Philippians 2: 1-13 (links validated 3/3/24)

In his critically acclaimed book, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, Charles Leerhson writes about baseball’s perhaps greatest player yet most controversial player. But, he notes, Cobb’s arrival in the major leagues went virtually unnoticed. When Cobb arrived from a lower league, the Detroit Tigers’ Bennett Park didn’t yet have dugouts. So he simply watched his first-ever major league baseball game from the bench on the third base side of the field where the rest of the Tigers sat. Leerhson notes, “No one much noticed the arrival of perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time. ‘The glances of the players as I went to the bench were not unfriendly,’ Cobb [later] reflected. ‘But they were decidedly impersonal. No particular interest was taken in my presence [italics added]’.”

Presbyterian theologian William Greenway offers a compelling picture. He writes, “If a single image could capture the character of God in [Genesis], it would be a gracious bow. All of God’s acts, blessings, and delights in creating are for others. In the Hebrew scripture, this is typical of God, who is intimately concerned with justice, peace and the flourishing of all creatures, [the One] who is ‘on high’ but never remote, who is ‘over all’ but faithfully and dramatically invested in life on earth.”[5] Greenway concludes, “This is love -- that God was, is and always will be Immanuel, God with us and for us. Every creature is bowing to the Three-in-One who bowed first and still bows. . . . This is a stunning, joyous, inspiring vision.”...

("More than 40 years ago, one woman began - one bulb at a time - to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Jesus did the same when he planted himself deep in the dirt of human life...")

("In this month of wild college partying on the beaches of Florida, we need to keep in mind that not all young people use their breaks to serve Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. Some serve a Lord of love named Jesus, such as the 44 church volunteers from New York state who donned work clothes and hard hats and spent last Easter break plunging into two houses in inner-city Washington, D.C....")

("A Christian's spiritual VROC is in direct proportion to his VROD -- his vertical rate of DESCENT. The way to heaven is down to earth, through the practice of heartfelt humility. The more we humble ourselves, the more we climb into the presence of God. The more we look after the affairs of others, the more our own affairs are taken care of...")

In her poignant book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand tells the amazing story of Louis Zamperini. Japanese soldiers captured his crewmates and him and imprisoned them in a filthy POW camp that was made all the worse by their appalling treatment of them. They did all they could to humiliate their captives. Beatings were merciless. There was almost no drinking water, and what there was, wasn’t clean. All the POW’s Red Cross food rations were siphoned off and sold at a profit to starving Japanese civilians. Rats were everywhere. Prisoners were always being degraded – shoved, bombarded with lit cigarette butts, and their faces pushed into latrines. They were kicked, clubbed, and whipped in the face with belts. They had to bow to images of Hirohito, wash the floors of their filthy barracks, waddle in front of guards who prodded and swatted them, and perform calisthenics till they collapsed. When the guards were shoving or kicking their prisoners they amused themselves with them, poking at them with sticks in their cells and chuckling at the prisoner’s contortions as they tried to evade. Or the guards would force prisoners at gunpoint to dance, watching with amusement as the prisoners staggered through the Charleston. They forced Louie to “whistle and sing” or “pelted him with fistfuls of gravel” or “taunted him as he crawled around his cell to pick up bits of rice.”

In his delightful book, Wishful Thinking, Frederick Beuchner writes, “Humility is often confused with saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship. If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy. “True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”

In his delightful book, Wishful Thinking, Frederick Beuchner writes, “Humility is often confused with saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship. If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy. “True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”

In his February 24, 2014 article on Quartz.com entitled “Why Google Doesn’t Care About Hiring Top College Graduates,” Max Nissen writes of how “Google has spent years analyzing who succeeds at the company, which has moved away from a focus on GPAs, brand name schools, and interview brain teasers.” In a conversation with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, Laszlo Bock, Google’s head of people operations, detailed what the company looks for. And increasingly, it’s less and less about credentials. “Megan McArdle argued recently that writers procrastinate ‘because they got too many A’s in English class.’ Successful young graduates have been taught to rely on talent, which makes them unable to fail gracefully. Google looks for the ability to step back and embrace other people’s ideas when they’re better. ‘It’s “intellectual humility.” Without humility, you are unable to learn,’ Bock says. ‘Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure’.”

