Philippians 2.5-11

Much taken this Holy Week with the link which Paul places at the beginning of the (existing?) hymn ‘Christ Jesus was in the form of God’, the epistle for Palm Sunday, the canticle for Evensong in Passiontide.

The link with this hymn about the total self-emptying of God-in-Christ is ‘let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus’. 

So, if we are made in the image of God, then we are most so when not clinging onto anything, least of all status, power or prestige; all the self fulfilment aspirations, goals and norms promoted around us are fundamentally misconceived.

It turns out the aim is not to be filled or full at all, however much this pagan hope is integrated into my own instincts as well as anyone else's.

Paul is, of course, writing from prison and from within the possibility of condemnation to death.  This is what he talks about all the way through the first chapter of his letter to the Philippians leading up to this.  And he says it doesn’t matter, it is where we are meant to be.

It is from there (I’m equally taken with the ‘therefore’ in ‘therefore God has highly exalted him’) that we see that ‘crimson cresseted east’, a hint of which was even seen through our back window last week.