After Leaving Isaiah and the prophetic poems looking forward to the coming of a new Kingdom in Christ, we will now move ahead 600 years to see what the early church understood about the king that had come to them and taught all about the new Kingdom.
We begin with Paul the Apostles letter to the Philippians.
He begins this scripture by reminding us that once we have found the new kingdom we need to realign our minds to the understanding of the one we have been waiting for in the leading up to Christmas.
When people in the ancient world thought of heroic leaders, rulers and kings they often thought of Alexander the Great.
At the age of 20 he succeeded his father Philip to the throne of Macedonia, quickly made himself master of all Greece, and then set about the task – to him, it seemed, quite small – of conquering the rest of the world. By the time he died at the age of 33 he had succeeded to such an extent that it made sense, within the thought of the time, for him to be regarded as divine.
Only when we grasp this, do we see just how deeply subversive, how utterly counter-cultural, was Paul’s gospel message concerning Jesus of Nazareth, whose resurrection had declared him to be Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord. He was the reality, and Alexander and Augustus were the caricature.
In today's reading, we see the true humility of the king that we wait for, this Christmas on full display.
Turning the idea in what way kingdoms are run on its head.

He ‘emptied himself ‘. People have sometimes thought that this means that Jesus, having been divine up to that point, somehow stopped being divine when he became human, and then went back to being divine again. This is, in fact, completely untrue.
The point of verse 6 is that Jesus was indeed already equal with God; somehow, Paul is saying, Jesus already existed even before he became a human being
But the decision to become human, and to go all the way along the road of obedience, obedience to the divine plan of salvation, yes, all the way to the cross – this decision was not a decision to stop being divine. It was a decision about what it really meant to be divine.
There is so much goodness and mystery packed into this verse, and also also packaged into Christmas that there comes a point that we need to embrace and understand and appreciate the mystery of who Jesus is and that he is fully God and fully human.

As we read this verse one more time, take some time to appreciate the wonder of God. Allow the spirit to speak to you about the mysterious miracle of Christmas and the birth of God into humanity.

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