Kenosis

Extending Hope #40

Kenosis is the name we give to the self-emptying of Christ that is so beautifully described in Philippians 2. Paul calls us in v5 to have the same mind as Christ - to follow his path of humility. This is a concept full of hope and consolation.

And yet.

This beautiful concept has sometimes been used with devastatingly negative effect in the church. People already experiencing more than their fair share of life’s humiliation have sometimes been exhorted toward greater and greater “christlike” humiliation by people who hold all the spiritual power. Some feminist theologians, therefore, resist this concept, with good reason.

And yet.

I still love the whole idea of walking with Jesus on the humble downward path that leads to resurrection and vindication and that, along the way, brings me into contact with the best people!

I wrote this poem (if memory serves me correctly) after a conference in which a male bishop had spoken about kenosis with no apparent awareness of how his words might be received by women, who have constantly, over two millennia, been required to take humbler, quieter, disempowered positions in the church hierarchy.

I choose the kenotic path, not because someone with spiritual power tells me I have to, but for much more beautiful reasons.

Kenosis	
By Margaret Wesley, 2021

The downward path, the lonely path,
The path of Christ, the only path!
But only is it the path of Christ
When the path is freely chosen.

***

So, I pick my way down the ravine
Not simply to descend
But to bring bandages 
And medicines
And bread and wine
To those knocked down
As lessons in humility
By teachers at the top
Who have, presumably, been edified.

And I refuse all offers of free passage
On rope bridges and cable cars
That bypass rocky loneliness beneath.

Why do I walk this path?
To be a hero?
Or to sink to lowest depth 
So some kinetic kenotic trampoline 
Will bounce me up glory? 
Ha! God help me, no!

It is my path because it is the path my Lord has walked,
And because in this ravine lie fractured souls, 
In need of healing,
And because I also have been knocked down here
And know that
Healing comes from borrowed bandages 
Belonging to
Companions on the way,
And not from those that are
Thrown down from on high. 
And I descend because my God is God of Resurrection, so
God’s power is revealed in darkest place,
Where hope is lost and life
Is reaching out its one last feeble hand in prayer. 

With love from Rev Margaret