“Do nothing from selfish conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to the interests, but to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4).

 

Paul’s theology, his way of thinking about God, Christ, and the church, didn’t come out of thin air. It was forged in the crucible of people trying to live in community with each other – the community we call the early church. This community argued with each other. There were power plays, put downs, and people puffing themselves up. Back then, church could be as it can be today - a real ego-fest.  And as the Sufi poet, Hafez, once wrote:

 

“The only problem with not castrating a gigantic ego

is that it will become amorous

and end up fathering a hundred screaming ideas and kids,

Who will then all quickly grow up

and skillfully proceed

to run up every imaginable debt…

This would concern normal parents and seekers of freedom

and the local merchants nearby as well…

 

When I talk about the “ego”, I’m not referring to a discrete thing. It’s a shorthand way of referring to that cluster of desires that are born from a singular insatiable desire for more – more of everything. This egoic cluster that ends us fathering a hundred screaming ideas and kids is behind the potential economic meltdown in the United States. Its name is debt, an economic contract between banks and consumers – you and me – to service our reliable desire for more: more cars, bigger homes, more expensive holidays, more toys, more luxury, and more convenience. The screaming kid that is the current debt crisis is symbolic of an economic system that is bloated with the desire of the many who cannot afford the lifestyle of the few. I’m no economist but propping this system up so that everybody can continue to borrow money to fulfill dreams that the planet cannot sustain and the majority of the people cannot sustain is well – unsustainable. When do we deal with the spiritual crisis underlying the economic crisis?

 

When Paul needed to intervene in these fledgling church communities scattered through the Mediterranean basin, he couldn’t simply issue a parental injunction: “Stop acting like two year olds!” It wouldn’t have worked then, and it certainly doesn’t work today. Paul invokes the authority of the one he calls “Christ Jesus”. (It’s interesting that when you reverse the order of those words like he did, there’s less temptation to think that Christ is Jesus’ last name – it’s not “the” Christ is a title, the Messiah or anointed one.)

 

Most early church communities believed that the fullness of God took up residence within the historical man, Jesus of Nazareth, and did so in a unique and unrepeatable way. God became human, so that humans could become divine, is how one early church father puts it. If this is your belief then it follows that if we want to know the nature of Ultimate Reality – or God – we look to Jesus of Nazareth. And what we find, in Paul’s words, is a man “who did not count equality with God a thing to be exploited (or grasped), but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (2:8).

 

The true sign of a great person – one who is living out of their divine nature - therefore, is not one who is bloated by chasing after one desire after another, but rather one who empties himself or herself. The power this person desires to exercise is the power to serve, not to be served. It doesn’t matter if you a king or a queen, a CEO or a line worker, we exhibit the greatness of Christ Jesus, when we get it that we are here to serve a higher purpose than to father 100 children and ideas of the ego.

 

This willingness to “empty” ourselves as Christ emptied himself  requires a nuanced understanding. Much of our life is, after all, about expressing ourselves, not emptying. In truth, life is a dialectic that swings back and forth between these two poles of self-emptying and self-expression. There are entire stages or phases of our life when it is appropriate to be in self-expression. The two year old absolutely needs to go through this phase. So does the teenager. If we’ve been emotionally wounded in such a way that has caused us to disappear from the world, our life is more about showing up – expressing ourselves. For the last 40 years, the feminist revolution has empowered women, after 1000’s of years of being silenced by society, to show with your distinctive needs and wants and ways of being. There is a place and a time to honour self-expression to be sure. But even this requires a nuanced understanding, which I will return to in a moment.

 

It is perhaps more difficult for us to appreciate the place of self-emptying in our journey toward fullness of being. It is so counter-cultural. How is that we discover our full human potential and even our divine nature through self-emptying? Scholars call this reading from Philippians the “kenotic” passage. Kenosis is a Greek word that means “to empty” or to “make room” for the other. In theological jargon, Jesus gave up his divine status in order to be fully human. And in the process of relinquishing this status, he made room for humans to discover their divine nature. And in that process of self-emptying he discovered the fullness of God within him.

 

 Let’s bring this down to reality, shall we? We’ve all been out for dinner with a person who was so full of himself or herself that it was impossible to get a word in edge wise. Such a person shows a remarkable lack of curiosity in his dinner guests’ lives. Even though, she may regale us with one fantastic tale about his or her life after another, we sense that this inability to make space for anybody else reveals an inner emptiness. Their lives seem full on the outside – but hollow inwardly.

