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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
Today's Scripture
1If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus,
6who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
*Philippians 2.1-8, NRSV
Spiritual Teaching
Our Scripture for today appears to be the first part of one of the earliest Christian confessions of faith. Likewise, it is one of the first written, liturgical witnesses to the being and mission of Jesus Christ.
A key word in the passage is the Greek kenosis. Verse 7 reads that the Word “emptied himself.” The KJV reads, “made himself of no reputation.” The Greek verbal form is a form of kenoo, “to empty, make empty; to make void.” A person could undergo kenosis by being made to appear of no value, useless. (Strong's Concordance). The passage clarifies that the Word of God chose to become and appear weak and of little apparent worth.
* * *
The true Church, the mystical Body of Christ, by spiritual baptism enters into the kenosis of Christ, for the true Church is a continuation of the Presence of Christ. That late monk Abhishiktānanda, in In Spirit and Truth, speaks of the Christian as participating in a communal kenosis, in spiritual union with Its Head, Christ:
Jesus lived this dilemma of being in the kenosis, the self-emptying, of his incarnation and crucifixion. He still lives it in his kenosis in the Church.
The Christian is one who is aware that he bears in his body and his heart the tragedy of this dilemma of being – first of all, on his own behalf, as one to whom the plan of divine love has been revealed, but no less for all those to whom it has never been revealed, since by God's choice of him the Christian is responsible for them and for their salvation. For he himself can only be saved in union with all humanity.
Yet, this self-emptying is not a loss for the true, spiritual Child of God. Rather, he or she finds in it the freedom the soul longs for amidst the things of this world:
The Christian knows that his freedom is grounded in the eternal meeting of the Father's call with the Son's response within the unity of the Spirit's love. The Christian cannot live on the surface of things. He is the man with a “deep heart” of the Psalm (63:7 in the Vulgate), for his faith has opened up in his heart the abysses of eternity, the very eternity of Being.
* * *
The Christian person, then, cannot allow himself or herself to be shaped by the pragmatic logic of this world. This pertains in matters of everyday life. Each word, thought, and decision of the follower of the Word is to be a word reflecting the Word, and each is to serve the self-emptying that continues the redemptive kenosis of Jesus Christ.
Author Gary Thomas, founder of the Center for Evangelical Spirituality, wrote the following in Discipleship Journal:
When my wife and I prayed extensively about buying a house, we gave God many opportunities to close the door. God appeared to bless the move. Five years later, our house is worth considerably less than what we paid for it.
”Why didn't God stop us?” my wife and I kept wondering. After all, we had given Him plenty of opportunities. But one day as my wife was praying, she sensed God asking her, “Have you ever considered the possibility that I wanted you in that neighborhood to minister there rather than to bolster your financial equity?”
We thought of the people we have been able to reach, and then asked ourselves, [A]re we willing to surrender to a God who would lead us to make a decision that turned out to be undesirable financially but profitable spiritually? Does obedience obligate God to bless us, or can obedience call us to sacrifice? Think about the cross before you answer that one.
* * *
The self-emptying of the Word, of Christ, is a lively word calling us into the mystery of the incarnation of Christ, and all that follows that coming. No, I am not saying that God expects us to have nothing for ourselves. I am asking, “Are you willing to give your heart and life to Christ, to follow Him, live for Him and others, in forgiveness and goodwill, and service, even if that does not profit you materially in any way?”
Beyond this willingness to live outwardly a self-emptying, as person and faith community, we see this happens only from an emptying within us. If our supposed religious and spiritual mindset and practices are attempts to validate and bolster the ego-self sense, apart from sacrifice of self for others and in Christ, we will build up the separate self rather than surrender it to and in Love, in kenosis.
The contemplative path and contemplative prayer is this intent to practice through prayerful kenosis a prayer that logically seems to be of no use to anyone. After all, what use is resting in union with Christ, when you could be doing something useful? Yet, the apparent uselessness of self-emptying is the practice in participating in the ongoing Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the inspirations of the Blessed, Holy Spirit. Amen.
Responding
1)Explore practices of Christian meditation and contemplative prayer. Links to do this include: www.contemplativeprayer.net ; www.centeringprayer.com ; www.contemplativeoutreach.org ; www.prayingchurch.org ; www.wccm.org : the following is a link on Christian Zen practice – www.zcoc.org .
2)What are ways God is calling you to self-emptying? How does practicing kenosis relate to serving others?
3)What are ways self-emptying can be embodied by Christ communities?
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*Story from Gary Thomas, in Craig Brian Larson. Choice Contemporary Stories and Illustrations. "Gratitude."
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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