Staying out of the treehouse

 This week's verses are Philippians 2:5-8:

You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,

who though he existed in the form of God

did not regard equality with God

as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself

by taking on the form of a slave,

by looking like other men,

and by sharing in human nature.

He humbled himself,

by becoming obedient to the point of death

—even death on a cross!

These verses are talking about Jesus, who we are celebrating during this Advent season. Jesus, as we know, is God. But when he came to earth he put aside the advantages of being God and allowed himself to be vulnerable to all of the same things we are, even to the point of suffering injustices with us and dying on the cross.

If anyone had the right to a "get out of jail free" card, it was Jesus. He was the rightful heir to everything. The world belongs to him. He could have just climbed up to a high place and rained down righteous condemnation on us, but he didn't. He came to our level and met us eye to eye, not to condemn but to serve.

One of the side effects of being saved and reconciled to God is that we can sometimes begin to think we're above those who have not yet accepted his offer. The church in that condition becomes a kind of tree house or observation tower, where we look down at the poor lost souls wandering around on the ground, and throw handfuls of condemnation down on them to try to get them to see us and how much higher we are than them. It's not a "hey come up here before it's too late" conversation we're having with the world. It's a "why are you damned fools still on the ground instead of being like us" conversation.

But Jesus didn't approach people like that. He didn't take advantage of his position as the son of God to harass people and boss them around. He didn't distance himself. He lived among us in a body just like ours, experiencing the things we experienced. He never stopped being "one of us" in a relational sense, even though he was so much more.

But when you encounter someone who isn't a Christian, or someone who is struggling with a sin you don't suffer from, or someone with a different political affiliation or different opinion on things than you, do you encounter them as Jesus, or do you call down to them from your high position to tell them how much better they would be if only they could be you?

Jesus humbled himself. He emptied himself of his natural born exemption to being confronted and attacked, and enslaved himself to the task of setting us free. He never even considered climbing up amongst the birds into that treehouse to shout us all down.

The way we deal with people who are lost or ignorant, or are full of themselves and hostile, or are simply on a path to self-destruction is often very different to how Jesus handled them. We want to be the lighthouse, the Pharisee, the snark-armed policeman of the Committee for Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. We don't see them as being like us at all, and we want to prove it.

Jesus found himself born suddenly into a world of filthy animals, surrounded by people with real problems, people with real prejudices against him, open hostility, even outright treachery and betrayal. He had every right to say to himself "I don't have to deal with these people. I'm the precious lamb of God and they're a hopeless toxic mess." But he didn't.

When you encounter someone who is like that, you have a choice: Will you be the privileged Pharisee who ushers them out of church, boycotts their businesses, trash talks them to their colleagues, and maybe hands them a tract or two about how they will end up in hell if they don't believe as you say? Or will you be the flesh and blood brother and servant, like Jesus?

Our choices often depend on who Jesus is to us. If we believe that he is unapproachable, unreasonable, and unacquainted with the kind of things we have to deal with, we will likely be unapproachable, unreasonable, and out of touch to others when we try to represent him. But this week's verses paint a more realistic picture of who he is and who he should be to us.

God didn't have to give us a second chance, but he did. He went so far out of his way to make himself approachable that he came right into our midst in the form of a slave. And he didn't ascend into the heavens until we saw him and knew that he's made sure everything would be OK for us. Is that the God you see when you pray and read the Bible? Is that the God you reveal in the life of your church, in your encounters with others? If not, then spend some time digesting this week's verses in order to bring your Christianity more down to earth.