Don Friesen
Some fifty years ago Sao Kya Seng, the prince of thirty-four independent states in northeastern Burma, came to Denver, Colorado, to study agriculture. Seng wanted to experience what it was like to be a student in the United States, so he kept his identity a secret. No one, not even his professors, knew that he was a prince! One of his fellow students was Inge Eberhard, from Austria and also an exchange student. The two became friends, discovered they had a lot in common, and spent more and more time together. Their friendship grew into love, but Seng didn't want their relationship to be coloured by the fact that he was royalty. He wanted her to marry him for the right reasons. Eventually Seng proposed to Inge, she accepted, and they got married, in Colorado.
The couple took their honeymoon, first in Austria, where they met her family. Then they travelled to Burma to meet his family. When their ship reached the port of Rangoon, hundreds of people had gathered on the dock. Many of them had come out to meet the ship in small boats decorated in bright colours. A band was playing on the dock, while people held up welcoming signs and tossed flowers at the couple as the ship passed by. Surprised at this unusual welcome and excitement, Inge turned to her husband and enquired as to the cause of this celebration. "Inge," he said, "I am their prince. These people are celebrating our arrival. You are now the princess."
A strange but true story. Like the story of the Burmese prince's hidden identity, we do not get a glimpse of Jesus' royalty until his entrance into the holy city. And then people wave palm branches, toss their coats in his path, and shout cries of welcome and acclamation! We already know his true identity, because the Gospel writers knew who he was when they wrote the Gospels, but most people of the day did not know.
There is another parallel to the story of the Burmese prince. In a book Inge wrote about her experience as a princess (Inge Sargent, Twilight over Burma: My Life As a Shan Princess), she tells of her happy but short marriage, because in 1962 her husband disappeared during a military coup and she and her daughters never saw him again.
The Arc Spirals Downwards
Jesus' spot in the royal spotlight was also short-lived. The palm branches stopped waving, and any hints of either royalty or loyalty vanished as conflict loomed ahead. Jesus first went to the temple, an obligatory first-stop for a pilgrim, I would think, but before he left he had words with those who had lost sight of what the temple was all about. (Matthew 21:23-17) It wasn't long before the intellectuals of the temple confronted him, but he was too artful for them. (21:23-27) Then he told some stories in which the chief priests and Pharisees felt implicated. (21:45-46) Then the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus on a tricky tax question. (22:15-22) Jesus silenced them with a crafty question of his own! (22:34) More questions followed (22:41-46), but the people asking the questions weren't all that interested in any answers. They had an agenda.
The conflict escalated, the chief priests and elders now plotting his arrest and death. (Matthew 26:1-5) From there things took on a life of their own, but along the way Jesus was feeling the pressure of the conflict intensely, and it spilled over when he took some time out to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. (26:36-46) There he poured out his heart to God: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." (26:39) "Not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke 22:42, KJV) This is Jesus at his most vulnerable. He was facing unbelievable suffering, and if God could have found another way Jesus would have welcomed it. His Gethsemane experience was a battle of the soul, but he resolved to obey God's will, whatever the cost.
An Unusual Career Arc
There is an unusual arc, or trajectory to Jesus' life, especially as they are reflected in the events of Holy Week. The trajectory is downward. This is in contrast to what we consider success stories. Most of us do not aspire to job titles containing the words, "assistant" or "junior". On the other hand, few of us, upon taking off our graduation gowns, head straight for the boardroom, or even an office with a window! It's conventional wisdom that to get much-coveted positions of leadership you often have to climb, crawl, clamour, and claw your way there. I've never consulted a career counsellor – and it probably shows – but I would think that such a counsellor would advise you to plot a viable pathway to the summit of your profession, setting the appropriate, and realistic short-term and long-term goals. If successful, the trajectory of your career would follow an upward arc, and only as you got older and were not longer at the top of your game would the arc begin to dip downwards.
In contrast, the arc, or trajectory of Jesus' life spirals downwards. Whereas the week begins with shouts of acclamation, it ends with shouts of "Crucify him!" (Mark 15:13) Whereas the week begins with people throwing their cloaks on the road in front of him, in his honour, it ends with soldiers taking his clothes away! (Matthew 27:35) At the beginning of the week Jesus is hailed as the One, the Son of David! The One who comes in the name of the Lord! By the end of the week even the wretched Barabbas, a notorious thief, is more popular than Jesus. (Matthew 27:21)
An Ode to the Arc of Salvation
Several years ago Dorothy and I attended a conference in St. Louis, Missouri, home of The Gateway Arch, the tallest national monument in the United States. The usual arc of one's life is like the St. Louis Arch; it begins by curving upwards. The arc of Jesus' experience, however, appears to be the inverse of that curve, beginning by curving downwards. The New Testament traces the downward arc of Jesus' experience, saying that "Christ Jesus ...was in the form of God, ...but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, (and) being born in human likeness. And ...in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8) You cannot get much lower. Death on a cross was a degrading punishment reserved for slaves and criminals!
Someone has referred to this arc, or trajectory, as the "arc of salvation," and in the New Testament book of Philippians there is a song that celebrates the arc's sweep. It's an ode to the arc of salvation, if you will, and mirrors Jesus' experience during Holy Week, for his was a journey from acclamation to humiliation, a path that took him from eternal glory to abject humility and death. And along the way, to remind him that he was on the way down, he was mocked, repeatedly. (Luke 23:35-39)
It's called the arc of salvation, not because salvation is found in humiliation but because God honoured Jesus' humble obedience. And so the arc, after reaching its lowest point, begins to curve upward! "Therefore," says the song – meaning because of Jesus' humble obedience – "Therefore God ...highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue... confess that Jesus Christ is Lord...." (Philippians 2:9-11)
The arc of salvation at its lowest point may be low indeed, but it curves back up. To follow Jesus is to follow Jesus' spiritual trajectory. It is to be delivered from the fear that life has no hope or meaning. To follow Jesus is to be delivered from any private hell into which we have sunk. The lowest point of the "arc of salvation" may be low indeed, but it curves eternally upward!
The arc of salvation goes downward, so that Christ can bring us upward. He "became poor, so that by his poverty (we) might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9) He died so that we might live. (1 Thessalonians 5:10) "And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves," – the lowest form of existence – "but for him who died and was raised for them." (2 Corinthians 5:15) In other words, the arc-of-salvation becomes the arc-of-discipleship, for the Philippians passage begins, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus...." (Philippians 2:5)
It's a rather counter-cultural mind to have in our day, for it may mean suffering loss rather than claiming privilege, focussing on humble relationships rather than upon status, and distributing wealth rather than hoarding it. It may mean committing ourselves to unity rather than to what the New Testament calls "party spirit". (Galatians 5:20, RSV)
In fact, Philippians spells out what it means to have the mind of Christ, saying, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." (Philippians 2:3-4, TNIV) Paul says much the same thing in Romans: "Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not think you are superior." (Romans 12:16, TNIV)
The arc of salvation encourages harmonious community. I may have told this story before – that's what happens when one's career trajectory begins its downward dip: you start repeating yourself – but the story is told of a monastic community whose communal spirit grew brittle and argumentative with time. They sought the advice of a visiting bishop, who took it upon himself to take each monk aside and tell him a secret. He told each one, "One of the members of this community is the Messiah". It was a mischievous way to foster harmony, for it kept the monks guessing, but it also put an expectant and redemptive spirit in their hearts. Their communal spirit was transformed as they began to relate to each other differently, conscious that the person beside them might be the Messiah!
May this same expectant and redemptive spirit — the spirit of Jesus — transform our hearts and minds. AMEN
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.