This afternoon, if all goes as we would like – all of us, that is, with the possible exception of a few traitors and a few folks who for some strange reason do not care about pigskin prowess – this afternoon, if all goes as we would like, our beloved Redskins will do battle with the folks from up at Philly, and will perhaps this time rise to victory. I am pausing for the cheering to die down!
Now in order for this to happen, several things have to be just right. For one thing, it would help if we had some healing miracles to take place in the next couple of hours. For another thing, somebody's throwing arm has to be on target, and several pairs of hands need to stock up on stickum. Besides that, you need to perform surgery on your Bibles. That's right … you need to clip out the verse that speaks of mounting up as eagles!
But most of all what needs to happen this afternoon is that old No. 72 and his compatriots will need to be on top of that fleet-footed Philadelphia quarterback. For the uninitiated, the word is "sack." We want them to sack the quarterback. What that means is to trap him, stop him, immobilize him, or as Khrushchev might have said, " bury him." "Bury him." Who was Khrushchev … oh, I think he was the coach of the Moscow Bears.
Now when we sack that quarterback there is a phrase the officials will be using to determine whether we really got him or whether we just inconvenienced him a little. They will determine whether the quarterback was in the grasp and control of our defense ... in the grasp and control. Did we not only lay unholy hands on him, but did we put him in his proper place? Did we not fully get big burly arms wrapped around his body, but did we also keep him from pitching that pigskin a thousand yards or so in the wrong direction? Grasp and control.
You know, I see in that football phrase something of a parable of what you and I keep on trying to get for ourselves. Grasp and control is our aim too. Grasp and control is what we are looking for. We may use more sophisticated language, we may speak about security or about image or about reputation, but the truth is what we want is grasp and control. We have jobs; we want to keep them. We have images; we want to polish them. We have a concern about self-control, about being in charge of ourselves. Grasp and control.
One of the saddest sights in all the world is to see someone who is, in fact, out of control, someone who wanders about the streets babbling, not making sense, someone who loses his cool and screams with anger. It's fearsome to see somebody lose grasp and control of himself. That's kind of been a thing that has bugged me for a long time. I can still remember the astonishing frequency with which I would bring home report cards from school, and the teachers would inscribe huge, black marks under the line that reads, "Shows reasonable degree of self-control." I don't like to be out of control of myself, do you? And I don't like to be out of control of situations in which I'm working. I’ve said to our church staff many times, in morning worship, here, we try not to have accidents. There may be a little spontaneity … in fact, I hope so … but no accidents. Control. Grasp and control. It's important to most of us.
And so the contrast is very striking indeed, very sharp and very clear, when you let this tremendous passage from the Philippian letter sink in. We want grasp and control, but this passage tells us of one who could have had control, did have control, but who thought that his place in life was not something to grasp and snatch, but who gave it up.
This ancient hymn … that's what many scholars think it is, an early Christian hymn, which Paul may be quoting here for the Philippian church … this ancient hymn speaks of one who by his very nature is an expression of God, but who chooses not to grasp that, not to hang on to that, not to flourish and flaunt that. This passage tells us of one who as he chooses to express himself in the man Jesus of Nazareth, freely strips himself of all the badges of godness, gives up his grasp, even gives up his control, goes into danger, walks into peril, enters every dimension of our humanness.
You can tell that I'm having trouble saying all this just right. Let me permit the ancient Christian poet to say it far better. "Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men ... and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."
What can I do, what can I say, to help you understand this? Here is very God himself, and the essence of his goodness is that he knows who he is, he has a grasp of hlmself, he knows his own worth. And the heart of his godness is that he is in control of himself, of the worlds he has created; the very heart and core of what it is to be God is to understand himself and to exercise his control of his will. His grasp and control. And yet in Jesus of Nazareth in some sense God gives up being God. God loses grasp on being God. God gives up control.
Oh, don't hold me to precise language on this. Don't charge me with heresy and don't quote scriptures to prove me wrong. I'm just struggling to share with you something of the awesome truth contained in this passage, something of the wonder of Advent, that we are about to be presented with a God who strips himself of goodness, a God who divests himself of grasp and control and becomes like us to show us how we could become more like God! When Jesus comes: no grasp. When Jesus comes: no grasp.
