The Divine Crash

Recently my internet went out. So I am forced to use the internet on my 3G iPad which is great for small thing but there are still something I just can’t do. One of them is upload my sermon audio to this blog. So please enjoy the notes from my last sermon at Eldersville UMC. Once my internet is back up I will upload the audio to here and to my podcast.

Like I said, this is my last sermon as the pastor at Eldersville UMC. It has been an interesting year and I give this sermon with some sadness and sorrow because there is still so much more I want to do here at this church, but as far as God is concerned my time here is up and I am on to the next step in my journey. Harrsiville UMC on July 1.

Scripture: Philippians 2:5-11
Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.
Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God highly honored him and gave him a name above all names, so that at the name of Jesus everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

- Attitude the same as Christ. Made himself nothing into a servant

If we take it seriously Jesus is equal with God but considers it something to not hold on to and makes himself nothing.

How does that make us live?

He made himself obedient to death? What does that mean?

I want to look at what it means to be obedient to death.

First the text is Philippians 2:7

Word is Kenos. Greek means nothing.

Sometimes means empty. Jesus emptied himself. His Godness was emptied himself?

To understand this we need to properly understand the way a Jr. High dance works.

to properly understand our verse we need to understand 8th grade dances.

Girls on dance floor, boys in gym playing basketball.
I asked this girl to dance her name was Samantha.
She said nothing and burst into tears, ran to the bathroom and stayed there until her mom picked her up at the end of the night.
-My therapist and I relive this moment on a regular basis.

Anyone relate? what a bunch of liars

When a boy asks a girl to dance in 7th grade the boy has extended himself to her and has put all of himself out there and now she has a choice. Yes or no. or in my case a third option of weeping and sobbing in the bathroom.

She can say yes or she can say no.

The boy gives her the ability to say yes or no in the relationship. She now controls whether the relationship goes on or if it is over.

“When we extend ourselves whether asking someone to dance, to marry, or serving, or out for dinner or loving someone, or calling someone and asking them to hang out, when we extend ourselves to another human being we are giving something away.”

I am giving something away in the relationship where the other person can accept or reject the relationship.

That something is contol.

When we extend ourselves that person now has control.

extending ourselves is risky because they have options.

Love is extending ourselves and therefore love is risky.

When we choose to love we run a great risk of those things happening to us.

To be people who love and live the Jesus way is to be risky people. Because we get stepped on.

Love and control exist on a continuim. they work in tension with each other.

Love and control sometimes exist in opposites.

Love means the other person has control

When we control a person we are not loving them.
- If you know someone who is controlling to their spouse they are not loving their spouse
- I gurantee that the person you know who is the most loving is the least controlling.

Loving people are never controlling and controlling people are never loving.

Matthew 20
- the way of living, the Jesus way of living
- Jesus calls his followers to live a certain way
- love and control work in tention with each other.

Verse 26
- Mom wants sons to be in control
- whoever wants to be great must be servant
- First must be slave.
- Son of man is here to serve not be served.
- Jesus says the greatest is to be servant and slave
– Why? Because loving people are not controlling.
- Jesus always calls his people to be slaves and by that he means living with an awareness that I am going to serve this person with their well-being ahead of mine and because if that is how we live then it is impossible to be controlling. Because love and control exist in tension.

This brings to mind questions:
- What is God like? What does it mean for God to love us?

Job 38
Verse 31-35
- Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
- God speaking to job.
- God controls the whole created order

Isaiah 45:11
- God speaking of his control and mastery to the physical realm

How do you love if you are an all controlling being?
If you are an all controlling God how do you then love? How do you come to people and extend yourself without control?
- You have to give up control
- Philippians 2:5

John 19
- Jesus on the cross
- mocked, stripped, skull injuries, with human spit on his face

verse 28
- Jesus says “I am thirsty”
- If Jesus is God he is tired, naked, bruised, and now thirsty.
- After drinking he says it is finished. and gives up his spirit.

Our picture is a bloody, bruised, naked, and thirsty Jesus.
- Jesus needs help to even get a drink.

I don’t know what your concept of God is but scripture says Jesus is God who voluntarily emptied himself and we end up with a Jewish Rabbi/God who needs a drink

Jesus is God coming to us control free. Here he is in his naked, bloody, helpless. Unable to get himself a drink.

Let’s turn this one more time.

Many would say “God is all powerful, God can do anything.” But in love it is different.

The Cross is God’s way of saying “I can’t do everything.”
- If you are breaking out in hives, calm down.

God cannot make you love him, God cannot turn your heart to him. God cannot make you desire him.

God can do the miraculous, God can do the impossible but God can’t make you love him.

For some reason in God’s power, God has chosen to set it up this way.

Jesus is God control free and he can’t make you love him.

God can make DNA, the grand crayon, a coral reef, and babies, thousands of fish, human brains, people, invent taste, touch, invent love, and smells for your favorite meals,

and that feeling you get just before you dive into a body of water on a hot summer day God created that.

God can create your heart to beat without you even thinking about it but God can’t control what your heart loves.

God can’t make you love him.

In love you have to give up control.

God can do everything, including making a world where he can’t do everything that is just how powerful God is.

The cross is God’s way of saying “I extend myself and give myself to you and I make the first move, I pursue you and I want to know you but I can’t force myself into your heart.”

Popular phrase for Christians “The ground at the foot of the cross is level.” How many have heard this?
- The idea is that God loves everyone and because of the cross no matter who you are, what you did, when you did it, who you did it with or how many times you did it, you can come to God.” No matter what you drag through the door the central message of scripture is that no matter what you are accepted by God. So we as christians celebrate the ground at the foot of the cross is level.
– Are we all in agreement?

At the cross, the ground at the foot of the cross is level for God too.
- Anyone, anytime, no matter what can come and say yes to Jesus.
- But the ground is level for God too.
– In love God has chosen to play by the same rules we have to play by.
– In love we give the other person options too. to accept or reject. To say yes or no.
– Love is risky and love is risky for God too.
– Human beings are a huge risk for God because some of them might say no to God.

The Cross is God’s way of saying I can make your heart beat but I can’t make it beat for me.

The Cross is God’s way of saying I can form your heart, put it in your chest but I can’t make it turn towards me.

The Cross is God’s way of saying I can make your feet to walk but those feet may walk away from me.

The Cross is God’s way of saying I can give you the ability to desire but I can’t make you desire me.

In love God plays by the same rules as we do.

And so, We have the choice to either accept God’s love or reject it. God has prepared everything for us to accept it but we are still left with the decision to make on our own. God loves us enough to let us much that decision and let us live with the consequences of our decision.

To be a christian is to be filled with a sense of desire and a sense of I want to know you God. The Cross is God’s invitation to us saying “Here I am stripped naked, emptied, nothing, and thirsty so that you can be near me.”

So Then, How do we respond?

We say yes.

God is passionate, God pursues us, God is right there chasing after us and wants each of us and keeps going after us creating coincidences where we are forced to say “there is no way that just worked out like that that must have been God.”

God desires us to say “Yes, here is my heart, here are my desires. I give them to you. I love you and I give you the control to respond.”

And when we come to that level ground at the cross and we say yes and give him control we find that God is there and when he has control he loves you.

God, we thank you for the shocking, subversive elements of that Cross that turn upside down our notions of truth and what you are like show us greater truths. May you show us how the world really works and how the universe really is now. May your Spirit clean us out. May we say yes to you. Amen”

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Sermon by RevBT