Empowerment, Kenosis, and the Lives of People Living with Dementia
Not so long ago I was talking to a friend, Jeanette, who had just been diagnosed with dementia. It came as quite a shock to her. She said that her first response was fear; she was afraid that she was somehow going to lose herself. With fear came a sense of embarrassment. “I know how people think about dementia,” she told me. “When you start forgetting things, people no longer respect you. They’ll see me as weak and in need of help. I’ve always made a point of looking after myself. I don’t want people to think I am needy.” And she felt powerless: “I just feel small,” she said. “Everything seems to be going on without me. I feel so helpless and powerless.”
Jeannette’s concerns were warranted. If who we are is defined by our memory, dementia challenges our understanding of who we perceive ourselves to be. She was losing a lot of the things that she and others valued. She was losing her power over things and people, and she was shrinking, at least from the perspective of those who value cognition over presence. But as she spoke, I was reminded that, of course, God does not see her as small.
Something that is easily overlooked is that dementia is a deeply human and meaningful experience that happens to unique individuals who process that experience in different emotional, social, and spiritual ways. And spiritually, Jeannette’s situation was complicated. Her spiritual formation was based on a certain understanding of knowledge, memory, and power that was now being confronted by the challenges of her broken neurology. She was deeply perplexed by how her powerlessness and the loss of her memory might affect how she knew Jesus.
I tried to help Jeanette by assuring her that God will always be with her and that the people of God will never forget about her. I was convinced about the first part of that statement but not necessarily the second part. I did not think that people would deliberately abandon her, but because of the ways in which the church sometimes frames theology, worship, and role of the church, I was worried that she would face an implicit sense of abandonment.
The Power of the Risen Jesus
The previous Sunday, Jeannette and I had stood together in worship as the leader urged us to celebrate the victory of King Jesus. We were both moved as we sang powerful songs of triumph, songs invoking how King Jesus will come in power to crush the darkness of this world in order that the new dawn of the kingdom might be seen by the whole world. We were struck by the idea that the sufferings of this world are temporary, transient, and moving on. We worshipped; we sang; we felt nudged by the Spirit.
But now, with the news of Jeannette’s diagnosis, that experience and that articulation of God’s power seemed distant, perhaps even dissonant. It began to feel like we had been living in Palm Sunday, as though we had been in the crowd of people who thronged around Jesus in anticipation of the revelation of his kingship and the liberating power that people hoped would come from it, as though we were among the people who did not yet know about the passion and the surprise of the resurrection.
We had cried out that “one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord!” (Phil. 2:10 NIV). But then, just a week later, as I lamented with Jeanette, I wondered what that meant for her and others in situations like hers. I knew that some of the worshippers within our congregation could never bend their knees. Some had no knees to bend. I knew that some of us could never confess Jesus as Lord because language is not the way in which we negotiated the world. I wondered how those who have forgotten who Jesus is or whose intellect does not allow such comprehension feel as we insist that everyone recognize Jesus and confess his lordship with intellect and words—I guessed they wouldn’t feel anything about it other than the movement of the Spirit who intercedes with groans we cannot understand (see Rom. 8:26). I wondered how Jeanette felt as she discovered that the things which apparently held her in her faith are the things that are moving on in her life journey.
The Power of Kenosis
On the following Monday, I sat in my office in the university and considered how these images of Jesus as a powerful conquering king fit not only with the undesired self-emptying Jeanette was facing but also with the voluntary self-emptying of Jesus that Paul points us toward in Philippians. My daily devotion for that day was Luke 14. That’s the passage in which Jesus gives these instructions:
When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, “Give this person your seat.” Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, “Friend, move up to a better place.” Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
(Luke 14:10)
The power revealed here is very different from the kind of power we seemed to have been singing about in church. This passage completely reverses our earthly assumptions about importance, standing, power and value. In the kingdom of God, success is not found in prestige or power or victory. Success has to do with giving up power, being humble, embarrassing oneself according to cultural norms, and ensuring that those whom others reject and marginalize not only have a place at the table but our place at the table.
