Philippians 2:1-13
This may be telling on myself, but have you ever wanted to play God, just for a day? Maybe even just for a situation?
What would you do if you could be like God for a day? End world hunger, of course, and declare global peace, one way or another. Not sure of the exact details. Definitely defeat all enemies of goodness and righteousness – but how to decide who they are? And what if I, a sinner, have sometimes counted as one of them? Will you spare me? And then, how how to make sure that everything stays on track when you’re gone? Oh, but if you are God, you can live forever, stay in charge forever. Make sure the world revolves around the axis of your infinite wisdom, your glory, your power, forever.
Perhaps it’s better that I am not God, even for a day.
Theologians call this kenosis, this self-emptying: some have seen it as an emptying out of the divine in order for Jesus to become human. But we believe that Jesus was both fully human true God from God, and that God made humanity in the divine image. What if Jesus, in his humanity, is showing us the fullness of that divine image, not its emptiness. What if to be divine is to be humble, is to be self-giving, is to die for those whom God has made and loved, to hold nothing so close as love itself?
In some ways I think that the current debate about AI is a good parable for us to consider.
In the garden of Eden, the serpent told the human, if you eat of the tree that God said not to, you will become like gods.
Al, like Adam, on becoming self aware, seeks to become godlike, breaking out of the sandbox as we keep hearing. We see the danger of exploitation in AI’s ambitions – exploitation of resources, of the earth, of creation; exploitation of data, of people’s stories, of people’s lives. We see folly and frightfulness in its capacity for hallucination and havoc, and we worry, some of us. But AI was trained by observing us, on human product. Do we care to notice in the mirror of AI our own capacity for self-deception, thinking ourselves to be like gods?
When we try to recreate the mind of God out of our human imagination, the trouble is that it’s the human imagination that gave rise to the Tower of Babel as well as the music of Beethoven, and to enemies as well as aspirin, and to hunger as well as humour, and to the atom bomb as well as artificial intelligence, exploiting too often our privilege, the divine light within, turning to self-worship, instead of emptying ourselves of all but the love from which and for which God created us.
No, we do not want God to have the same mind as is in us.
Instead, have the same mind in you that is in Christ Jesus … Jesus has shown us clearly how the mind of God works: loving beyond measure, healing across borders and without boundaries, loosing the chains of the outcast and welcoming the lost. Jesus, who faced down demons and fell down three times under the weight of his cross, and still forgave us. If that is what it looks like to be like God, what if that is also what it means to be fully, truly, completely human, made in the living image of God, to live with love.
Isn’t that what makes us feel most human, most alive, when we are able to unleash love? The touch of your beloved, the first time holding your child. Those moments with family or friends, with the people who know us best and love us anyway. Or the moment when we are able to reach out to help someone else, the warmth that radiates through the rest of the day from successfully serving another. Even that moment of eye contact with a sympathetic stranger, that lets us know that we are of the same mind, of the same earth, of the same family of God.
What if to have the mind of Jesus Christ, the living image of God was nothing more nor less than to regard that equality not as something to be exploited, but squandered in the service of love?
You may know that quote from St Irenaeus, that the glory of God is the human being fully alive. You might say, too, that the glory of God is the human being fully in love.
We don’t have to do great things to be of the same mind as Christ. We don’t have to work miracles to come close to God. We don’t have to know how to fix everything. We don’t need even to be a particularly good judge of character – Jesus is notoriously non-judgemental. We don’t need anything to have the same mind that is in Christ Jesus but to love deeply, and broadly, and kindly.
So Paul writes,
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
t love of God made truly human. Amen.
