It is almost unheard of for anyone who has been a somebody to become a nobody.
For example, how ridiculous and insane it would be for Donald Trump to voluntarily surrender all the glitz, glamour and glory—all the presidential power and prestige—that is his to become a dishwasher at Denney’s? Can you imagine the field day the press would have if President-elect did that?
What if one of the world’s super models such as Kendall Jenner or Kate Moss quit the runway, gave away their wardrobes and trade the glamour of New York and Paris to move into the slums of a Chicago housing project?
What if Bill Gates voluntarily turned all of his assets over to the United States government to help pay off the national debt and went to work answering the telephone and manning the Help Desk for Apple?
You would think the cheese just slid off his cracker.
Once you’ve arrived and made it to the pinnacle, you hang on for all your worth; you grasp it and refuse to let go. As a matter of fact, even when the pinnacle has been reached some folks refuse to be satisfied with that: they want more and make a concerted grab for bigger, better, higher, nicer, grander, faster, finer, sleeker, larger.
Jesus had no need to grasp for more and neither did he clutch his deity in such a way that it was impossible for him to ever relinquish it.
He, as God, was supremely powerful, all-glorious, worthy of the highest accolades, the one adored by angels, feared by demons, possessor of all authority and strength, the eternal and all-wise God, full of goodness, grace, truth, justice and mercy.
But then Jesus did the unthinkable. (The sane person would say that the cheese slid off Jesus’ cracker). “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing . . .” (Philippians 2:6-7).
Advent means “to come, to arrive” and so the Christmas season attempts to grasp the idea that Jesus descended—plummeted from deity to dust and made himself nothing. “O come . . . let us adore him.”
