Have This Same Mind

A sermon based upon Philippians 2: 1-13

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,

Passion/Palm Sunday April 5th, 2020

I hate to tell you this, especially on Palm Sunday, but Palm Sunday is based on a lie---one very big lie. 

Palm Sunday had parades.  There were overflow crowds in the streets.  People were shouting over and over, Hosanna, which meant ‘Our God saves!’  Blessed is the one who comes!    They were all pointing at Jesus as the one who came to save them.

But as we all know, it all ended up being a lie.  By the end of the week, on that very same Friday, in the very same city, the same people who were shouting “Hosanna!” were now shouting: “Crucify him! 

And this very same Jesus, whom they once put their hope in, was now being executed as a troublemaker, a blasphemer, and a lawbreaker.  Crowds can be very fickle.  Crowds are fickle because people are fickle.  When people don’t get what they want, exactly how they want it, they can turn on you!   And this is what people did.  This is what people still can do.

YOUR ATTITUDE SHOULD BE

This tendency for we humans to be ‘fickle’ and ‘unpredictable’ is what the apostle Paul understood, all too well.   

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul was writing to a great, young church made up of wonderful new Christians.   But these Christians were still people, just like you and me.  They were people who were ‘saints’ and sinners at the same time.   They were people who Paul remembered to prayer for, not just because he remembered how special they were to him, but he also remembered how they were still people, who could follow Jesus faithfully one day,  then forget what it meant to be follow Jesus the next.   To be a human being, and even being a Christian, meant that we could ‘forget’ that we are still to be like Jesus.

This is why Paul reminds them, “BE OF THE SAME MIND….THE MIND THAT WAS IN CHRIST JESUS….    Notice that what Paul is saying is they all should have the SAME MIND….    He is not saying only that they should ‘have the mind of Christ INDIVIDUALLY BUT THEY SHOULD HAVE THE SAME MIND COOPERATELY—together,  as a CHURCH, and as a PEOPLE together.

It is a wonderful thing for people to ‘come together’ and to see things together, do things together, work together, and believe things together.   Unfortunately, this is become ‘rarer’ these days, as we are losing a sense of being connected to the past, or working toward a unified future.  

Today, our tendency is to do things single-handedly, selfishly, and personally.   While we must do our part, something is loss in a culture that can’t seem to get together on anything.  AREN’T WE SEEING THIS IN OUR ELECTION YEAR?   Either one party is dominated by one person, or one party is so fragmented that people can come together around anything.   That’s a set up for dangerous times ahead.  When people can’t be of THE SAME MIND, they can lose their mind, or follow the wrong MIND…..   When life is self-centered and me-focused, we lose focus, and NO ONE can Focus on the BIGGER PICTURE that can help us all.

On this PALM SUNDAY, that one, and now, most agree: ‘GOD SAVES’.   They saw in Jesus this truth coming together, were hopeful and believed in might be realized in Him!  Jesus was the promised Messiah!   Jesus was the one God would use to SAVE.   But by the end of the week, things quickly fell apart.   By the end of the week,  JESUS, couldn’t even SAVE HIMSELF….  That ‘one mine’ was lost.  They became a very different mind.  They broke into many different kinds of attitudes and minds too.

WHAT HAPPENED?   You know what happened, don’t you?  Being human happened.   When Jesus came into Jerusalem and started telling the truth about how things were in Jerusalem and how they need to take part in GOD’S SALVATION, the people decided he was better off dead.   They preferred their own own way, rather than God’s way.  

This is how it was in Jersualem, and it’s also how it could easily become in Philippi, as as it can still be in Union Grove, in Hamptonville, in Yadkinville, or in Statesville, or wherever we humans reside ‘having ONLY our own minds’.   Aren’t PEOPLE ALREADY ARE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PLANET…like the Moon, or Mars, to move too, because we can’t get together,  BUT IT WOULD BE THE SAME THERE TOO.    This is what that story, “LORD of the FLIES WAS ABOUT….”   It is a story a shipwreck, where children got to fix all the mistakes their adults made, only to make the same mistakes again….  I see this happening in our world too, don’t you?   People trying to abandon Foundations, Establishment, Traditions, so quickly, thinking they can create a whole new world, which will end up, no better than learning how to behave in the world we are in.

