Following Jesus

Last week I received a Christmas letter from one of our missionary couples, David and Deborah Miller.  It began with a story.  Deborah called it “My Mary Story.”  She began by saying that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, has always been her hero and for years Deborah had asked God to make her like Mary, the woman He chose among the women throughout history to bear His only begotten Son.  And then we came to Sudan, Deborah wrote. 

For those of you who don’t know, David and Deborah Miller, who are now back with us, served as missionaries in the remote hill country of the Sudan, in a place where you could only travel by foot, where you could only live in mud huts, and where few, if any, white men and women had ever been. 

Here is Deborah’s story.  It’s quite a Christmas story. 

“We were in the midst of building our mud huts,” she writes.  “It was the rainy season, and I was hoeing the heavy clay soil of the garden we hoped to plant to supplement our rice and bean diet, suddenly an intense pain shot through my back.  It took two people to carry me to our unfinished hut, where they laid me on the cold damp dirt floor on a thin foam mattress.  I lay shivering under the leaking thatch, while the rain caused one of the mud walls to collapse.  It would have to be remolded with cow dung.

"I couldn’t move the pain was so unbearable.  There was no possibility of evacuation because no one could carry me the 10 miles to the nearest airstrip.  For three days I lay in this half finished, rain soaked mud hut, relieving myself in a bucket lid David brought to me throughout the day.           

"But the hardest part for me was at night when the mice came.  David slept next to me, our son Danny at our feet, each on their own thin foam mattress.  Amazingly, they slept peacefully. 

"But I just kept hearing the mice scurrying around me.  Had I been off the floor on a bed I would not have minded as much.  But the fact that I was on the bare floor and the mice could crawl over me kept me awake.  In my pain I could only shine a flashlight to scare them back into the shadows.  I was desperate for sleep but afraid of falling asleep. 

"I turned to God. “Father, help me. Give me something to hang onto. I’m so tired,” and then came the vision.  It was a vision of Mary.  I saw it all so clearly, giving birth in the cave, the cows nearby, the mice scurrying, the donkey braying in the corner, the smell of dung and the heavenly sight of Mary giving birth to the Messiah, Savior of the world. 

"And suddenly, it didn’t matter.  I was filled with joy.  Jesus was making me into a Mary.  He was giving me the desire of my heart.  I remember falling asleep and feeling a mouse crossing over my feet but it didn’t matter.  It really didn’t matter.  God was making me into a Mary.” 

Two ways of telling the Christmas story

There are two different ways of telling the Christmas story.  You can tell the story from below or from above.   You can tell the story ...

1. from the perspective of those who experienced it here on earth, or
2. from the point of view of heaven above. 

But we tend to prefer the stories from below.  Matthew, for example, tells us about the time Joseph discovered that his young fiancé was pregnant.  Imagine that: your fiancé pregnant.

Joseph was going to end the relationship, but he determined to do it quietly; he didn’t want to cause Mary any more pain, any more embarrassment than she already felt.  But the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and said, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.  Because the child she carries is from the Holy Spirit.”  That’s a story we respond to, a story full of feeling.

Then Luke, our favorite Christmas story teller, tells us what Mary experienced.  He tells about her encounter with the angel Gabriel. How startled she was when he said, “Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you.” 

How puzzled she became when he told her she would give birth to a son who would be called the Son of the Most High & sit on the throne of David.  “How can this be,” she asked, “since I am still a virgin?” 

Then Luke tells us how humbly and submissively Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant; let it be to me as you have said.” 

We wonder, what must it have felt like? 

• What must it have been like to have been Mary or Joseph, to travel those 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem while great with child? 
• What did the shepherds see when they came to that cow stall and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in that manger? 

But imagine, if you will, how the event of Jesus birth looked from above, how it was experienced, if I can even say this, by God Himself.  Philippians chapter 2, verse 5: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Messiah Jesus." 

We’ll come back to that verse.  Messiah Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but  made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross! 

The story from above:  “He emptied Himself”

Paul tells his version of the Christmas story, for that is what this is, from above.  He begins,

• long before the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary,
• long before the shepherds were out watching their flocks by night,
• long before the trek to Bethlehem or the birth of the babe in that stable.

Paul begins in eternity.  He says, before Christ Jesus became a man he was, in his very nature, God.  He existed from all eternity as the eternal son of the eternal Father, the second person of the triune Godhead, creator of heaven and earth. That, quite frankly, is unimaginable to the likes of you and me.  But this eternal son did not consider the glory of His equality with the Father something to be grasped, to be held onto. 

When I hear that phrase I think of a little boy holding onto his toys, saying “mine, mine;” or a grown man holding onto his money, or his career or his failing physical strength, saying “mine, mine.”  The eternal son didn’t do that.  He emptied himself; that’s what the NASB [version of the Bible] says.

