We often use a lot of words trying to explain the mystery of faith. But the mystery of faith is really quite simple to articulate: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Today on Passion Sunday we not only contemplate, but seek to enter more deeply into one aspect of Christ’s Paschal Mystery: his passion and death. On Passion Sunday, we observe Holy Week in a compressed way.
Compression is the force used by nature to create diamonds. Hopefully, our compressed Holy Week today will crystallize and turn our observance of the sacred Triduum, which begins at sundown on Thursday with our celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, into something truly beautiful for God and conform us individually and together more into the image of Christ.
What is the image of Christ into which we are to be evermore conformed? St. Paul, in our reading from his Letter to the Philippians, gives us a deep insight into Christ’s image when, using an ancient Christian hymn, he tells us that Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh, did not deem equality with God something to be held onto.
Several weeks ago, at their First Scrutiny, our Elect (those who will be baptized next Saturday at the Easter Vigil) were presented with the Nicene Creed. It only takes reading through the Creed once to see that it is what we might call asymmetrical.
The only thing we say about God, the Father, that is not in relation to the Son and/or the Holy Spirit is very brief: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”
Jumping ahead in the Creed, we profess belief in “the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” And we end with the very compressed profession- “I believe one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
Between what we profess about God, the Father in and of himself and what we profess about the Holy Spirit, we find the majority of the Creed, which is all about Jesus, without whom we could not call God “Father” or have the Holy Spirit in full measure.
Pope Saint John Paul II began his first encyclical letter, Redemptor hominis, with these words: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history.”1 From the beginning Christ, the only and eternally begotten Son of the Father, who is “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God” is, was, and always will be the center of the universe. As the scripture says, everything was created through, by, and for him.2
A better translation of the beginning of our passage from Philippians than the one usually rendered is Jesus Christ, “Who, being in the form of God…” It is God’s very nature to be self-giving, self-sacrificing. It is a debased theology, paganism, to view divinity in any other way than how God is revealed in Jesus Christ.
In order to be the center of history, eternity had to step into time and infinity had to enter space. Christ seeks to share his divinity with us. This is why he emptied himself, “taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance.”3 It is also why he “humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”4
The Greek word for “emptied” in our reading from Philippians is a form of the verb kenosis. In context, kenosis can also mean “to make of no reputation” or to be reduced to nothing. Why does this parsing of words matter? It matters because Jesus not only emptied himself for love of you, for you and for your salvation he not only condescended to become human, he allowed himself to be humiliated and killed for love of you.
In the verse immediately preceding our reading from Philippians the apostle exhorted the church in Philippi to “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,” before going on to note that “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself,” etc.5
My dear sisters and brothers, this is the attitude we are to have among ourselves. It’s the only way others will know we are Christians. It is Christ who brings us together week after week, month after month, year after year. It is Christ who brings to the threshold of this Holy Week. Jesus Christ is the reason, the point and purpose, of St. Olaf Parish.
If the Eucharistic liturgy is truly theologia prima, that is, prime, or first, theology, then it is during Holy Week, especially the Triduum, which, as Christians, are our high holy days - the Easter Vigil being the main liturgy of the entire year - that we see the words that comprise the Creed are an -urgy, not an -ology.
The word “urge,” from which we derive the suffix -urgy, means to act, or, in the case of the liturgy, to enact. It means to do something. By contrast, an -ology is abstract. In English we usually define -ology as “the study of” something, as in biology, theology, psychology, etc. Without a doubt, following Christ is an -urgy, not an -ology. At the end of your life, you won't be given an exam in systematic theology.
Being a Christian isn’t about doing the right thing or even about doing the right thing for the right reason. It is about doing everything with the love of Christ. This does not mean doing what you do in a cloying or obnoxious way. Rather, it is about being patient, gentle, kind, and- this is important!- joyful.
Yesterday, praying Morning Prayer with those who aspire to become deacons and their wives, I was struck by this prayer in the Intercessions: “Jesus, meek and humble of heart, clothe us with compassion, kindness and humility – make us want to be patient with everyone.”6 This, friends, is Christian prayer!
May our observance of this Passion Sunday prepare us for the Easter Vigil. And may Jesus, the man of no reputation, who for our sake let himself be reduced to nothing and who, in the words of Rick Elias, “loves us all with relentless affection,” by his passion and cross, heal our hearts of darkness, our hearts of stone.7
1 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter, Redemptor hominis, sec. 1.↩
2 Colossians 1:15-23.↩
3 Philippians 2:7.↩
4 Philippians 2:8.↩
5 Phillippians 2:5-7.↩
6 Liturgy of the Hours, Morning Prayer, Intercessions for Fifth Saturday of Lent.↩
7 Rick Elias off Rich Mullins’ The Jesus Record, “Man of No Reputation,” 1998.↩
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