Downward Mobility

Rachel Held Evans once wrote that the Table is the great equalizer — the place where we stop performing and start belonging. Philippians 2:3-4 invites us into that same downward mobility: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."

In a culture addicted to platform-building and personal branding, humility is a subversive act. It looks like the suburban congregation that showed up to a city council meeting not to speak, but to listen — really listen — to unhoused neighbors describing what they actually needed. No agenda. No savior complex. Just folding chairs and open ears. They came expecting to offer solutions and left realizing they had been the ones educated.

This is the kenosis Paul describes — the self-emptying that mirrors Christ. It is not self-hatred or doormat theology. It is the deliberate choice to decenter ourselves so that marginalized voices can finally be heard. Brian McLaren reminds us that the reign of God looks less like a pyramid and more like a circle, where power flows outward instead of upward.

Humility, in the way of Jesus, means asking a harder question than "How can I help?" It means asking, "Whose voice have I been drowning out?" And then making room.