kenotic pleroma

“ 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…” (Philippians 1:6)

Kenosis is the word in the Greek New Testament, meaning “to empty.” And so, coming to Jesus is to approach an emptiness, an empty tomb, an empty place at the table, an abandoned temple, a space  devoid of icons, symbols, or sacraments. Anything resembling divinity has escaped down the rabbit-hole, back into whatever wonderland it came from.

This is a familiar emptiness, as familiar as the chair in which my mother used to sit before she died, as familiar as the living silence of old forests, or the monastic pauses at the asterisks* in psalms.

In contrast, the Epistle to the Colossians speaks of “fullness”, in Greek, pleroma, stating, in 2:9 and 10,  “…in [Christ] all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him.” This fullness is familiar also, from the births of my children, and experiences with music, rivers, liturgy, and love.

Between kenosis and pleroma there is a contrast, but no contradiction. Our coming to God is a sacred emptiness, a living silence, a “kenotic pleroma”, a powerless authority, an exalted humility, a crucified majesty.

“At the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Philippians 2:10)