Palm Sunday gets difficult to work with year after year, so this year I seize on our reading from Philippians "Let the same mind/attitude/mind-set be in you that was in Christ Jesus" (2:5). The phrase "in you" is plural , and perhaps better translated "among you." Paul envisions the life of the community being formed by the mind of Christ -- by a spirit of humility and loving service to one another rather than competition and grasping for power and control. Palm Sunday is an object lesson for what is to come and theology as well.Jesus is acclaimed, Scripture is cited as being fulfilled, but it is a little parade in the face of the Roman legion marching in.Prince of peace looks small compared to military might. In a way, ti encapsulates the highs and lows of the life of christ. Put differently Holy week is framed by two utterly different forms of exaltation around the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.
what it means to bear his name? Does our life together reflect "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus"? Are we looking to the interests of others rather than our own interests? Are humility and servanthood evident among us?This permits invitation, not command and control.At the same time, it reveals the Prince of Peace as the goal of human life.
Power games and pining for glory do not honor the name of Jesus. Rather, by following Jesus, giving ourselves away in service to a suffering world, we honor "the name that is above every name."E. Johnson Eastman-For this very reason, the story of Christ also moves from separation to solidarity, and from difference to likeness, as Christ moves into the most despairing depths of human experience. In the form of a slave, he mirrors back to us the reality of our own enslavement to sin and death. He comes very near, so near that he "gets under our skin." This is the "kindness" of God, in that God becomes one of our kind, kin to us. This is the incarnation,. God gives us the desire and the energy to enact Christ's compassion in the world. .
Christ Jesus did not regard snatching, abduction harpagmos; : to be worthy -- or equal to -- God, but having taken on the form of a slave [To whom was he a slave? Humanity, perhaps. If so, then this is an example of servitium amoris, the slavery of love, a widespread motif in Greek and Latin poetry expressing the complete dedication of the lover to the beloved.] he emptied himself [the phrase in Greek always refers to a bodily occurrence preceded by melting; liquefaction of the body and subsequent draining away of the once solid self was the poetic way of describing longing, the desire for union with an absent beloved.].D. Frederickson
Kenosis and Alan Lewis-every year I try to read some of a posthumously published book . In the movie the shack, a small scene conveys divine emptying. Does divine love have no cost. The Creator maternal divine figure shows scars on her wrists that reflect the scars of Christ on the cross.What is in the divine and human aspect of christ that can face pain and struggle and yet remain divine or human?Scots of the 19th century saw God’s power shining through the passivity and weakness of the cross, death, and burial. Love may well require release of power over, may require that love does have a cost, at least against egotism.Barth-God is revealed in the midst of death’s deep darkness, even in what seems to be utter defeat.god is god with us, God for us, all the way to the grave.
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