Downward mobility

Cross-shaped discipleship has a Christological, counterintuitive, and countercultural character that is marked especially by hospitality and service to those without status, which implies a decisive predisposition toward the weak rather than toward the powerful. The normal path to greatness—to power and honor—is replaced by a path to “lastness,” a path of downward mobility that takes one, paradoxically, both to greatness and to God.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 109