Being divine does seem to give Jesus an advantage that puts him in a whole different category from the rest of us.  Our creed confirms his distinctness.  Jesus is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God . . . one with the Father.”   Does this mean that the life, teaching, suffering and death of Jesus are not real, but fake?

It seems contradictory to claim that Jesus is truly God and truly human.  One cancels out the other, since God is eternal, while mortals suffer and die.  Divinity enjoys supernatural powers over creation, while human beings are subject to the laws of space and time, and they endure significant limitations.

One way to reconcile these opposing natures is through the idea of kenosis, or self-emptying. Saint Paul is the first to take this approach in the “Hymn to Christ” quoted in Philippians 2.  The “Hymn” describes how Jesus, who’s in the form of God, chooses not to cling to this privilege, but to empty himself of such favored status and commit fully to our human condition.  He doesn’t cease to be divine, but he chooses to fully embrace mortal existence.

Imagine a missionary from Canada who chooses to go live in the developing world.  She may spend the rest of her life, education, and talent bringing her advantages to a community that can’t even dream of them.  While the missionary never ceases to be a person of privilege who could easily get away from human misery, she chooses not to get away.            

Such a person may well be martyred in the land she has chosen – this happened to four American missionary nuns in El Salvador in 1980 – subject to the same dangers that claim the lives of those with whom she has chosen to be.

Is the missionary’s sacrificial life and death fake, play-acting or fake?  When Jesus chooses to incarnate himself in our humanity, the cost is very real.  En-couraged by the Grace of God, let us make our kenosis a sacrificial self-emptying that is not shallow, pretentious.  Let our kenosis have a cost, a risk, that is very real and wholly Christian.

Lloyd Baugh, S.J.