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Hey, everyone. If we haven't met at some point, my name is Scott, and I am part of the team here at Commons, and it is great to have this chance to join this current conversation we're having about Paul's letter to his friends in Philippi. More on that in a second. Because it is so great to be jumping in at the June, which marks the beginning of summer proper, which I am so ready for. And it is also the last few weeks of school.

And Commons kids and youth, we are thinking about all the twists and turns you have faced in your relationship to school, and we celebrate the milestones that many of you are passing and the new paths that are ahead of you. Teachers and educators, you have also been working so hard. You've honed your Teams game. You have cared for kids with huge limitations in place, but I am so proud to know many of you and watch the ways that you have done this work. Also, let's be honest.

All of you commons parents out there who, with kids at home lots of this last year, have been filling the roles of IT support and educational aid, detention supervisor, and cafeteria staff in addition to the rest of your portfolio, you are heroes, friends, for sure. And this is why I think it's super important for everyone to feel a sense of accomplishment as June comes to meet us, and we celebrate all the ways that you bring things to a close in the coming weeks. That said, these are interesting times here in the city and the province as pandemic response leans into optimism that we maybe haven't seen for a while. And listen, we so appreciate the ways that you have tracked with us online, and we look forward to the moments that we will share in person again soon. Stay tuned for more information and details in the coming weeks.

But as anticipation builds for change in our COVID lives, I I wanted to share that over the past little while, I've had several conversations with some individuals from our community that have really struck me as profound, where I listen to stories of how so many of you have found community in new unexpected places while we haven't been able to be together. Maybe a neighborhood that you didn't know that well. Maybe in a support program that you took the risk to find and discovered that you actually really needed. Maybe in new professional connections born from being online or working through a change in your career. Honestly, there are so many examples of this.

And I just want to say how much I've appreciated these conversations, seeing the ways that you have built new community bonds and strengthened others and grown in your resiliency. And yes, of course, I realize that some of you haven't had that experience. There have been a lot of hard moments for many of us this last year, and that probably feels like a euphemism. And the truth is we carry those stories too, trusting that in all the newness that brings fresh perspective, all the change that our lives and connections have gone through, and all the ways that we're still figuring out how to move forward, we are together, and we will support each other, which is a great entry point back into our current series, everything is awful, because the apostle Paul in this letter is writing to his friends, and things aren't perfect. Paul's writing from jail after all, and things aren't going smoothly in the church.

More on that a little bit today. But over the past couple weeks, we've looked at the historical setting of this letter and the diverse group of individuals that were part of its beginnings. And last week, I love how Jeremy invited us to consider the emotional underpinnings of this letter, informing the ways maybe where we might hear Paul's repeated phrase in Christ. Maybe we learn to trust this idea of Christ being around us, keeping us, shaping us as we follow his example in the world. But then also I loved Jeremy's consideration of Paul's grammar, how his sentences start to lose their coherence at times as perhaps he gets a little more amped and involved in the things that he's trying to convey to his friends.

Where we consider that Paul wrote with confidence about God's care while at the same time probably being a little anxious about his future, which gives us license for the uncertain moments we live in now, where we need to trust God and grow in faith. How that's not always easy for us without feelings of fear, despair, and uncertainty coming with it. But also to trust that in sharing these things, these experiences like Paul does, that community, even distanced, has this divine potential to carry us on. And with that, we need to get to work on Philippians chapter two, thinking a little bit about first options, what we share, starting points, and practical theology. But first, let's pray.

God of all, to you, our hearts are open and our desires are known. And today, we choose in whatever way we can to take a step toward your goodness, carrying the weight of so much change and maybe feeling a little stretched and thin and seeking some solid ground. And so we come to these moments asking for courage to trust your kindness and for peace to surround our busy minds and our heavy hearts and for grace to hear your voice today in ancient words and in words that speak of new life we need. We ask in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen.

