Philippians 2:5-11

Year A - Palm Sunday or False Dawn Sunday

Year A - Passion Sunday or Premature Fear Sunday

April 13, 2014

Philippians 2:5-11

Before getting into this passage there is information about privilege that needs to be explored. If you are up for an hour’s tutorial on this you can go to The Pathology of White Privilege. If you have not done your work in the area of entitlement this is a very dangerous passage.

Talk about emptying and humility that does not take into account the invisibility of privilege to the privileged ends up being pietistic nice that confuses charity with community organizing. Charity mostly continues dependence because the charity-giver benefits by not having to question the system they are in or to own up to their responsibility for actually changing unjust systems.

It won’t be long before we exalt humility to the point of passivity. The kind of humility looked for here is not the emptying kind, but the being filled-with kind. Remember that humility is connected with humus, earth, ground, mud, clay. Humility takes us back to creation where each part is connected with every other part. Every creative act, not just that of humans, reveals an image of G*D. To be humble here is to be filled with a passion for health of every other we encounter. This sort of humility is active, active, active in seeing that there is no overlay of privilege (no over-privilege causing under-privilege) that blinds us to the inherent image of G*D present in another.

Do all the Christ-is-Lord talk you want, if Christ privileges you, the point has been missed.