Last Fall, in America, as the Election year was starting up,  the President of the United States, who was facing the possibility of Impeachment, was attending a World Series Ball Game in Washington, and a large section in the crowd starting chanting to the presidents, the same kind of words, he taught people to chant toward his presidential opponent 3 years earlier.   Instead of saying ‘Lock Her Up!”, as he once allowed, now they were chanting at him: “Lock, Him Up!   Lock Him Up!   It’s doesn’t matter what you think about the president, or his opponent, when you let “INCIVILITY” out of PANDORA’S BOX,  it will come back to haunt you.   It always comes back.  That’s what they Bible means when it says, ‘When you sow into the wind, you reap the whirlwind!”   The ‘whirlwind’ that is out of the Box is our day, is incivility.   The ‘attitude’ that has the day is hate, blame, criticism, ugliness, meanness, and negativity.

This is exactly what happens in a culture where everyone is doing most everything from ‘selfish ambition and conceit’ (v. 3).   Whereas Paul says we should ‘do nothing out of selfish ambition and conceit’ we have become a culture almost completely focused on ‘me, myself, and mine’.   This began way back in the 60’s and 70’s with the rebellion and SELF-EXPRESSION of the Hippy Culture.   Then when all those Hippies took over the culture,  they moved all the companies to Mexico, China, and India, and other places so that they could continue to keep what was ‘mine’---all mine.   Now, what was being done in the 80’s and 90’s is finally ‘trickling down’ to be revealed in our uncivil culture, where it’s not only just about me,  NOW, ITS MORE OPENLY, UNASHAMEDLY, not about YOU….   It’s me, me, me, and there is no more Thee, WE, or Thou, because God is now out of the picture too.  YOU always have to KILL GOD, or CRUCIFY JESUS again in order for you to LIFT UP and LIVE ME, Me, And only Me.

And what we need to understand carefully, is that this is not only happening in our WORLD, but it’s also happening at church.   I was at a meeting at my Baptist School, and the Teacher reported to us:   Every year in America 4,000 churches padlock their doors.  This means by 2030, ¼ to 1/3^rd of all Churches will be closed.   It also means that each day 3,500 people leave the church.   That’s 1.2 million people in a year.  What that means is that every day, 3500 people, even people in this church are saying and singing loudly,  ME, ME, ME.  That’s the only ‘tune’ in life they know.

In this text Paul tells us this is exactly what happens when people ‘only’ look after their own interests’.  When have no ‘encouragement in Christ’.  When we have no ‘consolation from love’ and when we share no more ‘in the Spirit’, we lose both ‘compassion’ and ‘sympathy’.   Do you see it?    When we only look after our own ‘interests’   life, culture, society, and final the world falls apart.    That goes for nations, societies, communities, churches, families, and individuals too.   IN a me age, SUICIDES CONTINUE TO RISE…   Every good psychologist knows that the ‘death wish’ is mostly a ‘me wish’.   To kill yourself is the most selfish act, because you don’t care about what anyone else thinks, feels.   YOU ONLY THINK ABOUT HOW YOU FEEL.

HAVE THIS SAME MIND…

WHAT PAUL RECOMMENDS, instead, is learning the kind right kind of ‘attitude’ or ‘mind’ to have in this world, in Philippi, or in the church, where we are RIGHT NOW.   This is the way to salvation, not to find something completely new, but to find something NEW IN WHO WE ARE, HOW WE THINK, and WHAT WE DO, right where we are and in who we are, and should be.   Paul says ‘his joy’ is ‘complete’ when people ‘have the same mind’, ‘the same love’ and are in ‘full accord’ and ‘of one mind’.   He implies that we lose ‘joy’ and become ‘incomplete’ when fail to have the right kind of mind and attitude.

