Breathe Out, Breathe In
Reflections on Philippians 2.1-11
Palm Sunday
14 April 2019
Holy Trinity Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 14th of April.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 14th of April.
Philippians 2.1-11
2.1If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.
9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Thursday afternoons you will usually find me at the Diamond Centre at Vancouver General Hospital participating in a cardiac wellness program. My hour-long class begins with warm-up exercises, three ten-minute sessions on the various equipment in the gym and then a cool-down period. We are taught to breathe out when flexing our muscles rather than a tendency on the part of most of us to hold our breaths and to breathe in during the relaxation phase of the exercise. Often during the cool-down portion of our class we will spend a few minutes quietly breathing in and out, concentrating on deep breathing using our diaphragms, a form of easy meditation.
Think on it for a moment. Each time we breathe out, we help our body cleanse itself of the potential toxic effects of carbon dioxide. We empty our lungs of what is harmful to us in order to breathe in the oxygen and nitrogen that gives life to our bodies. Thousands of times each day, countless times during our lives, we breathe out and then breathe in, a rhythm of emptying and filling that can include the wider world in which we live and move and have our being.
In 1987 the Faculty of Vancouver School of Theology collectively breathed out our commitment to academic traditions and practices that were hundreds of years old and breathed in a new commitment to a way of offering theological education that challenged us then and continues to challenge the whole church to this day. We agreed to embark on a journey in partnership with indigenous communities throughout North America who wanted clergy leaders who had been trained to honour the cultures of indigenous peoples as well as their stories and their ways of learning. Our partners wanted their clergy leaders to be trained, as much as possible, within the communities they served rather than disappear for three years to study in Vancouver or some other urban setting.
So we designed a program that made use of on-line courses, classic extension courses, summer school courses and tutorials led by local tutors. Some of our colleagues in other institutions thought we were foolish. Others thought we were sacrificing the academic traditions in which we had been trained. But we breathed out what was not life-giving to our indigenous students and we breathed in what had the potential to be life-giving.
We actively recruited allies through the Anglican and Episcopal churches in North America. One of those allies was the then Bishop of Alaska who came to Vancouver for visit to learn more about the program. I was assigned to be his host and guide. On the appointed day I dressed in a very professorial way and waited for the Bishop to arrive. Time passed with no Bishop in sight. So I finally went downstairs to Reception. I passed by a man in his forties, dressed in a lumberjack shirt and sporting a beard and a ponytail. We smiled at each other and I went on the receptionist. I asked her to keep an eye out for the Bishop and to call me when he arrived. Behind me a quiet voice said, ‘Oh, here I am. I might be a little late.’ I turned with to shake his hand and came face to face with a man in his forties, dressed in a lumberjack shirt and sporting a beard and a ponytail --- the Bishop of Alaska. Years later he would become and still is our National Indigenous Bishop, Mark MacDonald.
Mark had breathed out the trappings of office that sometimes hinder bishops in their ministry. He then breathed in a more life-giving persona that allowed him to reach out to people where they were.
Friends, on this Palm Sunday we begin our annual journey from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through the tumult of a week filled with intrigue and fear, betrayal, condemnation and death, to the resurrection and its proclamation that ‘Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death’ and that ‘victr’y is ours, victr’y is ours, through God who loves us.’ [1] During this week Jesus breathes out ‘equality with God’ as a barrier to reaching out to us and to all humanity. He breathes in ‘human likeness’ so that you and I and all our sisters and brothers can ‘. . . be of the same mind, having the same love, [be] in full accord and of one mind.’
We breathe out ‘selfish ambition [and] conceit’. We breathe in ‘mind of Christ’ so that we can ‘look not to [our] own interests, but to the interests of others’. We breathe out injustice, arrogance and self-centredness. We breathe in justice, humility and loving-kindness. With each breath we become more and more our true selves, the beloved community gathered to be transformed, whether as individual believers or as a community of faith, not for ourselves alone but for the sake of world.
Bishop Nicholas Knisely writes in his little Lenten devotional book, Lent Is Not Rocket Science, a reflection on breathing out and breathing in.
[If] you work out all the math, it turns out that each breath we take contains many of the same air molecules that Jesus breathed during his lifetime. You and I are literally, with each breath, breathing the same air as Our Lord. And, by extension, the same air that was breathed by every saint, known and unknown, who ever lived --- and every sinner as well.[2]
The air of laughter, of tears, of heroes, and of scoundrels surrounds us at every moment of our lives, filling our lungs and giving us life.[3]
Have the same breath within you as was in Christ Jesus who breathed out exploiting his relationship with God. Have the same breath within you as was in Christ Jesus who breathed in our human nature. Breathe out. Breathe in. With each breath become more like Christ Jesus who gives life to every cell in our bodies so that the glory of God, the compassion of Christ and the wisdom of the Spirit might fill the whole earth or at least that small space that surrounds each one of us.
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