Passion Sunday

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God

something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death --

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father."

Philippians 2:5-11

"The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man. Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest of death and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect and perfectly happy creatures. This means something much more than our trying to follow His teaching. People often ask when the next step in evolution--the step to something beyond man--will happen. But on the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952, p. 48.

Prayer: Father, by your Holy Spirit, work in me that perfect surrender and humiliation of Christ, help me to humble myself, to become obedient, even unto death, that I might share in the risen life of Christ and in his glory. Amen.