Some things are just not on in Ireland if intellectual respectability is to be retained. Christian mission, for instance. The attempt to win someone to unashamed faith in, and loyalty to, Jesus Christ is viewed with grave suspicion as being an arrogant and imperialistic act.
The majority vote is for pluralism - and not just the pluralism which everyone believes, that there are numerous faiths and religions. What Ireland has embraced with gusto is the ideological pluralism which asserts that every religion has its own independent validity as a truth system. From that flows the dogma that no one should interfere with another person's inalienable right to practise their own religion.
Tomorrow's epistle reading, therefore, is exceedingly distasteful to pluralists and can even be embarrassing to Christians who find it difficult to include in their personal belief portfolio this unequivocal declaration that at last everyone in the universe will bow before Jesus Christ in worship.
However, the Letter to the Philippians 2:5-11 is not easily excised from the Bible because, as one might expect from a book which claims to be a unity in itself and to declare a unified message, the rest of the scriptures add their own weight to what the Apostle Paul writes:
"God has exalted Jesus to the highest place and given him the name that 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."
Paul seems to be quoting from a very early Christian hymn which reviews the decision of the Son of God to leave heaven's glory where he had an equality with his Father. It speaks of him humbling and impoverishing himself "not by changing his own divinity but by assuming our changeableness", as St Augustine described the Incarnation.
He took the form of a servant, putting himself into a new relationship with the Father. From eternity he had been the Son, but now he became a servant, bound to obey, to discharge the task assigned him. But this was only the first of three downward arcs described by Christ.
He also assumed a public image which was exclusively human. The impression made by Jesus was less than remarkable. The Christians in Philippi were concerned about their image, what people thought of them, but God's Son put himself in a position where people completely misunderstood and underestimated him. There was nothing in his appearance to distinguish him from anyone else, no halo, no glow, probably no especially handsome or striking features. No head turned as he walked by. The glorious one became utterly ordinary.
Then he took death, "even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8). In his original form, Jesus was impervious to death, but now he assumed a mortal form and went towards death as its victim. It was not simply that the cross was physical pain. For him it was death with its sting, death without light, comfort or encouragement to the point where the Son knew himself only as sin and his Father as the righteous judge. Prof Donald MacLeod has commented: "The prestige he enjoyed in heaven was not exploited to relax the rules of engagement."
On the back of this emptying of himself came Jesus's exaltation via his Resurrection, Ascension and reign at God's right hand and it is now that the sources for this teaching become apparent. The prophet Isaiah had declared the word of the Lord (Isaiah 45:22-23): "Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: before me every knee will bow, by me every tongue will swear." Here is scripture ascribed to the Lord God himself now transferred without embarrassment to describe the glory of the Risen Christ who is worshipped by the church, adored by the angels and dreaded by the demons.
We journey into Holy Week living with the uncomfortableness of particularity. Relaxed pluralism is simply not a Christian option. Jesus is Lord of all, or he is not Lord at all. It is one of the givens, part of the package deal of commitment and regrettably non-negotiable, even though this may perplex and even irritate our friends of other faiths or none.
G.F.