Dr. Rodney Plunket

Today is the Day of Pentecost.  About one thousand nine hundred and seventy-three years ago today, the Holy Spirit descended upon a group of diehard disciples of Jesus Christ.  The Spirit gave those disciples the power to speak in a multitude of languages, and they used that gift to declare “the wonders of God.”  The speaking of so many different languages generated accusations of drunkenness; but the Apostle Peter’s defense against that charge was a great sermon, a great sermon that resulted in thousands being baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ.”  Those who were baptized had their sins washed away and received “the gift of the Holy Spirit” (see Acts [Ax] 2).

Last Sunday, we heard the Apostle Paul express his passionate longing to know Christ.  We heard him, in Philippians 3:10, say, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”  Paul the apostle, still hungered to know/to discover more and more of Jesus.  I am convinced that all disciples of Christ have that same passion.

As a result, I think it not at all inaccurate to say that through Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost many persons began a lifelong journey to discover more and more of Jesus.  Acts 2:42 makes clear that these early converts were hungry to discover more about their Savior and Lord because it reports that these early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching . . .”  The messages in the Book of Acts and in the letters that the apostles wrote, plainly reveal that “the apostles’ teaching” focused on Jesus.

But “the apostles’ teaching” is not all to which these early Christians were devoted.  Please listen to Ax 2:42 in its entirety:  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  I take “the breaking of bread” here to be a reference to the communion meal.  The phrase, “the prayers,” may refer to a regular schedule of times when the disciples met for prayer together.  And I take the word “fellowship” to refer to the experience of community and oneness which characterized these early disciples.

What I want especially to note is that, even at this very early stage of their journey to discover Jesus, the discovery was not an individualistic exercise.  Our early sisters and brothers were joined together by their common journey and for their common journey.

The great German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote,

Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon Him, nor come to Him.  But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him.  The way is blocked by our own ego.  Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother.  Now Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one.  But they can continue to do so only by way of Jesus Christ.  Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through him are we bound together.  To eternity he remains the one Mediator.[1]

See how Bonhoeffer ties our relationship with Jesus to our relationship with one another.  This morning I will try to help all of us see how Broadway’s mission, “Discovering Jesus,” impacts relationships.

Please open your Bible to Philippians (Php) 2:1-11.  Last Sunday we spent our time in Php 3; this morning we will be in chapter two of that same letter.  Please follow along as we work our way through this great text of Scripture.  In verse one, Paul writes, “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, . . .”  Paul begins by pointing to positive experiences that he knows were common to his readers.  The little Greek word translated “if” at the very beginning of this verse, is often used to convey greater certainty than the English word “if” does.  It tends to move into the field of meaning more naturally inhabited by the English word “since,” S-I-N-C-E.  This seems to me to be one of the places where that happens because Paul is clearly working from something he knows his readers have to something he wants them to have.  What he knows they have are “encouragement in Christ, . . . consolation from love, . . . sharing in the Spirit” and “compassion and sympathy.”

Look at what he seeks to build upon those things that he knows his readers have.  Please follow along as I read verses (vv) 2-4:

. . . make my joy complete:  be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Through this passage, Paul makes clear that his joy relative to the Christians in Philippi would be “complete” if, in addition to the Christian blessings they already have, they would add a unity and a love that precluded “selfish ambition” and “conceit” and produced a humility that caused them to “regard others as better than [them]selves.”  He wanted them to grow in unity and love to such an extent that they no longer focused upon their “own interests” but instead they focused upon “the interests of others.”

Now please look with me at vv 5-11.  These verses make clear the connection between “Discovering Jesus” and relationships within the Body of Christ.  Please follow along as I read:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

          who, though he was in the form of God,

                    did not regard equality with God

                    as something to be exploited,

          but emptied himself,

                    taking the form of a slave,

                    being born in human likeness.

          And being found in human form,

                    he humbled himself

                    and became obedient to the point of death—

                    even death on a cross.

          Therefore God also highly exalted him

                    and gave him the name

                    that is above every name,

          so that at the name of Jesus

                    every knee should bend,

                    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

          and every tongue should confess

                    that Jesus Christ is Lord,

                    to the glory of God the Father.

Notice first vv 9-11, the final section.  There Paul reveals the incredible exaltation given to Jesus by God because of what Jesus did.  Surely the point is that since God so exalted Jesus for doing what Jesus did, all who seek to fulfill God’s will should do the same.

So what did Jesus do that we are to imitate?  To put it simply, Jesus emptied Himself of all the prerogatives which attended His divine position, divine status, and divine nature; and He humbled Himself, became a slave in human likeness, and died on a cross.

The Apostle Paul’s words help us know how to connect “Discovering Jesus” to our relationships with one another.  We are to look at one another and to treat one another in light of the radical humility of Jesus.  We are above no one to the extent that Jesus is above us all.  Yet Jesus came down, all the way down, from divinity to become the equivalent of a human slave who was crucified for us all.

