Some might say that humility is foreign to God. To be God in all his Majesty he must be the very opposite of lowliness. He must exist in perfect bliss in contrast to all suffering. He must be above and beyond all that is earthly. He must be the Most High and Wholly Other.

But in Jesus God has actually become the lowly suffering human. In doing so, he exposes our ideas of “The Most High” as entirely false. He shows us that we cannot make our own abstract notions the standard by which to decide what God can or cannot do. Truly, Jesus corrects our notions of who God is and what he is like.

Jesus is the Most High who went down to the lowest place in order to lift us up with him to the highest place. He wanted to include us within the communion he shares with his Father in the Spirit. To do so, he came to us as lowly servant going down the lowest place of death on a cross to bring us to his Father in the Spirit. With our eyes fixed on Jesus we do not know God as the “Divine Being” above and beyond us. We only know him as the God who has joined himself to us as lowly servant in order to lift us up with him to the highest place in communion with his Father in the Spirit.

And now in the Father’s presence we lift Jesus up on high as the one who stooped so low taking up our cause as his own in deepest humility.