Alright. Well, I wanna start today with one of my few claims to fame, which is that I've actually been to the ancient site of the city of Philippi, and I think anybody else on our team has been there. And maybe there's somebody listening who has, and I invite you to feel free to comment and join the nerd parade if that's you. There's no shame here. I actually traveled in Turkey and Greece for about a month in my early twenties, and the experience drastically altered my life and my faith, truth be told.

And I mentioned that trip for two reasons that relate to this series that we're in. First, because Philippi is one of many cities that we hear referenced in the New Testament where the story of Jesus caught on, but the city there or the city that was there in the ancient world is now abandoned, which created an embodied experience for me when I was there many years ago, this encounter with the ways that truth and community flourish while they do, as we see in Paul's passionate correspondence with real people. And then these things push on to grow and sustain in other places, which I think is true for how we read scripture, but then also true for how we live our lives now, which is a sermon all on its own, but we gotta keep moving. The second reason that I mention having been there is to discuss something that struck me while I walked through the ruins, and it relates to the backstory of how Paul gets to Philippi in the first place. We find the story in Acts chapter 16 where we read that Paul meets Timothy near the city of Ephesus and recruits him, they start delivering their message in the surrounding area with some success, apparently.

And in verse six, we read that after touring the area, they tried to turn north and east towards Asia but, quote, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit, end quote. And then they attempted to go north toward the Black Sea, but, quote, the spirit did not permit them. And while we don't really know how Paul experienced these bouts of divine roadblocks and resistance, Maybe he just couldn't find a good deal on tickets, or maybe there was a pandemic shutdown. Those happened in the ancient world too. What what we do know is that shortly after this, Paul had a dream in which someone from the Greek region Philippi was in appeared and asked him to come and help them.

So Paul and his colleagues went. And as they did, Christianity takes this decided turn towards the West and into Europe for the next few hundred years, which might be one of the most influential dreams turned into reality in Western civilization. It's really not a big deal, but more to the point, this is important because Paul only ends up in Philippi, only ends up building relationships there, only ends up writing personal correspondence that the spirit still inspires because what Paul wanted to do and where Paul wanted to go didn't work out, which might just be one of the reminders that we need when everything is awful. In those moments where you feel like you hit a wall, when a first option doesn't work out, when it feels like there are no doors, much less open ones, or maybe when you feel like things might be changing but you aren't sure which way to go. See, I think the backstory of this letter teaches us to trust that the same spirit that led Paul just living a life, that same gentle presence leads us to taking our dead ends and carrying us toward what we rarely imagine as next, next, often into community and relationships that, just like Paul and the Philippians, will support and hold us in the days ahead.

Now, that said, today we are jumping into the second chapter of this letter, and the fact is that we can't really do justice to the next few jam packed verses in one sermon, which is why we are already thinking about a return to this chunk in one our series next year because, yes, we are well into our prep for next year's journal, and that's just a bit of a September launch teaser for some of you. And while there is a or while this is a familiar passage for many who have been around the church, I wanna read some portions of it to you because it starts, therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete, Paul asks, by being like minded, by having the same love, by having one or being one in spirit and of one mind. And I wanna make just a couple notes here first. As we always should, when we see Paul use the word therefore, we need to take a look back at what he's tying back to.

And we can't do a lot with this today, but at the end of chapter one, Paul has encouraged his friends who are facing some difficulties and are aware of his current situation that he's writing from prison. And he encourages them to go through the challenges they are facing by trying to emulate and follow Jesus' example, which is why he says, Since you know that Jesus faced challenge too, since the love of God is close to you in difficulty as it was with Jesus, since the Spirit binds you together in your shared struggle forming tenderness and compassion in you, please And you can sense Paul drawing heavily on relational collateral here. He says, please make my joy complete. Put my mind at ease. Please get along.

And we don't really know what tension there was in this community. There are some hints in some other places in the letter, and we might come to these. But I wanna focus on a couple themes that we can pull out today because Paul makes this request that they consider his feelings by getting along. And then he tells them to be like minded, to have the same love, to be unified in soul and mind, in feeling and in thought. And I wanna just briefly note this repetitive instruction Paul gives here, this phrasing that the NIV does a good job with actually when it uses the term like minded where Paul is using a form of the Greek verb in a couple of instances.