the food pantry of the church I serve has been such a source of blessing. We’d had a pantry open once a month for the past seven years. But with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, a local food bank challenged us to open once a week. That, however, presented tremendous challenges, including economic and volunteer ones. Our church had budgeted, after all, for a monthly pantry. We’d chosen to have the food pantry open monthly because we also felt that we wouldn’t have enough volunteers to staff it more often than that. Before this pandemic struck, we served about 100 households of our hungry neighbors on a monthly basis. After it struck, we serve approximately 700 households of our hungry neighbors on a weekly basis. This simply would not be possible were it not for God’s startling generosity with our pantry. The Giver of our daily bread has startled us nearly weekly with an amazing variety of provisions for our needs. One of the most stunning ways God has done this is through an incredible variety of supporters and support. Our denomination, as well as local government and businesses have come alongside our ministry with financial support. An amazing variety of houses of worship have provided volunteers and monetary support. And the stream of food donors who are our nearby neighbors never ceases to amaze me...

The Rev. Denny Camp is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In the late 1960s he graduated from Cummings High School in Burlington, NC. It was an old building built in the early 1900s; a long, brick, two-story building with staircases at each end of a central hall. Some long ago principal had organized the class changing chaos by decreeing that the East End staircase was UP and the West End staircase was DOWN. This rule was strictly enforced, going the wrong way on a staircase was a serious offence! One day Denny found himself at the bottom of the DOWN staircase a few minutes before classes changed. His next class was in a room directly over his head. To properly, appropriately, legitimately go upstairs, he would need to walk all the way to the other end of the corridor, go up the UP staircase, and then walk all the way back to his class room. This would probably have been good exercise for him, but he was a 15 year old boy; exercise was not on his mind, the easiest way to do what he wanted to do was. Denny glanced at his watch, looked around and saw no teachers, and headed up the DOWN staircase. When he was about halfway up, he first felt, then saw, then heard a presence above him. He glanced up the second floor landing and saw the Football Coach and Assistant Principal for Discipline glaring down at him. “CAMP! Get up here!” the coach yelled. At just that exact moment, the bell rang and a sea of teenage humanity started flowing down the DOWN staircase. Denny couldn’t make any headway – he was stuck. The Coach kept glaring down at him and shouting, “CAMP, GET UP HERE!” But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t buck the tide. He couldn’t go down, the coach was calling him up. He was stuck, stuck going up the DOWN staircase...

Leroy was about the ugliest dog you could imagine. His coat was straggly and wiry; he had the strangest ears; his tail was crooked and he drooled. You might give Leroy a first glance and think what a strange mistake of creation but you wouldn’t give Leroy a second glance. You would wonder how anyone could love a thing like that. But there was more to Leroy than his looks. He was bursting with personality and had loads of love to share. This was evident when he was taken to the local aged care nursing home. He didn’t care that the people there were frail, wrinkled, disabled, sometimes poked him a bit too hard, or got him in the eye when they meant to pat his head.

Theologian William Placher uses an illustration from the world of basketball. In basketball, the players who are always asking ‘How am I doing? Am I getting my share of shots at the basket?’ they are the ones who never reach their potential. The best players are the ones who lose themselves in an effort to be a part of the group. They get caught up in the game and forget about themselves. And isn’t that the case with all of us in whatever we do? An artist becomes lost in the work; lovers become lost in their beloved; workers are excited about a common enterprise. You toss aside that part of yourself that is always watching how you are doing. And in that self-forgetfulness, you become most fully yourself.

In his memoir This Boy’s Life, writer Tobias Wolf relates that when he was a boy, he used to take a perverse joy over taking a loaded gun and then, from his second-story bedroom window, drawing a bead on passersby. Women pushing strollers, young children playing ball, garbage collectors talking and laughing together–whoever it was, Wolf would secretly aim the gun at them and then fight back laughter at the ecstasy he felt of having so much power over these people. Over time, however, he began to feel like this was empty. Over time, however, he began to feel like this was empty.

"In his troubling novel, Silence, Japanese author Shusaku Endo tells a story about the persecution of Christians in 17th century Japan. Christians were given a chance to escape persecution by stepping on a fumie, a crudely carved image of Christ. Those who wouldn't do it were killed. Those who took that step of apostasy stayed hidden, deeply shamed by their denial..."