He made himself nothing.  The Greek word is kenosis.  There has been much ink spilt by theologians in an effort to explain what this self-emptying of God could possibly mean.  But at least it means what Paul says it means in the verses that follow.  It means the Son of God became the Son of Man. 

Think of Mary in that cave, with the cows nearby, mice scurrying on the ground, the smell of dung and animal urine all around and she cries out in pain and gives birth to her first born son. Now think of the infinite and eternal God becoming that baby born on that day to that young girl in that way.  Hold it in your mind, if you can.

The hands that flung the stars into space!  I speak metaphorically because He had no hands when He spoke the worlds into existence.  But He who spoke the worlds into being, and even now holds them together by His power, He was born from the womb of a woman on the hay-covered ground of a cow stall, with mice scurrying on the ground. 

That was only the beginning.  For this God in human flesh assumed the very nature of a servant.  The word is doulos, slave.  You see, when Jesus donned the servant’s towel on the eve of his crucifixion, and knelt down to wash his disciples’ dirty feet, he wasn’t acting in a way contrary to his nature.  He wasn’t assuming a mere posture; he was revealing who he really was.  He was embodying in that action the whole shape of his earthly life from the day he was born in that dirt covered floor until the day he died. 

• Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 
• Behold, what a distance, what a glorious distance, the Son of God has come descending from the very height of heaven and the very glory of divinity to the humility of a cow stall and a criminal’s cross. 
  You can only tell the story, the whole story, when you see how far Jesus has come. 

The story from above:  “Therefore”

Of course, that’s not the end of the story.  Philippians chapter 2, verse 9.  “Therefore and what is the “therefore” there for?  It is there to identify a connection, a connection between the events recorded in the first part of this hymn and those recorded in the second:

• because Jesus emptied Himself,
• because He made Himself nothing,
• because he took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of human flesh and humbled himself to death on the cross,
• because he bore in his body our iniquities and carried our sorrows in his being,
• because he was pierced for our transgressions,
• because the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
• because he became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 

The day is coming, and may soon be here, when the resurrected Jesus Christ will descend a second time; only that time, not to suffer on a cross but to sit upon his throne and judge the living and the dead and finally bring the Kingdom of God to earth. 

That’s the story from above.  The story of the Messiah who has come, first, to die for our sins, and the story of the Messiah who is coming again to rule and to reign.  So now let’s go back now to verse 5. 

 
Two ways of talking about being a Christian

There are two ways of talking about being and becoming a Christian.  They’re not contradictory ways; they can fit together.  But they are different. 

• The first way focuses its attention on the word ‘becoming,’ as in ‘becoming a Christian.’  It puts the emphasis of Christianity on the point of entrance.  Jesus called it ‘being born again’; Paul, being ‘justified,’ declared right with God and becoming, by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, a child of God. 

• But there is another way of talking about being a Christian.  It doesn’t contradict the teaching about becoming a Christian; but it does add to it.  It puts the emphasis not on becoming but being. 

That’s what Paul is talking about in Philippians chapter 2, verse 5.  He is saying that ...

• if you are a Christian;
• if you have received the blessings of salvation (verse 1);
•  if you have been united with Christ in baptism;
• if you have known and experience God’s love;
• if His spirit is dwelling in you,

then verse 5, you should become like Jesus.    

His attitude should become your attitude.  You should follow him and especially you should follow him in his humility.  “Do nothing,” verse 3 “out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others as better or more important than yourself. Don’t just look out for your own interests,” (verse 4), “but also, and especially, the interests of others.” 

In other words, follow Jesus as he became a servant.  Follow Him even if it leads to death, at least death to your own selfish desires because God the Father will exalt you.  He will raise you from the dead in Jesus’ name.  Though he will not give you the name that is above every name,

He will, through the name of Jesus, raise you up and cause you to rule and reign with him forever and ever and ever.  That’s what it means to be a Christian. 

Perhaps being a Christian all comes back to Mary, in many ways: 

• Being willing for Christ to be formed in you. 
• Being willing to say, “I am the Lord’s servant; let it be to me as you have said.”
• Being willing to pray, “Not my will but thine be done.”  
• Being willing to let mice crawl over your feet if God leads you there. 
• Being willing, not just to believe that Jesus became the babe in Bethlehem and the man on the cross to save us from our sins, but
• being willing to follow him, to go and do likewise.
   

Deborah Miller ended her Christmas letter with a poem, the Valley of Vision.

            Lord high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

            Where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

            Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

            That the way down is the way up, That to be low is to be high,

            That the broken heart is the healed heart,

            That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

            That the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

            That to have nothing is to posses all,

            That to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

            That to give is to receive,

            That the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, Let me find they light in my darkness, Thy life in my death,

            Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty,

            Thy glory in my valley.