And this is a verb that is really important to Paul. It pops up again and again in his writing, and it generally just means to think or to have in mind. But Paul expands its nuance here to mean something a little bit more like to set one's mind on or to adopt a perspective to have a certain mindset. And what kind of mindset is Paul imagining that his friends should commit themselves to? Well, he gives them a couple of brief instructions.

He says, don't do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Literally, these words mean rivalry or empty glory. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each to the interests of others. And what we can't lose sight of here is the social and political world that Paul's words are addressing. A highly stratified system of patrons and their dependence, of masters and slaves, of the powerful and those always required to give way.

A system that perhaps threatened to undermine the truly revolutionary shape of this early church gathering around the story of Jesus. And heard this way, we can see what Paul's not saying. He wasn't telling this diverse group of people that they were all the same or that their opinions would all line up. Because to tell the poor and the slaves of the ancient world to be humble would have just been reinforcing the status quo and ultimately undermining the story of Jesus. And to tell the powerful and the elites to be humble would have been strange and maybe even offensive because for many of them, their position and their honor held the society together around them.

Meaning that Paul's encouragement to be like minded was hardly a blind command to abandon all difference, but rather an emotional plea to stay together in those differences, which seems like advice that can still help us in our highly segmented and stratified world, in a world where serious issues can leave us feeling as though we are locked in an intense rivalry with those we don't agree with. And to be clear, it's always important to contend for truth and to advocate against injustice. Those are not the kinds of rivalry that Paul's referring to here, I don't think. He's referencing more how easy it is to enter and exit conversations carrying the empty glory of being right or holding the moral high ground and being unable to share it, or how I rarely consider the interests of others, how their concerns shape their opinions, their perspectives, and their mistakes just like mine do. And I I wonder if this isn't a timely reminder as we face the challenge of returning to shared workspaces, of returning to the shared vision of being on teams or in organizations that are drastically different than they were a year ago.

As we think about what it means to return and reengage with a commons that is different too, bringing with us all the change that we've gone through and facing a city with its diverse neighborhoods and challenges. And that all feels bang on for me. And that's why I love Paul's simple request to place a higher value on what's shared as we look to move forward together, where in all the spaces we reenter, we choose to be like minded in our hope that the world can be made right and that our differences don't always have to keep us from that future, that our differences, in fact, might just be part of that future, especially as we focus on the humanity, the dignity, and the affection we see modeled in Jesus. Now having pleaded with his friends, Paul then jumps to this theological justification of these requests he's made of them. He says, look, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset.

There's that same Greek verb again. Same mindset as Christ Jesus. And what Paul's doing here is claiming that, in effect, when we consider others, when we value what we share, we follow Christ's example, an example that Paul then describes, speaking of Jesus, who, being in the very nature God, didn't consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. And listen. This passage, sometimes referred to as the Christ hymn, has inspired gallons and gallons of spilled ink, which is curious on the one hand because Paul's writing a letter, and then all of a sudden he just starts riffing on these soaring metaphors and poetic images of who Jesus was and is.

And, I mean, you you can totally imagine those who are listening to it for the first time shaking their heads and saying, woah. This escalated quickly, which, side note, is exactly what Siri says when you ask what zero divided by zero is, which is one of the many things that I learned while helping my kids do school from home. But, anyways, the point is that Paul's writing escalates here and takes on this distinct style and tone to the degree that scholars debate whether or not he's imported these lyrics from another ancient early Christian singer songwriter, which sounds kind of fun to imagine, but we're not gonna be able to go too far down that path. I I'll just say this, that I'm inclined to view this passage as an as an encomion, which is a poetic form that most closely mirrors our eulogies and our tributes, where a person is praised for their contributions and their character. And the reason I think this is because of the ways that Paul seems to be mirroring the practices that we see in Greco Roman myth, where we frequently see stories of both divine and human metamorphosis, which is what Paul's describing here when he's talking about Jesus.

