For Palm Sunday of Year B, the three assigned readings are Zechariah 9:9-12; Philippians 2:5-11 and Mark 15:1-47. The text chosen to preach about is Philippians 2:8, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”
Humbling oneself is as difficult as deciding to fall in love with someone. Both are not acts of our will but that which happens to us passively. To a degree we are all like Texans who refuse to pronounce the Texas town “Humble” with an “h”. Instead, they say “umble” because they don’t want to give the impression that they are humble people. They are a proud people. And that is fine if it comes to your race, heritage or ethnicity but it is an error if it comes to your standing before God. For before God we all are to be like Isaiah in chapter 6 who said, “Woe is me” in the presence of God being a man of unclean lips.
Yes, the work of the Law is to make us humble as it diagnoses our true condition before God as one that is to confess we are poor, miserable sinners deserving nothing but temporal and eternal punishment. So it comes as a surprise that there was One Who indeed humbled Himself according to Philippians 2:8. This One is none other than the Christ; the second Person of the Trinity Who took on human flesh for the purpose of taking away the punishment you and I deserved. Being sinless, He indeed is the only One Who could humble Himself as the verse reveals by being obedient to the will of the Father to die for His enemies. In fact, about them He said to His Father, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
His being humbled or humiliated is not that He was embarrassed. Instead, His humiliation was a series of events He volunteered for including His being conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffering under Pontius Pilate, being crucified, dying and being buried. Because of that willing obedience to the Father, Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God through the events of descending into hell, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father from where He will return on that great Day of Judgment.
In His voluntary decision to be humiliated, the Christ took upon Himself the punishment that should have been ours. He became sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. As the Gerhardt hymn (A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth) which is the hymn of the Day, moves us to sing, “O wondrous Love, what have You done! The Father offers up His Son. Desiring our salvation!”
Name:Tom Baker