GOD'S HUMILITY John M. Buchanan
Luke 2:17; Philio ians 2:5-11 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

December 16, 1979 Columbus, Ohio

It used to be my privilege to visit regularly and conduct an occasional Chapel
Service at the Indiana Soldiers Home. The people who lived there were retired mili-
tary persons and their spouses; many of them career officers, I loved my visits. Con-
versations were always lively, opinions felt deeply and expressed readily. It was
almost as if they were compensating for the lifelong silence on political issues prac-
ticed by professional soldiers. I called there during the Vietnam years and as you can
imagine the crusty veterans of Flanders and Normandy were not the least bit happy with
the conduct or the results. I know that they are discussing the matter of the American
hostages in Iran, and I am sure they are unanimous in their opinion as to the appropriate
way to deal with that crisis.

E thought of the residents of the Indiana Soldiers Home this week when Tf was
studying the New Testament lesson we have heard, from St, Paul's letter to the Phil-~
ippians. J thought of them because they are precisely the kind of people to whom Paul
was writing. Philippi was, in fact, somewhat of a retirement center for former military
officers. Philippi gained prominence in 42 B.C. as the sight of one of history's major
and decisive battles, After the assassination of Julius Caesar, the armies of the con-
spirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were opposed by the loyalists, Mark Anthony and
Octavius. Mark Anthony and Octavius were victorious at Philippi: the victory marked the
real beginning of the Roman Empire and when Octavius emerged as Head of State - the
Emperor - the Senate conferred the title Caesar Augustus on him,

Octavius must have had a soft spot in his heart for the place where his dramatic
vise to power began because one of the first things he did was rebuild Philippi, on the
model of a miniature Rome, and populate it with his old soldiers, It was given the rank
of colony. Jt would have had something of the character of a military base. Its mental-
ity would have been martial. And in Philippi, a Roman citizen by the name of Paul, had
planted the seeds of a Christian Church,

These are the people to whom he wrote what was to become one of the most important
and certainly one of the most eloquent passages in the Bible. Philippians 2:5-1l...
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in
the form of Ged, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself.,.humbled himself, became obedient..."

The old soldiers of Philippi, like the old soldiers of Indiana, would have understoo
the business about obedience unto death, That is the military code, It was the self-
emptying, the humility, the conscious renunciation of power which they would have tripped
on, and which was so opposite from everything they had lived by. A soldier understands
power, You don't renounce it, you use it on your enemy. You don't empty yourself: you
protect and extend yourself at the expense of your opponent, Nowhere does the Gospel of
Jesus Christ stand in such sharp contrast to the world as in the passage written, perhaps
for the old soldiers of Philippi. Self-emptying - humility are here defined as charac-
teristics of the new life in Christ, and that - even at Christmas, is radically different

The world, after all, operates largely on a power basis. It always has, The funda-
mental religious question asked by every generation since the beginning of time has to
do with power; namely, if God is all powerful, why do His people suffer? We ask that
question every time a good and dear friend, a loyal church member, a generous human
being is struck down prematurely. Why? Why does God let it happen? Why do God's enemies
prosper and His friends suffer? Why doesn't God do something?

No one ever asked that question more urgently than the ancient Jews at the time of
their exile in Babylon. In the beginning they perceived their God in the same terms

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as their neighbors. Tribal deities gave power to their people: the more powerful the
tribe or nation, the more powerful the deity. Prosperity, economic strength and
military conquests, even the number of concubines enjoyed by the King were all seen as
evidence of God's power and glory. In brief, God was established by the power and
strength of those who claimed His name, During the reigns of Kings like David, Solomon
and Uzziah it was easy to believe that the God of Israel was Lord of all, and His

people chosen from among the whole human race, But it didn't last long: the system
began to unravel in a civil war, a split into two nations, questionable alliances,
finally invasion and conquest. In 587 Jerusalem was vanquished and Solomon's Temple, the
very sign of God's power and presence, was leveled and the population deported,

Paul Tournier observes: "For’a nation which has so totally identified its destiny
with the power of Jahwah, it is much more than a military defeat, it is a religious
calamity, the collapse of the very foundation of its faith, Having for so long proved
God by the suecess of those who served him they began to doubt him in the face of this
complete catastrophe, Where is God's power?'' (The Violence Within, p.107).