See, when Paul talks about Jesus being in very nature God and taking on the very nature of a servant, he's using the Greek verb morphe, which just means form. And this is why more literal translations like the NRSV will translate these verses as though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And it's in this or it's this change in form, this image of metamorphosis, and its parallel in other contemporary stories that Paul is playing with, I think. For instance, there's this story by the famous Greek playwright Euripides that tells of the raucous, imbibing god Dionysus in which Dionysus declares, here I am, having changed form or morphe, from that of a god to that of a human. And in a few lines later, we see Dionysus declare, I have taken in exchange a mortal image.

I have changed my form into that of a man. In another example, we see the all powerful Greek god Zeus come to Earth taking the form of a swan, the text says. The structure and grammar in that text actually nearly identical to Paul's phrase taking the form of a slave when talking about Jesus. And what's intriguing is how the self transformation of gods in Greco Roman myths like these ones I've related to you, in those texts, it's meant to typically conceal the gods' identities, which is a stark contrast to Paul's contention here. Because Paul's whole point is that Jesus reveals a completely different image of the divine to us.

A god that doesn't see power as something to be used for one's own interests. A god willing to empty themselves of the forms of power that keep it protected, separate, and in control and take on the form of a lowly servant. This vision of a god that measures divine power in the step down into what's awful about being human. No longer shrouded in sweeping glory but known in outstretched hands. And friends, this image was a profoundly different place to start from in forming faith and community in the ancient world, and it still is.

And Paul argues as much that something happens when we stop forming gods in the likeness of our rivalry, our self importance, the endless pursuit of our own interest. The gods we form with these persuasions rarely do us or those around us any good, leading us to believe out of fear and adhere out of shame where our faith can become a weapon of our self interest that wounds those who are different than us, which is why Paul overturns the mythic language of his day in praise of a different kind of God, A god that didn't come to hide and yet hold on to power, but instead a god that came to be truly known as letting go of it. A kind of letting go that restores all creation to itself and might just change my faith and yours if we decide to start with God in Christ, with God as a servant, which is just a reminder that for Paul, all theology is practical. Remember, this is a letter addressed to real people living in a physical and a social world. It's it's not a theology textbook.

And it's so important that we keep this in mind that Paul doesn't expound on Christ's emptying of his divine self, framing these expansive theological systems just to show his academic chops. No. Paul does this theology because of its real world implications, speaking to real people going through real social pressures. And to be honest, I think that's why we come back to these texts. It's why we find that they still hold meaning for us.

And I think it's why this series is particularly timely, because so many of us have seen or are maybe right in the middle of all kinds of awful. And while a good chat with a friend is nearly always helpful in scenarios like this, sitting through a theology lecture probably isn't what we choose, and that's not what Paul's after either. It's so important to let these words come gently to where you are, reminding you to trust that like Paul somehow ending up in Philippi, the spirit is at work in the dead ends and obstacles you face, reminding you to be hopeful in all the differences you find in others and with all the differences you bring with you into our shared future and reminding you that to start with Jesus, to follow Jesus, is a profound step. A step into a world where change and transformation don't flow through power and those who hold it, but instead are found in the humble love and tender care you offer today and in the days that you will face this week. Let's pray.

Loving God that we see in Christ, today, we step into the mystery and the poetry of these words and the ways that they maybe feel like they collide with our world. Maybe we can feel the tension in our relationships or in some of the choices that we've made or in the shifts that we feel are lying just ahead of us. And we ask, gentle spirit, that you would bring comfort and care that we need. We ask too that you would give us courage to trust the ways that you are still at work in us, the ways that you are calling us beyond ourselves, the ways you invite us to start with you. Humble, considering others, which completely changes our vision of what it means to be human.

And so we ask, take our simple actions, our weak attempts, and let them join your beautiful work even when everything feels awful. This we ask, trusting you, our hope. Amen.