.”
The Palm Sunday parade of a King on a donkey was a living demonstration of the true nature of our Savior that Paul celebrates in Philippians 2. In Jesus Christ, God humbled Himself. He became a human being. He died. He even died like a criminal, on a cross.
Our text is all about submission, submission not just to reasonable, just, loving direction offered with gentleness, but submission by God’s Servant to the worst the world can offer. Isaiah 50 talks being beaten, insulted, spit on, even having one’s beard pulled out. Ouch. Philippians 2:8 leads on to final step in the Servant’s obedience and submission to it all. “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”
It’s worth remembering again during this week ahead of us, especially on Friday as we remember that death to which Jesus was obedient. Crucifixion was not an honorable way to die. It was a humiliation to which no Roman citizen was made subject. Only non-citizens whom Rome found troublesome were hung up on wooden poles to die slowly as a public spectacle while others mocked and jeered at them.
We’re so used to the Cross, even graphic pictures of Jesus on the Cross, that we might learn something from the connection James Cone made in the title of his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Picture some of those old horrible, hideous photographs from the beginning of the 20th century. Smiling, laughing, men, women and children gathered around and staring up at a figure dangling from a rope tied to a tree. That’s the kind of ugly, humiliating death to which Jesus became obedient.
That kind of obedience was necessary for Jesus because it is necessary for us. Jesus had to be obedient in a way that you and I are often unwilling and unable to be. We don’t want to submit to lessons that cause pain. We rebel against the authority of God over our lives to direct where we go, how we live, when we will die. We so desperately want to take matters into our own hands and be our own gods. So Jesus had to submit. Jesus had to die. He had to submit because we are unwilling. He had to die because death frightens and dismays us. He had to do it so that He could teach us how to do it.
The second half of the text jumps from Jesus’ painful, deadly obedience to His glorious exaltation. Verse 9 begins “Therefore God also highly exalted him…” That is wonderful news. It’s the event we are going to celebrate next Sunday. Out of death God brings life. Out of humiliation God brings exalted glory. Yet how exactly does that “therefore” work? Why does exaltation follow obedience? Why should humility lead to anything but more humiliation, more suffering?
Transition from obedience to glory happens because of the word which follows “Therefore.” It’s “Therefore God…” In the suffering, death, and then resurrection of Jesus, God shows us He can and will do for us what we cannot possibly do for ourselves. God can take all the horrific suffering of this world and make something glorious, life giving, and even honorable out of it. But only insofar as it comes in line with Jesus’ own obedience and suffering. Only if we have the same mind in us which was in Christ Jesus.
Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times starts as a scathingly funny book. There are lines that sound like they come from Monty Python. He satirizes 19th century social engineering and a pompous work master named Mr. Bounderby. From the humor though, Dickens descends rapidly into chapter after chapter of a bleak, hard look at the miseries of the poor working class in 19th century England. Near the end of the book, one miserable but honest worker named Stephen Blackpool has been framed and unjustly accused of robbery. As he returns home to try and clear his name, he falls into an old mining pit and lies there at the bottom with broken bones for several days.
Finally the injured man is discovered by two women, one of whom is Rachel who loves him very much. They get help and a windlass is rapidly constructed with poles and rope above the pit. Ultimately they manage to get the man into a large mining bucket and raise him out of the ground. The crowd that gathered murmurs in pity as they see coming up “the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.”
As his love Rachel kneels beside Stephen to offer comfort in his last moments, he looks up and sees a star which he had seen for several nights above the mouth of the pit as he lay there. He has the sense that it shone especially for him. Then he asks to speak to a man whom he thought might yet be able to clear him of the robbery charges. He tells him “make my name good.”
Then he looks up again at the star and says to Rachel, “I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Savior’s home. I awmust think it be the very star!” Then we read, “They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead.” Rachel the woman he loves walks beside him and holds his hand as he is carried away, nearly dead now. She holds his hand and Dickens tells us:
They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes and over the wide landscape; Rachel always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shone him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.[1]
In the rest of the story we learn that the poor dead Stephen’s record was cleared. The man who framed him was shamed and had to be spirited out of the country to avoid imprisonment. But Stephen’s name was “made good” as was his dying wish.
Verse 9 continues about Jesus that God not only made Jesus’ name good, but “gave him the name that is above every name.” Like the poor man in Dickens’ novel, Jesus came through humility and sorrow into a good name, a glorious name. The name which was restored to Jesus is so great, says Paul in verses 10 and 11, that
at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
That bending of every knee to Jesus and confessing of every tongue began as His followers were obedient with the same mind as Jesus, in the same way Jesus was obedient. They too obeyed God even to the point of great suffering, even to the point of death. And as they did so, the Good News about Jesus went far beyond the little crowd that hailed Him on Palm Sunday. Now there are those who name the name of Jesus and seek to obey Him in every part of the earth.
Being obedient is not easy whether you are two, thirty-two or seventy-two. Nobody likes to be told to do what we do not want to do. This Friday we will hear again how even Jesus did not want to do what He did, how He prayed to His Father, “if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” But then He prayed, “yet, not my will but yours be done.” He taught us to pray that last prayer constantly, “Thy will be done.”
Learning obedience for a two-year-old ultimately leads to a safer, happier life. Learning obedience to God leads to the only kind of life which really matters. As Eleonore Stump writes in her book Atonement, obedient acceptance of the suffering to which God calls us actually leads to good, to flourishing as human beings. She recounts the story of Harriet Tubman and how she took her suffering as a slave and transformed it into a glorious life lived for the good of others. She didn’t flinch from danger or physical discomfort but constantly risked herself to set other slaves free. In doing so she gained a name, a place in history that is honored to this day.
It is in our own obedient suffering that Christ will vindicate us, will make our names good. Our victories in life are nice, like Jesus’ so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But it is hard times which show whether we have the same mind in us which was in Christ Jesus. Everything is easy when we are winning. It is when we lose, when we submit, when we obey and head for the Cross with Jesus that everything is crystal clear. Jesus Christ had to die in order to rise again, to be exalted. So do we.
Dickens wrote that Stephen Blackpool came to a good name and to rest in his Redeemer through humility, sorrow, and forgiveness. That’s still the way to rest in our Redeemer from all our labor and pain in this world. Let go of pride. Let go even sometimes of happiness. Let go of bitterness and forgive those who’ve wronged us. That’s how we follow the star of our Savior. It leads us on. He leads us on.
It is not an easy road. On some bright days there may be palms strewed on the road to make it smoother. A few voices might rise to praise and encourage you. But stay on the right road, the one that leads to the Cross. That is being obedient. That is the way to a good name. That is the road to rest in our Redeemer. Let’s find that way.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] All quotations from Hard Times (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), pp. 262-263.