Let the Same Mind Be in You

Palm Sunday

The first stories I remember hearing from my dad as a young boy were about the Hatfields and the McCoys in Kentucky and West Virginia.  These families had been feuding for generations.  The thing had gone on for so long that people don’t rightly recollect how it got started.  Some say it was because the McCoys supported the Union and the Hatfields were Confederates.  But it could have been McCoy’s belief that a Hatfield had stolen one of his hogs sometime back in 1878.  As I said, the details seem to have gotten lost in the mists of history.

But once it got going, the feud was fought back and forth across the West Virginia/Kentucky state line for several generations.  In 1888 several Hatfields were arrested and stood trial for the murder of two of Randall McCoy’s children. An aspect of that case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.  These were two of the most feuding families that ever lived according to my Dad.  And the only thing that ever came out of it was death and more death, and vows of revenge and tears of loss.

Paul counsels a better way.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ.  This is a far, far better way.  That was also Dad’s advice.  Yes, you could be right, in fact, dead right.  A slight, a harsh word — let it go.  Just let it go.  Keep on walking.

Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  What makes this passage so annoying and difficult is that we human beings aren’t built that way.  It’s not our nature to let it go.  It goes against the grain. Our natural tendency is to put up our dukes.  We’re going to settle this after school is the taunt. 

Put up your dukes on the playground always won out over any silly notions about forbearance and the mind of Christ.  Any boy talking such nonsense would have become a laughing stock.  He wouldn’t have dared show his face in the classroom after recess.  Not one of us sixth grade boys had the spiritual maturity to even remotely have considered such an option.  It was “me first and if anyone else survives, it’s mere coincidence.” So, put up your dukes, you yellow bellied coward was the choice de jour out on the basketball court.

Yet, Palm Sunday is a procession into humility.  It is a drama of emptying out — setting aside one’s own prerogatives, one’s rights.  That is the mind of Christ.  To go to Jerusalem is to willingly enter the pain and suffering of the world. 

This was the choice in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. “He set his face towards Jerusalem,” is how the story goes.  As the Jewish Passover approached there were two parades in the city that morning.

According to Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their book, The Last Week,[1]  the choice was between a humble rabbi with a message of peace and rebirth and the full might of the Roman army.  That morning before the Passover festivities, imperial Roman legions marched into Antonia Fortress to ensure law and order during the Jewish high festival.

Those of the Roman procession wore highly polished armor breastplates that glistened in the sun.  Upon mighty steeds and with banners held high they represented all the power and might of Rome.  They were in control.  These centurions were there to prevent the unrest that in the past had punctuated other Passovers.  In the last major Passover unrest in around 4 BC, over 2000 of those who had taken part of the rebellion in Jerusalem were crucified.  Fearsome iron swords and sharpened spears, gleaming helmets and imperial banners carried high aloft were the guarantee that there would be no repeat.  Drummers beating out the cadence announced to all Jerusalem that Caesar was in charge and would brook no opposition.  This is the parade of Pax Romana. The Iron Fist.

That Passover there was a second procession on the opposite side of the city.  This was a procession of a little-known rabbi and his followers from the countryside.  His reputation as a noted teacher and healer had proceeded him.  Some thought that he might be the anointed one come to rid their land of the despised Romans.  Some thought he might be the one to herald in a new age spoken of by the prophet Isaiah – a new age when the crippled would be healed, the blind would see and there would be an abundance of food and drink for all.  People joined the band waving palm branches and little children skipped and ran along side.  But for Jesus this was no picnic.  This was deadly serious business.

It was imperial might arrayed against vulnerability.  Roman armor up against one who whose message was of a new way of living.   Not born of the brutality and force of arms, but a kingdom of the heart, a kingdom of spirit. A kingdom where women had a say and children were valued for themselves.  A kingdom meant to include all.  A regime where the least are first and the hungry are satisfied.

We have such difficult time understanding that all means all.  We still flock to might and prestige.  We honor the prerequisites of tribe and clan. Even after two thousand years and we still don’t get it.

The interesting truth is that one can still encounter the humble followers of that simple teacher while Roman might seems to have evaporated into history.  Empires come and go, yet the mind of Christ still beckons.

Let this same mind be in you.  Do not be swayed by the fickle crowd as variable as the high desert winds that blow first this way and then that. 

