When God Became Weak: Advent #1
Philippians 2:5-8 December 4, 2005
Intro:
Peter writes, in 1 Pet 2:9-12, “9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
As “aliens and strangers in the world.” Those of you who know me well may well imagine why I relate to those words. I never really felt like I fit in. I was always a little on the outside; shunned by the really “cool” kids at school; sometimes teased and ostracized. In high school, even though I was the school president (by acclamation – nobody else in my school even ran for the job), I was never invited to a party, never offered a joint, never tempted by any kind of relationship with a non-Christian girl (the closest I came to that was someone who anonymously left a cassette tape in my locker with the Glenn Medeiros song, “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You”)…
Yet I always had a strong center. Of course I felt left out, a little like an “alien” or a “stranger”, but I knew that I really was different. As a child of God, it was ok to not fit in to my high school world, I derived my true identity from my adoption as God’s child.
I think that is one of the reasons why, even now, I sometimes see clearly how opposite God’s Kingdom is from the Kingdom of this world. Our world says “get rich, you’ll be happy”; God’s word says “give, and you’ll be at peace.” Our world says “look out for yourself, nobody else is gonna look out for you”; God’s word says “put others first and God will look out for you.” Our world says “love those who love you”, Jesus said “love your enemy”. Our world says “you must always be strong. Never let them see you sweat.” God word says “when we are weak, God is strong.”
It is that last one, about being strong, that really becomes undone at Christmas.
The Person of God in the Body of an Infant:
We spend a lot of time trying to create an accurate understanding of God. We speak of His power, we sing of His wonder, we stand in amazement at His holiness. We read of how thresholds shake, mountains crumble, armies flee in terror, the dead are raised and the blind given sight, and death itself is swallowed up in victory. We fall to the ground in gratitude at what God has done in our lives – redeeming us, forgiving us for every single sin, healing us, restoring us, bringing joy in the midst of impossible situations, comforting us, encouraging us, and loving us even when we look in the mirror with loathing at ourselves. And we praise Him for His power and His strength, we are in awe, and we worship.
And then comes this Christmas thing. Somehow, we are supposed to wrap our minds around taking all of that power and strength and knowledge and holiness, and stuffing it into the physical body of a completely human, male, infant. Helpless. Weak. Completely and totally dependent on a human mother, on a human father. Both without any support structure of their own, far from home, with the best option for this newborn to sleep being a cattle feeding trough.
That is certainly not the kind of entrance our world would expect of the King of Kings. Certainly not a Hollywood beginning. Certainly not leading in strength and glory.
And it is not like God had no other options! He called Abraham, one of the wealthy and powerful. He rescued Moses and arranged to have him raised in Pharaoh’s palace. Solomon, though conceived in sin, was born into luxury and raised surrounded by power. Not so for God’s own son. He was born in a stable, and then forced to flee as a refugee; homeless, powerless, surviving only on the financial gifts of some strange astrologers who showed up and worshiped this human child.
And there, in all the weakness and helplessness of infancy, in the dirt of a stable, lay God. Of all the many, many things that tells us, let me just point out one today: it is ok to be weak.
Philippians 2:5-8
Let me read you the Christmas story from the book of Philippians:
“5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!”
“Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” That is a much better way of putting what I have been trying to describe – the whole might and power and strength of God, and Jesus gave it up. Let it go. Put it aside. And became a fragile human being.
“made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant”. How counter cultural is that! We aren’t suppose to make ourselves “nothing”, we are supposed to make something of ourselves! Go to school, get a great job, make lots of money, get lots of power so you can influence lots of people. We are supposed to “amount to something”; and the measure of that is worldly success.
Jesus’ birth into our world turns that on its head. Jesus did the exact opposite – He gave up power to become “nothing” – “a servant”. He traded strength for weakness, He exchanged self-reliance for helplessness.
This is truly the greatest definition of humbling oneself. And He did it out of love for you and for me.
“Your Attitude Should Be The Same”:
Perhaps the most shocking part of that passage of Scripture is the command at the very beginning: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” As amazing, astounding, incomprehensible as Jesus willingly “making himself nothing” is, we cannot let it stop there. We must do likewise.
If this is so true, why do we despise weakness so much? Why do we hate it when we have to rely on someone else, when we need to depend on others, when we have to give up some need or desire of our own for the good of someone else? Why does that frustrate us, discourage us, make us feel small and insignificant?
May I suggest that it is because we tend to derive our identity from the world around us rather than from our relationship to God through Jesus.
And may I suggest, further, that we see that very clearly when we come to worship the infant Jesus. If we will join the shepherds, which is probably the group to whom we can most closely relate, and gather around the manger, and see God willingly become a helpless infant, we begin to see how much God loves us. We see how much God would give up to become one of us, to join us in all the joys and sorrows, sufferings and pleasures, dreams and disappointments, and we realize that if God loves us that much, then what others think really, honestly, doesn’t matter. We find the truth of our identity in Him.
And in that, we discover that it is ok to be weak. That powerlessness, at least as our world understands it, is a reflection of Christlikeness. Jesus taught us, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).
Are You Confused Yet?
All this talk of the Christlikeness of weakness is, I anticipate, a little confusing to some of us. After all, our conception of power and of strength is based on the idea of being in control –first of ourselves and then of others. To be “strong” must mean that I am “stronger than you”; it must mean that I am in control, I am “the boss”, I have the power. Some of the language of Scripture confuses us – we are “victorious”, we are “more than conquerors”, we “resist the devil and he will flee”, we are in Christ who has defeated the power of death. And we hear those words and immediately associate worldly ideas of victory and control and power.
The difference is simply this: that in God’s Kingdom, those powerful things come through what our world would describe as weakness. God as a baby. Jesus’ instruction to love your enemy. Jesus humiliated on the cross and choosing, even there, to forgive. Our culture sees servanthood as disdainful and lowly, humility as the pathway to being stepped on and pushed aside, love as something for women and families. But in God’s Kingdom, love and servanthood and humility are the most powerful traits imaginable.
That’s The Power Of Love:
Although my son, Thomas, is now 5, it is not so long ago that he was an infant that I have forgotten what that was like. I can still, very vividly, recall what it was like to hold his 6 pound body, to cradle his head gently because he couldn’t hold it himself, to see that the only thing he could do to express himself was to let out a cry that made Joanne and me work hard to guess what he needed – food or cleaning or sleep or touch. I remember how helpless he was. And when I try to wrap my mind around God being that small… I admit that it is a struggle.
And yet, I also very vividly recall the power that was my love for him. He may have been helpless, yet the sole fact that he was my son drew from inside of me a love and a corresponding power that is almost terrifying in its strength. I would do anything, give anything, accomplish anything, for his good. Because he is my son.
Here is true power – that is how God feels about you and me. God looks upon you and sees His child, he recalls how He formed you, knit you together, placed within you all of the physical traits and personality traits and passions and dreams and desires. Then He remembers how He has walked through every part of this life right beside, coaching and encouraging and teaching and forming us, with a strong desire that we simply love Him and allow Him to make our lives full and rich. And then, most amazingly, as God steps back and looks at you, He smiles and says, “perfect.” Exactly what I want.
Even when we are weak. God doesn’t look on weakness or powerlessness with disdain, as does our world. He looks with compassion. And He looks with understanding. Because He knows; Jesus knows what it is like to depend on others. To not be able to do it alone. To be helpless, like a newborn child.
Conclusion (Heb 4:14-16):
I began with Scripture; I’d like to close with Scripture as well. Heb 4:14-16: “14Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
