Hilton Head Island, SC – March 2, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Philippians 2:1-11; 12-18
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. – Philippians 2:3 (RSV)
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you had been born in a different country than the United States of America? I realize a very small percentage of you were born elsewhere. So I would say to you few Chapelites who were born in foreign countries, have you ever wondered what your life would be like had you been born not where you were born or in the USA, but somewhere else? What if we all had been born in Cambodia or India or Albania or Nigeria or Upper Volta or Peru or Guatemala? How different would our lives be?
The fact is that most of us were born to American parents in America, and that has shaped the course of our lives as much or more than any other single factor in our existence. During our lifetime, almost no one born in any of those nations I just named, or in most other underdeveloped nations anywhere in the world, could have the advantages we have. The obstetrical accident of being born where we were born has given all of us a great leg up on life.
How do we feel about being Americans? What do we think about being Americans? How are Americans perceived by other nationalities? It is obvious that there are tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of other citizens of the world who would move to the USA in a heartbeat if they could, because America is still a beacon of hope and aspiration to those who would gladly become immigrants to our nation if it were possible. It is impossible objectively to verify or quantify this, but Americans are probably some of the most admired and also despised people in the world. Because we are still the most powerful country on earth, and likely shall be for at least the remainder of our lifetimes, most other residents of this planet either generally love or generally detest us. However, it is not us they either affirm or vilify; it is our government and its policies which stirs them. Still, probably few mentally or psychologically ignore us.
“This is my country/ Land of my birth/ This is my country/ Grandest on earth/ I pledge thee my allegiance/ America the bold/ For this is my country/ To have and to hold/ Breathes there a man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself hath said/ This is my own, my native land/ This is my native land.” I remember singing that song in chorus class in West High School of Madison, Wisconsin, as though it were yesterday. When Miss Huxtable chose it for us to sing, she likely wanted to instill patriotic fervor into our self-centered, increasingly skeptical or cynical hearts. Patriotism must be taught early, or it may not be learned at all.
Remember the Lee Greenwood song and lyrics? “And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free/ And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me/ And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today/ “cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land – God bless the U-S-A.” If we have a mind’s eye, which many say we do, we must also have a mind’s ear. In my mind’s ear I hear Johnny Cash singing that song, although I would not stake my life on it. Anyway, we’re taught to be proud to be Americans, because there is much to be proud of. Whenever anyone is having internal troubles they can’s solve themselves, like Ukraine or Syria or Congo – or Kuwait or Afghanistan or Iraq – they call on us. It is very understandable, for America has more power and influence than any other nation.
Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901. It was the longest reign in British history, although it may well be eclipsed by the present queen. The Victorian Era was, more or less, the zenith of the British Empire. Those were the days when the British people fervently sang, “Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves/ Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.” “Land of hope and glory/ Mother of the Free/ How shall we extol thee/ Who are born of thee? Wider yet and wider/ May thy bounds be set/ God who made thee mighty/ Make thee mightier yet.” Those were the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. Britain in the 19th century was the USA of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The power of nation states waxes and wanes. But that is not what this sermon is about. Edward Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and William Shirer wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but the essential subject of those tomes is not what this sermon is about, either. Rather this sermon is about the kind of pride which normally and naturally fills the hearts of citizens of great nations during the height of their greatness. It is almost unnatural for such citizens in such circumstances not to be unusually proud of their nations. When nations are truly great, however one chooses to define or describe that, it is hard to avoid powerful national pride.
That is what this sermon is about, because it asks the question, Is the American Way the Christian way? In numerous instances the Bible urged the people of Israel to take pride in their nation and the assertion that the biblical writers believed God particularly favored Israel. But in numerous other places, especially in the sayings of Jesus and the writings of Paul, humility, not pride, is the virtue which is extolled. So which shall it be: pride, or humility?
Philip of Macedonia was the king of the nation just north of Greece in the fourth century BCE. A large and prosperous city, Philippi, was named in his honor. Philip was the father of his far more famous son, Alexander, who conquered everything from Greece and Egypt east, as far as the Indus River, on the western border of India.
The first Christian congregation formed by the apostle Paul in Europe was founded in Philippi. Paul maintained a close relationship with the Philippians for the rest of his life. When he wrote his letter to the Philippians, he was in prison. He doesn’t say exactly where he was incarcerated. He ended up in prison in four places: in Philippi itself, in Caesarea Martima in Judea, in Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor, or what we now know as Turkey, and in Rome. From the context, we may infer he wasn’t in a Philippian jail when he wrote his letter.
As Paul did in some of his other writings, in the letter to the Philippians he alludes to some unnamed preachers who presumably had come to Philippi and preached a version of the Gospel which Paul strongly disapproved. He neither says who they were or what they claimed, but we may assume the Philippians knew whom he was talking about. Don’t believe those people, Paul warns the Philippians in the first chapter.
He begins the second chapter with one of those magnificent expressions of poetic prose which only Paul could write: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (2:1-2). Then Paul wrote what is the sermon text for this morning: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves” (2:3).
