Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave, just as the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
-Matthew 20: 26-28
The great mystery of God's compassion is that in his compassion, in his entering with us into the condition of a slave, he reveals himself to us as God. His becoming a servant is not an exception to his being God. His self-emptying and humiliation are not a step away from his true nature. His becoming as we are and dying on a cross is not a temporary interruption of his divine existence. Rather, in the emptied and humbled Christ we encounter God, we see who God really is, we come to know his true divinity.
In his servanthood God does not disfigure himself, he does not take on something alien to himself, he does not act against or in spite of his divine self. On the contrary, it is in his servanthood that God chooses to reveal himself as God to us. Therefore we can say that the downward pull as we see this in Jesus Christ is not a movement away from God, but a movement toward him as he really is: A God for us who came not to rule but to serve. This implies very speciically that God does not want to be known except through servanthood, and that, therefore, servanthood is God's self-revelation.
Prayer
Lord you are the Way, the Truth and the Life. May we follow you always. Amen.
(From "Show Me The Way: Readings for Each Day of Lent" by Henri J.M. Nouwen)
Jane B. Lionberger, Associate Minister