There it is - the age old predicament of faith, Why the awful silence of God? Why
do the innocent suffer? Why not peace and harmony instead of war and suffering? A moment
of pure revelation and one of the turning points in the hiscory of religious thought,
came when a prophet, left behind in Judah, wrote to the exiles in Babylon to the effect
that God himself suffers with them,that He identifies with them, that He becomes weak
for their sakes, that He chooses humility.

The prophet used an image of a suffering servant and his words are among the most
poignant in all the language of religion, We read some of them reeronsively:

"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted

yet he opened not his mouth:

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like sheep that before its shearers is dumb ,
so he opened not his mouth."

What an incredible way to be talking about God, What a vast contrast between that
and the brazen and vulgar religions of the world with their petty tyrant gods flexing
their muscles and commanding obeisance at the threat of death, We have not always under-
stood it, but God's chosen humility has been the essential part of our tradition since
that time long ago,

Jesus knew about the words of the prophet, He seems to have understood His
mission in life in terms of Isaiah's description of God's suffering servant. The motif
of self-emptying, humility and the total renunication of power is the most consistent
in His life. He advised His followers, for instance, to become like little children,

He told them that the man who exalts himself will be humbled, He said that in His
Kingdom the first will be last and the last first, He suggested that the way to receive
life was to lose it, and the guaranteed way to lose it was to try to grasp it. And in
the Garden of Gethsemane, at the time of His arrest He said it plainly - "Do you think
that I cannot appeal to my Father who would promptly send more than twelve Legions of
angels to my defense?" , and then allowed himself to be taken away by the guards,

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a radical alternative to the use of power which
characterizes the world, Let's think about that for a moment, We have all experienced
the strange and compelling way in which power translates itself into violence, A
normally placid and peace loving person can, and often does, become aggressive, belliger-
ent, pushy and violent at the wheel of a several hundred horsepower automobile, Child
abuse, one of the truly alarming problems in our culture is a pure example of power

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becoming violence, encouraged by the degree of violence the culture both allows and
celebrates. But far short of physical abuse, every parent knows how easy it is,
because of inherent power, to do verbal and emotional violence to one's children,

Tt took me a long time to come to terms with it, but I am beginning to see that power
always has the potential of violence within it. Tournier, who has written an excellent
book on the subject helped me to see that, He writes: "The more powerful we are, the
greater the constraint, open or hidden, which we exercise upon others, and the more we
thus provoke them to violent reactions, (ob.cit., p.114). That ig a helpful insight as
we think about and are astonished by the intense hatred some of the Iranian people seem
to feel toward us,

One of the truly disturbing assertions in Tournier's book which he documents
thoroughly is that "power confers impunity on violence", From Julius Caesar on down,
powerful men have rationalized their own violence, "Tf you are powerful, your violence
can escape ail retribution. Power is secured by violence, and violence is justified
by power."' (Ob,cit., p.115).

You don't have to look far for the proof of that particular pudding. The history
of Christianity has been an object lesson in the corruption of power. Many scholars
contend that the very worst thing ever to happen to the church was its becoming the
State religion of Rome by edict of the Emperor Constantine, Certainly its worst mistakes
have been committed at the height of its secular power, The verbal violence of a
religious leader in modern Tran has been preceeded by other similar abuses against human
freedom and dignity - on the part of Christian leaders.

Yet we continue to be fascinated with power, Institutionally, we evaluate the
effectiveness of the church on the basis of its size, wealth and strength. Big - even
in churches ~ is beautiful. And we have made personal power into a kind of religious
guest. EST, Assertiveness Training, are important phenomena today. We are encouraged
to flex our muscles, push our weight around, take nothing from anyone and to insist, as
a matter of principle, that we have the right to have things our way. My, I'm weary of
self-assertiveness, I appreciate the psychologial reality fact that many of us could
stand a little more self-esteem, but we have turned the search into an obsession, the
result of which has become the 'Me Generation", It all came home to me in one of those
unexpected, aprochryphal encounters recently. i was waiting a bit impatiently at an
intersection while the driver of the car in front of me conducted an animated conversa-
tion with several young ladies in a van. It went on for some time. Finally, 1 suggested
that they might terminate the conversation and allow me to proceed by blowing my horn.
The driver in front of me put his car in gear and pulled ahead. The girls in the van,
however, pulled directly beside me, the driver looked me in the eye, made the one
universally recognized obscene gesture not two feet from my face, and in the richest
Anglo-Saxon combination of four letter words I had heard for some time gave me a concise
analysis of my personality, looks and ancestry, I was totally surprised - stunned - then
angry, and finally very sad, We heve used self-assertiveness as a socially accepted
excuse for unvarnished adolescent selfishness, We have used the psychologically legit-
imate need for self-esteem as an excuse ta bulldoze anyone who stands in our way.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who loathed the Christian faith for its emphasis on
humility, called it the triumph of smallness and weakness and offered instead a
celebration of strength and power which Nazi theoreticians eagerly used to give legiti-
macy to their Master-race ideologies, We have, in this culture ~ at this time - begun
to behave in a way Nietzsche would have approved, Power is the name of the game,

