Infinite Newness
N. Gordon Cosby
When life reaches the depths, as it reached the ultimate depths in Jesus, it explodes into infinite newness. The only man ever resurrected was the one who hit the bottom and knew total poverty. And so we have a new injection into the lifestream of humanity. The ascending way never explodes into newness. It reaches its pinnacle of fame, authority, power by sucking into itself that which should never have been arrogated to it. We store the names, remember the accomplishments–sometimes envy the accomplishments–and write much of our history around those who were invested in fame. We don’t write it around the poor, the real people. We write the story of who we are as a people around “the names.” But they don’t cause us to want to walk tall in the faith. They don’t release love into the common family.
Suppose the only God is the descending God. Suppose the only way that we can know God is to go down, to go to the bottom. Suppose the only way to be reconciled to God is to be reconciled to Christ, who is with the least, at the bottom. If God is going down and we are going up, we’ll miss each other. Going up is the way to evade God and miss the whole purpose of our existence.
Source: Sermon (September 24 1989)