The story is told among Jews of a rabbi who always signed his letters with the words, “From one who is truly humble.” One day someone asked how a humble person could ever say such a thing about himself. A friend of the rabbi’s replied that the rabbi had in fact become so humble that he no longer even realized it was a virtue–it had simply become his life. Describing himself as humble seemed to him as innocent as saying he had brown eyes...

Maybe you’ve heard the story of the mother who, wishing to encourage her young son’s progress at the piano, bought tickets for a performance by the great master Paderewski. When the night arrived, they found their seats in the front row, just beneath the majestic Steinway on stage. The mother got into a conversation with the person in the next seat and didn’t notice that her son had slipped away. When 8:00 arrived, the house lights came down, the audience quieted, and only then did they notice the boy sitting at the piano bench, innocently picking out, with one finger, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” The mother gasped and was about to retrieve the boy when out walked the great pianist. He slipped on to the bench beside the boy, and whispered to him, “Don’t quit! Keep playing.” And then Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began improvising a bass line; and his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obbligato. Together, the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized...

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky tells the tale of Madam Holakov’s confession to the monk Zossima. The old woman, doubting her destiny in the face of death, presumes her crisis is of faith. Father Zossima, however, sees the problem as one of love. When he advises Holakov to labor at loving her neighbors as a way to dispel her worries, she realizes he has struck a nerve. There is no doubt, she thinks, that she loves humanity; but the actual doing of it, the living of it, gives her pause. The old priest, concurring with her, recounts the story of a disillusioned doctor who had great dreams of universal love but bitter disappointments in dealing with the real thing. “I love humanity,” he said, “but the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people in particular.” While his dreams portray visions of saving humankind, in his daily life the good doctor can’t stand the people around him. “I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. … As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom.” The slightest irritation rattles the poor man’s nerves. He bristles at the way someone talks, sneers at the way someone walks or wheezes, and can barely tolerate the manner of someone’s dress or bearing. “In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men. … I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me.”...

Fleming Rutledge is refers to the “godlessness” of the cross and its being the nadir of Jesus as the self-emptying servant: “Perhaps we can gain further understanding by examining a horrific incident that occurred in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998 and soon became emblematic of the ongoing struggle against the persecution of homosexuals. A young gay man, Matthew Shepard, was beaten within an inch of his life by two other men and was then tied to a fence and abandoned. Eighteen hours later, in near-freezing weather, a passerby discovered the comatose figure and for a moment mistook it for a scarecrow. Matthew Shepard died in the hospital five days later without ever recovering consciousness. The particular cruelty of this death left people groping for words...

("As a little boy I was entranced by early TV. On our tiny flickering black and white set, I watched Lassie and Walt Disney Presents and Saturday morning cartoons. But my favorite was The Lone Ranger. If you’re anywhere close to my age, you’ll recall the question people always asked after an encounter with the Lone Ranger. With wonder or horror in their voices, they gasped, 'Who was that masked man?'...")

The whole question of whether you see a glass as half-empty or half-full has become some sort of personality evaluation. Are you an optimist? A pessimist? A surrealist? (See the graphic below.) Paul's play with words considers the polarities of empty and filled...

Driving down to Atlanta to record this sermon for Day 1, I thought of the very first church I served. I was a student at Emory at the time. I drove out to the church on Saturday to meet with the lay leader. He met me at the little one room church, then named, "Friendship Methodist Church" (That's a misnomer if ever there were one!). I got there before my host so I thought I'd go in the church and look around. But I was surprised by a big padlock and chain barring the front door. When the lay leader arrived I said, "Glad you are here to open the lock on the door." "Oh, that ain't our lock. The sheriff put that there," explained the lay leader. "Things got rough here at the meeting last month. Folks started yelling at one another, carting off furniture they had given to the church. So, I called the sheriff and he came out here and put that lock on the door until the new preacher could get here and settle 'em down."

