Episcopal priest and CAC faculty emeritus Cynthia Bourgeault describes how we can follow the path of descent Jesus models:
In Jesus everything hangs together around a single center of gravity…. In Greek the verb kenosein means “to let go,” or “to empty oneself,” and this is the word Paul chooses at the key moment in his celebrated teaching in Philippians 2:5–11 in order to describe what “the mind of Christ” is all about….
In this beautiful hymn, Paul recognizes that Jesus had only one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further (“even unto death on the cross”) and fell through the bottom to return to the realms of dominion and glory. In whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way, with the same motion of descent: going lower, taking the lower place, not the higher….
It is a path he himself walked to the very end. In the garden of Gethsemane, with his betrayers and accusers massing at the gates, he struggled and anguished but remained true to his course. Do not hoard, do not cling—not even to life itself. Let it go, let it be—“Not my will but yours be done, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Thus he came and thus he went, giving himself fully into life and death, losing himself, squandering himself, “gambling away every gift God bestows.” It was not love stored up but love utterly poured out that opened the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Over and over, Jesus lays this path before us. There is nothing to be renounced or resisted. Everything can be embraced, but the catch is to cling to nothing. You let it go. You go through life like a knife goes through a done cake, picking up nothing, clinging to nothing, sticking to nothing. And grounded in that fundamental chastity of your being, you can then throw yourself out, pour yourself out, being able to give it all back, even giving back life itself. That’s the kenotic path in a nutshell. Very, very simple. It only costs everything. [1]
Depth psychologist and contemplative author David Benner considers Jesus a model of surrendering to God’s will:
Christ is the epitome of life lived with willingness. “Your will be done,” he prayed in what we call the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10). And more than just in prayer, he lived this posture of preferring God’s will to his own. Christian spirituality is following Christ in this self-abandonment. It is following his example of willing surrender….
The abundant life promised us in Christ comes not from grasping but from releasing. It comes not from striving but from relinquishing. It comes not so much from taking as from giving. Surrender is the foundational dynamic of Christian freedom—surrender of my efforts to live my life outside of the grasp of God’s love and surrender to God’s will and gracious Spirit. [2]
References:
[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind (Shambhala, 2008), 63, 64, 70.
[2] David G. Benner, Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, expanded ed. (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 58, 59–60.
Image credit and inspiration: Unknown, Neom (detail), 2023, photo, Saudi Arabia, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this cave explorer, loving surrender can sometimes mean walking bravely into a dark unknown.
Story from Our Community:
Recently, I was feeling overwhelmed by the news in the U.S. I am frightened for our immigrant brothers and sisters, worried for Black and brown siblings, and the LGBTQ+ community. The recent Daily Meditation quoting Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes was excellent. I really resonated with the discovery of the Welcoming Prayer in the Story from Our Community section from Junia C. from Brazil. Daily practice is not a cure-all to ease my worries, but the prayer was an act of surrendering that I needed at that moment. I am grateful for the prayer and this community.
—Katie W.
