Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Alleluia.
The holy Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
Glory to you, Lord.
When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, by what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?
Jesus said to them, I will also ask you one question. If you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.
Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?
And they argued with one another, if we say from heaven, he will say to us, why then did you not believe him? But if we say of human origin, we are afraid of the crowd for all regard John as a prophet.
So they answered, jesus, we do not know.
And he said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
What do you think?
A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today.
He answered, I will not.
But later he changed his mind and went.
The Father went to the second Son and said to the same. And he answered, I go, sir.
But he did not go.
Which of the two did the will of the father?
They said the first.
Jesus said to them, truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.
For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him.
But the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.
And even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Children ages 3 through 10 are invited to follow our storyteller for a Bible story, prayers and music. They'll rejoin at the peace.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen. Please be seated.
We have one of the most important readings in the New Testament today, and it's from the passage from the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Philippians.
It's often called the Kenosis Hymn.
The words of the Kenosis Hymn are all about God's self emptying love. That's what that word kenosis means, self emptying and how it can lead us to joy and resiliency.
Here, Paul uses this hymn as kind of the center of gravity for the whole letter, which is indeed a testament to joy and unity.
He's writing from prison before he is executed.
Now, prisons in Roman times were dismal places, often windowless and dark. Their rations were bread and water, no medicine, no extra clothing, no paper to write on.
And this means that Paul and prisoners like him would have to rely on their communities to help them survive.
Indeed, the Philippians have done just that for Paul because at its heart, this is a thank you letter where Paul is writing back to thank them for the supplies, the company, most importantly the prayers that they have sent to him and to give them in return encouragement and instructions on how to keep a joyful faith even in the face of the adversity they are facing now. I keep using this word joyful. That's because Philippians is by far Paul's most joyful letter.
In the scant four chapters he uses the word joy or rejoice 15 times.
Now the Christian use of joy means something very specific.
It differs from simple happiness, which can be fleeting and is often tied to good circumstance.
For Christians, joy means a deep, resilient spiritual anchor rooted in God's promises, which can coexist with and even sing through profound grief and fear.
It's why we can make the bold claim at our funeral services that even at the grave we can sing, sing the song Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
And so it's here, from the heart of prison, that Paul drops in this hymn to Joy.
We think it might be the earliest Christian hymn that we have evidence of and he is using it to show us how to have the same mind of Christ, the same mindset of Christ that allows a person to sing forth joy even when they're surrounded by prison and waiting for death.
He says, have the same mind among yourselves, which is the mind of Christ Jesus, who though in the form of God, did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but instead emptied himself.
Now, I don't know about you, but I would like to be the sort of person who could have joy even in the face of terrifying life threatening times.
But even more than that, not just for myself, I'd like to be the sort of person Paul is describing. A person who does that not for self alone, but gives of themselves so much that it helps to change the world into a place where all can know the love of God.
And Paul is teaching us how to do that with singing, to remind us of the power that singing has to give us revelation, resilience and revolution.
Revelation, resilience and revolution.
So we're going to pack all three of those briefly to see how singing becomes a tool of kenosis to shape us into the mindset of Christ.
First, revelation.
What does this little bit of hymnody reveal to us about the nature of Christ?
Well, a lot more than we could possibly talk about in one little sermon here. But for our conversations, what we see is the power of Christ's incarnation to unify and to call us forth.
It's almost as though Christ is giving us a blueprint in this little hymn for downward mobility, this emptying process which will empty Christ of power and instead exalt his name above all the earth. And he takes us with us, us, him on the journey.
In putting on the mind of Christ, we're letting Christ's mind and ours become one. And that, Paul says in this hymn, is resiliency, humility and joy.
What it reveals to us about the nature of God is that God is giving, open, putting God's self where we are.
So many of us may hear that word kenosis and self emptying and think it means, like, letting go of all that we have to the point where we enter into scarcity mindset.
Like if we could just hold on to something here or there, we would be better or we would have enough.
But what we hear in this hymn is that it's the opposite of scarcity. To let go in the way Jesus goes means to let go of ego, fear, the stuff of competition.
And it makes us go from clenched hands to having a wide enough heart to have a better capacity to give love and to receive it.
So that's the revelation we're working with the sort of kenosis love, which leads to unity, but there's also resilience.
Now, Paul was not a neuroscientist, as far as I know, but he is working here alongside side what we now have scientific proof for that. Leaning in to practices that help us practice joy and gratitude help to change us, body, mind and soul. And again, not just as individuals, but as a group.
When we practice and focus on things like singing, we see positive changes even at a cellular level.
Hearts are stronger, livers function better, we have better neuroplasticity. The brain's ability to grow and change hormone regulation is better. In the body, singing is linked to activation of the vagus nerve, which helps to regulate heartbeats, digestion and immune response. It goes on and on, right?
Paul knew what he was talking about when he told us to sing out this joy.
But as I said, it's a unifier of all of us. It's perhaps the ultimate kenosis action because as we sing together and we give our voice to the community that joins together in singing, our brain waves start to beat in time with the music, Our heartbeats will go at the same tempo. Isn't that fascinating?
When we sing, especially in community, we're actually making neurological responses that help lower the stress and make us feel more at one equanimity grows together.
That part is joy.