("In his book The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg shares the story of Leon, Joseph, and Clyde-three psychiatric patients in a hospital in Ypslilanti, Michigan who suffered from a messiah complex. Now, their problem wasn't just a touch of narcissism. I mean, they weren't simply conceited..." and other illustrations)

"I love this quote from Bill Hybel's book Descending Into Greatness. He writes: 'In the vocabulary of our world "DOWN" is a word reserved for losers, cowards, and the bear market. It is a word to be avoided or ignored....it is a word that negatively colors whatever it touches. We say: DOWN and out, DOWNfall, DOWNscale, DOWNhearted and worst of all, DOWN under..." and other illustrations

("You may have read the obituary of a middle-aged tennis enthusiast who had shared with his friends and family that he had based his life on the principles presented in this favorite passage of scripture. He had applied these truths to his tennis, and he had won many tournaments..." and other illustrations)

("Although she does not want the title bestowed upon her, Mary Beth Talley has become a hero at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. A volunteer caregiver to several mentally challenged youth, she was especially fond of Heather MacDaniel, a sweet youth who has Downs Syndrome. Gathered in the Sanctuary, they were singing the praise chorus 'Alleluia' when a gunman opened fire...")

("I once read in an article that said the famous author Alex Haley, author of Roots, has a picture in his office, which shows a turtle sitting atop a fence post. What a sight that must be! The turtle's poor legs would dangle far to the sides of the post, and there would be absolutely no way he could get down. In my mind's eye, I can see the poor turtle struggling for all he was worth; all to no avail..." and other illustrations)

("Perhaps you remember that ultimate disaster movie of the seventies The Poseidon Adventure. When a tidal wave, caused by an undersea earthquake, capsizes the dangerously top heavy SS Poseidon, a group of survivors struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds to reach the hull and safety..." and other illustrations)

("Columnist Philip Yancey recently made a list of the people who have most influenced him, whose qualities he very much wants to emulate. He reports that he stared at the list for some time before realizing that all have in common the surprising trait of humility. Does this mean that they all have some kind of negative self-image? Not at all..." and other illustrations)

"I actually met Emma Tiller on my own before I found out she was interviewed in one of Studs Terkel’s fabled oral histories of Chicago – Division Street or Hard Times. Emma Tiller was a veteran of the Civil Rights movement in the South then living out her citizenship in the community of the Cabrini Green projects..."

Juergen Moltmann, now retired professor of theology at Tuebingen, was probably the most influential Christian thinker among the clergy of Europe in the latter half of the twentieth century. But he did not grow up in the faith, but rather in Nazi Germany. He was drafted at age 16 near the end of World War II, was captured at war's end and taken for several years to a camp in Scotland where he was forced to perform manual labor. The cold damp weather was bad for his health. One winter he had a terrible cold and no handkerchief for his nose. He was forced to use his coat sleeve for the excessive nasal discharge. The coarse material became stiff and abrasive... felt like sandpaper on his nose. He looked up from his work to see a group of local women and children standing with the military guards observing him and the other prisoners. One of the women looked directly at him for some time. She then spoke with one of the guards and handed him something. The guard walked over and gave Juergen an old white rag. At first, he only stared at the nondescript piece of cloth in his hand, failing to understand what had happened. Then, suddenly, it dawned on him what she had done. This was easily one of the most significant gifts he had ever received. It helped to change his life. The act did not cure his cold, nor did it free him from incarceration. But this love came from one who knew what it meant to be without the essentials of life. The old woman had just the right thing for his need: not a starchy new handkerchief, but a soft, worn rag. This was an act of grace and she had given it to a hated German prisoner. She became Christ for this young man and helped heal his loneliness, despair, and suffering...

("So it is from my earliest days to my final end that I am marked with the sign of the cross. Yet, as Paul Ricoeur says, symbols give rise to thought. And my thoughts have been complicated by the painful recognition that this central symbol of Christian life has a shadow side--a realization I owe initially to Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev...")

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"My dad's sister, Aunt Mildred, never, ever really threw anything away. When her nieces' and nephews complained to her about this, she would say, 'You just never know when you might need it.' Our protests that you had to be able to find 'it' in order to use 'it' when you needed 'it,' fell on deaf ears. She was confident that she knew where all her 'its' were. And I think she did..."

("Mike Yaconelli tells the story of a visitor at his church. The older man sat in the front row. He had braided and partially dreadlocked hair that hung below his belt and he had an extremely long goatee that shot in all directions from his chin. His nervousness was obvious. Mike could feel his fear...")

