“Side-by-side,"
that's what we are talking about this month. Accompaniment, coming
along side one another to listen and to learn, to live and to give
grace. Last Wednesday I shared some thoughts about side-by-side
being a God-thing. It continues today as we reflect on God's Son,
Jesus Christ.
There
are many names and titles given to Jesus of Nazareth: Savior, prophet,
Messiah, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Vine, Shepherd, Cornerstone,
Alpha and Omega, Great High Priest, Lamb of God, on and on. Over
one-hundred, I am sure.
One
name that comes early on in Matthew's story of Jesus is Emmanuel,
which means, God with us. In John's gospel, Jesus is named the Word
that was from God and was God. And, as written in John 1:14, that
this Word became flesh and “dwelt” among us, full of grace and truth.
“God in a bod” is how it went in the 60s and 70s as I recall. This
is the most outrageous claim of Christianity. God the Creator became
the creature. In the Old Testament God accompanied the people through
the presence of fire, clouds, wind, priests, and prophets, the Torah.
In the New Testament God's presence is radically present. In ways
we cannot understand and rarely ponder, God came along humanity
by becoming human.
Philippians
2:5:
5
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
In
Jesus, God accompanies humanity by means of releasing claims to
status or privilege (“did not count equality with God something
to be grasped”) . . . it also required an “emptying” (“but emptied
himself”) . . . but there is more, accompaniment, for God also required
putting something on . . . “slavehood” and “human-hood” (“taking
the form of a slave and being born in human likeness”) and finally,
obedience to death, the ugly death of the cross. This is God-shaped
accompaniment, if you will. What is for God is for God's people,
you and me.
We
speak of Finlandia as a learning community. The accompaniment language
of Finlandia's campus ministry encourages us to consider community
as companions, walking side-by-side, learning and listening, giving
and living grace. Yet there is more to it. Accompaniment calls,
invites us to release our feelings of entitlement and status, professionally
or socially, ethnically, economically, those that keep us from coming
alongside those different. This is the emptying. Emptied in such
a way we become more human, actually, more real, exposing our wounds,
our shackles and chains, vices, bad habits, hidden skeletons. Accompaniment
removes what is false and over-inflated and makes us more human,
and so, more . . . godly. That's the outrageousness of the Christian
God, God's Son, and God's people! God became human that we may become
human, truly human. What's more, accompaniment not only makes us
more human, it makes us servants. God's accompaniment in Jesus was
marked with slavehood. We can't use such a term today, hardly. It
carries too much baggage. But that's what it was for Jesus Christ:
slavery. This is why Jesus spoke of himself in Mark 10:45 saying
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his
life for many.” And his teaching immediately preceding that verse
“Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Should
we choose to call ourselves companions in this community we choose
accompaniment. To be so would make us an outrageous community. God-shaped
accompaniment as lived and taught by God's son, is at the least,
counter-cultural, and at the extreme, revolutionary. God-shaped
accompaniment in Jesus Christ ends as we heard, in death, ugly death.
This can only be good news to those who have come to believe that
in dying we are born anew and in being emptied we are truly filled.
Emmanuel. God with us. AMEN
-Rev.
Dr. Philip Johnson
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