The Folding Chair

When Rachel Held Evans wrote about the kingdom of God, she often returned to the image of a table — who gets a seat, who does the welcoming. But Philippians 2:3-4 asks something even more uncomfortable than making room. It asks us to grab a folding chair and sit lower than everyone else.

A community organizer in Portland told me about the night her nonprofit finally secured funding for a homeless resource center. She had spent three years writing grants, rallying volunteers, knocking on doors. At the ribbon-cutting, a reporter asked who deserved credit. She pointed to a woman named Diane, who had lived unsheltered for six years and whose firsthand testimony at the city council meeting had changed everything. "Diane built this," the organizer said. "I just held the clipboard."

That is what Paul means when he writes, "In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." This is not self-deprecation. It is a radical reorientation of power — what Brian McLaren might call downward solidarity. It means those of us with privilege, platform, and voice must constantly ask: whose story am I centering? Whose expertise am I elevating? Whose lived experience should be leading this conversation instead of mine?

Humility in the way of Jesus is not thinking less of yourself. It is leveraging whatever power you hold for the flourishing of those the world has pushed to the margins.