A homily by: Fr. Gene
Tucker
Given at: Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday,
March 4, 2012
“SELF-EMPTYING LORD”
We begin
this morning with a wonderful collect from the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered
not into glory before he was crucified: Grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other
than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.[1]
One of the
most beautiful prayers (among many to be found in the Prayer Book), this
collect might – if we are willing to take a close look at it, prompt us to
think it has oxymorons in it. Specifically, we might notice these seemingly
incongruous words being equated with Jesus’ suffering and our walking in the
way of the cross with Him:
The
way of the cross Our
way of life
Suffered
pain LifeWas crucified Peace
These words
don’t go together, do they? Not at
all! Or, at least from a human
point-of-view, they don’t seem to go together.
Dying on a
cross involves the following:
Pain
Loss of everything (friends, family,
possessions, clothing, dignity, etc.)Shame
Slow death
How can these things go together? How is the cross the way of life, the way of peace?
The answer
is in the Greek word KENOSIS.
“Kenosis” is the word which asks
us to remember that Jesus Christ emptied Himself
in order to bring us salvation.
Let’s
explore the concept of “kenosis” a little:
The first self-emptying that we see in Jesus
Christ is His coming to us as one of us.
That is to say, as a human being.
Jesus Christ takes on our full humanity, and subjects Himself to
everything that a human being experiences….joy, sadness, exhilaration,
rejection, loss, sorrow, etc. In doing
this, Jesus Christ lays aside the glory that He had with the Father beforehand.
St. Paul
explains Jesus Christ’s self-emptying
in his letter to the Philippians (2: 5 – 8), which reads, as he explains this
setting-aside process:
Have this mind
among yourselves, which is yours 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[2] himself, taking 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.
Paul’s
mention of the cross in this passage leads us to the second self-emptying, which takes place on Good Friday as He goes to the
cross. There, the loss of all things is
visible for all to see. The shame, loss and
pain of crucifixion mark the Lord’s complete and total self-emptying. The self-emptying process involves the loss
of His life, as well.
The
self-emptying qualities we see in Jesus Christ lead us to make an observation
about God:
It would be
easy for God to simply “mind His own business”, and to be concerned only with
“God things”, I guess.
After all,
the world as it existed when Jesus Christ came into it (and as it exists today)
is a pretty rough-and-tumble place, a place which is far from the perfection
that God had in mind when He created it.
It would be easy for God to simply walk away from the world and those
who live in it, and let the world go on in its own destructive ways.
Of course,
that was the view of God that the deists held.
A popular belief about God in the 18th century, Deists
believed that God had, indeed, created the world and all that is in it, but
then God walked away and allowed the world to proceed on its own. A common way of describing God’s creation of
the world and His continuing role – or lack of role – in it was to say that it
was as if God had made an alarm clock, then wound it up, and allowed it to tick
away, all on its own, so long as the spring had tension in it.
But the
experience we have in Jesus Christ tells us that just the opposite is
true: God loves the world, and wants to
offer the world His grace, mercy and peace.
Perhaps we
ought to define the word grace. (I think we use words and terms at times
without making sure we know what they actually mean.) Grace (as it has to do with God) is defined
in the dictionary this way:
1. God’s favor and goodwill; 2. God’s mercy, clemency, and pardon; 3. The
freely given, unmerited favor and love of God; 4. The influence of spirit of God operating in
humans to regenerate and strengthen them; 5.
A virtue or excellence of divine origin.
We see
these qualities in Jesus Christ.
He came,
bringing with Him God’s goodwill, God’s favor.
He came,
bringing God’s mercy and pardon.
He came,
showing God’s unmerited favor and God’s love.
And He
comes, not only in ages past, but today, seeking to make us a new creation,
giving us the strength to lead holy lives which are “living sacrifices”[3] to
the Lord.
So as we
hear Jesus say in our gospel text for today, “If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Taking up
the cross is a form of sacrifice. As
Jesus made the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, so are we to do the same,
making our lives as “living sacrifices” to the Lord. And as we make sacrifices of ourselves in
God’s service, we, too, empty ourselves in service to God and to others.
And with
this observation, we close: The
self-emptying process begins at baptism.
After all, baptism is a sort of death (see Romans 6: 3 – 9), in which we
enter the waters with Christ, dying to our old natures and rising to the
newness of life that the Lord offers.
And as we do so, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts,
strengthening us, leading us, enabling us to show the love which has been given
to us by the Lord to others. In this
way, we follow Christ as our model, for He Himself came, “not to be served, but
to serve others, and to make His life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20: 28).
As we
follow the Lord, walking the way of the cross, the Lord assures us of a truth
which seems like another oxymoron: If we lose our lives (figuratively, and
perhaps, literally) for Jesus Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, we will save it.
AMEN.
