I love scripture. I love the Bible. There are many things I love about it. One of the things I love is how rich it is. How I can go back to a passage that I have heard or read countless times before, and I can hear or see something new in it. It speaks to me differently, sometimes every time I go back to it. Sometimes it is because a particular phrase has gotten lost in all the rich things, or by the bigger feeling or more important stuff around it. Sometimes it is because there is something going on in my life that wasn’t going on before that made something jump out in a new way.
This is very much the experience I had with this reading. Philippians is a letter I have read many times, the 2nd Chapter is central to so much of our faith. I have read this so many times, and yet there is this verse that I never really noticed before. It’s always been there. I guess I read it. I’m sure I read it, but it just jumped out to me in a new way.
Paul says, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” This passage, of course, is so consistent with the Gospels. It is so consistent with Jesus’s teachings on loving your neighbors as yourself, his teachings in the Beatitudes, his teachings in washing the Disciples’ feet. It resonates with his very life. Paul goes on in this passage to say that looking not to your own interests, but to the interests of others is the mind of Christ.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.”
The very Incarnation, and the death and resurrection of Jesus speak to this very truth that Paul wants us to live by: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Jesus’s very life was all about considering the interests of others.
That line, for me as I heard it, read afresh today. It resonates with me so profoundly in this present moment that we find ourselves in, in all the crises that we face as a society. At the root of them is this question of whose interest is at stake, and will we act in the interests of others?
Take the pandemic: for most of us, getting Covid 19 is not particularly dangerous. The number of asymptomatic people is enormous. The number of people who have some symptoms but are relatively mild is substantial. There are a number of people who have had bad symptoms but recover, there are a number of people who die, and there are others who have serious, long-term symptoms who are proportionally a small number. It seems to be that for many of us, the risk is even lower based upon your age and various health factors that you have. So if I only consider my own self interest, I’m not really at all that high a risk. We do know people of all ages and all health situations have died from Covid 19, but they are the exception, not the rule. I am not personally, at a very high risk.
Does that mean I should go live my life normally? “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” As followers of Jesus, the answer of course is no. I have to concern myself with this pandemic, not for my own interests, not because I am at a particularly high risk, but because of others, because of those who are vulnerable, because of those who will most likely die. We know there are people who have decades of life ahead of them who have a very high risk of dying if they get Covid 19. 200,000 people have had their lives cut short by this. I read one study that said the average life span of those who have died was shortened by 11.7 years. As a follower of Jesus, I have to concern myself with them.
All the other crises have the same question at their core. What is my interest? What is the interest of others? Will I consider the interest of others? The fight for racial justice: will I as a white person be willing to consider the interests of black lives? Will I help them to matter in this society? Will I help them to thrive and flourish in society, or will I only consider my own interests?
The environmental struggles that we are facing: will I concern myself with those who are at the boundary between forest fires and the city? With sea levels rising am I going to concern myself with those who live in the vulnerable areas? Will I concern myself with future generations who are the ones most at risk because of the choices we are making at this moment? Will I concern myself with my own interests or the interests of others?
I think this is at the core of all the challenges we are facing as a society. Do we concern ourselves with the interests of others? Will we consider and will we work for the common good?
This is another book that I love, the Prayer Book. Another book that I read and pray with every day. It is also another book that is profoundly rich. I go back and pray a prayer that I have been praying for years, and suddenly something will jump out at me in a new way. A couple of years ago I had that very experience while praying the Compline Service. This is the prayer:
O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
May we never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil. That is the question of the common good. Each of us is connected to the other, and each of us who are called by Jesus to follow him have to concern ourselves with that common good, with the other. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Right after this passage Paul goes on to say that in the midst of this world, and all of its many flaws, we can be light. We can be stars in the midst of it, lighting this world. What that means is that we are willing to consider the interests of others. Every act that we take on behalf of other people is a light in this world. In this world that is full of so much suffering, we have the possibility of bringing light to the midst of if when we consider the interests of others and we act for the common good.
So, my friends in Christ, that is my prayer for all of us. That we can have that mind of Christ to consider others and to act on their behalf for the common good.
AMEN
