Advent: Going Down

When I was a little boy, I can remember going with my parents to large office buildings in downtown Baltimore, and riding the elevator. I remember that back in the old days there would always be an operator running the elevator. When the doors opened, he would announce which direction the elevator was going at that time, either, “Going up!” or, “Going down!” There was something about the musical way they announced that direction that has always stuck with me. And this Christmas, it comes back as a reminder that when the eternal Son of God made the move to be born in Bethlehem, He was “going down” in a most profound way.

The song the choir just sang was called, “Love Divine Came Down”, and one line says, “Sacred infant so divine, what a tender love was Thine, thus to come from highest bliss down to such a world as this.” We have no idea! We hear that Jesus left His glory in heaven and came down to earth, but we really have no idea how big a step that was, or how much love it took. But as we gaze in our mind’s eye at that little baby lying in a manger, a food trough, we are aware that we are staring at a whole set of paradoxes.

· small/big The baby is so small—maybe 6 - 8 pounds. He fits in Joseph’s arm like a football in the arm of a running back. And yet, He is the One who fills heaven and earth. (Jeremiah 23:23,24)

· weak/strong The baby Jesus, like all babies, was weak. At first He couldn’t even raise His own head or roll over. He was completely helpless. Without the care of His mother and Joseph, He would have starved to death. But the Bible says nothing is too hard for Him to do (Jeremiah 32:27).

· ignorant/omniscient This baby, like any baby, was completely ignorant. He was starting to take in sensory perceptions, but He didn’t yet “know” anything in the sense of knowing that He knew. And yet, somehow, He was the One who knows all things. (Psalm 147:5)

· fully human/ fully divine They say that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. So if it looks like a human baby, cries like a human baby, and poops like a human baby, it must be a human baby. You would think. But in this case, appearances are deceiving, because while He was certainly fully human, there was more to Him than that. As Jesus said to His followers, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” This creature was in some mysterious way also the Creator of all that is.

· the eternal Word can’t speak In the beginning, God spoke. He has always been expressing Himself, and that Word became flesh and lived among us. But when He came, at least for a while, He couldn’t speak. All He could do was cry and make little mewling noises like a cat.

John Donne (1572-1631) wrote a poem called “Annunciation” which puts a lot of these thoughts much more profoundly and succinctly than I can:

His mother laid Him in a manger – a rough, humble cradle for any baby, but all the more incongruous for this one. His first visitors were shepherds, who were notoriously low on the social status scale.

All of this serves to remind us that Jesus came down from glory to abject humility; from a throne on which He ruled the world, to an animals’ food trough. And when He got here, there was no room for Him! The creator was unrecognized and unwelcomed by His creatures. The master was rejected by His servants.

It all seems so wrong, and so mysterious. How can this be? Why would someone like that do what He did? Why would He come so far down? The choir sang, “Love came down at Christmas; Love was born at Christmas,” and I think that is pretty close to the answer. You couldn’t force Jesus to do that, to come all the way down to us like that; but His love moved Him to do it voluntarily. Jesus is the supreme example and model of humility for us.

To begin with, we have to grasp the significance of this statement that He was in very nature God. It means that before Jesus came to earth, He shared fully in the glory of God. Heb 1:3 is a good commentary on this phrase when it says, Hebrews 1:3, “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...” Or, as Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Or, as later theologians described Him, He was “God the Son”, with all the glory, and power and knowledge and perfections of God.

In spite of who He was, look at what He did: He did not consider His equality with God something to be grasped. He rejected the temptation to clutch tightly to the equality and glory He had. The plan to save mankind involved all sorts of degrading things for Him, and He could have said no. You and I would have said no. We would have told the Father, Let the world go to hell; I’m not going through all that. I deserve better than that. Jesus certainly did deserve better! But He didn’t cling to His prerogatives as deity. Instead, He took four major steps down, all because He was more concerned about us than about Himself.

Literally, this says, “He emptied Himself.” He emptied Himself of the glory and privileges and rights He had by virtue of being fully divine. He “made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.” Jesus was in His very nature God, the Master and Ruler of all things, but He took the nature of a servant, with no rights, no privileges, no glory. He emptied Himself of His exalted position.

The second step down for the eternal Christ, the second person of the Godhead, was that he became a human being.

It was one thing to give up His glory and His prerogatives of deity and take on the role of servant of the Lord. It was quite another to become one of His own creatures. We have no comprehension of what this must have been like for Him. But the difference between God and us is greater than the difference between us and a slug, so this was an even greater step for Him than it would be for us to become a slug. It was more limiting, more confining, more humiliating.

We’ve already seen that Jesus took the nature of a servant, and a servant is, of necessity, obedient to the master. But now we see that this obedience went all the way to the point of death. We cannot hear the angels singing of His birth without hearing in the background the agonizing plea, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me!” He was laid in a wooden cradle at birth; He was laid on a wooden cross to die.

But Jesus was not finished going down even yet, for there was one more aspect to His death that was even more humiliating.

There are a lot of ways to die, aren’t there? Some are even what we might call “good” ways: Soldiers die brave and valiant deaths on the battlefield; some die peacefully in their sleep; others are taken suddenly in an accident. But the death that Jesus suffered was none of those. Crucifixion was the most painful form of execution yet devised, and thanks to Mel Gibson’s movie a few years ago, we have a very good idea of just how painful it was. It was always conducted in public as a deterrent to crime. It was the death of a common criminal, a means of death that signified for the Jews being cursed by God (Deut 21:23). For the One who shared the very nature of God, this was the ultimate in humiliation.

