Monday Reverb – 07August2023

The Transforming Power of Kenotic Love

Romans 9:1-5 (NRSVUE)

In this week’s scripture readings, we learn that an encounter with divine love will change (transform) us in ways we can’t anticipate.

Love can be a difficult word to define.  We love pizza, but we also might love our mothers or our spouses.  We might say we love human beings, and as Christians, we may hold sharing God’s love with others as a personal value.  But what does love, specifically transforming love, look like, and how are we changed by it?

The New York Times bestseller Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is a science fiction novel that tells an interesting story about transforming love.  The main character, Ryland Grace, is a junior high science teacher who finds himself sent without his consent on a suicide space mission to save the earth from a single-celled organism that is threatening to extinguish the sun.  Grace unexpectedly connects with an alien (whom he names “Rocky”), who is on a similar mission, and after they work together to develop a solution using a predatory organism called Taumoeba, they part ways to return to their respective planets with the Taumoeba.  However, Grace discovers that Rocky won’t be able to get back to his planet because the Taumoeba can eat through the material of the container housing them, the same material that Rocky’s entire spaceship is constructed of.  Grace faces a dilemma: does he leave Rocky stranded to die in space and head back to earth with barely enough food to make it or does he go after Rocky to help, knowing that he will starve to death with no way to replenish his food supply on Rocky’s planet?

When Ryland Grace was asked to participate in the suicide mission to save humanity, he didn’t want to go.  He wasn’t willing to give up his life, even though he would say he cared about his students, humanity, and the state of the planet.  But [spoiler alert] when faced with the prospect of his friend being stranded, alone, and destined to die in space, Grace goes after Rocky to save him.  This is the power of transforming love, a kind of love that changes us and makes us willing to sacrifice ourselves to help the one we love.

This type of love is kenotic.  The word kenosis is found in Philippians 2:7 which says in reference to Jesus, he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness” (NRSVUE).  This self-emptying love is a sign of great transformation, and proof of the Divine at work in and through human beings.  We first witness Jesus, reducing his divinity to fit into human flesh and then willingly letting himself be executed to take human feelings and actions spurred by hate and isolation (i.e., sin) into himself to put them to death, free us from them, and include us in relationship with the triune God.  Jesus shows that there is no evil in human beings that is too big to be encompassed and overcome by this self-sacrificing, divine love.

Our sermon text comes from Romans 9:1-5, and here we see Paul showing similar anguish as he expresses his deep emotions for the Jewish people who refused to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.

Read Romans 9:1-5, NRSVUE

I am speaking the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit — ² I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  ³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood.  ⁴ They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; ⁵ to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.  Amen.  

What’s the context?

Romans 9:1 – 11:36 begins Paul’s discussion about God’s providence and the rejection of Jesus Christ by Abraham’s descendants (i.e., the heirs of the covenant).  To prepare the readers for his exposition, Paul sets forth this theme in the first chapter:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17, NRSVUE)

Paul points out that neither Jews nor Gentiles possess a privileged standing with God, for all are part of the universal human reality – that all have fallen short (Romans 1:18-3:20), and are subject to the egoic pull of the old self.  Because both Jews and Gentiles benefit from being included in Abraham’s covenantal promise, all believers are freefromGod’s wrath (5:1-21), the control of sin (6:1-23), the law (7:1-25), and ultimately the power of death (8:1-39).

The first eight chapters of Romans set Paul up to explain how divine love transformed him from a persecutor of Christians to a believer and follower of Christ.  It was relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit, not the law, that changed Paul’s heart.

The immediate Context – Romans 8:31-35,37-39

What then are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?  ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.   ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ^[t] who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? …  ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.  ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

A Closer Look at the keynote passage – Romans 9:1-5

I am speaking the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit — I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. (Romans 9:1-2, NRSVUE)

Paul conveys the deep emotion he feels about the Jewish people’s rejection of Jesus as the Christ.  Those Paul is writing to understand his personal history, so for a former murderer of Christ followers to express anguish over others’ rejection of Jesus, his readers must find it compelling.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood. (Romans 9:3, NRSVUE)

In this verse, Paul speaks of the kenotic love that only comes from a relationship with the Father, Son, and Spirit.  He is communicating the very nature of Jesus himself because “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13, NRSVUE).  This verse communicates how kenotic love behaves.

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs. (Romans 9:4-5a, NRSVUE)

Paul points out the advantages the Jewish people had: the rich history with the law; the Shekinah glory of the cloudy pillar and tabernacle; and the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promise(s) of the coming of the Messiah.  They had a special relationship with God as a called-out people, a benefit the Gentiles did not have at first.  These advantages Paul applies to non-Jewish believers in Romans 4.

And from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:5b, NRSVUE)

He points out the honor the Jewish people had in participating in the birth of Jesus, the Son of God incarnate.  Paul concludes his plea with acknowledging Christ’s supremacy over all human beings, the Son of Man (as Jesus called himself) AND the Son of God.

Application:

• Realize that our transformation does not come through the rigid keeping of rules but from divine love connecting us to God and to others.  Too often we fall into keeping score, comparing ourselves with others and then either feeling superior or inferior.  Neither of these states lends itself to the transformation of our human hearts by kenotic Divine Love.
• Recognize from Paul’s example that kenotic love comes from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It’s not love that we can generate ourselves, much the same way Ryland Grace from the novel Project Hail Mary had no desire to go on a suicide mission to save the earth but didn’t think twice about giving up his life for his alien friend Rocky.  Humanly speaking, we can’t drum up this kind of self-emptying love on our own, but we can trust that developing our relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will put us in a position to grow in our awareness of the divine kenotic love at work in us and others.

Transforming love is difficult to define and impossible to generate on our own, though we know it when we see it.  From reading Romans 9:1-5, we see that Paul understands that Jesus’ kenotic love has transformed him to the point thathe also experiences self-emptying loveon behalf of the Jewish people who rejected Jesus.  May we know the depth of love God has for us, and may that love come through us to bless those around us.