Kenosis

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 slave, 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. (Philippians 2:5-8)

You emptied yourself, taking the form of a servant (that is, the lowest among us). The crucial point is that you took on the form of human being. You say “form of a servant or slave” lest anyone think (stupidly) that if you took on the form of a king, a lord, a genius, a superb athlete, that it might be an appropriate union, a congruence of the best with the best. The Greek gods took human form, made love to humans, had human children, but the gulf was not infinite.

When the gulf between your divine life and your creature’s human life is infinite, then any taking of our form is an emptying of your self, crossing an infinite difference and binding your infinite self within the human being that we see and hear and touch. Imagine how our human being would be utterly consumed by coming close to the energy of one sun, or even one lightning bolt. Yet somehow you graciously come to us in human form without consuming that human form or consuming us who come in contact with you.

You come to us not in the light, fire and thunder of your immeasurable power and glory, but in the sheer silence of an easily deniable, easily missed presence as divine presence of the human Jesus (cp. I Kings 19:12). Jesus, you are and have all that a human being is and has. If your human being was not, so to speak, held open to union with your divine person, you would be a human person and a human being as each of us is. As it is, you are a human being who is a divine person.

When you became human you didn’t only become ‘flesh’, you became subject of a human culture, you became thinker in and speaker of a human language. So you as Word of God emptied yourself and took on the form of human language. This relationship of you as Word to the words you spoke to your disciples becomes our splendid light for understanding the sacred scriptures. When you, Jesus, as present speaker remove yourself from among us, you promise that the Spirit will lead us into all the truth we need, will lead us to understand the human words of the scripture, so that we connect to your person as Word of God, as Truth and as Way.

Now the author of Philippians, just before he quotes the early hymn (?) we have been considering, says: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God…” (Phil 2:5). This makes me think that by our union with you--whereby we become your Body and the same mind is in us as is in you—what happens for us is the opposite of the kenosis (the emptying). We become, rather, lifted up, filled; our bodily life an expression of the presence of your Spirit, our speaking and writing also a kind of sacred scripture, a manifestation of you as Word. This is especially true when we bring the actual sacred scripture to expression in our own time and place. But it is also true in a secondary sense of all our speech, for we are always members of your Body and you are present to our time and place through us, and not least, through our speaking.

This means that every truth we utter brings light to the world and that light is ultimately and immediately a participation in you—Light from Light, true God from true God. Every act of love, every task done, every work of art is a manifestation in this time and place of your love and your creative doing.

The promise is that You will be all in all. Not that we cease to be ourselves, but that ourselves and our doing are all transformed and illumined by being in you.