ISN’T THIS always the true WAY OF SALVATION.  Isn’t this the way of BEING A WHOLE PERSON, a saved person?   It starts in the HEART, or IN THE MIND…   This is not intellectual part of our mind, but it’s in the relational and moral part of our minds.   It is to have a ‘mind’, that is ‘one mind’ based on the most basic ‘way’ or ‘truth’ that has a saving effect on us all.  BUT WHAT IS THIS MIND?  WHAT IS THIS ATTITUDE?

The RIGHT KIND OF MIND begins when we realize that WE CAN’T SAVE OURSELVES, nor can we be saved THE WAY WE WANT TO BE.    We are going to have to ‘give up’ some part of our own MIND to be saved!     You have to stop some of your ‘own interests’.  You are going to have a MIND bigger than your own.   You are even going to have to understand that YOUR LIFE… YOUR OWN LIFE is not only about you.   PEOPLE used to believe there was a ‘GRAND NARRATIVE’, that is that our lives are part of an ongoing story, that transcends time and place.   Today, however, most people are writing a THEIR OWN LIFE STORY, individually, alone, with only a few, either on FACEBOOK, in their own groups, or in their own way.    THERE is no SHOULD anymore,  there is only a WHAT WOULD I LIKE, or What do I want.  

The problem with living without a ‘SHOULD’ and only with a “WOULD” is that we finally end up without a ‘COULD’.   What I mean is that when we lose the mind and heart of how we must or should live,  we will eventually lose how we ‘could live’.   You see, the selfish life, if finally a self-destructive life, because when we go after what we want, it eats up what we have already.   Do you understand what I mean?  Let me explain.  When people go after only what we want, what we want is becomes a desire without limits, and in a world that is ‘free’ like ours is,  we can keep eating away at more and more, so that by getting everything we want, we not only lose what we have already, but we also fail to go after what we really, truly need.  For you see, the FREEDOM you have to be YOU,  Is always made possible by THE FREEDOM of a WE.     It’s like the song the foot bone is connected to the Leg bone, etc.   THE FREEDOM of ME is connected to the Freedom of WE, and the freedom of we is connected to the freedom  to do what I MUST DO, not just what I want to do.      YOUR ATTITUDE what you COULD BE IS Alway connected to what your attitude SHOULD BE,  because only by being responsible with your freedom do you get to keep it.   The PEOPLE IN PRISON lose their freedom because they can’t connect the dots.   The people headed for a prison of lost opportunity forget how to connect these same dots.  The people who think it is only about ‘me’ and forget the ‘we’ are headed for the inability to ‘be’ or ‘become’ much of anything they have the potential to be.

So, the ‘SHOULD’ begins in our ATTITUDE and in the right kind of attitude.   This is what Paul means by using the words, encouragement, comfort, fellowship, tenderness, compassion and love.   These are RIGHT, whereas their opposites are the way of ME WITHOUT THE WE.

THAT WAS IN CHRIST JESUS

But who’s to say that there is an ‘attitude’ that we SHOULD have?   Well, Palm Sunday they said it was Jesus, until they understood the kind of ATTITUDE he had.

What kind of ATTITUDE WAS IT?   We know what they eventually did to Jesus, but do we remember ‘why’ they did it?   Well, this passage from Paul reminds us that it was the kind of ‘attitude’ Jesus had that got him killed.  But it also says, that this kind of ‘attitude’ can save us.   Can we believe this?   The early church made a ‘hymn’ out of this ‘attitude’ and they sang it in their services.   This hymn is what Paul quotes here, as the kind of ‘ATTITUDE’ that could save the world then, and can still save our world today.  

Do you believe it can?   I do!  While we might have different ideas on what will save the world, and we might even interpret Jesus somewhat differently,  what you eventually must get to that what was in Jesus’ heart.    What kind of attitude was in Jesus own mind and heart?   And do we remember this is what Paul said we must also ‘have’ if we want to be a people, a church, or even a nation ‘blessed’ by God’s goodness and grace.   So, what is this mind of Christ?  What kind of ‘mindset’ did Jesus have that ‘killed’ him, but today, could ‘save’ us?