The power revealed in Luke is not the same kind of power that Jeanette feared losing as she worried over her future. In fact, Jesus’s words seem to suggest that as Jeannette moves onward in her dementia journey, her trajectory may be away from the power of this world and into the power of the kingdom.
Later in the chapter, Jesus tells of the master who hosts a banquet that the rich and powerful refuse to attend. That master tells his servants, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame” (Luke 14:21). It is those in society who have no power, people who are assumed to have no value, whom Jesus loves. Not only does Jesus love them, he is one of them.
Jeanette is losing her earthly power and that is disturbing her for obvious reasons. But perhaps her hope can be rekindled by recognizing that Jesus is with her and like her in her powerlessness. He is the one who empties himself of all earthly power in order that power can be redefined and reimagined. Jeanette’s self-emptying is biological in causation and undesired. Nevertheless, one of the consequences of her dementia journey is that she becomes the bearer of a different kind of power, a power that is found in weakness and vulnerability, a power that relativizes secular power.
I must be clear here. I am not suggesting that people with dementia are closer to Jesus just because they have dementia. That may or may not be true, but it is not my point. My point is that the things that Jeanette is losing have personal, social, and cultural value, but they are not the primary sources of value in the kingdom of God. In other words, I believe we need to frame Jeannette’s experience and the profundity of her unshakeable value differently in the light of what we know about Jesus and not what we assume we know about worldly power and value. When we do that, interesting things will begin to emerge.
Kenosis and Human Life
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul offers a challenging vision of who Jesus is and what it means to be a human being before him:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(Phil. 2:5–11)
There is immense depth in this passage. We read that Jesus Christ empties himself and takes on human limitations for the sake of others. Jesus, whom Paul describes as the “one true image of God” (Col. 1:15), makes himself nothing. He humbles himself even to the point of a deeply shameful death on the cross. The Greek word for this divine self-emptying is kenosis, and it was because of his kenotic life that God exalts Jesus to the highest place.
The term therefore (verse 9) is particularly interesting in this passage. As readers, we might be tempted to think of this as a transition point that moves Jesus away from kenosis to an understanding of glory that is very different from his kenotic life. The trajectory appears to be upward and away from kenosis. If this is so, the idea that every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord seems to indicate a transition into the kind of power that Jeanette is afraid of losing. At the very least, there is an apparent tension here between the kenotic Jesus and the imagery of the all-powerful conquering king.
This tension becomes particularly acute for those like Jeanette whose lives are inevitably, if involuntarily, kenotic in the sense that a powerless and humble way of life is unavoidable. The kenotic Jesus offers a way of thinking about human beings that incorporates such an experience and allows us to recognize that all of us are vulnerable, dependent, and self-giving. That is what it means to be a creature. And yet when we think of the exalted Jesus we might be tempted to think of him wielding worldly power, the kind of power that brings people under control. The tensions between these two perspectives can easily drift into Docetism, in which we believe that Jesus’s humanity was temporarily assumed, like a cloak, before he revealed himself for what he really was and is, an all-powerful being, with power being defined by images drawn from what we think we already know about power.
However, I believe both the Lukan passage and my thoughts about Paul’s observations on the kenotic Jesus point us in a different direction. What if both aspects of Paul’s description of Jesus—kenotic and exalted—are in fact expansions on the same dynamic? What if the kenotic trajectory is not upward toward overpowering strength but downward into deeper humility, love, vulnerability, and presence. What if the kenosis of Jesus intensifies in such a way that, in the end, we will be drawn into God’s glorious love in such a way that our knees will buckle, and our tongues will cry out in amazement? We may end up in the same place—every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord—but the modus operandi may be quite different.