We buy books which advise how to "Win Through Intimidation", We even arrange our
office furniture so that the boss sits slightly higher than anyone else, But even
though it is our current obsession - integrity demands the observation that power does
not work, It is one of the grandest of delusions: perhaps the biggest lie of all - that
might makes right, or that it even works over the long run.

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Power can change behavior but it cannot convert one single mind, Parents discover
that almost daily with their children. A child can be forced to behave in a certain way
out of fear, But that will not translate into respect, or more importantly, into self
conscious responsible behavior unless there is something more than power involved. The
cause of Jesus Christ was not advanced when the church controlled the minds of men and
women, or when conversions were effected by force, In romance, we discover that love
can never use power to work its will, for if it does, it will negate itself out and
remain empty and alone. Power = our greatest temptation - simply doesn't work..,

In fact, there is a curious way in which real power never resorts to force, but is
expressed in restraint. It is difficult to resist the temptation but thus far the power
of our nation has been eloquently expressed in what we have net done in Iran. The phil-
osopher Georges Gusdorf observed that, "despite appearances violence is more a sign of
weakness than of strength,..Violence is the opposite of strength, for the energy it
brings to bear is the energy of despair.,.The stronger one is, the less one needs to
show one's strength." (Tournier, ibid, p.11).

Power doesn't work. Love works, Strong love which never coerces, never forces, is
never violent. When God wanted to give the gift of salvation to His creation He had, one
must assume, any number of alternatives. When He wanted to show people how to live fully
joyfully, eternally, He could have made it mandatory, But it wouldn't have worked that
way. God, in infinite wisdom, chose to become humble...

Sitting in prison, waiting for his execution by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had
plenty of time to think about God's power in the context of teal, worldly, military
power. And he wrote: "God allows himself to be edged out of the world and unto a cross,
God is weak and powerless in the world and that is exactly the way in which he can be
with us and help us," (Letters and Papers from Prison, p,164),

And so He came among us as a baby. Years later $t, Paul would describe it as a
process of self-emptying, of self-giving so complete that He was obedient unto death. But
for now, as we near the date, we must deal with the incredible miracle of the birth. Ther
is no more descriptive picture of vulnerability and humility than that. There is nothing
less powerful than a new born, Has it been long since you held one in your arms? Can yot
remember the feeling: the slight uneasiness because of the smallness, the total dependency
and vulnerability? There is absolutely no threat of harm in holding a baby. God, I belie,
chose that way to be known among us, Not in thunder and lightning - people have been
seeing their gods in that way since the beginning of time - but in a baby's ery: not in
the majesty of a great cathedral - people have always installed their deities in grand
architectural monuments - but in the utter humility of an infant's birth.

God's humility: He chose it that way because it is the only way we would be con-~
vinced ultimately. Yet, sometimes we miss it. Sometimes in the midst of tinsel and
gifts, in the midst of the very customs with which we hope to observe it, we miss its
humble beauty,

And so, be reminded today, Be reminded in simple wrods written by a Scottish poet:
"They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high,
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry." (George MacDonald}. Amen.

O God, in the middle of all the busyness, the music and activity and celebrating,
help us, once again, to know the humility of the birth of your Son. O God, forgive us
for idolizing power. Help us to see that the only real power is in love. Our Father,
we are grateful for this blessed season: grace it with Your presence: through Jesus
Christ our Lord, Amen,