There are many lines in this hymn or song, but only one line interprets the rest of it.  Do you see it?   It’s the saving line.   It’s the line in verse 8 that says, that,”He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross”. (Phil. 2:8 NRS).   The attitude of Jesus that saves us that Jesus had an ‘attitude’ to ‘obey’ God, ‘even to the point of death…even death on a cross’.   The attitude of Jesus that can still save us, is that we also return to ‘an attitude to ‘become obedient’,  that is to be obedient to what is good and right, even ‘to the point’ of our own ‘death’.   Paul does not mean we have to our must repeat what Jesus did for us, but he is pointing to the attitude we must have in our heart toward each other… which Jesus had FOR US.  Jesus denied himself to obey God and die, and we must deny and die to ourselves to obey God and to give ourselves FOR OTHERS TOO.  

All this begins in the heart and in the mind.  In order to have salvation, we have to live our salvation into reality in this world.   This is what the people in Jerusalem did not want to hear.  They wanted Jesus to do it for them.   Well, he did.  But it was on God’s terms, not on their terms.   In the same way,  God wanted Jerusalem to live Jesus’ way.  If they would have, the Romans would not have destroyed them, like they did.   If these people in Jerusalem had listened and learned that ‘OUR GOD SAVES’ means that God calls us to participate in this salvation though our own obedience.  TRUST AND OBEY, for there’s no other way.   

And this trusting, obeying way of Jesus, that must be lived in us, is a sacrificing way.  Again, we don’t have to die on a cross, but we do have to take up our cross, and follow Jesus, for God’s salvation to be realize in our lives, here and now.   This is how the saving way of Jesus becomes the saving way for the world.   It is a saving way because it is a self-denying, sacrificing, obedient way, and it is an obedient way because it is A HUMBLE WAY…. A SERVANT WAY, which is how God redeems and restores human life, here and now.     God still works through the attitude and through the heart, but we have to first give our hearts to him, in both word and in deed.

In short,  Jesus gave up being God to save us.   It’s a mystery, I know, but this mystery points to the simplest truth of all:  ‘We have to also give up being god, to be saved.’      This is what ‘denying ourselves’ and ‘following Jesus’ is all about.  To follow Jesus in his way, which is the right, humble, and healing way.

Jim Wallis, Editor of Sojourners Magazine says that the way to ‘heal our land’ starts in the heart, and in the attitude of our own minds.   And this attitude must be to give up our own positions and politics and return to the politics of Jesus, which are the way of the cross.   He says, Jesus is the solution to our great political crisis, and we can only apply his solution to our lives, when we put our full trust in him by ‘having the same mind’ that was in Christ Jesus.

Dear friends, we not only call this Sunday Palm Sunday, but Passion Sunday, because it is on this day that we start to think about the true, heart-felt, passion of Jesus to die for us, so that we can live for him.   And living for Jesus means living like Jesus.   This is not just religious, churchy, or even just political stuff, THIS IS LIFE STUFF.    As the old gospel song says,  “THE WAY OF THE CROSS LEADS HOME….”   Only when we cease to ‘look on our own interests’ and begin to ‘look on the interest of others’ can we be a CHURCH,  can we be a PEOPLE, and can we keep being a NATION that brings light into this world.   This is how God came in Jesus to put his HEART IN US, so we can receive his HEART and also RECEIVE the gift HOPE AND LIFE.     

Dear friends, on this Palm Sunday, which is also Passion Sunday, we understand from Paul, that the only way to get OUR WORLD BACK, or to KEEP the FREEDOM we have is to obey God,  and to follow this servant way.   In order to keep our heads in life, we have to LOSE OUR MINDS IN HIM.   This loving, serving, caring, and trusting mind is the only hope for a return to sanity.   Have this mind, and you’ll keep yours!  Amen.