("It was 1959, the year we moved from the house on Edna Street to the big house on Plymouth Terrace, which was across town. Moving was a traumatic experience for me, since I grew up with a feeling of not being like other kids because of the big steel brace which supported my right leg...")

On the tenth anniversary of September 11, I heard some stories I hadn’t heard before. One was about two women, Phyllis Rodriguez and Aicha el-Wafi. Phyllis’ son, Greg, died in the attack on the World Trade Center. Aicha’s son, Zacarias, was charged with 6 counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism. About a year after the attacks, these two women were brought together because Aicha requested a meeting with some of the victim’s families. Several people were there and they were all nervous, each wondering what the others wanted from each other. Aicha started by saying, “I don’t know if my son is guilty or innocent, but I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened to your families. I know what it is to suffer, and I feel that, if there is a crime, a person should be tried fairly and punished." That opening statement broke the ice and allowed others to share freely. On that day Phyllis and Aicha began to be friends. In 2005, Aicha came to America for her son’s trial. Phyllis wanted to give her as much support as possible. She didn’t speak a word of Aicha’s native French, but she placed an international call, and somehow they managed. Phyllis said that when Greg was killed she thought, “I will never forgive the people who murdered my son.” But four years later, she said, “When I watched Zacarias at the trial, my heart was broken because I could not look at him as a stranger. I saw him as the son of my friend Aicha.”...

("Hamilton Whaley was a prosperous lawyer in Tampa, Florida. From his own story in Guideposts, he was happily married, had 5 great kids, a big comfortable house in a pleasant community. He was active in a good church and making more money than he ever dreamed of. He was also a partner in one of the leading law firms in the state, a vast organization with nearly 70 lawyers..." and several other illustrations)

("George Fallen tells of visiting an artist's studio out in Dallas, TX. One picture was the artist's pride and joy--a picture of Jesus on the cross. Fallen and the artist discussed the painting briefly. The artist said that the hardest thing about painting the crucifixion was putting the scars in Christ's hands and feet and side...")

("In 1927 a man named Asibi, a West African native, was stricken with the deadly disease, yellow fever. Not many people survived this dreaded disease. However, Asibi lived. It seems that his body had conquered the disease. Asibi's blood contained the antibodies from which to begin to develop a successful vaccine...")

("The owner of a beautiful hunting lodge in Scotland invited some of his friends to spend the weekend there. In their revelling and partying, one of the guests opened a bottle of champagne and it shot out onto a wall. It left an ugly blotch. All through the rest of the weekend, the guests watched that blotch dry into an ugly stain...")

("Once there was a beautiful garden. Of all the plants in the garden, the one that the master regarded as the most beautiful was a splendid and noble Bamboo. Year after year, Bamboo grew yet more beautiful and gracious. He was conscious of his master's love, yet he was modest and gentle in all things. One day the master looked at Bamboo and said: 'Bamboo, I want to use you.'...")

("During the nineteenth century, when Italy was divided into a number of independent states, there was a popular movement for the reunification of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. Before he became king there was a surge of enthusiasm to drive out the Austrians, keep the French at the borders, and to place this man on the throne...")

("There are two Greek words for 'form': 'morphe' and 'schema'. They must both be translated 'form', because there is no other English equivalent, but they do not mean the same thing...")

("I sat down with a group of leaders in a congregation a few months ago. This particular place, like many, has had its share of struggles. Indeed, those people who had come together that night shared that the congregation as a whole just wasn't very 'nice.' They were, by then sitting on fifty years of conflict and more and their dealings with one another had become downright abrasive. We began our meeting with prayer and then I read these words from Philippians...")

("If you should find the perfect church without fault or smear, Please, don't join that church, you'd spoil the atmosphere. If you should find the perfect church where all anxieties cease, Then pass it by lest joining it you mar the masterpiece...")

("Henry Rogers wrote The Eclipse of Faith. In it he imagines that some powerful hand has wiped the influence of Christ out of our civilization, as a hand would clean a blackboard in a schoolroom. Rogers represents himself as going into his library to find no trace left of the life or words of Jesus...")

("Listen to C. S. Lewis: 'A man who was merely a man, and said the sort of things Jesus said, would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with a man whose says he's a poached egg -- or else he would be the devil of hell...")

