Pentecost 18A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS
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​ Today’s Epistle lesson is one of the most important excerpts from all of Scripture. You’ve heard the words read, you’ve sung a paraphrase of them. Now hear them again from a different translation, The Common English Bible: 

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit, any sympathy, complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united, and agreeing with each other. Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. 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. 
​

Paul is in prison, in chains for his work spreading the Gospel. The preceding chapter of the Philippian letter expresses an upbeat attitude, even to the point that those who use Paul’s difficulty to gain attention to their own work are at least still spreading the Gospel, talking about Jesus. 

There’s some debate around the poem in today’s lesson. Is it an older hymn used by Paul, or did he write the words himself? Is he paraphrasing the words of others to allow a new hearing of familiar words? We don’t know, because no earlier manuscript of this text predates Paul’s letter. But consider that Paul writes these words maybe as soon as two or three decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. So even if they are an older hymn, they can’t be that old. The words of the hymn we just sang were written the same year this parish was founded. In the history of the church, that’s not all that old, either. 

The opening words of the poem can be somewhat confusing, starting with the first word. Though he was in the form of God . . . . Consider the choice made by the editors of the New International Version: 

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. . . . 
British Bishop and scholar N. T. Wright wants that sentence to begin with “because,” emphasizing a divine intent. Because he was God, which makes everything else not only possible but very real, as real as “let there be light.” As real as a humiliating death. As real as a glorious resurrection from the dead. 

And it’s more than intent. It’s about ability. Because Christ is one with God, because Christ is with God, working with God from before creation itself, Christ is the only way possible for the redemption of humanity. The one whose activity formed creation is the only one whose action can promise a new creation. This comes by way of choosing to become human, to embrace all by becoming one with humanity even as Christ is embraced by and embraces God. And by doing this, all creation, heaven and earth, is joined as one dwelling place for God’s ongoing work of creating life and offering salvation. 

All this happens not by asserting power and authority, but by bending under the burden of carrying all that is to the altar of the cross, giving all of life back to God as the only acceptable offering that could be made. After all else has failed—laws, miracles, punishments, exiles, losses and gains—only one thing was left to reveal to the world: who God really is, God’s true nature, and God’s reason for creating life in the first place. 

Love. 

Only love can set aside ambition and entitlement and, to use our contemporary transactional language, accounts payable and receivable, in order to invite the unworthy and rebellious to come back home. Only love can forgive past and even future transgressions so that relationships are restored to new and enduring life. 

Only love can look beyond individual aspirations and pervasive greed in order to invite the empty, forgotten, discarded shells of existence into meaningful and, dare I say, resurrected life. And Love itself chose to do this, not in order to gain those final words of today’s poem, but to offer those words as the possibility, the only real hope, to all who hear and are embraced by them. 

Because Christ set aside all that was rightly his alone and became one with and for all of us, we have a share in the glory that is given to him. It becomes ours when knees humbly bend, tongues haltingly confess, and hearts and hands give all we have, all we are to present the only offering we can possibly make. That offering is not things but a confession as deep as eternity itself.

​Jesus Christ is Lord.