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To Have the Mind of Christ
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis May 1, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill John 15:12-17 I Corinthians 2:1-16
Human life needs many things in order to sustain it: some very tangible things like food and water and shelter; some less tangible things like acceptance and love and a purpose. Among those less tangible things is this need that we have for a perspective from which to make sense of our lives. We seek a clue, a truth, a “revelatory moment”, to put the matter theologically, that will enable us to order the disparate experiences of life into a meaningful, coherent whole, to see a pattern and purpose in human history, to overcome the incongruities between what life is and what it ought to be.” [John Leith] On one hand, we are born into those experiences that purport to provide clues concerning who we are in the world and why. Heredity and environment conspire to order our response, to impose a particular perspective as we emerge from the womb. But in another sense, part of being human is seeking for our selves a point of reference, a standpoint in the world—often in direct opposition to the one we were born into! What we come to know of our lives short of that “revelatory moment” is simply this: that we move restlessly in and out of many frames of reference, various perspectives, a multitude of vantage points before we arrive at the life given us by God to live. As children we lived in reference to our parents or a best friend or a teacher. Perhaps along the way there was a mentor through whose eyes we saw the world for a while…or a great writer or thinker or artist…who caused us to taste, touch, see, hear as though for the first time. We enter lifelong relationships that cannot help but redefine our perspective: lover, spouse, parent, grandparent, friend. There are jobs that have required us to view every waking moment through a certain set of priorities, defining us by our performance, ordering our days by our productivity. There is the nation whose meta-narrative would claim our allegiance and always the pull of family, be it 10th generation back to the Mayflower or first to set foot on these shores, be it staunchly Republican or seriously Democrat, be it North Philly or Mainline. All of these frames of reference surround us, claim us, call us into the world and shape us in such a way that we have it in us to do this and not that, notice one thing and ignore the other, live for these reasons and distain the rest. So we are each a peculiar mixture of Aunt Esther’s stubbornness, our fifth grade teacher’s favoritism, our first love’s taste in music, our parents’ politics, our middle child’s vulnerability, our grandfather’s sense of history and our chance study of the Metaphysical poets. Somehow through the minds and hearts of so many others’ perspectives, we eclectically fall into our own. Still, we are left with only penultimate responses to the question which is ours to answer, the question as to our life’s meaning and purpose. We are restless until we find our rest in reference to the One for whom we were made and no other. That was Paul’s point in chapter after chapter of his letter to the Corinthians. They were obviously people of many minds, following Apollos or Cephas or Paul. Being impressed by the wisdom of the age, the rulers of the land, the wealthy and well-known, they lived in reference to everything else around them save for the One whose followers they claimed to be. “I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no division among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose,” by which Paul meant more than that the Corinthians should to come to a Quaker-like sense of the meeting. Rather he names the singular “revelatory experience” they share, the “intelligible event in the light of which other events become intelligible”: “I have decided to know nothing among you,” he writes, “except Jesus Christ and him crucified…that your faith might not rest in the [world’s] wisdom but in the power of God.” In a word, the mind he means them to have is the mind of Christ. But what did he mean by that mind? Perhaps we would do well to say, at the outset, what he did not mean. In a world where not only evangelists but politicians are apt to assure you of the exact mind of God on any given issue [especially if sex is involved], having the mind of Christ does not mean that you hold in your head an answer in every circumstance to the question: what would Jesus do? Nor does it mean having at the ready a set of moral absolutes or behavioral norms that can be imposed or transposed from the first century to the twenty-first by way of either liberal ideologies or conservative theologies! What then could Paul have meant? I think his letters presume that to have the mind of Christ, in the first place, is to dwell in Scripture, in the story of the God who--through the history of Israel and the person of Jesus Christ--addresses us and gives us the ground on which to stand. The church, the ecclesia is, in fact, defined as those who are called out by God’s address in the words of Scripture and the Word-made-flesh in Jesus Christ. What we are doing here is listening…together …for the mind of Christ! Now as people in our theological tradition have listened, have dwelt together in Scripture, they have found that this dwelling did not fill their minds with answers, but rather shaped the questions they brought to economics and politics, to the home and the work place, to the neighbor and the stranger. One’s perspective, then, becomes not that of knowing but being known. One’s days are spent not in certainty but expectation. One’s heart and mind are transformed and conformed to the God who dwells with us in God’s word, to the Spirit which blows where it will, to the mind of Christ. Anne Lamott tells the story of “a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, ‘Why on our hearts, and not in them?’ The rabbi answered, ‘Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.’” This is no technique I am suggesting, for it often takes a broken heart to hear Scripture rightly and with grace. Yet I believe that as we listen together and God’s Spirit works within us, we become those who are addressed by the living God and given a perspective as wide and wild as that of the prophets when we open the newspaper, a perspective as tender and vulnerable as that of Mary when we swaddle our firstborn, a perspective as confident and courageous as the apostles when we take the first step toward doing something brave for Christ’s sake, a perspective as hopeful and trusting as the early church when we risk all that we are and have on God’s promises. Scripture gives parabolic shape to our imaginations such that as we venture way out to a land promised, we finally circle back by another way to the God who is our home and has awaited our return for years! In the second place, to have the mind of Christ is to be sent out as one who sees life from the perspective not of saving it but of losing it, of spending it, of giving it away for the sake of another. “This is my commandment,” Jesus said to the twelve at the end: “that you love one another as I have loved you.” How has he loved? He laid down his life for us. Therefore wrote Paul, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Christ has commanded us to love in this way. With that command in mind, I tell you every moment of every day is given as a moment redeemed from insignificance. The perspective you bring to every instance is “to do that which is ‘better than to receive, namely, to give….Love is an action of giving, and it is therefore one in which we move out from ourselves,” says Karl Barth, “and affirm in practice that we do not belong to ourselves, and never have….” To have such a mind in this world is unimaginable, is inconceivable, is humanly impossible except for the fact that Christ’s mind is the clue that “enables us…to see a pattern and purpose in human history, to overcome the incongruities between what life is and what it ought to be,” to understand as if for the first time what it means to be human…and then to be forgiven, moment by moment, for falling so far short. Finally though certainly not exhaustively, to have the mind of Christ is to be given the gift of knowing to whom you belong, in life and in death, and so to live in a freedom from every penultimate perspective that would claim you—be it the narrowness of your own mind or the domination of another’s. Our reference is the cross, says Paul, in whose shadow alone we may stand to see the height and depth and length and breadth of God’s love. Now I tell you all of this for a reason this morning. At the last meeting of the congregation, you elected officers to serve this church. You listened to their names being placed in nomination and then, like citizens of this country, you voted them into office. But that is where the similarity ends. For while politicians must spend their days making promises to this group and deals with that; while they traverse the nation convincing all who will listen that they share with them a common perspective, swearing to represent this constituency or that region, the officers of this church—who are also representatives—represent another. You elected them to represent the mind of Christ in all of their doing and deciding. Therefore I charge you who are about to be ordained and installed as elders and deacons to do just that: to live among us as those who live in reference to the Living God; who more and more, day by day, dwell in Scripture with your whole heart and mind and soul and strength; who not only give yourself away for Christ’s sake, but lead the rest of us to do the same; who are held in such freedom that you look not to us for confirmation, but to Jesus Christ and him crucified. Abide in his love that you may receive grace to be the person he has called you to be in this place and for this time. In other words, have the mind of Christ! |