To enter the gates of Jerusalem is to enter the pain of any of our large urban areas. It is to encounter the despair of emptied out rural America.  For the church, this means setting our own agenda aside and opening ourselves up to what we hear and see.  That is the mind of Christ that will bring our own healing.  That is the mind, out of death that brings life.

Mike Kinman tells of entering the pain of St. Louis and being confronted by the anguish of Black Lives Matter.  He tells of an experience five years ago, yet still as vivid in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. 

“I feel you. Do you feel me?”  That was the voice of Pastor Traci Blackmon as she grasped the shoulders of Vonderrit Meyers, Sr., the father of a young black youth who had been shot six times in the back on the streets of St. Louis on October 8, 2014.  Mike continues the story:

I can still hear the Rev. Traci Blackmon’s voice ringing in my ears.

I can still see her face against his, hands on his shoulders, eyes piercing into his eyes.

It was near midnight on October 8, 2014, and a few hours before, 18-year old Vonderrit Myers, Jr. had been shot eight times – six in the back – and killed by an off-duty St. Louis City Police Officer. A crowd gathers at the scene and when they begin to move, the clergy who are there split up. Some go with the crowd. Others – Traci and I – we go with Vonderrit Myers, Sr. to the city morgue to be with him as he identifies the body of his son.

We stand outside for what seems like an eternity until the father emerges, the nightmare he had lived with since the day his son was born slowly becoming real. Head hanging to the ground, he almost whispers the words we already know:

“It’s him.”

And then… the pain begins to turn to rage. I could see it happen. He begins to fume … and tremble. What begins as a cry becomes a wail. What starts as a murmur grows into a shout as he says:

“It’s him. It’s my son. Somebody is going to pay for this. I’ve got a gun, and somebody is going to pay for him tonight!”

I am paralyzed. I cannot imagine his rage and know he has every right to it. I will not tell him to calm down. And… this is headed nowhere good. Not only do I not know what to do, I know whatever it is, I’m not the one who can do it.

And then Traci steps up to him. Traci steps up to him and grabs him by his shoulders, and puts her face right up to his face … her eyes to his eyes.
He is trembling. And she is trembling. And she holds him. And he looks at her and she says:

“I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. OK?”

He nods.

“Now I need you to feel me.”

His eyes are glued to hers.

“You have a job right now. You have to be a husband tonight. Your wife has lost her son, and she needs her husband. No one can do that but you. You have to go be with her. That’s where you have to be tonight. She needs you.”

“And tomorrow morning, I’m going to be at your house first thing. I’m going to be there and I’m going to stay there with you for as long as it takes.”

Tears fill the father’s eyes.
Tears fill Traci’s eyes.
And she says again.

“I feel you. Do you feel me?”

Vonderrit Myers, Sr. nods his head, and they embrace. And they cry. And then Vonderrit Myers, Sr. leaves the body of his son and goes to spend the longest night of his life at home with his wife.

And first thing the next morning, Traci is there. And she stays until they don’t need her to stay any more.[2]

To enter Jerusalem is to enter into any of our distressed urban areas, and pray to God, pray, like Pastor Traci, to have that mind of Christ in you.  That is where our Palm Sunday parade is leading the Church this morning and on any given morning.

In city after city, in village and township, Christ is crucified anew.  Crucified as an eighteen-year-old black kid gunned down on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri.  Crucified in the deadened hopes of the homeless man who sleeps on the back steps of our office in Claremont. Crucified in our hospital emergency rooms as doctors and nurses struggle to save the life of yet another overdose victim.

And what about the Hatfields and the McCoys?  Maybe time is the balm that heals all wounds.   In May 1944, an issue of Life magazine revisited the Hatfields and McCoys nearly fifty years after the violence that had consumed those two families.   In that spread was a photo of two young women, Shirley Hatfield and Frankie McCoy, working side by side together in a factory sewing uniforms for those who would in one short year be storming the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe – many of whom would lay down their lives in the ultimate sacrifice of self.

Pray have this mind in you. Dare to enter the pain of Christ crucified daily in a thousand different ways.  With gentle hands receive his body from the cross.  It’s tough stuff.  Not for sissies.  But dare enter this pain and you will find your life. You will find your Easter.

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11;
Luke 22:14-23:56

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
March 25, 2019

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[1]  Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (San Francisco, Harper Collins, 2006).

[2] Mike Kinman, “The Power of Extravagant Love”, Sermon preached at All Saints, Pasadena, April 7, 2019.