“To read the
biblical narratives is to encounter a God who is, first of all, love (1 John
4:8). Love involves a willingness to put oneself at risk, and God is in fact
vulnerable in love, vulnerable even to great suffering. God’s self-revelation
is Jesus Christ, and, as readers encounter him in the biblical stories, he
wanders with nowhere to place his head, washes the feet of his disciples like a
servant, and suffers and dies on a cross–condemned by the authorities of his
time, undergoing great pain, “despised and rejected by others; a man of
suffering and acquainted with infirmity” (Isaiah 53:3). Just this Jesus is the
human face of God, not merely a messenger or a prophet but God’s own self come
as self-revelation to humankind. If God becomes human in just this way,
moreover, then that tells us something of how we might seek our own fullest
humanity–not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity
with the despised and rejected, and willingness to be vulnerable in love.“
– Wiliam
Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God
All this
took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a
son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means,
‘God is with us.’
(Matthew
1:22-23
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.
(Philippians
2:5-8)
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