Kenosis

For my class, I was asked to consider Christ's death as "kenosis" or self-giving.  As I pondered on the mystery of Christ’s death on the Cross, I was drawn to think first about how utterly humiliating this was.  It would have been humiliating enough if Jesus had only been a man.  He was stripped of all dignity and treated so inhumanely.  Yet he wasn’t just a man – he was God. 

The idea of God becoming man, in and of itself, is so profoundly humiliating; but to die the death of a common criminal, and such a horribly grotesque death at that, is unfathomable.  How could He?  How is it possible?  From philosophy we are taught to think that God cannot contradict Himself.  He can’t make a rock too big for Him to carry; He cannot make a square circle; He is Truth, and Truth is unchanging.  So how?  How does He Who cannot change become a changing creature?  How does the Creator and Ruler of all things subject Himself to parents, governments, and ultimately death?

From what I have gathered in my experiences at IPF and in reading Corbon's book The Wellspring of Worship, I think it has to do with the type of love that God exudes.  This completely selfless love for first the other Persons of the Trinity and then to His creation is a complete emptying out; a complete kenosis.  God thirsts for us and wants us to be fulfilled, not for His own gratification, but for ours.  

In Chapter 2 of his book, Corbon speaks of the Christian as one who has “Union without confusion, distinction without separation.”  This unity and distinction comes solely from the relationship shared among the Persons of the Holy Trinity being participated in by the Church through its own unity with the Second Person. 

How humbling this becomes for me.  God condescends to me and to His people because He see His Beloved Son in me .  Wow.