Our minds are precious commodities, as we sometimes find out when someone we love loses their cognitive abilities. The person may forget important things, like their own name, or your relationship to them. My Aunt Dot who died a year ago, gradually lost the ability to speak as she aged into her late 80s, although she retained the ability to understand what people were saying to her.
Michael J. Fox, the actor, was diagnosed with a nervous system disease, Parkinson’s, that may lead to various problems with brain function, including dementia. President Reagan developed Alzheimer’s Disease late in life and retired from all public appearances. And here several parishioners of Holy Trinity have dealt with this and other dementias in their life.
Those who love someone with a brain dysfunction grieve the loss of the person they knew, as they seem to lose their personality with the loss of the ability to remember and to speak their mind. If dementia is the loss of ourselves, what does it mean to have the mind of Christ, which Paul encourages the people of Philippi to do in our reading today?
Having the mind of Christ is not giving up our own mind, but taking on the best and most loving aspects of Christ. As Paul sees it, the mind of Christ is the mind of one who does not put himself first, but humbles himself, putting others in front, even to the point of death.
This mind of Christ comes from our acknowledging the love we have received, the compassion, and sharing in the spirit as Christians in Christian community. We mirror then what we have received. In community we are heard, we are accepted for who we are, we are brought into a fold of love and compassion, where the interests of the other are put before our own interests.
Now as soon as I say all this about Christian community, anyone can say, but what about the times when Christian community is not loving, when there are arguments and rifts? One thing I have learned is that if we are encouraged in scripture to do something, it’s because that thing really needs encouragement, so the Philippians probably really needed to hear Paul encourage them to have the compassionate mind of Christ. Their Christian community probably also needed to be reminded about the basis of their gathering in Christ.
Paul’s words about humility point to the great humility that was in Christ. God is in work in us, as Paul writes to the Philippians in his last sentence—which is the best news of all. Most of us can’t hope to give up worrying about our own issues and concerns and to put others first, and we must have God at work in us to keep us moving along the path to having the mind of Christ.
Paul does not say how God works so that we can have the mind of Christ, but I do believe we participate with God’s work in us and help this along. We meditate or read scripture, or pray daily, not just on Sunday. It is a lifelong work that God is doing in us, and the humility of Christ works in us for the peace and justice of the world, one person at a time.
Humility itself is nearly a banned word in our culture. But don’t mistake humility for being humiliated, or for abasing yourself by putting yourself or your talents down. Humility involves deciding that God is in charge and then acting that way. The mind of Christ is the mind that participates with God working in us—this mind gives time to being for others, not in a martyr-like way, but in a giving that naturally comes from our love for others. This giving is not the constant self-denial of someone who pities themself, who boasts about how good they are. This mind rests in God’s love and naturally wants to include others in compassion.
The mind of Christ is a mind attuned to God around us, through us and in us. This mind connects with the love that the world needs. This mind is centered on the spirit of compassion, encouraged by Christ’s words of love to us.
It has been said that we are what we think about all day. If you think about your plants, you are a gardener; if you think about your check book, you are an accountant. If you think thoughts of love, you are a compassionate person; if you think thoughts of anger and revenge, you are not. You can train yourself to be compassionate by reading about the compassion of Christ, praying to be more compassionate, and by being more compassionate toward your own self. If in your mind you are not worthy how can anyone else be worthy of compassion? We can take the example of twelve step programs that help train those with addictions to change their thinking about themselves so that they can be more fully human, and thus more compassionate toward themselves and the world.
If dementia scares us, because it is the loss of the best part of the mind, then opposite of this kind of loss is cultivating our own mind of Christ; to fully engage with God’s work within us—the work of love and compassion, the work of the sharing the spirit with each other.
May this place be a place where we take Paul’s words seriously and assist each other in this work to develop the mind of Christ, the mind of humble compassion for the world.
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