Well, that’s nice. Very touching. Impressive, really, that He would do that. Truly amazing. But so what? Is it just a nice warm, fuzzy Christmasy observation about the baby in the manger, or does it have something to do with us? The music the choir is bringing us this morning is drawn from all over the world, and it’s really very pretty. It’s easy and even fun to listen to. But right here in the middle is this bit about the manger, which has a sharp point embedded in it. The point for us, as the Apostle Paul put it, is: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5).

What would it mean for your family relationships, or for your relationships with close friends, your colleagues, or your boss, if you did this? What would happen if you took the role of their servant, rather than trying to convince them that you are better in some way? Can we allow our spouse and close friends the freedom to point out our mistakes to us? Will we invite them to tell us our sins against them? Can we accept even the most abject humiliation, even in front of the ones we most want to impress? Will we accept, figuratively speaking, death on a cross?

Someone once said that if you have been thoroughly humbled by God, you cannot be humiliated by men. Think about that for a minute. The more thoroughly you humble yourself before God, the more completely you come clean with Him, and admit to Him and to yourself who you really are, the more ruthlessly honest you are in your assessment of your own self- centeredness, the less power anyone has to humiliate you. Because no matter what horrible things they may accuse you of, you know that you are worse than they know. So you don’t try to defend or protect yourself against those damaging truths. You humbly admit that they are right, and ask for their forgiveness. No more pretense, no more posturing, no more keeping up the image. It is so painful, but so freeing in the end.

You know the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” It means that people like to hang out with folks like them. Strong leaders love to hobnob with other leaders; sports fanatics thrive on conversation with other fans; women typically gravitate to the fellowship of other women, etc. But what about God? There is no one else even remotely like Him. Who does He hang out with?

God loves humble people, and they are the ones He is willing to associate with. The reason for that is simple: they are the ones who see reality. The person who is puffed up with self-importance, who is so conscious of his or her wonderful qualities, who knows how much better they are than others, who is always right, who believes deep down that if everyone were just like them, “what a wonderful world this would be” —this person is deluded. They don’t see reality when it comes to their relationship with God. Humble people, on the other hand, do see just how high God is above them, and how insignificant they are, and they therefore treat God with appropriate humility and worship.

Another reason God loves humble people is nicely illustrated in the story of Bamboo[1].

Once upon a time, in the heart of the Eastern Kingdom, lay a beautiful garden. And there, in the cool of the day, the Master of the garden liked to walk. Of all the plants of the garden, the most beautiful and most beloved was gracious and noble Bamboo. Year after year, Bamboo grew more noble and beautiful, conscious of his Master’s love and watchful delight. And often when the wind came to revel in the garden, Bamboo would cast aside his grave stateliness, to dance and play, tossing and swaying and leaping and bowing in joyous abandon, leading the Great Dance of the garden, which delighted the Master’s heart.

One day, the Master approached Bamboo with an air of somber expectancy. Bamboo bowed his great head to the ground in loving greeting.

Bamboo flung his head to the sky in utter delight. The day of days had come, the day for which he had been made, the day to which he had been growing hour by hour, the day in which he would find his completion and his destiny. “Master, I’m ready. Use me as you will.”

“Bamboo,” – The Master’s voice was grave --- “I need to cut you down!”

A trembling of great horror shook Bamboo…”Cut me down ? Me—who you have made the most beautiful in all your Garden? Cut me down! Please, not that. Use me in some great way, use me to glorify you, but please don’t cut me down!”

Beloved Bamboo,”—The Master’s voice grew graver still—“If I don’t cut you down, I can’t use you.”

The garden grew still. Wind held his breath. Bamboo slowly bent his proud and glorious head. There was a whisper: “Master, if you can’t use me without cutting me down.. then do what you must, and cut”.

“Bamboo, beloved Bamboo, I also need to cut your leaves and branches from you”.

“Master, spare me! Cut me down and lay my beauty in the dust; but do you have to take my leaves and branches too?”

The Sun hid his face. A listening butterfly glided fearfully away. Bamboo shivered in terrible dread, but finally whispered, “Master, cut away.”

“Bamboo, Bamboo, I need to split you in two and cut out your heart, because if I don’t, I cannot use you.”

After much agonizing and inner conflict, Bamboo bowed to the ground: “Very well, Master… then split and cut.”

And lifting him gently, carried him to where there was a spring of fresh sparkling water in the midst of his dry fields. Then putting one end of the broken Bamboo in the spring and the other end into the water channel in His field, the Master gently laid down his beloved Bamboo. And the spring sang welcome, and the clear sparkling waters raced joyously down the channel of bamboo’s torn body into the waiting fields. Then the rice was planted, and the days went by, and the shoots grew and the harvest came.

In that day Bamboo, once so glorious in his stately beauty, was yet more glorious in his brokenness and humility. For in his beauty he was the very picture of life abundant, but in his brokenness he became a channel of abundant life to his Master’s world.

God loves humble people, because they are the ones He can use. May we, this Christmas, be moved by the example of Jesus, to be humble enough that God can use us in whatever way He sees fit.

[1] Author Unknown; Contributed by Mark Curley, Rooster@zzn.catholic-pages.com. Found at http://www.inspirationalarchive.com/texts/topics/humility/bamboo.shtml