Some years ago, Carl Jung told the story of a man who asked a rabbi why God was revealed to many people in days of old, but now nobody sees God. “Why is this?” he asked. The rabbi answered, “Because nowadays no one bows low enough.” Perhaps we are looking for God in all the wrong places. In today’s video, Sister Margaret goes to prison. She is not Jesus. She is not God. But she believes God is there in Riker’s Island...

("Abraham Lincoln is often selected as being the greatest giant of our presidential past. When people make a list of the greatest American presidents who ever lived, Abraham Lincoln is most often on the top of the list. Why is that?...")

The reality is that any inner strength you have is a gift from God. Paul writes to the church at Philippi “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you.” The love of God is already in you. When you express it, when you give it away, you are God like in your actions, you have the authority of God in what you do—that’s the fear and trembling part. David Albert tells a story that, for me, captures the essence of this mystery. I spent must of yesterday looking at violin bows. I must have tried 50 or 60 of them at my favorite luthier’s shop. Some were light chestnut in colour, others red maroon, still others a dark, rich brown. There were octagonal and round ones. Some had buttons (the piece that tightens the hair) made of nickel, others silver, and still others gold, and they could be in either one or three parts. Frogs (that’s what one holds when playing) were of ebony, ivory, or tortoise shell (I could never in good conscience own one of these last two; some of the ivory ones came from mastodon or woolly mammoth tusks which, when one considers that the donors are extinct, pose over ethical questions than if they came from elephants), with slides (attaching the hair to the frog) of abalone or oyster shell. Grips on the bow itself were of gold, or silver, or nickel wire, or plastic; the really fancy ones had whalebone (I thought those had only been used for 19th Century Corsets!). Some of the bows were lighter and some heavier, fatter or skinnier, flexible or stiff, heavily arched or straight. “There are actually 157 different kinds of Brazilian hardwood,” said my luthier friend, “even though we usually only talk about two of them.” He showed me some of the various types. And so I started trying them out...

("It was early in my political career, and I was home from a legislative session for the weekend. I went down to the little country market, not far from my home to get something, and while there ran into an old friend of my family I had not seen in some time. He was sitting around, swapping stories, drinking coffee, and generally doing what 'old men' do at local country stores, especially throughout the South...")

Do you remember the line the serpent in the garden used to tempt Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. “Eat this, and you will be like God.” Adam and Eve made a grab for equality with God. And what does Paul say of Jesus? “He did not regard equality with God as something to be grabbed at.” Adam and Eve got too full of themselves and rejected their place as servants of God. Jesus emptied himself and took on the form of a slave. Adam exalted himself, and became disobedient unto death. Jesus humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross...

What would you do if you ever became President of the United States for just one day? What bedroom of the White House would you like to sleep in? What proclamations would you issue? Would you take a trip to Camp David? Or spend the time on Air Force One? Would you throw a Grand Ball? While the opportunity of filling our country’s highest office for just one day may sound absurd, one relatively unknown man became President for a day. Most people have never heard the name David Rice Atchison, but he was president for just one day even through he was never elected by a popular vote. Atchison was born in 1807 in Frogtown, KY, a little town in the mountains. His parents wanted him to enter the ministry, but after graduating from Transylvania University in Lexington, he studied law. He later moved to Missouri and was elected to the state legislature. He later became a circuit judge and at the age of 36, the governor appointed him to complete the term of a US senator who had died. He must have worked hard and displayed true gifts of leadership because the US Senate elected him president pro tempore (the presiding officer of the Senate when the vice president is absent). In 1848, General Zachary Taylor was elected President of the United States. His inauguration was scheduled for Sunday, March 4. However, Taylor was a devout Episcopalian and refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday. This created a problem. President James K. Polk and the Vice President term of office expired at midnight, March 3. Since the new President would not take the oath for another day, Senator David Atchison, president of the Senate become President of the US for one day...

