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Encountering the Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault

Session Five: Kenosis: The Path of Self-Emptying Love

In past sessions, we have seen how Jesus is a master of the art of metanoia, going into the larger mind, or, in other words, a radical change of consciousness that sustains unlimited love. The parable of the vineyard in Matthew 20 can be seen as a litmus test on where you are on in terms of this consciousness, binary operating system or non-dual thinking. In essence, Jesus is holding up a mirror. How do you understand the story?

How do you shift your consciousness? What is the path? What is the way? This session concerns praxis—the practice, the things you do that bring about the metanoia consciousness.

Not all wisdom paths have the same methodology. Jesus is typical of the wisdom tradition in terms of the center or goal but the way he gets there is very different from other traditions’ paths. Jesus’ path was radical in his time and still is today. One of the problems with modern Western Christianity is that we have not seen how different Jesus’ path is from all others.

Paul used the word kenosis, Greek for self-emptying, to describe the path, in Philippians 2:9-16. “Have in yourself the same mind as Christ.” Everything Jesus did, he did by self-emptying. In whatever life circumstance, Jesus responded with this same motion, descending. It is counter-intuitive to our cultural understanding of spiritual seeking: the way to God is generally an ascent, upwards. Think of Jacob’s ladder. Ascent mysticism was very much current in the time of Jesus, such as in the Essene community. Perhaps this powerful image of spirituality is built into the archetypal make up of our mind.

Ascent requires energy. Most wisdom traditions focus on the collection, concentration, or conservation of life energy, for example, chi, prana. This concentration of energy is at the basis of most asceticism in the service of inner transformation. Containing, strengthening strategies of fasting, meditation, etc., work. Self-mastery sustains contact with higher frequencies of the divine life. Powerful path to the center of being. The more ancient path of inner transformation.

But there is another route to the center: giving being away freely, extravagantly. This is Jesus’ way. It is revolutionary in Jesus’ time and ours.

Modern stories and dramas illustrate this path. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry describes how the free squandering of possessions makes manifest what love looks like. “Babette’s Feast,” a movie based on a story by Isak Dinesen, is another example of how extravagant generosity mirrors what God’s love is like.

The goal of ascent mysticism is union; the kenotic path’s goal is self-disclosure. It shows what God is like. Mystical theologians say that this is how the world was created. Karl Broner: God was prodigal in creating the world.

This poem of Rumi describes best the path of kenosis:

Love is recklessness, not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet in the midst of suffering, love proceeds on like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.
Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Jesus’ idea of dying to self does not mean self-denial; instead it is this extravagant giving away of self. John the Baptist’s followers were shocked by Jesus’ behavior. He hung out with the questionable people and lived in a most un-ascetic way. He kept breaking out the box of the law and bothered the Pharisees. He affronted even his disciples by his free-wheeling generosity. Think of the story of the woman with the alabaster jar who anointed his feet with oil. What the Laborers in the Vineyard and the Prodigal Son stories have in common is this extravagant, unreasonable generosity. (It frightens people.) Recall the story of the five loaves and fishes. Jesus had been in search of some peace and quiet before he was called to both teach and feed; responding to that call became his prayer. He faced his death with anguish, again characteristic of the kenotic path. But finally he came to the point of trusting his spirit to God.

Jesus may not have been the first or the only teacher of the kenotic path but it was revolutionary in his time and place. The first time that anything of this teaching had been seen in Jesus’ time and world. Even his disciples could not stay with it. They’d catch it and lose it. Paul struggles to hang onto it. Jesus’ followers keep going back to more familiar models.

One group of people really got it. A wisdom school developed in Capedocia in the 4th century. Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea created an image of the trinity in which the father poured himself into the son; the son poured himself into the spirit; the spirit poured herself into the father. They used the word kenosis to describe these mutual outpourings. The trinity is an icon of this self emptying that goes around in a wheel. They called the wheel parachoresis, or “the dance around.” This is how God moves, how God shows what love is like. The constant dance around of emptying is like a water wheel, generating love manifest.

What are the implications for living the Jesus path? Self-emptying may look like a pointless sacrifice. But the trinity assures us that no act of kenosis is ever isolated. All kenosis is connected to parachoresis, the ultimate act of self-transcendence and connects us to God manifested. Divine love is endless and infinite and will always come to us, if we don’t cling. As we practice it in our lives through acts of kindness and compassion, something is born out of self-emptying—what God looks like mirrored in our deepest and most real face.

This poem, left by the body of a dead child in Ravensbruck concentration camp, shows us the mystery of kenosis:

O Lord,
Remember not only the men and women
Of good will, but also those of ill will.
But do not remember all the suffering they inflicted on us;
Remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to
This suffering—our comradeship,
Our loyalty, our humility, our courage,
Our generosity, the greatness of heart
Which has grown out of all this, and when
They come to judgment let all the fruits
Which we have borne be their forgiveness.