“The Engendering Deed”
Date: March 28, 2010
Script: Philippians 2:5-11
Revd William F. Meier ~ First United Methodist Church, Saint Cloud, Minnesota
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A new mother, worn out from hours of draining labor, places her child carefully at her breast to receive life once again from her. The young married couple has a fight fiercer than any they’ve ever experienced before—the hurt deep, the trust frayed—yet words of forgiveness…new beginnings…starting over—are shared. A teenager, gaining fuller consciousness every day, begins to realize the sacrifices his mother has made for him—two jobs, lack of sleep, delaying school and a career for herself, wearing older clothes so that he could go to school in new clothes in the fall and be a part of the sports he loved so much.
We’ve all witnessed some act, some deed that had a powerful impact upon us. It might have been a small simple thing—but it shaped us in such a way that ever since, we are not the same. We act in a way that is based upon a whole new foundation.
I sat in a small room in the Nursing Home with him. He’d only come in the day before. Life in this new place with schedules, furnishings, food, and people not his own was going to be a difficult adjustment. Yet he willingly chose to come to the Nursing Home because he knew that caring for him was slowly killing his wife. He sacrificed his own comfort, independence, and wishes out of selfless love for her. Jesus talked about “no greater love” and in a sense, this man exhibited it perfectly.
Joseph Sittler talks about “the engendering deed”—the act that produces something in others who witness it. Life is full of meaning and so nearly any moment of our lives can hold an engendering deed. Jesus’ counter-cultural, counter-political parody of Pilate’s imperial parade into Jerusalem in what we call Palm Sunday might be one. Intentionally riding, not on an armored war horse, but a donkey or colt, the crowd welcoming him as a king in this near-comic spectacle, may have engendered some to believe—others to hatred.
The events of that last week we call holy are crammed full of possible engendering deeds; purifying the Temple… healing… teaching… challenging the political and religious cozy arrangements of the day that held down so many people in poverty, misery and shame…bread and cup at table… late night prayer in a garden… surrendering self to allow others to go free… silence before indictments… suffering and dying on a cross. Any and all of these can be engendering deeds that transform us.
For the particulars of those engendering deeds we look to the Gospels. For their meaning…the reason and mindset of Christ as he went through this week we turn to Philippians. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” Paul sings or quotes an early Christian hymn. And what is this “mind” that was in Christ? What was the vocation—the first passion of Christ’s life that led to his second passion?
Clearly it was the “Kingdom of God.” It was the subject of his teaching, and subtext of all his healing, miracles and acting. God’s heavenly reign infusing this earthly reality with grace, reversal of expectations and distributive justice so that all may have life abundant—all, men and women, healthy and dis-eased, Jews and outsiders, rich and poor, powerful and powerless. All.
That was Jesus’ passion. And he was obedient to its fulfillment despite the cost. Paul quotes this hymn as saying that Jesus “became obedient to the point of death—.” He’s not saying that Jesus was obedient to some horrific god’s need for a substitutionary sacrifice to satisfy some absurd legal sacrificial system. He’s saying that Jesus was obedient to God’s vision—God’s reign, wherever it took him, even death on a cross.
The vocation—the passion of Jesus was the Kingdom of God. What was his method for bringing it about? Was it to gather support, build a cause, rally the troops in a larger and larger movement that eventually would overcome the powers of Rome and the corrupt temple? Holy week itself supplies the answer; from the crowds and energy of Palm Sunday onward Jesus’ movement diminishes. The crowds fall off…dwindle down to a few who in the end deny, abandon, and betray him (except for a few women). It was all down-hill from Palm Sunday. In a larger context, it was downhill from the beginning. As Philippians puts it:
[Jesus] “emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.”
The passion of Christ was the Kingdom of God. The method or vocation of Christ was losing, diminishing, emptying, decent.
As followers of Christ, what is our vocation, our calling? To spiritually ride the coat-tails of Jesus, or to follow his path ourselves? Paul apparently thinks we are to do this ourselves: “Let this same mind be in you…” Emptying… faithfulness and obedience to the point of death. That’s what it means to be “in Christ.”
Jesus’ own ego was so bracketed that he was open to the great I AM— to God’s reality and Kingdom. That is our work too. To step aside from our own agendas, our own preferences, our own drive to selfishly orchestrate things to our benefit.
Sooner or later we too will all be called to be obedient to death; we will face the darkness of death and enter into it. In the mean time we each have the freedom to choose our method of living: will it be self-protection or self-donation? Will we seek to save ourselves or give ourselves away in the footsteps of Jesus? Will we push aside our ego long enough for God’s true identity for us to be operative? What kind of engendering deeds can we pull off in our days to come?
The engendering deed of Christ was cross-shaped, horizontal and vertical, the human and the divine…but death was at the center of it. The tomb of Christ was a cave, not a tunnel. Christ emptied himself without view to any gain for himself.
As a lens to see this last, holy, week through, and as an affirmation of our faith in the pathway of Christ, let us read together this ancient hymn. Page number 197 in your pew Bibles. Philippians 2:5-11