Kenosis and the Church
Reflecting on Jeanette’s journey and the kenotic self-emptying of Jesus enables us to discover a poignant and tender way of thinking about the nature and practice of the church. We are given the opportunity to imagine a church that seeks to mirror the self-emptying, deep, and intensive love of the exalted Jesus. Such a church will exhibit Christ like kenosis, intentionally moving away from the trappings of power and prestige toward the embrace of a posture marked by vulnerability, openness, and service. Such a kenotic church will become a living testament to the way of Jesus, a community that seeks not to dominate but to serve, not to be first but to be last, and not to rule but to wash the feet of the world. A kenotic church puts Jeanette at the top of the table and seeks to serve her, not once the real business of the church has been completed but as the real business of the church: loving her with the intensity of love that we find in the earthly life of Jesus and the exalted glory of the risen Christ who is reconciling all things to himself through his mission of love (see Col. 1:19–20).
But surely, some might say, this is wholly impractical! A kenotic orientation does indeed seem unrealistic and does not appear to align with getting things done efficiently in the real world. In a neoliberal context, where time is money and everything and everybody is a commodity, such concerns may appear to be well founded. After all, who has the time to slow down and be with people like Jeanette? The short answer would be Jesus. The challenging question for the church, then, is what better way is there to spend our time than to spend it with those for whom the world has no time? As disciples and followers of Jesus, we might be wise to reflect on the people whom he spent his time with.
Others might object, arguing that to think in this way is to assume that the church should become completely passive, weak, or devoid of influence. But that is not what the passage from Luke or the words to the Philippians say. They don’t suggest that the church has no power. What is suggested is that the power and the influence that the church brings to the world is of a different order. Kenosis is about spiritual power through service, not eliminating power through might. As Zechariah put it, “So he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty.’” (Zech. 4:6). God’s power and work is accomplished not through human strength or force but through God’s spirit. This aligns closely with the ethic of kenosis that subverts worldly notions of power, influence, and productivity. God’s power shines through precisely when human powers are surrendered. The so-called weakness of kenosis discloses true spiritual power. Human systems—including the church—that celebrate status, control, and coercion are challenged. God sits with the lowly and the humble.
Kenosis, the Body of Christ, and the Mission of the Church
All of this reminds us of the power of Paul’s description of the body of Christ: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). Without kenosis, the image of the body of Christ remains nothing more than a challenging metaphor when it is clearly intended to be a reality.
If we consider the church as a kenotic community within which each member is dependent on and interlinked with the other, we can begin to see just how vital kenosis becomes. If the body is to link together with people living with profound intellectual disabilities, people with dementia, people who struggle with various forms of mental and physical disabilities, and people who are vulnerable to physical or emotional rejection, we see that each member of the body has to give up power. Paul doesn’t say that only those trained as health and social workers are bound to vulnerable people. He doesn’t say that within the body only family members are responsible for the care of people in distress. He doesn’t indicate that if you are in business, a banker, a brain surgeon, or a neuroscientist, you can hold onto your power and leave others in the body to deal with people who have no power. No, he tells us to be with those whom Jesus loves and to make sure that within the body no one is excluded. The only way we can truly participate in such a community is by taking kenosis seriously. In the power of the spirit of the exalted Jesus, all of us together are called to give up our worldly power and love one another with a deep intensity that is knee bending.
When we begin to think in this way and take seriously the lives of disciples like Jeanette, the mission of the church is inevitably reoriented. When God’s power is manifested through human emptying, we are pointed to resurrection life and prophetic hope for the world.
We desperately want people to come to know and to love Jesus. That is the mission of the church. But our plan of action is not determined by programs or indicators of worldly success (although programs do, of course, have their place). Ministries that are shaped by kenosis may not reflect worldly metrics of success, but they will manifest God’s subversive wisdom. We will be judged by the quality of our faithfulness and the intensity of our love—this is the witness to the world that we see in the ministry of Jesus, the one true image of God. We, as his body, are called first and foremost to reveal this Jesus to the world. We are, as Leslie Newbigin has put it, the hermeneutic of the gospel: we are that place within creation where people can look and see Jesus in the lives of his people.[1] The challenge lies in what people actually see when they look at the church—do they see Jesus or do they see something else? As Jeanette moves on in her dementia journey, I will hold that question firmly in mind.
[1] See Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989).