Kenósis as Core
[“Although (Jesus) was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be clutched, but poured himself out, taking the form of a servant . . .” (Phil 2:6-7 [EA]).]
O Lover,
For nearly my entire life I have been familiar with this text from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. For much of that time I have understood verse 7, the verb kenóo (“to empty,” “to bring to nothing”) in particular, as teaching that in the cross Jesus set aside (temporarily) his divine prerogatives refusing to exercise powers available to him. However, amid my prayer of late I am being shown not so much a correction of that interpretation as its massive expansion and deepening. In this post I return to You the gift of this glimpse with much gratitude.
In the Jesus event—including his life, teachings, Passion and Resurrection—we followers of him encounter the principal and decisive embodiment of You, this in keeping with his reported words “The one who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). Our text thus attributes self-emptying not only to the Christ, but, implicitly, to You, O Lover. Indeed, it may well be intimating Your most revolutionary and defining M.O. What we see (in the Christ) is what we get (in You).
Furthermore, already among medieval mystics (e.g., 12th C William of St. Thierry) an awareness grew of the image of the Trinity as glimpse into the reciprocity and mutuality of Self-giving Love (who is the Spirit) between the Father and the Son. Other explorations in this direction elicited additional relational and collective terms for You like perichorésis (“circular dance of Love”), circumincession (“mutual interpenetration”), coinherence, and, later, Divine Sociality, and the Community of Love. In all of this the emphasis was moving variously from the static and dogmatic to the dynamic and mystical, from noun and state toward verb and cadence. The basis was being laid for kenósis becoming one of the names for You: ever and intrinsically Self-outpouring, oxymoronically always giving Yourself away!
Moreover, in the nearer past an awareness has grown of the Incarnation in the Christ as pointing to Your kenotic embodiment in all creation, in the entire cosmos. Thus what we see in You via the self-outpouring Christ is what is unfolding in all of us finites You have brought into being. The Christ then is forerunner, harbinger, first fruits; he is the future, destiny and télos, of . . . everything! In this sense all of us creatures are the Christ, with the Johannine “I go to the Father” (16) not unakin to the universal evidences of homing and convergence, from atomic sub-particles to families of galaxies, to which both science and our hearts testify.
So then, no longer distanced in dualistic constructs, You, Self-infused in Your treasured creation, are inviting us to become embodied participants in Your ubiquitously Self-outpouring life. The least inadequate single word for this grand vision is Love, Your vibrant and oneing dance of Love. Thus is this one taster’s glimpse of the scale, centrality and promise of Your theme of kenósis.
