Worship Service for September 27, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Come near to the Lord.
P: Lord, be with us this day.
L: Lift your sorrows and joys to the Lord.
P: Lord, hear the cries of our hearts.
L: Come, rest in the love and mercy of God.
P: Bless us, O Lord, that we may be blessings
for others in Your name. AMEN.
Opening Hymn – Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven #478 Blue Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
You know how fickle we are, O
Lord. We proclaim Your presence with us
and then we behave in ways which run counter from Your word. We get caught up in our own needs and whine about
the injustices we feel in our lives.
Help us place our trust in Your mercy and Your compassionate love. Forgive us when we stray from Your ways and
wander into paths of self-pity and self-destruction. Lift us from the deep morass and put us back
on track. Give us confidence in Your
presence and Your direction throughout our lives, for we ask these things in
Jesus’ name. (Silent
prayers are offered)
AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Feel the comforting power of God’s love
and mercy in your lives. God is with us
through all our experiences. Though we
try we cannot stray from God’s love.
P: We rejoice for this is good news for all
of us! AMEN
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Lord,
Your blessings abound in our lives and we lift our voices in gratitude for
these gifts from You. We also lift our
voices as our hearts cry out our concerns for those who are ill, who mourn, who
feel lost. We offer to You both our joys
and concerns, so often intermingled in our lives. Be with each of us and for those whom we name
with our voices and in our hearts. We
especially pray today for…
Lord,
you have heard our cries and our shouts of joy.
Make Your presence known to us again through the love and forgiveness of
others as we have loved and forgiven them.
Hear
now our own hearts’ desires and needs in this time of silence
Hear
our prayers this day, as we gather in one voice and say…Our
Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – How Great Thou Art #467/147
Scripture Reading(s):
Psalm
25
Philippians
2:1-13
Sermon
The Mind of Christ
Philippians 2:1-11
Most of us have had the experience of
walking into a room and sensing almost immediately that something is
wrong. No one has raised a voice, no one
has slammed a door, and everyone may even be smiling politely, but beneath the
surface there is tension. Perhaps two
people are no longer speaking to one another.
Perhaps someone feels overlooked, someone else feels criticized, and
everyone is quietly rehearsing the reasons they are right. Families know this
experience. Workplaces know it. Even Church communities know it. We can love one another deeply and still
become tangled in pride, competition, hurt feelings, and the stubborn need to
have the last word. The Christian community has never been immune from any of
this, which may be why Paul writes to the church in Philippi with words that
sound both tender and urgent: “Make my joy complete: be of the same mind,
having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”
Paul is not writing to people who have no
differences. He is not asking them to
pretend that every disagreement is unimportant or that faithful people must
always think alike. The church in
Philippi contained people with different backgrounds, experiences,
responsibilities, and points of view, just as every church does. When Paul speaks of being of the same mind,
he does not mean uniformity. He means a
shared direction, a common center, a way of belonging to one another that is
deeper than any disagreement. He is
asking them to let the love of Christ become more important than winning, more
important than status, and more important than the exhausting work of proving
that we are better, wiser, more faithful, or more deserving than somebody else.
Paul writes, “Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.”
To carry some of the themes forward from the last couple of weeks, humility,
too has often been misunderstood. Some
people have been taught that humility means thinking poorly of themselves,
remaining silent when they are mistreated, or allowing powerful people to
continue causing harm. Those whose
voices have been pushed aside have sometimes been told to be humble when what
was really being demanded was their submission.
But that is not the humility Paul describes, and it is certainly not the
life revealed in Jesus. Christian
humility is not self-hatred. Humility is
the freedom to stop making ourselves the center of every story. It is the courage to recognize the dignity,
pain, wisdom, and need of another person without believing that their worth
somehow diminishes our own.
Paul is careful to say, “Let each of you
look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” He doesn’t say that our own interests don’t
matter. And He doesn’t ask us to have no
boundaries, no needs, and no voice. But
he asks us to look not only for our own interests, but the interests of
others. The problem comes when our
concern stops with ourselves. The mind
of Christ widens our field of vision. It
teaches us to ask, “How will this affect me?” but also, “How will this affect
others? Who is not being heard? Who will
carry the burden of this decision? Who
is hungry, frightened, lonely, or exhausted while I am protecting my comfort?”
We live in a culture that constantly
trains us otherwise. Public
conversations reward the quickest insult and the sharpest outrage.
Advertisements tell us that fulfillment is always one purchase, one
achievement, or one upgrade away.
Political life is increasingly presented as a contest in which
compassion is weakness and compromise is betrayal. Into that noisy, anxious world, Paul speaks
this quiet sentence: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Not the mind of the market. Not the mind of the crowd. Not the mind of fear. The mind of Christ.
Then Paul writes out these beautiful words
that many scholars believe were part of some early Christian hymn, words the
church may already have sung together: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form
of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
This is one of the most breathtaking claims in the New Testament. In it we see self-giving love. We see the Christ who refuses to exploit his
privilege, the One who moves toward human vulnerability rather than away from
it, the One who kneels, serves, touches, welcomes, feeds, forgives, and
loves…all the way to the cross.
The phrase “emptied himself” does not mean
that Jesus ceased to be divine or that goodness requires people to erase
themselves. Jesus empties himself not of
his identity but of the use of any power he could have claimed for
self-advantage. He doesn’t cling to the
status of being God. Instead, he clings
to the idea of being a servant. But
being a servant is not weakness; it’s strength under the discipline of mercy or
power and authority refusing to become cruel.
