Making Room for the Other
Reflections on Philippians 2.1-11
RCL Palm Sunday A
9 April 2017
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
2.1 If then there is any encouragement
in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion
and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be 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 regard others as
better than yourselves. 4 Let
each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of
others. 5 Let the same mind
be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but
emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a
cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Growing up as I did on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, I have always liked to have room around me. The happiest homes in which we have lived as a family always have had plenty of space around them or easy access to green space nearby. I admit to suffering a bit from claustrophobia, so the tightly packed streets of downtown Toronto hold no attraction for me. I do not like shopping during busy times because of the number of people crowding the space around me.
Sometime
after Owen was born, Paula and I bought a Plymouth Voyager family van. All three children were in some car safety
seat or another, so trying to fit everything into the Subaru station wagon was
no longer an option. When our first van
reached its limit, we turned it in for a new Voyager. We had become the typical urban family: three kids, a dog and a van.
One
of the saving graces of a family van is space.
Two children could sit in the back seat and have a space between
them. One child could sit in the middle
seat and have space to her or his right.
Between the driver’s seat and the front passenger’s seat was space for
whatever needed to be close at hand. On
longer road trips we had room for Paula’s box of musical noise-makers which she
would produce at just the right moment.
The kids would sing at the top of their lungs and play their
instruments. Energy was discharged and
harmony was maintained. Rarely did Paula
and I have to suffer the dreaded words:
‘He touched me. Move over. I don’t have enough room.’
Some
theologians have described creation as God’s act of making room for others. During the season of Lent we have heard these
words every Sunday: “At your command all
things came to be: the vast expanse of
interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this
fragile earth, our island home; by your will they were created and have their
being.” (BAS 201). All that is, seen and unseen, exists because
God has chosen to create rather than remain supremely alone and
self-sufficient.
And
why did God choose to create? The writer
of the First Letter of John gives us the answer in three simple English
words: “. . . God is love.” (1 John 4.8b)
Love is not possible in isolation.
Love requires someone who loves and someone who is loved. The relationship between the lover and the
beloved creates what we call love.
Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century Christian theologian, once
described the Holy Trinity as ‘God the Lover, God the Beloved, God the Love’.
When
genuine love is present, the lover makes room for the beloved. In this space the lover hopes that the beloved
will become more truly herself or himself.
And the beloved is also the lover who creates space for the other to
grow and to mature. Most conflicts in
loving relationship, I think, arise when we crowd the space of the one we
love. We struggle to love the other as
he or she is. We try to crowd out the
person we know at present with our image of who he or she should be. We may do this with the very best of
intentions, but our efforts run the risk of failure and disappointment.
Paul’s
words in today’s reading from his letter to the church in Philippi are among
the more familiar texts in the New Testament.
Paul quotes an existing early Christian hymn that describes Jesus
emptying himself in order to accomplish God’s loving purposes. We might want to say that Jesus made room
within himself for humanity by putting aside the prerogatives of being God’s
promised one. Jesus lets go of his
rights in order that our relationship with God can be put right. This is the attitude that Paul believes
should inform the lives of every Christian:
“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any
consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same
mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition
or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your
own interests, but to the interests of others.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus . . .
. “ (Philippians 2.1-5)
What
Jesus has done runs counter to much of human culture. I dare to say that xenophobia, ‘fear of the
other’, is built into the cultural DNA of many human societies. It’s understandable: survival as a community requires a certain
caution in welcoming someone who is different, someone who is not like us. For example, the Saxon settlers who came to
Britain called the Celts ‘walesc’ --- ‘foreigners’. We know too well the stories European
colonists in the Americas and Africa told about the ‘savages’. Making room for the ‘foreigner’ and the
‘savage’ is never easy. One Christian
writer described the Gospel according to Luke as being filled with the belief
that ‘the stranger is my friend’, a truly counter-cultural view in the tribal
world of humanity. Rather than
exhibiting xenophobia, Christians are meant to live out an attitude of xenophilia.
Making
room for others is at the heart of evangelism.
You and I have promised on multiple occasions that we will “. . . proclaim
by word and example the good news of God in Christ” (BAS 159).
Proclaiming the good news of God in Christ challenges us to make room
for the other. Making room for others is
never easy. ‘They’ move the
furniture. ‘They’ put kitchen utensils
in the wrong drawers. ‘They’ don’t
understand ‘our’ jokes and ‘they’ frequently speak in languages ‘we’ do not
understand. ‘They’ ask questions that
‘we’ may not wish to answer and ‘they’ invite ‘us’ to undertake initiatives
‘we’ may not have considered. But if
Saint Faith’s is to live out its promise to be a place of ‘help, hope and home’, then making room for
others will be a priority.
We
are proclaiming the good news of God in Christ through Saint Hildegard’s
Sanctuary by providing a space where contemplation and the arts can touch the
lives of people who, for one reason or another, have not always experienced the
Christian community to be a place of ‘help, hope and home’. We are proclaiming the good news of God in
Christ through the Community Pastoral Resource Centre by providing a space
where access and advocacy touch the lives of people who need a place of ‘help,
hope and home’. Next week we shall take
the first steps to reach out to families with younger children.
But
making space for others takes time and commitment. After all, it’s been billions of years since
God made space for creation --- and God’s work is not yet finished. It’s been two thousand years since Jesus made
space for humanity --- and Christ’s work is not yet finished. It’s been seventy years since the Spirit made
space for Saint Faith’s in this neighbourhood --- and the Spirit’s work is not
yet finished.
So
let us “(draw) the circle wide . . . let our loving know no borders, faithful
to God’s call”. For this is the mind of
Christ; this is the mind that is ours.
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