Lenten Meditations from Our Parish Family
Beginning on Ash Wednesday, we invite you to journey through Lent with daily meditations written by St. John’s parishioners. These reflections offer honest, thoughtful voices from within our community—meeting us right where we are in this season of prayer, repentance, and hope. Meditations will be shared by email, posted on Facebook, and available as printed weekly copies at the church. Be on the lookout, and let these shared words accompany you as we walk the Lenten road together.
Palm Sunday
March 29, 2026
Phil 2:5-11
I used to think that when I got older, the world and human condition would be steadily improved and problems among people would lessen. Evidently not.
At the time that this passage was written Paul must have thought the same thing because he himself has been imprisoned and hears of problems among Christians in Phillippi. He writes to them as if to a family.
“Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which 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.”
Every generation has been interested in family history, but recent science has made available to us the ability to trace our ancestry using DNA analysis or names written in big family Bibles. There is even a popular television show,” Finding your Roots”, and in the UK, “Who Do You Think You Are?” Unfortunately, this knowledge doesn’t seem to increase harmony or peace even when we begin to learn the ways that we are interrelated among ourselves.
Paul addresses this problem when he writes to the Philippians who are tempted to lose faith and disagree about how to live their life as a community of believers. Look to your ancestry in Christ he tells them. Have among you one mind, consider Christ who even though He could have come with all the power available to Him, emptied Himself and took on the form of a servant. In their lives so much like ours, Paul knows that the overcoming ruthless power that we see around us cannot lead to the peace and joy of everlasting life in this world or the next. Choose instead the power of a servant leader.
Therefore, let us follow Paul’s advice. Consider Jesus and His form of servant. Continue to immerse yourselves in the process of continuing salvation, evermore becoming sanctified being made increasingly holy until at the last we are all reconciled to Christ even as he will reconcile the entire world to Himself. “And 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.”
This is our inheritance and we know how to answer when someone asks, “Do you know who you are?” or have you “Followed Your Roots”? Do not tempt us with the idea of worldly type of overcoming power. We are members of the family of a servant who holds all the power.
Gibbs Davis
