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ABC produced a television program titled Strange World. The story line of a rather dull episode was that a young scientist set out to transfer the memory of the mind from one person to another. The experiment was extended to transfer the experience of death in the mind of one person to another. In order to carry out his experiment the scientist decided to kill in order to transfer the brain fluids from the dead person to the live person. What triggered the experiment in the first place was a fascination with death. People are likely to believe that if somehow they are able to enter into the death experience, they will have some mastery over death. That notion is borne out by the flurry of publications which appeared for a time reporting near--death experiences. The trend was to try to find some commonality in what people experienced as they may have had their brush with death on the operating table or in some physical crisis in which they may have been dead for a very brief time.
As we begin this week of concentration on the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are very much concerned with the matter of the death of our Lord and how it factors in our lives. With the lessons appointed for this day we anticipate the remembrance of the death of Jesus Christ as we meditate upon it in this Holy Week. However, what is obvious from the Second Reading from the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians is that Paul is able to put a unique spin on the manner in which he deals with the subject of the death of Jesus.

Obedient To Death

What is unusual about the way Paul speaks about the death of our Lord is that he says we should have the "same mind" as Christ who became "obedient to the point of death." You are apt to retort that there is nothing remarkable about that. We all have to be obedient to death. There is no escaping death. That is even true of the person who commits suicide. The suicide becomes obedient to death, even though suicide seems a friendly exit from a dreadful form of living. What is different about the death of our Lord is that the path to our Lord's death was traveled a different way. Death interrupts our lives. It always seems to come at the wrong time. Sometimes it appears to come far too early. Other times death appears too late. We do not set the alarm for death to arrive at our fixed time. What Paul wants us to understand about how our Lord met his death is that Jesus literally went out to meet his death with a holy purpose and goal.

The Lord Jesus did not try to identify with death for the sole purpose of letting us know that he had done so in sympathy for us. The strategy was that the Son of the Father in heaven was sent into the world to take on death as the enemy. Death followed upon sin. Death was the judgment for failure to trust God. Death stood as a wall between God and humanity. The divine intention, then, was to focus on the means of dealing with death with a finality that would rob death completely of any rights to intimidate or judge people. The goal was not to minimize or assuage the pain that death brings, though those would be the fruits of dealing a knock--out blow to death. All of this implied that the strategy was not to view death as a physical problem or the end of physical life. Clearly the intention from the beginning was to recognize that death has to do with life as lived in trust of God or the failure to trust God as the Creator of life. Because life has its origin in God and is sustained by God, in order to deal with death one has to face the fact that one has to begin with one's attitude toward God. That is where the story of Jesus of Nazareth begins. That is how Paul understood it.

God's Equal

In order to help us appreciate what Jesus accomplished by going out to meet death, Paul quotes an early Christian hymn which is our reading for today. The hymn recalls that Jesus came into the world in the same condition as Adam. When God created the First Adam, God made a special feature of humanity's createdness. The first creatures were to stand in relationship to God. God gave to them of God's own Spirit. Consequently, the first creature could be called the "Son of God" (Luke 3:23). Likewise when Jesus was born into the world, he was born to the same advantage as Adam. Jesus could be called the Second Adam. The hymn says, "He was in the form of God." As the First Adam, Jesus was a person of the flesh, human in every way, from head to toe. However, Jesus, like the First Adam, was filled with the Spirit of God. But, the hymn goes on to say that Jesus "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited." That was different from the First Adam.

We recall that the temptation in the garden was for the creatures to believe that they could be as God if they ate of the forbidden fruit. They wanted to exploit the business of being equal with God. They were already as God, but they doubted that they were, because the Tempter said they could be like God. They doubted what God had done for them was enough. They exploited the notion that they could be something more than they were to be "as God." That was the most ungodly thing they could have done. It was rank blasphemy. It was unbelief, the source of all sin, the same original sin we all engage in. Jesus avoided it. Jesus did not capitulate. Jesus did not "regard equality with God as something to be exploited."

In Human Form

Jesus did just the opposite from exploiting the equality with God. Jesus chose to be identified with us "in human form." The Creator became the creature. The reason Jesus chose to do so was to be able to roll back humanity to the innocence at the time of creation. In order to do so, Jesus had to take his place with us in the human order of things as they are now. Richard Fortey, an English paleontologist, has compiled the story of the development of the creation as we know it in a study titled Life. This study is a compilation from the date derived from the multitudinous evidences of the fossils of millions of years ago. The generous deposits of traces of the development of life stretched over eons of time tell the story of how life emerged on the remarkable planet earth that we call home. Mr. Fortey sticks to the hard evidence of what has been distributed as a remarkable account of how life has emerged.

The paleontologist sticks to the facts as they have been discovered. There is no intention to explain more than what has been found. No meaning is applied to the life which has emerged. No philosophy or theology interprets the material. But there is one observation of fact that cannot be denied. The human that evolved from this trail of life is, Fortey notes, the only animal that has deceived itself. To be sure, there is abundant evidence of that. That is the telltale evidence of the human condition. We suffer from the fact that human behavior belies the wonder, the mystique, the marvel, the profundity, the beauty, and the majesty of life. The psalmist can extol in hymnic phrases that we are fearfully and wondrously made, but in the next breath bemoan that we must cry from the depths of woe of our sin and unbelief. As humans we have blown it. We have messed up the gift of life God has given us. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ came to be among us in human form. Christ came to reverse the process of devolution that we have introduced into the creation.

