Philippians 2:1-13
Every knee should bend, it says. Maybe. Maybe it should be easy to bend — but it never is. It’s not just the movement. There are emotions in each attempt to make that joint actually bend. I’ve noticed this as my father winces in pain. I never seem to have the right reaction. I’m either too concerned or not worried enough — but once he gets talking, I learn that it’s not just that he can’t move that way. It’s that he was an athlete. He’s played tennis and hockey — and he was good. So the fact that he can’t bend his knees shocks his entire reality. It’s fair that he should scoff at these words because they’re not true.
Every knee will not bend. Some knees can’t. Some won’t. No matter how much gravitas you throw into that should, those knees are just not going to bend. Of course, when Paul writes these words to the church, he’s not trying to make them feel badly. He’s not asking them to contort themselves. Instead, he sings to them. It’s a love song to this Christian family that has supported him. When he winced in pain, when he couldn’t move, even when he was overwhelmed by his own emotions, they prayed for him. They waited with him for relief. Make my joy complete, Paul sings because they have. He’s seen it in them. In their prayers, Paul found the same mind and the same love as Christ Jesus. And so, he sings. He doesn’t kneel. He doesn’t bend. He doesn’t twist or contort. He gives them beautiful, lyrical words. And in doing so, he’s just like us.
We have a lot of lovely words in our worship — but make no mistake, we do NOT bend. We sit. We stand. We pass. That’s about it. We sit to listen. We stand to sing. We pass the friendship pad. We sit to pray. We pass the offering plate. These are confusing movements to a newcomer, but if you’ve been around for a while you know that this is how we are most comfortable. We sit. We stand. We pass. We never, ever, EVER kneel.
There’s a reason for this. It goes way back to our ancestors, the Puritans. Our dear ancestors never, ever kneeled. It wasn’t right. It was undignified to bow before another. It may have been proper to kneel before the King. It may have been expected but the Puritans didn’t like it. If you kneel before another, in one gesture, you’ve made yourself smaller, unimportant, worthless and feminine. The Puritans didn’t want that. No matter who you are, you shouldn’t kneel — not even in worship. There’s no reason to kneel before God. You can’t submit like that to a member of our own family — and Puritans believed that they were indeed part of God’s family.
Isn’t that nice? I like that a lot — but it sure isn’t the way I usually think of the Puritans. The Puritans always seem to be this rigid, narrow bunch. It seems more likely that they didn’t want to move at all — but I do. I want to move. I want my knees to buckle at the awesome presence of God. I want my legs to tremble at the power of God’s love. I want my muscles to clench with anticipation for what God will do next.
I want to feel God’s presence in my body. I want that knowledge to be knit into every muscle and every bone. I don’t want to have to use words to explain it. I don’t want trip over metaphors about my human body to explain how God works because recently that hasn’t worked. When the poverty report was released last week, the embrace of my arms wasn’t enough. When our government can’t cross the aisle, I didn’t want God to share my furrowed brow. I want God to be bigger than that because I believe God is bigger. So, I don’t want God to have my father’s knees or my mother’s arms. When I can’t make sense of the world, I want God to have more than my grandmother’s wisdom. God is bigger than that.
But that’s scary. It’s easier to imagine God as something more concrete, more familiar, more tangible — and so the Bible is full of those images. In the very first chapter of Genesis, God is wind. God hovers over the waters of creation. In the Gospel of Matthew, God is like a hen gathering together her brood under her wings. In the Book of Revelation, God is like a city with a river running through it. Or as Lillian Daniel pointed out recently in the UCC Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, there’s always that man on a plane that finds God in the sunset to which this United Church of Christ pastor responds, ever so gently, please stop boring me. I mean, it’s nice that we can find God in these wonderful images embedded in our world. It’s a little boring but it’s nice. It’s lovely that we can see God in the humility that we find in each other. It’s nice that we can see God in the natural beauty of this world. But, if that’s it, then when do you bend? When do your knees buckle without understanding? When do your legs shake because you can’t believe that this thing has happened? When do your muscles tense because you know that there is more justice in the world?
But, let’s be honest. It’s usually much more personal. That tension in your neck isn’t about the debt ceiling or the poverty report. Your knees buckle because your family member has been diagnosed with cancer or your father is waiting for much-needed relief through surgery or you lost your job. It’s in those personal blessings and curses that we really reach for God. It’s then that we wonder how God works. Isn’t that our task? Isn’t that what God calls us to be? Isn’t it our job to understand who Christ is and what Jesus means to us? It’s interesting to me that that we are afraid to make too many claims about this. We don’t want to alienate anyone. We don’t want to sound too rigid or too narrow to those that love the sunsets. But, if we’re gonna sing this faith, it seems we should listen to Paul even if we don’t really like him. It’s lyrical here so it’s not quite as scary as some of his other pearls of wisdom. Here Paul has but one request: work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
With fear and trembling, dare to notice where you think God is working. This is never an easy question — which one rabbi makes even more challenging. When he’s approached by someone rejoicing, this rabbi asks, “How do you know it’s not a disaster?” When he is approached by someone that is devastated, he responds, “How do you know it’s not a blessing?” They are not easy questions with answers that can’t be found in sunsets, walks on the beach and hilltops, but how can you ever know unless you work it out?
That’s all Paul asked the church in Philippi to do. This story of Christ Jesus was still hard to tell. It didn’t fit with the rest of the world. They knew that — and they were still trying to figure out the details. The story was still unfolding around them. But, then there were all those people more interested in sunsets. Paul assures us not to worry about it. Work out your salvation, he says. Do it with fear and trembling. Find yourself in the presence of God. Feel your knees get weak. Let your legs shake. Allow your muscles to tense as you know that this is the God of your salvation.
Of course, I know that the next time I’m on a plane and my fellow passenger asks about my faith, I’m going to fumble for words more than Lillian Daniel might. I’m not going to tell the truth because that person doesn’t really want to know how my God saved me. He wants to talk about the sunset. That’s fine. He doesn’t need God to be any bigger than those pinks and orange hues in the sky. It’s not a conversation to be had on a plane. It’s a conversation to begin with people that have known your pain and waited with you for relief. It’s the conversation you begin when you dare to realize you’re ready to move. And ever so slowly, you bend right from the knees.