Brothers and sisters, our mission statement, “Discovering Jesus,” is inauthentic if we do not connect it to loving others as Jesus loved us.  Please, let us all be passionate in our efforts to discover more and more of our crucified and risen Lord.  But that discovery cannot be, must not be just a discovery of more facts organized and stored in our brains.  Our discovery of Jesus must be a discovery that causes our love for others to be transformed so that it is more and more like the love that Jesus lived out for us.

Philippians 2:1-11 is focused exclusively on the love that the Philippian Christians were to have for one another.  That exclusive focus is likely due to the fact that Paul is addressing disunity within the church in Philippi.  But we need to realize that the New Testament elsewhere teaches that we are to love everyone that way and not just those who share our common faith.

There seems to me to be no stronger indication of the all-inclusiveness of the love we are to show than Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan.  In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells that parable and through it calls upon us to love anyone who has need without regard to religion, race, nationality, or creed.  Jesus gives the victim in this story no ethnic identifiers, no race identifiers, no nationality identifiers, and no religious identifiers.  The victim is merely a person in need.  That is all that distinguishes the victim.  Through this parable, Jesus makes clear that we are to love sacrificially anyone who has need.  They are all our neighbors.  Discovering Jesus is to love others in such a way that we regard them as better than ourselves.

Just a few days ago, June 5, was the two-year anniversary of my father’s death.  Maybe for that reason and maybe because next Sunday in Father’s Day, my mind has gone to stories from my Dad’s life as I have thought about this morning’s sermon.  I want to share one of those stories with you now.

I knew of the events that make up this story soon after they happened, but I was not present when they happened.  But my brother Joe has a friend, Robert Harper, who was there.  He wrote the story just a year or so ago.

I want to tell you about the most powerful, courageous sermon I ever heard a brother preach. . . .

In the Spring of 1971, I was an eighth grader at a Christian school in Birmingham, Alabama.  The school, West Birmingham Christian School, no longer exists.  At that time, the school was required to publish a statement that it would not discriminate on the basis of race, in order to keep its tax exempt status.  You might think that would be a no-brainer…but this was Birmingham in 1971.

The school’s board of directors was primarily made up of elders and ministers from three Churches of Christ in the area, including mine, the Adamsville Church of Christ.  My mother also happened to teach at the school.  Anyway, all of the board members from Adamsville were strongly in favor of passing the resolution, as you would expect Christians to do.  One of the other congregations was pretty much against it…there were quite a few racists.  The third congregation…Hillview Church of Christ…well, folks there were pretty much split down the middle.  It was a very, very contentious time.  There was a lot of bitterness.

At the very time when all of this is reaching a climax…Lamar Plunket was scheduled to come to Hillview to hold what we used to call a “gospel meeting”…a week of nightly services.  A common practice was to have the services start on Sunday night at 7:30.  That way, people at the neighboring congregations are able to come also, since most congregations’ Sunday evening services went from 6:00 to 7:00.  So on that Sunday evening, after services at Adamsville were over, we hurried over to Hillview so we could hear Lamar Plunket preach.  The place was packed…with people from all three of the congregations involved in the school controversy.  There were probably at least 400 people there, and they were probably split right down the middle on the race issue.

Well, I guess someone got word to Lamar about the whole situation, because when he got up in the pulpit, he let ‘em have it with both barrels.  It’s been 32 years, and I still remember what he said, “If you can’t love them down here, you’re not going to be able to love them up there.”  Let me tell you, in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1971, it was a courageous and powerful sermon.

Well, the elders at Hillview didn’t know what to do.  Apparently they thought about canceling the rest of the meeting and sending Lamar home, but they didn’t do it.  They let him finish the week.  So on Monday night, Lamar preached about Philip and the Ethiopian.  What a preacher!

About three years ago, while we were living in Bangladesh, we were privileged to have Lamar stay in our home whey he was in the country to teach a course at a preacher training school.  It was a great experience for me to talk to him about that night 32 years ago and what it meant to me as a 14 year old teenager.  He still remembered.

I was very saddened a year or two ago to hear that Lamar had passed away.  He was a great man and a great preacher.  I will never forget him and the privilege it was to have him visit us before he died.

To the best of my knowledge, Dad knew no African-Americans in Birmingham.  He did not enter this battle for any specific person or persons.  He simply regarded some people he did not know as better than himself; he focused upon their interests and not upon his own.  I think he learned that from Jesus.

Discovering Jesus leads us to a courageous and heroic love.  May we keep discovering Jesus, and may we always live out that discovery by emptying ourselves of “selfish ambition” and “conceit.”  Let’s love humbly.  Let’s live out the example of Jesus who, though divine, stepped all the way down, became a slave, and died on the cross for us.

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