New Testament texts used in this homiletic reflection are Philippians 2:3-11 and Luke 23:13-49.
A HOMILETIC REFLECTION
By Norm Wright
“Experiencing Jesus - Kenosis”
+In the name of Jesus, our Brother+
As some of you know, when Lent started this year we began a series of mid-week devotions focused on “Experiencing Jesus.” I personally found the two devotional services we were able to hold very interesting as they allowed time for us to look at a piece of scripture and talk about how something Jesus experienced was reflected in our life experiences.
On this Good Friday, I invite those reading this devotion to think in terms of how the story of Jesus’ passion; how his suffering and death is experienced in our lives. As I mentioned during these Wednesday meetings, it is my personal creed that “What is true for Jesus is true for us, and what is true for us is true for Jesus also.”
Jesus is one of us and Jesus is one with us.
The Gospels, in various ways try to make this point, sometimes struggling to juggle between keeping Jesus’ two feet on the ground while maintaining Jesus as God’s beloved Son. For me the story of Jesus’s last supper, his going off with some of his disciples to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal, his arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion are among the most human moments depicted in Jesus’s life. By the end of that first Good Friday, Jesus ends up being stripped of his humanity (our shared humanity) in graphic detail - demonstrating how human Jesus is.
Paradoxically, in this process of being totally stripped of physical life and as he is dying in a most cruel manner, Jesus fully lives into being the beloved Son God said he was at his Baptism. This fully living into his being God’s beloved Son is captured best in Luke’s Gospel account of these events, but I would quickly add that all the Gospel accounts add a dimension to this paradox and are worth reading and meditating on while we await the great mysterious story of Jesus’s resurrection.
Mentioned in many of my homilies is a term that I would like to explore more fully in this reflection, “Kenosis.” This Greek word simply means pouring out or emptying out. While the well-known Christological hymn of Paul in today’s Epistle Lesson uses the term kenosis in the context that Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,” I see kenosis as Jesus’ emptying himself of his “self” on the cross to make room for our “selves.”
At the last moment when fully depleted of life, Jesus, with his last breath, commends his spirit to our heavenly Father. Upon doing so Jesus enters the embrace of that SELF that is GOD whose essence makes up our spiritual DNA as declared in Genesis.
The question for us today, utilizing our Lenten theme of experiencing Jesus, is when have we engaged in kenosis, in emptying our selves to make room for others, to make room for God?
When have we experienced, an “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani” moment - a “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” moment (described in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark)?
When have we felt abandoned by friends and relatives and feeling left hanging?
When have we experienced kenosis as moments of feeling so emptied out that we let go and let God?
Kenotic moments are transfiguring moments.
Many times they serve as launching pads into a new way of life or a new way of experiencing life. We may see things differently, and we may actually appear differently, like the blind man in John 9 was; as in that “There’s-something’s-different-about-you ” way.
In Luke’s account of Jesus’s crucifixion, we see Jesus ever-concerned about the needs of others as he makes his way to Golgotha to die. In my mind, the “Eloi, Eloi… statements of Jesus found in Matthew and Mark are melded with Luke’s account. That is how this tragic moment in Jesus’s life bubbles up in me - perhaps because my own kenotic experiences seem to come when I feel at a loss and feeling lost.
It seems to me that Jesus, in the moment of his utmost sense of abandonment, sees things as they are, sees the very people who put him on that cross as the same as he is; beloved children of God, sees things as God our Father sees things; transfiguring his loss as their loss, and feeling in his inability to physically embrace anything a desire to embrace everything.
And so Jesus forgives as he has always done.
Jesus embraces the entirety of us with the spiritual embrace that is forgiveness. He forgives all. “Father forgive them because they have no idea what they are doing.”
Let’s face it. We don’t know what we’re doing even when we think “we’ve got this”; that expression of the illusionary state of mind that comes with living on the ice-thin surface of existence.
Today we are in a collective moment in which kenosis is being played out in a real time during this pandemic; in which our illusions of “we’ve got this” are being stripped away. There are some who will undoubtedly exemplify those who Jesus identified as having no idea what they are doing. Jesus forgives them and so must we.
Then there are those who exemplify what Jesus did on this Good Friday, who are emptying themselves of self; who are willing to tread on the unknown turf that is the valley of the shadow of death, making room for other “selves,” being open to the Self of God; opening their hearts to the needs of others at tremendous personal risk and potential cost to themselves - May God bless and protect them!
We are experiencing a cross roads moment, a crucifixion moment. Life as we know it is changing, and in such moments as these we have a chance to see life differently, to understand life more deeply, to embrace life more fully, to forgive those we share life with more intentionally; to experience Jesus more fully.
Amen.
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