If you are reading this from America, you and I live in an entitled culture. There is a constant whisper, feeding us the lie that, "I deserve this. You've earned that. I have a right to be upset." And it's not just us adults that are feeding on this deception...our children are catching on too, and quickly. And to be honest, it tastes good. At least it does at first. I don't need a whole lot of encouragement to make Catherine #1. I do just fine on my own making myself the priority, I don't need much help from outside. So the red-hot danger of the world saying "more Catherine" is one that I am particularly susceptible to. I imagine the same is true for you.
We cannot begin to imagine the glories of Heaven. The tangible glories are magnificent, I am sure, but let's think for a moment about the relational glories also! Christ Jesus, His Father., and the Spirit..forever they had lived in perfect harmony and love. Never had they had even a moment of discord, tension, anger, disappointment, or hurt. Holy trust bound them together in perfect understanding and unblemished love. Never has there been and never will there be a relationship as precious and perfect as theirs.
Can you imagine the weight Jesus must have felt when the Father commanded him to leave the only place he had ever been, that's good beyond imagination in the constant physical and emotional and spiritual presence of his Father, and come to Earth? The magnitude of the loss he was being asked to embrace is beyond what I even know to try and type. I don't even know how the Father could have asked this of him. It is a testimony, indeed, of the Father's terrific love for his children on Earth, us. What a cost to Christ, the innocent one! Jesus' holy oneness with the Father led him to an immediate and confident "yes sir" rather than an anxious and self-pitied "are you really asking me this?"
Christ Jesus, Our Humility.
Jesus didn't deserve the task assigned to him. We have to remember too - it wasn't just what he was leaving, it was what he was going to. He did not just enter into the hurt and brokenness of humanity, but also the pride and disdain of humanity towards him specifically. He knew his task the second the Father uttered "go now" to him. He knew he would be mocked, physically die a gruesome death and spiritually experience the sin of all mankind on his shoulders and the wrath of God directed at him. He knew the task ahead; He knew God was going to turn his back on him. Even still, "yes sir" was his unentiteled reponse.
Christ Jesus, Our Humility.
Phillipians 2:3-11 reads
"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
The entire Christmas story is sewn together with the thread of humility. Love begs humility. You cannot have true love without humility because to love is to sacrafice. To sacrafice is to count someone else more worth it than yourself. Christ, the KING of all creation - the one who had every right to be entitled - enters our brokenness in utter humilty and love. Christ Jesus' humility is on full display in so many elements outisde of the most obvious one, Him leaving the side of his Father to come rescue his rebellious children in a broken and dark world.
In the Christmas story we see the humility of Christ Jesus in...
Mary, a poor, Jewish teenager from a no-name town - the woman/child God appointed to be the earthly mother of the King of the universe. A young, poor, female with no voice in her society, was given the task to carry the Savior of the world in her womb.
The Shepherds, distained by society - being in the same catagory as tax collectors and dung slingers - these were the first ones to receive word that King Jesus had been born. These men of zero status, deep out in the pastures, were the ones that the biggest announcement in history was first made to.
The manger, where Jesus was laid just after being born in a stinky, filthy stable, very likely had rotting food scraps and animal salava, maybe even maggots cuddled up beneath where he lay in that feeding trough. He deserved a elaborate nursery in a gold-plated palace and instead he lay in a livestock feeding trough in a stable with hay and poop and mice and other vermon, I'm sure.
Christ Jesus, Our Humility.
He really did deserve the best! He really did deserve all of the highest esteem! He really did deserve a royal nursery and a dignified family and a glorious announcement. But he didn't do that because he is not like us. He doesn't demand that which he actually does devserve. In God's upside-down kingdom the humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled (Matthew 23:12).
You and I really will be mistreated in this life. We really will be hurt by people. We really will be sinned against. But, we also really have been forgiven for all the times we have done the same to others. We don't have to demand our own way because Christ didn't, on our behalf. We are free to live and love and sacrafice to the glory of God, following in the footsteps of Christ.
My prayer for us, today, is that this meditation on humulity will lead us to gratitude. And may that gratitude lead us to humble thinking. And may that humble thinking lead us to love the people the Lord puts in our paths today.
We praise you Christ Jesus, for your example of humility. Amen.
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