The Call to Descend
“Christ descended to our lowly world.” –Ephesians 4:9b, NLT
Seventeen years ago, I stood in the living room of a red brick town home in Southdale, a neighborhood of dilapidated fourplexes and duplexes sparsely built and poorly maintained in the heart of a Kansas City suburb. The landlord gave my husband and I the lowdown on the previous renters—evicted after months of unpaid bills, poor mental health, and no job. The front stoop was missing a railing, the two bedrooms were small, there was only one bath, no dishwasher, and the brass light fixtures were definitely 1960’s originals. On the bright side it had a basement, a green space out back, and easy highway access to just about anywhere in the city.
I stood in that narrow living room and knew in my bones it was the rental for us. We were fresh out of grad school with two little boys in tow, accustomed to living lean. With a little paint and imagination, we could make the town home livable. Yet, I hesitated. I couldn’t shake visions of inviting my middle-class, college educated, Christian family and friends into this space. If we chose to live in this neighborhood to “minister to the poor” that would be acceptable—but to live there because you had to? That meant you were actually poor. I knew full well how my friends and family felt about people who lived in neighborhoods like this one—addicted, irresponsible, lazy, do-nothings dependent on food stamps and welfare checks for survival. Imagining the shock-turned-judgment when they walked into our place made my heart beat faster and my head spin. So, I told myself: You aren’t like the neighbors—you have education and goals. You can handle living here for a year, tops.
A few months later the housing market crashed, my husband lost his job, my pregnant sister left her husband and moved into our basement with her two kids, and my family of origin devolved into a relational war zone.
One year in our town home became two, two became three, three became four.
Along the way our neighbors became friends who taught me more about the reality of our humanity and our need for Jesus than I’ve ever learned inside a church building.
Education, money, title, and talent are something and yet nothing at all: something to be thankful for, yet add nothing to a person’s worth.
Gifts like money, status, and education are too easily twisted into shields that deflect from the reality of our vulnerability. The lack of these gifts tempts us into escaping vulnerability through drugs, entertainment, sex, scrolling, and fantasy. As poet T.S. Eliot says, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” Rich or poor. Educated or illiterate. White or black or brown. Seeing and savoring the beauty of vulnerability comes only to those willing to grow in being truly human. This is the lesson I keep on learning from being poor and living among the poor.
In our eleventh year of living in Southdale, on a cold, wet November night, our landlord stuffed a typed note in the mailbox telling us our place had been sold to a new owner and we had four weeks to get out.
Our four kids burst into tears. I felt sucker-punched in the gut. My husband went quiet. We weren’t ready to leave.
Three weeks later we walked out our front door and locked it behind us for the last time, carrying with us a thousand stories of descent into human fragility, our own and our neighbors’. Descent—a lowering of self from a higher to lower position—comes with humiliation and loss.
As humans we don’t willingly descend, especially in a Western culture grasping for media likes, corporate success, wealth, education, better health and greater fitness. Descent equals less-than, equals the loser, the forgotten, the insignificant, the nobody.
Jesus chose the descendent life—leaving power and being born into a poor family, to a disgraced virgin, in a barn-cave—his first cradle a feeding trough and his first address in Bethlehem, who was “too little to be among the clans of Judah,” (Micah 5:2b).
Perhaps one reason—if not the reason—Western Christianity looks so little like Jesus these days is that it buys into the anti-gospel of the ascendent life—an uphill, valley-free rise to the pearly gates.
The descendent life is a call to surrender whatever earthly gifts you leverage to prove your worth in order to receive Jesus’ love as everything you need. The descendent life can be lived from Mansion Row or a Section 8 apartment if in your heart you count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus’ love. The call to descend like Jesus looks different for each of us. For me, the call to live among the poor next door to one of the wealthiest suburbs in America meant surrendering the good opinions and affirmations of others. This was and still can be, painful. I love the good opinions of others far too much.
Advent is about Jesus surrendering throne and crown and descending to earth for love of you and me. As his children, we are called to follow in his footsteps. The path of Descent exposes our vulnerabilities and softens our hearts until we are open to receiving Love so we can give Love away.
I wonder how Jesus might be calling you and I to descend in order to receive and give his Love this Advent Season?
How To Engage this Series
Each post in Descending into Advent contains several elements: a descriptive word, Scripture, story, and breath prayer. Here are some suggestions to help you slow and attune your heart to how the Lord desires to speak personally and powerfully into your own story of descent.
Visualize: Each post contains a descriptive word and definition meant to invoke an image. Read each definition and ask yourself—what is the first image that comes to mind when I hear this word? That image informs the perspective you bring to the Scripture and story that follow.
Read: This post series traces Jesus’ descent into human experience using passages from Micah, Luke, and primarily Isaiah 53. The meaning of each descriptive word is found in Christ’s story, and he invites us to see the meaning of those words in our own stories as we identify with his. As you read the storied reflections that follow each Scripture, I invite you recognize some of your own story in those that are shared, and in that recognition begin to see God at work in your life in ways you may have missed before.[1]
Ponder: Each reflection is followed by a question meant to help you apply the Scripture to your life.
Pray: Each post concludes with a breath prayer focusing your heart on the primary invitation. With your eyes closed, inhale deeply and pray the phrase after “inhale.” As you exhale, pray the phrase after “exhale.”
Each of these components is meant to help you engage in honest conversation with God about your everyday stories of descent.
*You can view the full post series here.
[1] Reference to Buechner, Frederick. “Life Itself is Grace,” (pg 2).Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.
Pursued 