The Melrose in Dallas was built in 1924. Today, it is a Four-Diamond luxury hotel boasting a Landmark Restaurant—one of the top ten restaurants in a city priding itself on having more restaurants per capita than any other city in the U.S. Their dining room is set with circular tables covered with linen, stuffed chairs, and a library while you are waiting that makes you feel that you’re an English lord in your castle.
A few weeks ago I got to pretend that I was one of the elites of Dallas as my brother, Don, and I reunited two roommates from graduate school who are now in their eighties for lunch. Jerry Jones and his wife casually strolled in for a quiet meal together half way through our meal to enhance my feelings of power, prestige, and position. There’s a part of me that loves to sit at a table like this, have the multiple waiters repeatedly fill my water glass, and even help place the linen napkin on my lap.
Jesus had all this attention and infinitely more. The blinding stars only reflect a fraction of the divine light that burns forever in His heavenly home. The majesty of the Montana Bear Tooth Mountains a split second before sun down are like a Dollar Store card compared to the true beauty of His perfect landscapes. Think of ants on the floor of the United States Capitol building thinking they are the movers and shakers while in the chairs above the Senators meet in session—this is a weak comparison. Supernatural cherubim and hosts of angels bowed continually before Jesus’ divine throne. Reveling in all this power, prestige, and position, why didn’t God the Father and His Son decide to use the fiery, divine royal war chariot that Ezekiel saw in prophetic vision? Why a Galilean teenager’s womb? Why a cave in a rural, small town south of Jerusalem?
Like John 1:1-18, Philippians 2:6-11 gives us not the melody, but the words to another Christmas carol—more technically an incarnation hymn of praise—that the 1st Century church sang when they met together either early Sunday morning or after work in the evening after their Agape meal and communion. Paul uses this hymn to point out to the Philippian believers and to us the way to the top. This path cuts right across my desire to get rich enough so I can eat at the Melrose daily.
Take some time in the midst of the Bethlehem child's birthday celebration to study what He teaches us about being a slave so that we can rule in the end. Before you conclude that this is all pious sentimentalism ask yourself this: Two thousand years later who actually is august--Augustus or the Lord Jesus Christ?
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