Readings (Track 1)

Dogs and cats: the dog thinks you’re god; the cat knows he’s god. After all, who cleans whose litter box? Likewise, when we say “so-and-so thinks he’s god,” we usually mean that he thinks everyone should serve him.

So what’s being God, being like God about? That’s where today’s readings get interesting.

At the center of our second reading there’s a striking hymn. Paul uses it to ground his plea that his readers change their behavior: “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.” Why? “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”

By the way, I’m focusing on this second reading not because I think this congregation particularly needs to hear it, but because it gives us an opportunity to step back to think about our mental pictures of God.

In the NRSV the hymn begins “who, though he was in the form of God.” That word “though” is supplied by the translators; the KJV reads simply “Who, being in the form of God.” The NRSV probably gets us off on the wrong foot, suggesting that Jesus did something unexpected of divinity. Rather, Jesus acts divinely precisely in treating divinity as something not to be exploited, and takes the form of a slave. Creation (recalling Paul’s words in Romans 8) “subjected to futility,” in “bondage to decay,” “groaning in labor pains until now” (vv.20-22), so, in the spirit of that sign on Truman’s desk (“The buck stops here”) the Holy Trinity through Jesus does what is needed to set things right.

And that, the hymn joyfully reminds us, is what being God is about. No wonder Paul writes “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” because of the devil’s many lies, the lie that living like the gods means doing whatever we want and letting others pick up the tab has perhaps sunk in the deepest. So working out our salvation is not first about additional hours at prayer, additional mortifications of the flesh, even increasing our giving, but about the work of actually hearing and responding to our neighbors, maybe particularly the ones we’d rather ignore.

And what this vision of God can do for our imaginations! Our first reading tells of God providing water in the desert. Toward the end of the text the Lord tells Moses to strike the rock, not a rock. The rabbis, who thought nothing in Scripture was accidental, wondered about that. They concluded that the text was talking about the rock that the Lord had provided, the rock that followed the people and continued to provide water during their trek. Paul, recalling that story in his first letter to the Corinthians, has an “ah hah” moment: “and the rock was Christ” (10:4). That’s the sort of thing God does.

Nothing more human than to desire to live like the gods. The Living God has no problem with that, as long as we’re clear on how God lives. In the New Testament today’s Philippians focuses on that. In the Old Testament the psalms celebrating God’s creating are a rich source for the healing of our imaginations. Those lines from Ps 104 for example:

“All of them look to you
to give them their food in due season.
You give it to them; they gather it in;
you open your hand, and they are filled with good things. (vv.18-19)

Each table grace is an opportunity to refocus.

Let’s wrap this up by returning to today’s collect:

“O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure.”

That opening description of God largely overlaps with what we’ve been hearing in Philippians. And partaking in that heavenly treasure? Talking about something other than God’s self? Probably not—so “partaking” becomes another way of talking about our imitation—powered by God’s Spirit.

Meanwhile, Monday morning approaches–with Monday morning’s predictable headlines. Not much there about God’s almighty power. But then, if we’ve paid attention to the Collect, that’s not the place to look. Let us look, rather, at where mercy and pity are being shown—and how our hands and feet are contributing to showing mercy and pity.