Robert
Lyon is a retired clergyman who divides his time between
Guelph, Ontario and Melaque, Mexico. He taught high
school English, Latin, Greek and science, and served
as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve,
retiring in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His latest
book, Don't Throw Out Your Bible, is now in
print.
The
late Joseph Gold, sometime professor of English at the University
of Waterloo, once quipped that God created people because
he likes stories. On a more serious note, Professor Gold’s
1990 book Read for Your Life is sub-titled significantly Literature
as a Life Support System. Reading, he argues, involves thinking,
imagining, understanding, feeling, and healing – the
sort of engagement that is necessary for our physical and
mental health. Clearly, whether we look at life as a comedy
or a tragedy, and how we imagine ourselves as characters in
either of those plots, can have an effect on our physical,
mental, and emotional health, on what values we hold, on how
we treat others, and on the direction of our life. In fact,
I think the truth behind Professor Gold’s God-likes-stories
quip is that we have a hard-wired need to see our lives as
part of a narrative, and that when that narrative is disrupted
we experience depression, despair, and chaos.
Back in the days when I used to teach high school English,
we sometimes made plot outlines of the plays we studied. The
mouth in the frowny face on the tragedy mask, an upside-down
V (see gif below), mimics the plot outline of a tragedy, just
as the mouth of the smiley face on the comedy mask, a right-side-up
V, mimics the plot outline of a comedy. The main character
in a tragedy is striving for success, but just as he begins
to see it within reach, (as they say in a horribly mixed metaphor)
the wheels come off and his fortunes head south. In a comedy,
our character struggles against odds that keep pulling him
down, and then just as success seems beyond reach, something
intervenes and his fortunes soar, ending typically in a marriage.
At Philippians 2:6-9, St Paul quotes a hymn that’s built
on a plot outline of the Jesus story. And guess what? It’s
a smiley-face V, and that makes it a comedy! The hymn has
two stanzas, and each stanza has nine lines in three sets
of three. In the first stanza, Jesus’ life descends
to rock bottom, then in the second it rises to exaltation.
Here’s what it says:
Though
he (Jesus) existed in the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God as something-to-be-
grasped-at,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God highly exalted him
and gave 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 should confess
that Jesus Christ is LORD,
to the glory of God the Father.
Note
that Paul wrote this letter to the church at Philippi from
prison around the year 62. That’s only about 30 years
after the events the hymn describes. Paul did not compose
the hymn; he’s quoting something that already existed
before he wrote the letter. That’s significant because
the hymn conveys the highest imaginable view of who Jesus
was and is, and that view comes from somewhere in the first
30 years after the events of Jesus’ earthly life. So
this is not a view of Jesus that developed over many generations,
but one that seems to have been there from the beginning.
Let’s see what the hymn says about him.
In
the first triad, we see Jesus “in the form of God”.
“Form” here doesn’t mean shape, as we use
the word, but has the Greek philosophical meaning of “essence”
or “reality”. That is, before Jesus’ earthly
life, he already had the essence of God and was equal with
God, which are simply ways of affirming that he was God.
But
then he “emptied himself” and took the “form
of a servant”. The Greek word "doulos - servant”,
can just as correctly be translated as “slave”.
In the First Century AD, there wasn’t much difference
between the two. So either word would suffice to convey the
depth of humility involved in the divine majesty assuming
the likeness of man. But don’t let the words “likeness”
and “appearance” trick you into thinking of this
as some sort of charade; the expression “form of a servant”
assures us that the composer of this hymn understood Jesus
to have become an actual human being.
The
expression “something-to be-grasped-at ” is a
clumsy translation at best, but it’s hard to do better
in English; in Greek it’s just one word, "harpagmon",
and it means something like a treasured item that one is unwilling
to give up. But that wasn’t Jesus’ attitude: in
what to a Jew would have seemed an unimaginable humility for
God, Jesus “emptied” himself. Now, don’t
go speculating about what he emptied himself of ; “kenosis”
theories (that’s the Greek word for “empty”)
fail to see that “emptied” is a metaphor that
comprehends all of Jesus’ incarnation and crucifixion,
his becoming human, his becoming God’s servant, his
being obedient even to the extent of death on a cross. No,
Jesus did not empty himself of his divinity; he was truly
divine and became concurrently truly human. Charles Wesley
got it right: “He left His Father’s throne above
/ so free, so infinite his grace / emptied Himself of all
but love, / and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”
The
second stanza says that “God highly exalted him”.
That’s the resurrection plus a lot more; it’s
also Daniel’s son-of-man being seated at the right hand
of God and receiving an everlasting kingdom. And yet more
still: Jesus gets a special name. No, it’s not the name
“Jesus”; he already had that name. What he gets
is “the Name that is above every name”. What Name
is that? LORD! Doesn’t seem like such a big deal until
you think back to the column I wrote a few weeks ago about
Moses at the burning bush. “LORD” translates what
respectful Jews said so that they could avoid pronouncing
the sacred name “Yahweh”. Jesus has been given
back the name “Yahweh”, which was already his
at Line 1 when he “existed in the form of God”.
And when we so confess him, says this hymn, God the Father
is glorified. Or as a 19th Century hymn writer has written:
“At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, / every
tongue confess him King of Glory now. / ’Tis the Father’s
pleasure we should call him LORD, / who, from the beginning,
was the mighty Word.”
Frankly,
I doubt that Jesus ever “lost” the divine Name
during his time here on Earth. In fact, there are several
instances in the gospels where he uses the “I am”
of Exodus 3:14 with more theological meaning than we normally
find in a simple copula verb. But the problem that we have
in speaking of such things is that we inevitably resort to
human metaphor. In fact, we cannot avoid human metaphor when
we offer praise to God, even in writing our hymns and our
theology. Which is actually a useful thing, for it means that
just as God became human in Jesus, so our human language,
despite its limitations, can speak to us meaningfully, even
if imperfectly, about God. And having said that, let’s
get back to Professor Gold’s idea about the importance
of stories.
If
as the hymn says, Jesus was and is God, and if Jesus became
a real human, and if he did so for us, and if the plot outline
of his life is comic – meaning not that it was a big
joke but that it’s a happily-ever-after story –
then it follows that the smiley face mask reflects God’s
intention for his creation. Which means that the smiley face
is the plot outline in which we should identify ourselves
as characters. In fact, Paul says as much: “Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”. He even
explains how to do that: “Let each of you look out not
for your own interests but for the interests of others.”
And
do you remember how a comedy typically ends? Jesus’
first miracle was at a wedding. He sometimes spoke of himself
as a bridegroom. Paul uses marriage as a metaphor for the
relationship between Jesus and his church. And St John sees
God’s universal comedy, like every comedy, ending also
with a happily-ever-after marriage: “Blessed are those
who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”
(Revelation 19:6-9).
So
make sure your V is right-side-up. That’s the way to
the final Victory.