A group of people gathered around the apartment building of their Hungarian born pastor, László Tőkés, on December 15, 1989. They did not look very imposing. They did not chat threatening slogans against the government. They did not deliver political speeches. They sang the psalms and recited prayers. They were not radical militants. Few would have suspected them of being subversives. Many of them were women and children and members of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Timişoara, Romania. They only gathered to protect their pastor from being evicted from his apartment and pulpit, but their initial stand would directly lead to the toppling of the 22 year reign of Nicolea Ceauşescu's reign as the Communist dictator of Romania.1 How could that be? How could a religious vigil have political consequences? Are we suppose to keep religion and politics separate? Ironically, throughout Biblical history religion always had political consequences. Even Jesus' short unassuming ride into the city of Jerusalem was a political statement that we often set aside in favor of a moralized religious interpretation of the events. However, from a review of the details of that ride, we can only conclude that Jesus intended to make a political and religious statement that morning...

("I had two elders in my first pastorate who had some sort of a falling out. I was never sure what happened between them, but they absolutely detested each other. It was awkward because during session meetings, they would often ignore each other. When they didn't ignore each other, they were putting each other down and being very insulting and degrading...")

("A woman finally stirs up her courage to approach the pastor about the abuse that she has hidden from everyone for so long. She wonders what is the 'Christian' thing to do ...'WWJD' she asks. She opens her Bible here, pointing to this text as the reason that she has stayed with him for so long ...a text that she learned long ago meant that the Christian thing to do was to just 'take it' ... to 'suffer'... ")

("On June 9th of this year, a stirring address was given at Harvard Divinity School's diploma ceremony by Eric Gutierrez, a member of the Class of 2005. His subject was 'Walk Humbly: Religion in American Public Life'. This morning I want to share with you some excerpts from that speech...")

("In 1994, two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on biblical principles) in the public schools. They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage. About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage. Dan and Barb Stephens of Fort Collins, Colorado related the following story...")

("I felt like Mohammad Ali had to have felt one time on an airplane. Ali was in his prime, and he was about to take off on a flight and the Flight Attendant reminded him to fasten his seat belt. In good Mohammad Ali fashion he announced 'Superman don't need no seat belt'. The Flight Attendant came back just as quickly, Superman don't need no airplane, either"Ali fastened his belt..." and other illustrations)

("There was an old man in Chicago who got a burden and a passion in his heart for the inner city kids in Chicago. He didn't have a big developed plan, but what he decided to do was just to adopt an inner city high school. And what he did was every time there was a sports practice that ended he would be there and spend time with the kids..." and other illustrations)

("Once upon a time, a man had everything his heart desired. His family was healthy; and, lo, good fortune smiled upon him. As was his custom ~ when he was in town, when the fish weren't biting, when he could manage to squeeze time in, when he was not too tired ~ he regularly went to church...")

("The year is 1750, the place a village in West Africa. Excitement fills the village as an infant son has been born to a young couple, Omoro and Binta. It is a special time for it is a time of naming. You see, the Mandikas, the tribe to which Omoro and Binta belong, believe the name given carries great significance...")

("He was talking about someone who had risen high in his organization, a man with great ambition whose ambitions had been mostly realized. 'In a way, I've always been grateful to that man,' said my friend. 'Grateful? Why?' I asked. 'It was he who helped to curb my own ambition, he who showed me the limits of success and the goals I at one time thought I wanted...")

("A group of us, led by the great mountain man in our midst, Paul Winslow, climbed a rock face in the Sierras last summer. There was an easy route to the summit, or you could work your way up the cliff face. Some in the group were good athletes; some were not...")

always good insights!

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(Puppet Script by Louise Ferry)

We love dogs—we need dogs—precisely because of the way they live so unfiltered, so free of pretension or anxiety about status or wealth. They go after their Frisbee with passion, they lick their food bowl with relish, and they look at us with utter kindness and devotion. This week, in honor of the feast day of St. Francis, consider learning from the saints who have found God in their animal friends, and the untamed natural world that they bring us. Maybe let your dog be the pack leader, seeing their love poured out as a sign of the irresistibility of grace.

("Jimmy Moore was a dying man. There just wasn't any future for him. Then he got his chance at life again in the form of a heart transplant at Vanderbilt University. Two years later, he completed the grueling Music City Triathlon ...")

("Pastor Faith Brace tells the following story of an experience she had while visiting in northern Manitoba. 'No one was at the airstrip to meet me. Three Cree women sat in the cab of a pickup truck nearby. It was a raw cold evening in April, not winter, but not spring either in northern Manitoba. They offered me a ride—“but you’ll have to ride in the back,” they said..." and other illustrations)