Setting the heart's compass- What do you truly love? Phil 2

Philippians 2:1-13 

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians today, Paul is pointing to something that is central to the Christian life. We are being taught about being shaped into Christ-like people. In the Western tradition this is called “sanctification”. In the Eastern tradition this is called “Theosis”. It is not becoming some abstract kind of “holy”. It is becoming like Christ.

This is something we hear, and we know this is something we should desire, but most of us have a hard time imagining how it could become a reality. Do we do this? Can we even? Does God do this? And if so, do we just wake up one morning and we have the character of Christ?

Paul says something very interesting at the end of our passage, 

“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12-13).

 We might want to ask Paul, “which is it then? Do I work out my own salvation, or does God do it all working inside me?” … It’s easy for us to lean to one side or the other of Paul’s equation. We can lean towards legalism and fill our lives with following rules as we attempt to work out our own salvation, without trusting God’s action within us. On the other hand, we might leave it all up to God saying, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace”, and never actually attempt to live a transformed life. 

Paul holds it all together. 

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”-

 In some way I am responsible for my salvation, but then Paul says, 

“for it is God who works in you”

 and this makes it seem like it is all God’s doing. … God works in cooperation with us. God works inside us. Paul says that God works in our “will” and our “work”. There is some part of us that needs to choose to cooperate with God’s promptings, otherwise there isn’t much point in Paul encouraging us to live holy lives. It is a mysterious cooperative effort.

This is the dynamic of spiritual formation. It is about learning to cooperate with the leading of God. We are always in the process of having our souls shaped, but we do have some choices regarding what forces shape us. A very important book that I suggest every serious Christian read is “You are What you Love” by James K.A. Smith. He mentions a scene in a novel where two men are about to walk into a room, and they know that the room has a kind of magic about it. They know that when they walk into the room they will get what their heart truly desires. They won’t get what they say they desire. They will get what they truly desire. … In the end they don’t go into the room because they weren’t confident that they really knew their heart’s desire. Maybe their heart’s desire wasn’t good for them. For example, maybe some jealousy or envy planted itself there, and that desire would harm someone they know.

Smith goes on to say that we cannot just think our way into Christ-likeness. Thinking is an important part of our formation, but in the modern West we tend to act as if human beings are only thinking things. But there is more to us than that. He says we have to pay attention to the “liturgies” that are present in our lives. We should examine the patterns and habits in our lives. Shopping at the mall is a kind of liturgy. How you use your smartphone can be a kind of habit or liturgy. How you use social media. How much you watch TV, and what kinds of shows you watch, can be a kind of liturgy. All of these habitual activities shape who we are. These liturgies bypass our conscious minds and have an effect on our hearts. These liturgies teach our hearts what to love. These liturgies teach us a certain vision of what it means to be happy and fulfilled. These liturgies produce a motivation in us. They shift what we want- what we long for- what we crave. They produce in us a vision of ‘the good life’. … And all of this happens without us being conscious of it. Smith says, 

“’Liturgy,’ as I’m using the word, is a shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded with an ultimate Story about who we are and what we’re for. They carry within them a kind of ultimate orientation. … think of these liturgies as calibration technologies: [if our heart was a compass pointing to our true desire, then] they bend the needle of our hearts.”

Smith point to an important study that looked at the effect of certain brands on the brain. He says, 

“In a recent study to consider the effect of 'super brands' such as Apple and Facebook, researchers made an intriguing discovery. When they analyzed the brain activity of product fanatics, like members of the Apple cult, they found that ‘the Apple products are triggering the same bits of [their] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.’ This is your brain on Apple: it looks like it’s worshiping.”

So, the bad news is that our lives are filled with liturgies that are probably shaping our hearts in ways we probably don’t want them to be shaped. Think of the many liturgies that fill up our week. If the only Christian liturgy we participate in is an hour on Sunday morning, then how does our heart have a chance to be shaped into Christ-likeness when it is competing with all those other liturgies that have access to our heart?  The good news is that if we want to shift our desires, the key is in what liturgies we fill our lives with. Smith says this 

“is more like practicing scales on the piano than learning music theory: the goal is, in a sense, for your fingers to learn the scales so they can then play ‘naturally,’ as it were. Learning here isn’t just information acquisition; it’s more like inscribing something into the very fiber of your being.”

 We can include liturgies into our daily lives. We can include spiritual disciplines like fasting, and solitude, and silence, and they access those places in our lives that are beyond our consciousness. Of the discipline of worship Smith says, 

“Worship works from the top down, you might say. In worship we don’t just come to show God our devotion and give him our praise; we are called to worship because in this encounter God (re)makes and molds us top-down. Worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves. Worship isn’t just something we do; it is where God does something to us. Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts.”

An important question for every Christian to ask is, “What liturgies and habits are shaping my soul?” It’s important that we are purposeful about which liturgies are working in us. … I think it is interesting to look at our reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians through this lens. He is concerned about disunity among them. That probably says something about their desires. If we are all being shaped by the liturgical forces around us, and if we aren’t being conscious about what liturgies we are participating in, then we are going to have a community whose heart compasses are pointed in a variety of directions. So what does Paul do? He encourages them to be of the same mind. He wants their heart compasses to be pointing the same direction. He cautions them against those attitudes that destroy unity, like selfish ambition and vain conceit. And he encourages them towards those attitudes that promote unity, like humility, and putting others first. Then he sets the example of Christ in front of them.

Philippians 2:5-11 is a kind of poem, or song. We don’t know if Paul is quoting this song or if he wrote it, but it is a beautiful statement about the central truths of Christianity. Paul points them to a song to re-align their hearts. The song speaks about Jesus being “in the form of God” but not exploiting that reality. Instead he emptied himself, and came to us as a human being, even as a slave to serve us. He even went to the point of dying for us, and not just any death, but death on a cross- a humiliating and torturing kind of death. But because of his great humility, God has exalted him. Every knee will bend before him to acknowledge him and every lip will confess his lordship. This points to his divine nature again since in Isaiah 45:23 God says, 

“to me and me alone, says the LORD, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear”.

If we want unity in the church then our heart compass needs to be aligned to our love for Christ and what he has done for us, which then draws us into humble imitation.

I once heard a story told by a musician Matt Redman. He wrote the song, “The Heart of Worship”. He said that there was a time when his church was being torn apart by fighting over musical styles. It got so serious that their pastor banned music in worship for something like 6 months. They met and they prayed and they worshipped all without music. They reminded themselves why they were there. Instead of fighting about who gets their favourite song, they remembered who they were singing it to. And Redman’s song came out of that experience. This is the opening verse 

“When the music fades/All is stripped away/ And I simply come/ Longing just to bring/ Something that's of worth/ That will bless your heart/ I'll bring you more than a song/ For a song in itself/ Is not what you have required/ You search much deeper within/ Through the way things appear/ You're looking into my heart”.

Paul is saying something similar here. He is encouraging the Philippians to be focused on Christ and his humility and service for us. He wants their hearts to be focused on that reality, and that will grant them unity and allow the church to accomplish her mission. If we want unity, if we want to love rightly, every one of us needs to take our heart compass seriously. And that means constantly refocusing our attention on Jesus through purposefully engaging in  liturgies that build us up, and pushing back against those competing liturgies that try to steal our hearts. AMEN