Solidariedade - Part 2

Probably you have heard numerous lessons and sermons from this passage. Probably you have heard numerous lessons and sermons telling you to serve other people. Many of you have gone on mission trips to help people. Many of you have served at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Many of you have felt the need to help those less fortunate than you and be nice to the strangers and wierdos and freaks. And in our churches these sorts of actions are praised as sacrificial servanthood. But are these sorts of actions a real application of these verses? After all, don’t we just return to our comfortable homes and lifestyles when our time of service ends? Is this Christ’s example? Is this truly emptying ourselves?

What are you really giving up when you go on mission trips, or when you gather food for the boy scouts can drive, or when you donate clothes and coats, or when you buy toys for tots, or when you serve food at the local homeless shelter? These are all good programs and important to our society, but when you stop and think about it, what is the cost? Old cans of nasty beans that we weren’t going to eat? An old coat that is out of style and has been stuffed into the back of our closets for years? Some time that we probably would have spent playing a Wii or checking our Myspaces and facebooks? This isn’t sacrifice. This isn’t counting the cost.

Don’t get me wrong. While our acts of service are good and well intentioned I don’t think they get at what Paul is talking about in Philippians.

That is what separates Solidariedade from our notions of service. Considering others’ needs with no regard to your own flies in the face of what society expects from us. Entire businesses are built upon you getting what you want when you want it. It seems to me that we are willing to help people as long as it doesn’t really lower our own position. We will give people a hand out to put them on our level but we will not lift them up above ourselves. If we truly want to follow Christ’s example our actions do not stop with accepting one another as equal. Following Christ revolves around elevating others above your own position which may well mean lowering yourself. Giving up your rights. Sacrificing what you want.

Most of the time, when we truly count the cost, I am afraid that we decide it is too expensive and go for a cheaper version. For example, when the clothing drive comes my way, I could give away my best name brand shirt, but I look so good in it and I love the way it fits and feels. Wouldn’t it just be easier to give an old t-shirt that I never wear. What’s the difference? Shirtless people are still getting shirts, right? If you can’t see the difference in these two acts then you have missed the point for the day. You’ve missed what Solidariedade is all about. You’ve missed following the example of your Savior.

But this is a hard message to preach and even harder to live out. I struggle with it regularly. What is the balance between enjoying God’s blessings and elevating others above ourselves? Am I supposed take literally the command that Jesus gave to the rich man when Jesus told him to sell everything he had, give it to the poor and then follow? Should I cease buying anything new and just for enjoyment because other people are going without basic needs? Should I be plagued with guilt because I have contributed to the oppression and poverty in the world by creating the very demand that has caused such things?

I don’t know. I just don’t know. I go round and round with these thoughts all the time. I don’t have all the answers, but I know this – if we neglect the needs that are right in front of us and continue to live a life of luxury while others live in poverty we cannot be in the place God wants us to be. We cannot be following the example of Christ. We aren’t regarding others better than ourselves.

God is calling you to empty yourself so that others can be raised up. It may be dirty. It may be nasty. It may be uncomfortable. It may go against every instinct of self-preservation you have. But it is the essence of the life of a disciple.

In Latin America they call it Solidariedade. We just call it living the Christian life. May you embrace the life to which God has called you – a life of emptying yourself in the same way that your Savior emptied himself for you.