 

Recently, I was part of a group in which one person felt such an irrepressible urge to always speak up first and then go one for such long periods of time that there was no room for anybody else to be present. There was another man in the group, who said very little. Rather he watched in stillness. And when he did speak, he conveyed great wisdom that benefited the whole group and moved the process along. One of the women shared a poem with us about building a fire. Essentially it conveyed that in order to build a good fire, the space between the logs was just as important as the logs themselves. If you try to make the fire stronger by piling on the logs – especially in the beginning – you’ll just snuff out the fire. The empty space is just as important as the log when building a fire. The person in our group who just kept piling on the logs of his own ego was putting the fire out, while the one who left space and then added the log of wisdom at the appropriate moment stoked the fire and was in service to the group. He exemplified a kenotic way of being.

 

When you listen to another person are you actually listening? Or are you just putting in time until they are finished so that you can make your point? Watch yourself when you are listening – especially when you are listening to your spouse when the content is a little bit threatening. Is it possible to leave a space for his or her reality? Can you get out of the way in a manner that leaves both your integrity and your spouse’s reality in tact? It is an art. It is, truly, a sacred art. The human species has not yet evolved to this stage of development. That particular civic process known as an “election” is very discouraging in this regard. No candidate can afford to “empty” himself or herself and take the form of a servant – even though this is the foundation of the democratic process.

 

I noticed during the recent Presidential debate that Mr. Obama at least tried to give credit to Mr. McCain when credit was due, but this wasn’t reciprocated. In elections, to leave room for the other is to be considered weak. Each candidate talks for as long as possible so that the other has less time to express his views. The public perception of strength is one who is able to impose their will. That’s what we want in a leader, not somebody who is able to empty himself or herself and take the form of a servant.

 

Now expand the lens. Let’s go big picture for just a moment or two. My own theology, my understanding of God’s relationship with all of creation is kenotic. God is fully present in the evolutionary process of creation at all levels – geological, biological, and at the social, cultural levels of human existence. But God is present in a kenotic way – always leaving space for the rest of reality at all the levels I just mentioned to grow and to flourish following their own evolutionary path. God is the non-coercive, or stated positively, the persuasive presence of love. If you are a parent you know something about this kenotic way of being. The best that you can do is to hold your children in loving intention and let them find their own evolutionary path. You create the conditions for them to flourish, but it is the loving space you leave for their own development – your own kenotic emptying – that creates the conditions for them to thrive. You are always present to them, even when you are not intervening. You are present kenotically, holding them in the space that is love. This is how God is present at all times to us.

 

 Here’s where the paradox, the nuanced understanding I referred to earlier, comes into the picture. The emptiness is not really empty. It is fecund – full of life and full of love. It is full of awareness. It is full of the true freedom we are all seeking. Paradoxically, the emptiness is full. And self-expression is not the opposite of self-emptying. Rather, true self-expression, capital “S”, flows from self-emptying.

We tap into this fullness of being by emptying ourselves of ego. It is possible to experience this fullness of being in the silence of meditation – no thoughts, no images – just alert awareness. When mediators are hooked up to brain scans, this space of the empty mind correlates with a delta or theta brain wave. There is evidence that the brain is highly active. Meditation creates neural connections between the two hemispheres of the brain, enabling mediators to think in a more holistic way – in a more holy way. They become the parents, not of 100 screaming ideas that quickly grow up and proceed to run up every imaginable debt, but rather parent ideas that are born of a sacred wisdom.

 

This emptying, then, is not passive. Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, introduced the practice of the Tao, or The Way. It was the way of non-action that was active; of emptiness that was full; of non-intervention that changed everything. It involved a deep trust in an invisible sacred wisdom that was no thing and that took up no space – In Taoism the task is to empty oneself so that we might enter the Way and live from this place of Wisdom. Science calls this sacred wisdom “information” – it has no mass and no energy, yet it is what enables life to evolve from the inside out – without the action of any external agent.

 

Perhaps it’s time we collectively experimented with ending the project of obsessively filling our lives up. Perhaps this way of self-emptying may afford us the opportunity to discover the practice of joyful servanthood. Fortunately, we have a group of women in this congregation who have modeled this kind of servanthood for 50 years.

We give God thanks for the work, the love, and the service of the Maple group whose joyful service has enriched and continues to enrich our community of faith.