A Death On The Cross

The reversal that Jesus could bring to life for us could take place only through his dying. Theologians of other ages have wondered if it was truly necessary for Jesus to have died. Some have suggested that simply the incarnation, the birth of the Christ as human, could be counted redemptive enough. That would be to say, innocence was restored to humanity through the One who graced our world with his human presence. Some suggested that the blood shed at the circumcision of our Lord was enough blood shed for the atonement for the world. There are always those who say the value of the life of Jesus of Nazareth was that he was a model of how life should be lived and can be lived. That should be enough for us. Some say you don't even have to think of him as the Son of God to believe that. None of that comes close to understanding how Jesus "humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on the cross."

It was in the acts of moving to the cross willfully, pointedly, and dramatically that Jesus struggled with what plagued the human condition. It was disobedience to the Creator, unbelief before God, the failure to rely on God's goodness that had brought death to the world, because life without God is death. Jesus had to believe God in the face of that intrusion into life we know as death. Jesus submitted to God in obedience and faith by yielding to death on the cross. The older eucharistic liturgy reminds us that by a tree he overcame him who once overcame us by a tree. At the tree of the cross, Jesus redeemed what went wrong at the tree in the Garden of Eden. For us that means that our Lord Jesus Christ endured this death on the cross to reverse the judgment that falls around our ears in death.

He Is Exalted

It is because Jesus of Nazareth died the death that he did, we can now face death ourselves with the conviction that we can also face death not as judgment but as the step into eternity with God. Jesus removed the sting and the power of death, because he faced it under the judgment that should befall us. That is, Jesus died as the worst sinner of all, one judged as a blasphemer of God and an insurrectionist against the government. These sins were the worst crimes against both God and the state. He thereby represented the most heinous crimes of all of humankind. He died a death for us all under the worst kind of convictions we could have suffered. Yet he did so believing that God would still count him innocent.

God judged Jesus a sinner by the law that condemned him. But God judged him innocent by the faith that he still trusted the Father would raise him from the dead. And God did raise him from the dead. Thereby God exalted Jesus "and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend." Jesus proved God is faithful. God can be believed to deliver us from the worst of conditions and situations - death itself. Jesus proved that it is done by faith. Jesus became the source and the goal of faith at the same time. That is why every knee should bend before him. Mozart's Requiem, regarded as a masterpiece, was not completed by Mozart actually before his untimely death. There are those who suggest he wrote it for himself, though he had been commissioned for its composition. If he did write it with his own situation in mind, it is the outpouring of deep faith. "King of majesty tremendous, / Who dost free salvation send us, / Fount of pity then befriend us." Literally in the Latin, "Who saving saves free." You know the Latin for "free," that is, gratis. We all can appeal to him for salvation. It is difficult to imagine Mozart did not believe what was written here. The music says he did. And so should we. Paul's hymn says, "At the name of Jesus every knee should bend."

Every Tongue Confess

At the "name of Jesus every knee should bend" expresses how as the redeemed people of God we should bow in repentance, humility, and adoration to the One who is our Savior. Paul predicts eventually every knee "in heaven and on earth and under the earth" should have to give homage to the One who has been exalted by God. Paul adds, "And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Jesus warned that at his great day, however, not everyone who calls his name or says, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom. The words of Paul imply that we cannot give lip service to this Jesus with simple formulas. To "confess with the tongue" implies that the confession on the tongue and lips must be the confession of commitment in the heart.

The late Robert Shaw liked to tell of an experience he had in leading a workshop of music teachers and choir directors one summer in New York City. At the close of the workshop, the participants were privileged to give a concert of sacred songs in Carnegie Hall. The songs were picked from favorites they had sung or directed in their church choirs. Just before the concert he could tell how nervous the choir was about singing in a hall famed for the parade of great stars and renowned choirs which had performed there. He told his choir they had nothing to fear. He said they brought to the hall a spirit and faith that was rare among most of the performances, which had been solely professional. Mr. Shaw commented that the concert of his workshop choir was absolutely stellar that evening, because his choir members had furnished the inspiration for singing favorite choral numbers they sang mostly in their church choirs back home. That was truly confessing with the tongue the faith that lives in the heart.

Christ Is Lord

What we confess with the tongue about Jesus, Paul says, is "that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Curiously, the Matthaen account of our Lord's Passion records that those who confessed that Jesus was Lord at the crucifixion did not come from the ranks of his followers. It was Pilate who paid tribute to him with the superscription on the cross which read, "This is Jesus King of the Jews." It was a Roman centurion at the foot of the cross who confessed, "Truly this was the Son of God." It was Joseph of Arimathea, not identified as a disciple, who boldly came forward to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus in order to give the Savior a decent burial. The other evangelists indicate that one of the malefactors, crucified along with Jesus, gave testimony of his faith in Jesus as the King who could give him entrance into our Lord's kingdom.

How fortunate the recorded story was not about timid disciples, who suddenly became inspired and heroic in confessing profound faith in Jesus at the cross. Rather the confessions come from hardened hearts which had been moved to recognize already at the cross the hour our Lord called his "hour of glory," the Father exalted the Son so hearts could be moved to faith. That is a blessing for us. We know none of us, sinners that we are, need be excluded from the death benefits of our Lord. The confession of the dying thief gives us greatest assurance. That confession was the inspiration for the last lines of Bernard of Clairvaux's hymn, "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded." The lines are "Remind me of your Passion / When my last hour draws nigh. / These eyes, new faith receiving, / From you shall never move; / For he who dies believing / Dies safely in your love." The last line is that to have the mind of Christ, as Paul explains, is to know that both in life and death we can live in the faith. Because of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can be obedient to God not only in life but in death itself.