Philippians 2.1-13; Matthew 21.23-32
Today’s readings from Paul and Matthew are sobering stuff for those of us in the religion game. They both contain warnings against religious pride. This is a pitfall for all Christians, to be sure, but we who follow supposedly special callings and wear special garb to prove it are perhaps particularly prone. It behoves us to heed these warnings because pride, as we know, isn’t just irritating – it isn’t just that those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do – no, it’s that pride is deadly.
Paul tells the Philippians to ‘do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit’. Why? Because we are to be like Christ, who ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’. Easier said than done, you might think, but we are not called simply to try and be like Christ as best we can, using our own natural faculties. We are called to something altogether more astonishing. We are called to receive Christ’s very mind as our own: ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,’ says Paul. This is nothing other than the Holy Spirit herself dwelling in us as she dwells in Jesus, transforming us into the likeness of the Father. This passage is far more than moral advice – it is a mystical invitation.
Now, I say we are not called to achieve this transformation with our natural faculties, but to be more precise, we are not called to achieve it with our fallen natural faculties. We are created to be like God – that is our true nature – but insofar as we are turned away from God and towards created things as though they were gods, we have lost this nature. The Holy Spirit’s work is to restore our minds to their natural state by re-orientating them back towards our Creator, enabling us to know him, to love him, and in loving him to become like him. Love is the hallmark of looking God, and love is where Paul begins this passage: ‘If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.’ If the Spirit is in us then it is the same Spirit in all of us, and so we are of one mind, the mind of God. It may not always seem this way. We all filter the voice of God very differently, through our fallen minds and through the meshes of our unique and complex lives. We seem to hear vastly different things a lot of the time. But insofar as we are willing to make the attempt to listen at all, we can trust that our redeemer is drawing us into a unity of mind on a far deeper level than mere passing opinion – a unity which will one day be complete. In the meantime we get glimpses, surprises, moments when we find ourselves unexpectedly in deep and prayerful harmony with someone we don’t normally get on with. This cannot be engineered by our own efforts. It is a gift – the gift of hope. But we must be ready to receive this gift. And so our own efforts are essential, the right kind of effort: the effort of cooperation, obedience, of attentive yielding in prayer. So faith is cooperating with what we know is happening out of sight, hope is a glimpse of our future state, and love is the fulfilment of both in the here and now. It is the fulfilment of our joy: ‘Make my joy complete,’ says Paul.
There is no room here for pride but only humility. God’s love is the same gift to us all and none of us owns it, so we are to hold it lightly, with wonder and gratitude. We are to wonder at it in each other, to regard others as better than ourselves, as Paul says. We are not to grasp at our calling in the Church, or to use it for the elevation of our own status. ‘Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.’ Now this is not to say that he could have exploited it if he had wanted to, but that to exploit equality with God simply doesn’t make logical sense. Only false gods are exploitable, the inventions of human envy and pride, and these gods erode our humanity. The true God fulfils it. Christ, in being fully divine, is the fully restored human. God is un-exploitable because he is all gift. To be equal with God is to become that gift, to be eternally receiving it and passing it on just as Christ did, emptying himself even to death on a cross. This is the paradoxical glory of human life. Our dying to ourselves is our exaltation. ‘Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,’ says Paul. It’s always tempting to read that verse as the final reversal of Christ’s humility. But in fact it is its eternal continuity. The humility of Christ is his glory from age to age, because it is his freedom to love without limit. This is why we bow down and worship him – not because he is impressive, but because he is free.
In Matthew’s gospel, the minds of the chief priests and the elders have become entirely disorientated. They have turned away from God and become obsessed with human status. Instead of marvelling at the free gift of Jesus, they demand to know where he gets it. ‘Who do you think you are?’ they are saying. He challenges them back: ‘With your minds so fixated on worldly power, are you even able to recognise the humble power of God? Did you recognise it in John the Baptist?’ The elders are caught in a trap of their own making – the trap of having to preserve their authority: if they refuse to recognise John, the people will turn on them; if they do recognise him they will have to give up all pretence at having higher status. Then Jesus drops the bombshell: it is not those who make a claim to religious authority who will enter the kingdom of heaven, not those who have said yes to his call but then failed to go, but those who are humble enough to change their minds. This is metanoia, the Greek word for repentance – change of mind. Jesus accuses the elders of being too sure of themselves to admit what they see: ‘Even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.’
So for those of us who make a claim to a religious calling – to the priesthood, to the monastic life, or simply to call ourselves by the name of Christian – today’s passages are not just a warning but an invitation. They are an invitation to let go. Stop clinging to your ideas of who you think you are, or who you think you have to be to live up to your role. Put down that heavy burden, look up and see the wonder before your eyes, and let your mind be changed. It’s so painful to admit you’ve been getting it wrong and wasting your time on a fiction. But if you can, if you can stoop and surrender, counting yourself among the tax collectors and prostitutes who know they’ve been getting it wrong and how much it has cost them, then you will see the humble truth and it will set you free. Then it will be a joy to regard others as better than yourself, because it will be the enjoyment of seeing Christ in them and believing again for the first time.