Chapter Four - Letting Go
Chapter Four
Letting Go
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
Augustine, Confessions
People everywhere looked up to him. At five feet and four inches Louis looked over the heads of everybody around him. Those of taller stature than he bent over which effectively made the man above others. King Louis the XIV was the most powerful, most feared, most glorious person in seventeenth century Europe. Most everywhere he went king Louis the XIV was carried. His feet literally hardly ever touched the ground. Servants dressed and undressed him with hundreds of invited guests looking on. Those seeking his audience, when granted had to walk backwards toward the monarch, thus avoiding direct eye contact. His residence was an opulent palace outside of Paris in Versailles. The reign of Louis the XIV was “the Grand Century”, unrivaled in power, wealth, and prestige.
When Louis was born in 1638 his mother had been barren for 23 years. His parents acclaimed him “God-given.” At the age of five Louis became king while his mother remained co-regent. His mother educated him helped by his godfather, Cardinal Mazarin. Louis liked to refer to himself as the “Sun King”, for just as the planets revolve around the sun, so too all people and things revolved around him.
Louis was the center of the universe. Reminiscing on the renown of his king, Primi Visconti wrote, “Both within and without the realm all were submissive to him. He only had to desire something to have it. Everything, down to the weather, favoured him . . . Besides this, he had money, glory and, above all, fine health; in short, he lacked nothing but immortality.”[i] Louis knew himself to be God’s ruler on earth and his representative. Loyalty to the Catholic Church moved him to violently, in the name of God, persecute Protestants. Louis XIV reign lasted until 1715 when after 72 years on the throne he died.
Contrast Louis the XIV with another king, much greater than Louis, the Son of Man, whose express mission was “not to be served but to serve . . . “(Mk 10:34, NIV). Whereas for a limited time in a specific place people bowed the knee when in the presence of king Louis, all people who have ever lived will one day conjointly with all other created beings bow their knees in worship of king Jesus, the Christ (Phil 2:10).
Bathing in the glow of his majesty, the Sun King had droves of servants bending their knees in homage and service to him. The Son of Man, however, wrapped himself with the apron of a domestic servant and kneeling, washed the grimy feet of twelve of his followers (Joh 13). He who could have called legions of angels to rescue him from the fangs of murderous men, but instead voluntarily stretched out his arms on an instrument of death to allow spikes to be driven into his wrists. He who made the heavens and the earth and the black hole that is 30 billion times bigger than our sun gave us his calling card on which was printed “I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matt 11:29, NIV). Then he said, “Learn from me” – de facto, learn from the king of kings what it means to be humble.
We desperately need to learn from Jesus what a good life is, a life that pleases God, a life of humility.
Let us for a moment think the unthinkable. Let us imagine King Louis divesting himself of his crown, his powdered wig, his thrown, his royal robes of sovereignty, fringed with gold and precious jewels and clothing himself with a loin cloth cleans the latrines of the palace. It would be incredulous to imagine king Louis to stoop to such abject denigration. Should we magnify Louis’s glory and stature by one billion times, we would gain a small glimpse of what Jesus the Christ, the Son of God had and let go of. Such a loss of dignity can only be deemed staggering, unfathomable, utterly inconceivable. And yet Jesus did it.
It is in the human spirit to want to ascend. Only in the divine spirit do we perceive the glory in descent. In his humility Jesus was contrarian to all that we view as successful. To get to us Jesus had to become like us, and to become like us he voluntarily, gladly shed himself of all majesty and glory, honor, and dignity.
For God to make himself into man is to humble himself. The verb “he humbled himself” (Gk tapeinoo) means low-lying, that which is even or level to the ground. This term is used to describe the Nile River in ancient documents when it ran low.[i] Jesus lowest point was when he “became obedient to death - even death on a cross!” (Phil 2:8, NIV).
The above diagram which I refer to as the fulcrum of grace looks like a teeter totter. The middle of the teeter totter is the fulcrum point, the place at the center of balance where when one side has more weight, it elevates the other side. The greater weight is the weight of glory in Jesus’ descent, in his letting go of his glory, his honor, his reputation, his status and stature. By exerting the greater weight, we are lifted up, elevated unto glory, honor, sonship, forgiveness, eternal gain. Had Jesus not gone low, we would not be able to swing high.
But there is another element in the descent of the King of kings that we need to consider. It is that Jesus took on the very nature of a servant. Jesus became poor so that we might become rich (2 Cor 8: 9). Here we notice the loss of dignity and glory.
He was born in degrading conditions, placed in a feeding trough after birth. In terms of his appearance, Jesus would have never made it onto the cover of Vogue, EQ, or Mens Health. Seven hundred years before his entrance into our world, the prophet Isaiah summarized, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isa 53: 2, NIV). He had no property. Wealthy women supported him and his disciples. And when he died, he died the death of horror and shame, naked to those watching him expiring on an instrument of torture in the brutal middle eastern heat. The last words he heard, were words of maligning and taunting by the religious establishment of Jerusalem, by commoners, and by the soldiers executing their grime job. “The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’” (Lk 23: 35, NIV).
[i] Kenneth S. Wuest, Philippians, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1942, 70.
[i] Anne Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003, 62-63.