'When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.'
--Matthew 21: 23-27
When I was a kid one of the most terrifying comic book villains I knew was the Scarecrow, who is a member of Batman’s rogues gallery that specializes in fear. He doesn’t have any supernatural powers, instead Scarecrow preys on the people’s everyday fears and exploits them for his gain. As a kid I had nightmares about the Scarecrow because the weapon he utilized was the most real weapon of all, the weapon of fear. It’s incredibly powerful. Arachnaphobia – fear of spiders; acrophobia – fear of heights; pellebaphobia – fear of umbrellas.
The Scarecrow
Our fears lead us to make decisions we later regret, they become a form of self-sabotage, and they prevent us from living our truest, most authentic lives, which are the ones most firmly rooted in the grace, mercy, and love of God. The most common fear, as I’ve seen it among church folks, especially those of us in positions of authority and influence is atychibobia, the fear of losing a sense of control.
The Gospels are perhaps our best example in Scripture of what happens when people are so gripped by the fear of losing control. The authorities who often confronted Jesus were
religious fundamentalists who were terrified of losing their control as they watched the rapidly changing spiritual landscape around them. John the Baptist embodied their fears, since he was part of a group called the Essenes, who had retreated from the cities and cried out for people to repent of their sins out in the wilderness through the mikvah, the Jewish ritual bath otherwise known as baptism. Those on the margins liked this raving madman because he spoke truth to power, but the ones in power were scared to death of losing that power, that control.
Saint John the Baptist
Their fear gets called out by John’s cousin, Jesus, on his last trip to Jerusalem. They didn’t want to lose their positions of status and privilege, but they also wanted to be seen as caring about the people, so they tried playing both sides. When Jesus asks them if John’s baptisms were of human origin or divine, they are too afraid to say anything; afraid of Jesus’ judgment if they say it was from heaven, and afraid of the crowds if they say it was not. Either way, they risk losing their control, so they say nothing.
Do you know the last six words of a dying church? “We’ve always done it that way?” The fear that things might change – metathesiophobia – is largely rooted in being afraid of losing control. The existential dread is back-backing, but it’s a burden of our own making. Many a church community closes its doors or disbands because the fear of changing, of losing control, is just too great.
We often look at the landscape of Christianity these days and wonder if it’s ever been this ugly, this toxic. It has, actually. For the first three centuries after Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, there were few things gathered assemblies of believers could agree upon. The communities to which St. Paul wrote were in these sorts of situations. They were often very diverse, made up of Jewish believers and Gentile converts. Like churches today, they had their cliques, their silos that folks would gravitate toward. They had their strong personalities and folks who insisted that they had to do everything otherwise the whole system would collapse. They too had folks who were afraid to lose control.
Paul offered them a solution. He called it kenosis, which is a Greek word meaning to empty oneself, and in his letter to the Philippians, Paul offers a hymn to Jesus’ own self-emptying and calls on the community of believers in Philippi to do the same:
'Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
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.'
--Philippians 2: 5-11
But what does that mean? How do we empty ourselves?
The first step to truly embodying the kenosis of which Paul speaks is to recognize our own power, our own sense of and desire for control and being willing to imagine what would happen if we surrendered that; Jesus, after all, was perfectly aware of his, power, his divine nature, but he still chose to humble himself, to give up his sense of control, so as to lift others up. Jesus didn’t have to live this way, but he chose to, so that others would imitate him in giving up our power and need for control for the sake of the other. In the Zulu language this is called ubuntu.
The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church used ubuntu as its theme, and several other diocesan conventions followed suit. The word doesn’t have a direct English translation, but it roughly means “I am because you are.” Ubuntu is the remedy to atychiphobia because it is the releasing of the need to hold on to our own individual – and systemic – needs for control because it emphasizes that my existence is predicated on yours, and vice versa. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called ubuntu the “essence of being human,” and he did so during the height of his struggle against apartheid, that South African system of segregation that was all about white people maintaining control. What is at the heart of ubuntu is exactly why Jesus emptied himself – and why Paul urges the big C Church to do the same – which is the truth that no person on this planet exists in isolation. We’re all in it together.
How many of you, when you think you’re losing control, or are otherwise generally afraid of what’s going on around you, retreat and isolate? How many of you feel like you have to go it alone, or that you have to do everything yourself, otherwise the entire world will fall apart? How many of you fight against the tides of change?
A while back Kristen and I were vacationing in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the first time in a several years. I was excited to get in the water, but I failed to pay attention to the fact that it was late in the summer, the wind was picking up, and the tides were strong. I got caught, and the harder I fought the more tired I got. Plus, I was going nowhere. Kristen yelled from the shore for me to stop fighting – seriously?! – and let the waves carry me back ashore. Eventually I listened, but only when I let go and stopped fighting.
When our instincts cry for us to hold on or fight back, the still, small voice of Jesus calls us to kenosis and leads us to let go and surrender. What’s more, by recognizing the ubuntu, our connectedness as community – be it a church, a town, a country, or the whole world - we are freed of the part of ourselves that needs power and control. Come what may, we can ride the waves of change because we remember we’re in these waters together.
Still, emptying ourselves doesn’t mean harming ourselves or neglecting our own needs and self-care. Quite the opposite! Paul says to be imitators of Christ, which, I believe, means realizing that we are part of something that is bigger than just ourselves, and that when any of us are in pain, the whole Body is in pain. Too often when we are caught in the cycles of shame that keep telling us we have to have it all together, we can’t see the beloved one in front of us acting as Jesus and trying to help. It’s only when we empty ourselves that we can see that beloved one – see our ubuntu – and accept that help, be healed, and go do likewise. Because we cannot give to others what we ourselves have not already received.
The religious authorities of Jesus’ time often get a bad rap because they were so afraid of change that they couldn’t see God right in front of them. But their blindness was a symptom of the corrupt collaboration system of domination between the that was based on that very same fear of change and losing control. But what if we could let go of that fear for ourselves? What if we didn’t need to be in control? (Because, spoiler alert, we’re not!) What if we could empty ourselves of that need and realized our own existence is dependent on one another? Perhaps then we will understand that God is the only one in control, and that, come what may, as my favorite saint put it, all manner of things shall be well
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