What does this mean for us today? How can this speak to you and to me this morning? A moment ago I said that most of us play around in one way or another with the issue of grasp and control. We want control of our lives. We want to hang on to whatever we think we have that makes us somebody.
Some of us need prominence; some of us appear to need attention. Somebody has said that some of us need attention so much that whenever there is a wedding we want to be the bride and whenever there is a funeral we want to be the corpse! Grasp, attention, image.
Back in the fifties popular sociologists invented the phrase, "status symbol." Certain things, certain styles, had status, and others didn’t. And so in the fifties status symbols included fins on your car, split-levels in your house, and button-down collars on your shirts. Grasp these, display these, and you had status.
Well, we got past the fins and the split-levels and the button-downs, and we drifted into the sixties and seventies, and managed to make downscale upscale. Remember that? In those days, at least in certain quarters, you got status if you wore raggedy jeans, stayed away from barbershops, lived in a walkup apartment, and marched in demonstrations. Remember that? But it was still status-seeking. Low status became high status; but it still mattered to us what we looked like and how others valued us … grasp and control.
Now because I want to grasp and control my job, I will not spend time talking about what status-seeking has become in the eighties. I will say nothing about how we sew brand name labels into K-mart clothes. I will not mention how parents of small children worry a dozen years too soon about whether that kid will get in the right college. I will definitely not repeat for you how students at a certain university just down Georgia Avenue have been known to mispronounce the name of their school creatively, so that if you are not listening closely, you might suppose they went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rather than in Washington. Certainly I will speak of none of these efforts to grasp and control and polish images ... although I do have to take it as a sign from the Lord that while I was preparing this message yesterday, I took a lunch break, flipped on the TV, and found out that Hour Magazine was concluding something called Looking Good Week!
Well, there we are. We all need to grasp and control, or suppose that we do. We grab .at the badges that we believe will make us acceptable. And lest you think I am firing darts only at other folks, I am suddenly very conscious of Baptist ministers and their badges of respectability. A friend of mine says that when he first attended a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention and began to meet people, the first question they all asked was, "What seminary did you attend?" And he quickly learned that his was the wrong one for about 90% of the folks; they turned him off when they heard where he came from! Wrong badge. Wrong grasp.
But come back with me now to the Philippian letter. Come back with me now to this Christ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped ... did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped … but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
When Jesus comes, no grasp at the trappings of royalty, but a third-rate town and a humble family in a dusty corner of the world. No grasp, no control.
When Jesus comes, angels singing glory, yes; wise men bringing gifts, yes. But those are quickly forgotten and left behind. When Jesus comes, no grasp of all that, but only the pungent smell of a stable, only makeshift swaddling clothes. He gave up his grasp of things and emptied himself. "Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang, proclaiming Thy royal degree. But of lowly birth camest Thou to earth, and in great humility." When Jesus comes, no grasp and control, only obedience. Think of it: he who has the right to reign over a thousand thousand worlds, now obedient to a teenage mother’s command! He for whom the mountains bow down and for whom the waves of the seas clap their hands, now subject to having his diapers changed and his body bathed and all the other indignities of infancy. Obedient.
And a good deal more as well. He whom we call Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, King of Kings and Lord or Lords, obedient now to the spears of soldiers, obedient to the pitiful pounding of Pilate, obedient to the hammer blows at the cross, obedient. Obedient unto death. When Jesus comes, his hands do not grasp at goodness; they only knot in pain around cruel nails.
Oh, when you and I see how much we want to grasp our lives, but see how when Jesus comes, he exercises no such grasp, we are amazed and we are ashamed.
When you and I recognize how terribly important it has become to us to be in charge of our lives, in control of our images, in command of our turf ... when we recognize all that and then confront this one who comes and is born in human form and takes on himself the form of a servant, this one who becomes obedient, even unto death on a cross, we are amazed and we are ashamed, but more than that, we are clued in. This is the way to live. This is the way to have authentic life. Living is letting go. Living is being free from the need to grasp and control. Living is choosing to obey and to follow Him.
When Jesus comes, there need be no grasp. We have so often sung, "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear." We would do better to sing, "What a Lord we have in Jesus, what a Lord we have to obey and to follow."
When Jesus comes, let go ... no grasp