Let no one be mistaken. Paul was not talking about what I am talking about in this sermon. He was addressing individuals, and not ethnic groups or nationalities. He wasn’t urging Macedonians in general or Greeks in general to be humble and to count others better than themselves. Individual Christians should do that, Paul said, but he didn’t say no one should expect the peoples of the various nations to do that.
However, because the United States of America has been the Number One Nation in the world since the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991, and in retrospect probably since the end of World War II, despite the nearly fifty years of tension between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War, it is hard, even for American Christians, to think of others in a better light than we think of ourselves. In the so-called “American Century,” pride is the American way, even if humility is supposed to be the Christian way. If we had been born in the late 17th century in what then were any of the thirteen British colonies, or in what became the USA in the late 18th century, or even up until World War I, we would not have possessed the innate pride which dwells within 21st century Americans. But we were born when and where we were born, and pride coincided with our chronology and geography for most Americans. It just goes with our terrestrial territory.
Being a Christian is both a matter of chance and of choice. Most of us had Christian parents, and so we are Christians. That is the chance part. But when we became adults, we didn’t have to remain Christians, yet most of us did, and that is the choice part. However, the picture becomes much more complex and more muddled for us because we chanced to be born to American Christians, and thus are ourselves American Christians, and thus we don’t necessarily think or act or behave like other Christians in other parts of the world. We think and act and behave like American Christians. That may mean we consider ourselves better than other Christians, not because we are better Christians, but because we are Americans.
Am I right in the direction of all this philosophizing, or am I wrong? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Or, as Jesus might have said, am I straining at a gnat, purportedly on your behalf, while also forcing you to try to swallow a camel? (See Mt. 23:24)
In the past few years, there has been a remarkable swing toward the approval of same-sex marriage in many Western countries, including the United States. The US Supreme Court, in an astonishing decision, said there is nothing inherent in the US Constitution to prevent same-sex marriage. Other federal judges have also affirmed that legal notion. Nevertheless, many state legislatures, including ours, have passed laws prohibiting marriage between two people of the same sex. They have done so almost with a kind of perverse religious pride, in which they, who presumably are heterosexual in their orientation, want to prevent homosexually oriented people from marrying. One of the many alarming things about this is that they are falling in line with similar laws passed in authoritarian states around the world, such as Russia, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The US stands almost alone among advanced nations in the passage of such laws, although these are state and not federal laws. Is a kind of pervasive if also invisible pride involved in such legislation? In humility do we count others better than ourselves when we pass such laws?
The Arizona State Legislature passed a law stating that it is legal for business owners on religious grounds to refuse to serve gays in their business establishments. Is that a proper position for any religious person, whether Christian or otherwise? Would business owners count other better than themselves, were they to do that? Is there not an insidious form of hubris for anyone even to think such a thing? To her credit, the Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, who is a strong evangelical Christian, vetoed to bill. Good marks to her for having done so.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Too few people try to understand how the first part of that amendment is related to the second part. Americans seem to comprehend the possession of firearms like no one else in the world. The South Carolina State Legislature recently quickly passed a law which says that citizens may carry permitted weapons, whether concealed or openly carried, into bars, but they may not drink alcohol while they are there. Why would anyone carry a pistol into a bar, knowing that when he got there he could not drink? Does someone who does that count others better than himself when he does it? Who is protecting whom from whom when so many people have so many guns for self-protection? Is a unique form of American pride inherent in our fascination with firearms? Do citizens of powerful nations individually as well as corporately act with an unseemly swagger?
Is the American Way the Christian way? They are not necessarily antithetical at all, but they most certainly can be. When thinking like an American, whatever that means, trumps thinking like a Christian, whatever that means, American pride may have gotten in its own way, and it may render being an American Christian a difficult if also diffuse prospect.
Sadly, for some 21st century Americans, it would have been better for themselves and for others had they been born elsewhere. They would not become afflicted and infected with the kind of pride which indirectly can accompany being Number One. Some people cannot handle that heavy responsibility very well. Look at the behavior of some professional athletes or entertainment celebrities. They find it almost impossible in humility to count others better than themselves. Instead, they have a decided tendency to consider themselves far better than others. Being the best or the biggest or the most influential simply goes to the heads of some people, and they become prideful, disdainful, arrogant ignoramuses.
Christians should feel obligated to consider the welfare of others in whatever decisions they make about anything. No doubt most of us would much prefer to be American Christians to being Cambodian or Nigerian or Iranian or even German or Italian or English or Scots Christians.
With respect to pride, however, currently it is probably harder for American Christians naturally to count other better than themselves than it is for Christians of any other nationality. But surely that is what Paul, and Jesus, and God are requiring of us. In humility we should count all others better than ourselves.
An old song says, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble/ When you’re perfect in every way.” Well, we all need to work at it anyhow, fellow American Christians. Never forget that for Christians, humility should always trump pride, even when historical and geographical circumstances make that very hard advice to follow.