It is the Son of God showing us that greatness is not measured by how
many people stand beneath us, but by how willing we are to stand beside those
whom the world has pushed down.
We see glimpses of that kind of humility all
around us. We see it in the nurse who’s
already worked a long shift but pauses at the doorway because a upset patient
needs someone to listen to them. We see
it in the teacher who notices that the child called “difficult” is carrying burdens
no child should have to carry. We see it
when an adult child rearranges a busy week to care for an aging parent because
love sometimes takes the form of showing up again and again. We see it in the person who enters a
difficult conversation willing to say, “I may not understand what you are
saying or your point of view yet, but tell me what this has been like for
you.” None of these actions will make the
evening news, but each one reflects the mind of Christ because each one makes
room for the experience and journey, and life of another human being.
The biggest caution here though, is to not
turn this passage into nothing more than advice about being nicer. That’s not at all what Paul was trying to get
after. Jesus didn’t humble himself so
that the powerful could remain comfortable while everyone else learned better
manners. Christ’s very existence
challenged religious exclusion, social hierarchy, economic exploitation, and
every boundary used to decide who was worthy of God’s attention and who was
not. He ate with people respectable
society avoided. He touched people
others considered unclean. He welcomed
children when the disciples wanted them to go away. He listened to women whose testimony was
discounted. He announced good news to
the poor and release to the captive. The
humility of Christ creates a community in which those who have been ignored are
seen, those who have been silenced are heard, and those who have been treated
as disposable are honored as beloved children of God. In first century Judaism, and even in the surrounding
Pagan culture, those ideas were radical and totally upside down.
Not much different than today. In twenty-first century Christianity and our
own surrounding culture, that means a church shaped by Philippians 2 has to ask
difficult questions. Are we using our
traditions to serve people, or expecting people to serve our traditions? Do our decisions protect what is familiar to
us while placing the cost on someone else?
Are we listening only to the loudest voices, or making room for people
who have learned from experience that speaking can be risky? When newcomers enter our doors, do they sense
that they must become like us before they can belong, or do they discover a
community willing to be changed by the gifts they bring?
The same is true in our homes and
relationships. Sometimes the most
Christlike words we can speak are, “I was wrong.” Sometimes they are, “I am sorry.” Sometimes they are, “Help me understand.” ,Those
sentences can feel like a kind of dying because something in us wants to
defend, explain, blame, or retreat. We
fear that if we admit fault, we’ll lose power of some sort. We fear that if we truly listen, we might
have to change. But Christ’s cross tells
us that a life poured out in love is not wasted, in fact, it might tell us that
on the other side of it there may be a new relationship, a new understanding,
or at least a new freedom from the bitterness we’ve carried.
Of course, not every broken relationship
can be repaired. As I’ve said before,
humility doesn’t require returning to an unsafe situation, restoring trust that
has not been rebuilt, or pretending that an apology has occurred when it
hasn’t. Jesus’ self-giving love should
never be used to keep an abused person within reach of an abuser. Sometimes looking to the interests of another
means drawing a boundary that prevents further harm. Sometimes love speaks gently, and sometimes
love overturns tables. What makes both
actions faithful is not passivity, but a deep concern for the healing and
wholeness God desires not just for every person, but ultimately for the whole
world.
Paul continues the hymn by saying that
Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on
a cross.” We hear those words so often that we may forget how shocking they
were. The cross was not a religious decoration that people wore around their
necks. It was an instrument of state
terror, designed to humiliate and silence anyone who threatened the established
order. However, Jesus refuses to save
himself by becoming like the forces that oppose him. He doesn’t answer hatred with hatred or
domination with domination. He trusts
that God’s love is stronger than the empire’s cross.
Notice how the passage ends, “God highly
exalted him and gave him the name above every name.” God exalts the crucified servant. God’s final “Yes” is the great reversal at
the heart of the gospel.
Every knee bending and every tongue
confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord is not a picture of God demanding
flattery. It is the joyful recognition
that the true Lord is not Caesar, not wealth, not violence, not nationalism,
not popularity, and not the fearful little ego that insists everything revolve
around us. Jesus is Lord. The One who serves is Lord. The One who welcomes outsiders is Lord. The One who forgives enemies and stands with
the suffering is Lord. And if Jesus is
Lord, then all the smaller powers that demand our allegiance are exposed. They may frighten us, tempt us, or occupy our
attention, but they do not have the final word.
The world tells us to climb, to grasp, to
protect, and to conquer. Christ opens
his hands. Christ empties himself. Christ serves. And Christ loves. God says that this is what
true glory looks like. May our life
together make that glory visible. May
those who meet us encounter not a people consumed with themselves, but a people
learning to see, to listen, to share, to repent, to welcome, and to love. And when we fail, as we surely will, may we
receive grace, rise again, and begin once more, until the mind of Christ
becomes not only a passage we read or a hymn we sing, but the shape of our life
together. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Generous God, You have blessed us with so
much. Take these gifts and cause them to
work for You in this world which You formed, created, and continue to care for. AMEN
Closing Hymn – I Have Decided to Follow Jesus #602 Brown
Hymnal
Benediction –
Go forth into God’s world as
God’s own children. Let the love of
Christ be reflected in your life and your deeds. Go with joy to serve the Lord. AMEN
Postlude
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