P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

GETTING AHEAD OF MARY

It's kind of hard to track the tumultuous ups and downs of English royalty throughout history, and Hollywood has recently given the world yet another look at the intrigue of the British crown back in the 1500s. There was deadly derring-do going on between the Catholic and Protestant factions, with Elizabeth's half-sister, Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, desperately trying to hold on to power despite terminal cancer. And Elizabeth, born to Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, barely survived to get to the throne herself, in the year 1558. Her own sister almost had her executed, just to keep her from the crown.
Well, Elizabeth did manage to establish herself as monarch, despite the threats from within and without, and reign for 45 years as "Good Queen Bess." But let me tell you why I claw my way through such a complicated story here in February of 2001, as we begin studying a marvelous Chapter Two in the book of Philippians. First of all, it's so true that "what goes around comes around." This Elizabeth, who barely escaped the executioner's blade herself, or the torch - as enemies and heretics were often burned at the stake in those days - eventually turned right around and had her own rival put to death. That's right. Maybe you know that Mary, Queen of Scots, the regent queen of Scotland, was beheaded at Fotheringhay, England, back on another February day, in the year 1587.
And it's a wild and woolly story. Mary, born in 1542, became queen when she was one WEEK old, when her father, James V, died. She actually began to govern in 1561 when her mother died, then was forced to abdicate the throne to her son, James VI, when the population of Scotland rose up against her for marrying her third husband, the Earl of Bothwell. Why was everyone mad at him? Well, they thought or assumed that he was the murderer of her second husband, Henry Stewart, the Lord of Darnley, who also happened to be Mary's cousin. Furthermore, evidence suggested that she was in on the murder plot.

Are you following so far? So Mary fled to England, but was imprisoned there for supposedly being in on another plot to get Elizabeth killed. And so England's queen reluctantly gave the order and her fellow sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots, went to the blade some 414 years ago.
Well, so that's quite a complicated February story; you almost need a computer flow chart to keep track of it. But as we get into chapter two of Philippians, we find that palace intrigue, or spiritual intrigue, was going pretty much gangbusters in Paul's day as well. Because he starts off this important passage with one of his strongest appeals to the new Christians in this city. Notice:

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete [that's Paul, of course] by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose."

It's crucial to note that all of these challenges flow FROM the first expression in verse one: "being united with Christ." That comes first. That's the paramount thing. There's no sense going on if a reader isn't first of all united with Christ.
The New International Version's text notes have this to say about that expression: "united with Christ."

"In Paul's teaching," these scholars write, "this personal union is THE basic reality of salvation. To be in Christ IS TO BE SAVED. It is to be in intimate personal relationship with Christ. From this relationship flow all the particular benefits and fruits of salvation."

They also suggest that where it reads "united with Christ" it could just as well read "united IN Christ." In other words, all of this unity, this getting along, Christians being one in purpose and spirit, is going to come from being united IN Christ. There's no point in trying to find harmony and peace in this world apart from that all-important Christian relationship first. Every other attempt is basically a case of Band-aids on cancer. In the long term it doesn't work.
Let me quickly observe, and this is just a non-historian's perspective, that all of the tumult in old England - the beheadings and burnings, the backstabbings and betrayals - was largely due to the fact that people were so confused spiritually. The medieval church was a persecuting power; people found salvation at the point of a gun instead of being in relationship, PERSONAL relationship, with Jesus. So Paul's words here are so astute.

But now to verse three, and let me share this from a couple of Bible versions. Just for interest's sake, here's the King James:

"Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."

You get a bit of Henry VIII and the jostling for authority in that rendering, but here's the NIV:
"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves."

And I guess we shouldn't think so much about an ancient queen's willingness to kill her own sister, but about OUR own willingness to grab for more because of OUR selfish ambitions. To really nail this down, let me read the verse yet a third time, now from the very popular and new paraphrase, The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson:

"Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top."

And you know, there's a fine line here, a need for spiritual maturity and discernment. Here in the United States, as it's early 2001, there are already ambitious men and women, I'm sure, who are dreaming about living in a big White House four years from now. Before you can throw away your Bush and Gore bumper stickers from the last time, people are going to start jockeying for position and setting up mailing lists and making their first trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, there's nothing wrong with being president, and there's nothing wrong with running for president, and there's nothing wrong with having the necessary ambition to run for two years and raise twenty million dollars and sleep in 250 different hotel rooms and give the same stump speech at 250 rubber-chicken dinners. But even that person driven to want to serve people from the highest office in the land needs to heed this verse: "Don't PUSH your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top."
And even in something as mundane as your marriage of 30 years, these words are a daily foundation for lasting happiness. No selfish ambition. Ambition itself is fine, but not SELFISH ambition. No vain conceit. And how about this: "In humility considering others better than yourself." You know and I know how absolutely impossible it sometimes seems to put that other person first, when it seems that they ALWAYS get to go first; they always get the front seat and seem unwilling to relinquish it. How can we keep on, when that inner voice says to us, "Push 'em aside! It's your turn at last, fella"?

Well, the only way we can obey verse three is if we have first embraced verse one. "United with Christ." Friend, a person who is united with Christ has the promise of eternity. A forever of happiness and fulfillment! The promise of everything. Is it really that important who has the top spot or that little gold crown on their head for a few months or years down here? Stacked up against forever - which you have because you're united in Christ - is it really such a tragedy that someone else moves ahead of you in the line going into Disneyland? Or into the corner suite at the office?
Tucked into the corner there of verse two is one more small phrase, a hidden treasure for us to think about.

"Then make my joy complete," Paul writes, "by being LIKE-MINDED, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose."

And we think clear back to the original 12 disciples, who were anything but like-minded. In fact, even taking Judas Iscariot and his alien attitudes out of the mix, were the other 11 men very alike in their thinking? No! They were on 11 different avenues of ambition most of the time. And even after Jesus' resurrection, even after Pentecost, even after the birth of the new Christian Church, there were very clearly moments when a person's strong personality, the individuality of a man's mind, came through. And some of that is all right. But in terms of the gospel message, the commission to share Jesus with "nation, kindred, tongue, and people," Paul is challenging his friends - and you and me right here, today - to allow the gospel to pull us together in the IMPORTANT areas of human thinking.
There may be some doctrinal differences between us. And for now that's fine. But let's both study hard, and seek to have like-mindedness through Christ. We may advocate different methods or styles. Fine again. But let's find unity in preaching about Jesus. I like how The Message Bible admonishes us here:

"Do me a favor," Paul begs. "Agree with each other, love each other, be DEEP-SPIRITED FRIENDS."

Don't you like the sound of that last suggestion? "Be deep-spirited friends." You might like more rah-rah to your congregational singing than I do; I might be a premillennialist, while your prophecy charts interpret last-day events some other way. But we can still be deep-spirited brothers and sisters in Jesus, because He died for both of us. He's your Savior and my Savior too. In fact, maybe that phrase, "deep-spirited," implies that the Holy Spirit Himself comes into the lives of every person who is seeking to be "united in Christ," and, day by day, miraculously brings about the ongoing miracle of unity.
I wish Paul were around, because he says it "makes his joy complete." On the other hand, I guess Jesus IS watching.