Humility and simplicity are virtues that are sometimes rare in our world today, even among religious leaders in the church. Yet, this is one of the greatest human examples that Jesus left for us. Incarnation was all about the humility of the Son of God. The betrayal, passion and crucifixion of Christ are all about a humble surrender to God, in allowing oneself to be immolated for the life of the world. What other lesson can we easily learn?

Instead, most preachers of the Word have focused on power: the power to do miracles, the power to cast and bind, the power to forgive, to govern, to direct, to pastor and so on. What we seem to forget is that the greatest power is hidden in the greatest form of weakness, that is the self-emptying which Jesus exemplified. Being God, yet he did not count his God-nature as something to be forcefully possessed. It is His and there is nothing that can change that. Instead, Jesus became human so as to save. Incarnation is the greatest lesson in our humanness – humus, our ‘dustiness’ like we confessed on Ash Wednesday.

For many, COVID-19 is a better teacher of humility than the incarnation, and that is a shame. If we had learnt from the Son of God we wouldn’t be scrambling over power, we should rather have been competing over being good, kind, loving and compassionate to and with one another.

Teach us to be humble, O Lord.