As You Wish

This Sunday's sermon was on one of my favorite New Testament passages - Phil 2:5-11. Here, Paul explains how Christ demonstrates God's self-giving love. Christ chooses to be downwardly mobile - He gives up His position as God to become human, to be a slave, to die, to die a humiliating and cursed death on a cross. All for the sake of the humanity that He loves. And this, Paul says, is to be our attitude. Give up your rights, position, grasping for the sake of others. The fundamental character of Christ, and therefore of His Body, is self-giving.

What would it mean for us to take that up as our rallying cry? Not "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not "the customer is always right" or "in just a minute", not even "liberty and justice for all"; instead,  "Your will be done" or Wesley's "as you wish" to Buttercup. Maybe it's a little more complicated than that, but if we take self-giving as our baseline, would that change the game a bit? Last week we talked a little about worship. What about giving ourselves to serving our neighbor who does like the songs that we sing? Or to serving the worship leader by participating? A truly Christ-like attitude would change the way we relate as Christians (worship, or Leadership debates in the church) and the way we as a church relate to the world (the Christian conversation around gay marriage). Christ did not come to establish rights but to reveal God's character and Kingdom and to give us grace.

-Josh