Imagine if you will, an alien comes down to this planet. They land on our fancy new parking lot out there, walk into the church and ask what you’re doing. “We’re worshipping God,” you answer. To which the alien follows up: “Tell me about this God, what are they like?”
What is God like – It should be an easy question for us to answer, right? We’ve got an entire book dedicated to stories about God. Surely, that’s a simple enough task. Except, well, God is slippery. God refuses to be pinned down. Later in Exodus we will hear God’s own self-description: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. But if you’re reading the prophets you’d hear how God is a jealous and avenging God.
And we have these stories back and forth in the Old Testament of God’s abundant love and provision, and then scenes of destruction and desolation. It’s a real challenge for us to reconcile these things.
I imagine our alien visitors visiting this planet in different times and places and asking people the same question. To the Norse, what is your God like? “We have many Gods, Odin and Thor chief among them, mighty warriors, big hammers, lots of thunder and lightning.”
To the ancient Greeks, what is your God like? “We have many Gods, Zeus chief among them, a mighty warrior, lots of thunder and lightning.”
To the ancient Caananites, same question: “We worship Baal, a mighty warrior, a storm god, and yes, lots of thunder and lightning.”
And we can go all around that region to the Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites and it’s the same picture. All of these tribes and nations see their chief deity, the God they worship as this mighty warrior who takes their side in battle and rains down thunder on their enemies. It matters that your God is mighty. My God is bigger than your God.
Ancient Israel was no different: their God, whose name was too holy to say, visited a similar fate on their enemies.
So what if our alien friends visited Paul, in his prison cell, while he’s writing his letter to the Philippians. Paul, what is your God like? My God is the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The God who led Moses and the people through the wilderness. The God who returned Israel after exile in Babylon. But…well now the picture is more complicated.
What do you mean, Paul?
Well, in these last days God sent his son. Who himself is God. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.
Well, that’s different for sure. That sure complicates the picture. The mighty warrior God, whose name is too holy to say, became a mortal, fragile, and was beaten, and scourged and broken, and humiliated. Died the death of a terrorist on the cross. And that’s the very thing he’s worshipped for! Very different.
I want to be clear at this point Jesus complicates our idea of who God is, because we do not, we emphatically do not dismiss the Old Testament accounts of God because we find them upsetting or inconvenient. This is one of the oldest heresies that the church has battled.
Jesus complicates the picture. We don’t throw out the Old Testament. But Jesus is a reliable account of who God is, and what God is like. We are on solid ground when Jesus is the means by which we can begin to understand the nature of God, in as much as we can ever begin to understand the nature of God.
This section of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we’re pretty sure is an early Christian hymn. He’s quoting hymn lyrics in the same way a preacher might get up and quote from their own favorite hymn. And Biblical scholars have given it the rather catchy title of The Kenotic Hymn, Kenosis the Greek word for emptying, from that line “he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” – because the entire spirit of these verses is the humility of Christ, by which he is vindicated and glorified.
What is God like? God is a God of self-emptying love. Of complete and total self-sacrifice.
What is Paul’s ask of the Philippians? What is Paul’s ask of us? Be of the same mind. Have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. Imitate Jesus, as best you possibly can.
Jesus gave up the privilege of being God. What privileges are we holding onto?
Jesus emptied himself. What do we need to let go of?
Jesus was obedient. Are we truly willing to take those scary steps into the unknown that God often asks us to make?
Emptying, or being empty, has all sorts of negative connotations. How’s your day going? I’m wiped, I’m empty, I’ve got nothing in the tank. Meanwhile being filled up is positive: My cup is filled! My heart is full!
So maybe the call is not for us to be depleted but to spring clean. Get a dumpster like the one I’ve got sitting in this fancy new parking lot. And throw in it all the things that are holding us back from truly showing up for God and our neighbor.
Because that kind of emptying, that spiritual Marie Kondoing, makes us a different kind of person. An “empty” person is then able to receive the gifts that God wants to give to them. Are we coming to this table already full, or hungry for the gifts of God? Can we make ourselves not just recipients of God’s grace, but empty vessels ready to have God’s grace poured into us. And from us, flowing out to others.
I can tell you what I want to throw in that dumpster: my ego, fretting too much about what people think about me, my need for validation and likes on social media, I want to stop looking at which direction my 401k is headed, I want to throw my phone in there, or least learn to put it down when my son wants to play with me. I want to throw out all remnants of the notion that I am in full control, and everything rests on my shoulders.
That’s what I need to empty myself of. That’s what’s going in my dumpster.
What’s going in yours?