And so, given all of this, it should not surprise us that singing has always been a central part of Christian liturgy. We believe this cosmic principle so much that we stick it right at the heart of the Eucharistic prayer, where we are told to lift our voices as we sing with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven forever sing their hymn of praise, Holy, holy, holy.
Every time we sing that song, they're singing it in heaven.
So we believe we have the same mindset, brain waves that they are having in heaven, the same heartbeat that the heavenly hosts are singing with.
That is how our mindset literally becomes the mindset of heavenly Christ.
Okay, so we have the revelation this is God's giving of God's self emptying love that helps us put on the mindset of Christ and joy.
And then we have resilience, that practicing, singing and joyful practices like this will change us on an emotional, spiritual, and physiological level so that we can grow in our capacity to be resilient.
And then finally, we also have revolution.
The New Testament has many stories of Christ followers being thrown in jails.
They are often seen when they get there as singing hymns of praise of God throughout the night.
They do this to strengthen their heart. They do this to feel like they are one with each other and God. And they are doing this so that they can stand firm in their convictions.
An amazing thing happens when they start to sing. Often their own jailers are converted in their faith. Sometimes there's like earthquakes and the jails are open wide.
We see this as a tactic that is not unique to Paul, but is practiced by Christians over and over again when they find themselves in the darkest nights of the soul.
Why is that?
Well, let's take Paul, for example. He's in prison because his words are both deeply philosophical and theological, but also political.
The Roman Empire saw the emperor as also a God, and you're not to bow down to anybody but that emperor.
But Paul says later in this hymn, he uses the phrase that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not Caesar, Jesus Christ.
That's one of the reasons, maybe the reason why Paul is in prison. Rome cares about the religiosity, sure, but they care also about the political nature of what he says and what he sings.
So the earliest Christians were clearly singing to give themselves that theological teaching, to give themselves resiliency training and to be unified with Christ to help resist the powers of evil which corrupt this world.
This is still happening amongst people of faith today.
I'll give you an example.
Just this past week, I had the honor of gathering with over 80 clergy and community leaders in Minneapolis to take part in a Kingian nonviolence training.
We were being, as the name suggests, trained in the principles and skills of community organizing for social change utilized by Martin Luther King Jr. And the leaders of the non violent resistance movement of the civil rights movement.
Now, these practices and mindsets are still evolving and being used worldwide today.
These trainings are normally held in Selma, but the level of organization that has been happening on the ground in Minneapolis post George Floyd's murder and this year's shootings of Alex Peretti and Renee Goode and the other victims of ICE brutality had us moving there to help train people on the ground in this loving movement.
Now, the trainers themselves were tour de force. They were people who had been trained directly by leaders of the movement. Movement.
And that had the very impressive double effect of giving us their own concrete examples of living out nonviolence, but also powerful stories of pain and joy from the original civil rights leaders themselves.
And one of the single most important tools used then and now is, you guessed it, singing.
We've all seen this in these videos, right of where freedom marchers are singing we shall overcome, we shall overcome someday.
There's so many of these historical songs.
We sang many of them. Some of them I knew, some of them I'd never heard of.
But it didn't just stop with a history lesson.
There were, of course, and are still singing movements today.
There's a nationwide group that we have a chapter of here in D.C. called singing resistance, where people are writing modern songs, giving them theological grounding and non violence to give them resiliency, to have courage and to give them power to stand up in the face of pain and injustice.
One of the protest songs that we learned out there has the words that no one is getting left behind this time.
No one is getting left behind.
We get there together or we can't get there at all.
That sounds a lot like unity to me. It sounds a lot like an image of the kingdom of God where no one gets left behind.
Paul is in prison doing the exact same thing.
He's doing the work that we've been continuing for 2000 years and will continue to see sing out the power of God's love so that we can know the revelation of hope, the resiliency of joy, and the revolution of love.
It's as easy and powerful as singing out.
So our homework, if you can call it that this week, is to pick something to memorize and sing.
We have a whole leaflet in front of you full of service music, sometimes one liners, like the response we sing at the store. Psalm is a perfect one to learn to chant throughout your week, or a verse from one of our beautiful hymns.
It's a way to write this on our hearts so that we don't forget it and that we can sing out when we are called upon to live out God's love.
Now look, if you're saying to yourself, I don't like to sing, I don't have a good voice. It's not really my thing. I will remind you that the psalmist says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord, not like a perfectly pitched one. It's not about that.
It's a way to get this in our soul. This ancient tool of singing that has been used for generations for a reason.
It's going to give you the ability to keep going. It's going to give you a chance to walk in joy and justice. It's going to build your resiliency capacity. It's going to give you the courage to resist whatever evil you face this way week. Evil, pain, injustice. Whether it's weariness, whether it's fear, whether it's a system that's broken, whatever you need, wherever you're being asked to show up embodying the mind of Christ, you'll be able to do it. Because you've practiced the kenosis of singing as your prayer.
So practice it.
Really pray it. This week. Find how transformative it can be to be a person who is mindful like Christ, in joy, in action, in love, in humility and self giving. Watch how it grows. Grows you as a person. Not diminishes, but grows.
So that at the name of Jesus, when people hear us singing that name over and over again, knees will bow, hearts will be lifted up and joy will be everlasting.
Amen.
