Andrew Packman - Kenosis For You - September 28, 2014

Co-Pastor Andrew Packman, during dinner church, talks about giving, emptying, finding, and carpe-ing the diem. 

Readings: 

“Everything is Borrowed” (excerpt)

--The Streets

Some days I feel I’m getting smaller and smaller,

But some nights, I seem to grow taller and taller.

And we keep shrinkin’ and shrinkin’ but this will not finish.

You’re never nothing, if you didn’t disappear.

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.

Just when I’m loving life, it seems to start raining.

I pulled the sail safe switch, sea sail and I’m into the stars.

I love the rain on my scars.  The sky’s now red, my eyes reflect jets.

Smiling at this blessing, this life is the best.

I came to this world with nothing

And I leave with nothing but love

Everything else is just borrowed

If it’s bleak, or if the week’s leaking down the street

Or if any day’s wasted, I want to face facts.

My time on this earth is my only penny,

Wise is the gent counting every moment spent.

I don’t want to explain things, don’t wanna fill in the gaps,

I want to look at my friends and in that minute be at

I came to this world with nothing

And I leave with nothing but love

Everything else is just borrowed

It’s a bit like luck, you can only seem

To borrow it, you can’t keep it.

When the wind of change whistles into play

Will I blink or flinch away?

The wind of change won’t whistle me away

If I spin my tails and sail.

And sail away, let yesterday become today.

Excerpt from “Up from Pain”

-- Charles Blow, NY Times Sunday Review 9.19.2014

Daring to step into oneself is the bravest, strangest, most natural, most terrifying thing a person can do, because when you cease to wrap yourself in artifice you are naked, and when you are naked you are vulnerable.

But vulnerability is the leading edge of truth. Being willing to sacrifice a false life is the only way to live a true one.

Philippians 2:3-13

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 interest of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.