What Are You Looking For?

John 1: 29-42

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 16^th January 2010

  

“[T]he besetting sin today is the sin of literalism.”[1] These words were first published in Saving the Appearances: A Study of Idolatry (1965), by the Owen Barfield (1898-1997). Barfield was an English solicitor, a non-academic philosopher, a devoted Christian, and close friend of C. S. Lewis (1898-1963).  Lewis penned The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for Owen’s daughter, Lucy; he wrote The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for Owen’s son, Geoffrey.  Barfield’s Saving the Appearances was included in the top 100 spiritual works of the 20^th-century.  He had a profound impact upon both T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). 

            Why is literalism a sin?  Because it hardens the heart and hinders our imagination as it encounters the world.[2]  It prevents mystery.  It narrows by making the multiple into one; multiple meanings, multiple definitions, interpretations are reduced into one, monolithic meaning.  Literalism abhors the symbolic, the metaphoric, the “as-if” quality in words, in truth, in experience.  Literalism revels in the concrete, the material, the one.  Literalism, when taken to its extreme leads to fundamentalisms of all varieties – usually associated with texts, with words.  We see this particularly in religion, in fights over how the Bible or the Koran may be interpreted, which then lead to fights over ethics and morality.  We can see this in politics, where in our own nation literalism is making its way into how some view the Constitution and interpret it.

            A contemporary of Barfield, who also warned about the dangers of literalism was Norman O. Brown (1913-2000). A scholar, a classicist, Brown wrote, “The thing to be abolished is literalism;…truth is always in poetic form; not literal but symbolic; hiding, or veiling; light in darkness…the alternative to literalism is mystery.”[3]  In our age, we often assume that if we have a literal meaning of something, then we know more about it, the truth of what something really is.  If something is symbolic or metaphoric, then we suspect that we don’t have the whole truth, but only a portion of it.  But, ironically, an obsession with the literal actually blocks what is known and destroys mystery, and thus hinders the possibility of discovering what can be known.  Ironically, a lot of the truth contained in the Bible is missed because people read it literally.  The symbolic allows us to go deep, to have a deeper meaning of something, to discover what is not obviously available on the surface.  It’s striking that in this age of rising fundamentalisms and religious wars over the interpretation of texts, that we have a cultural fascination in film with stories full of symbols and metaphors, whether it’s a renewed interest in The Chronicles of Narnia, or the mythical battles in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or the daily dramas of Harry Potter and friends at Hogwarts.

            Throughout John’s gospel (and unique to him) there’s often two story lines going on at the same time.  There’s the literal storyline and there’s the symbolic storyline.  There’s a continuous interplay between the literal and the symbolic.  Simple phrases or words or questions have not one meaning, but two.  There are multiple layers in John’s narrative.   You can read the story one way and have it mean something.  Or you can go deeper and have it mean something something more.  It’s the something more in this exchange between Jesus and these two anonymous men that entices and pull them in to the strong orbit of Jesus’ movement in their lives.

            For example, right after Jesus’ baptism, we have this amazing scene.  John is standing with two of his disciples as they watch Jesus walk by, and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”  They hear John say this and then they follow Jesus as he walks.  Jesus turns to them (did he know he was being followed?) and says, “What are you looking for?”  They answer, “Rabbi,” Teacher, “where are you staying?”  Jesus says, “Come and see.”  And so they followed, arrived at the place Jesus was staying.  They remain with him.  Then John tells us what time it was was, about 4:00 p.m.  It’s very odd.  We come to know that one has a name, Andrew, who then introduces Simon Peter, his brother, to Jesus as the Messiah.  This, we might say, is what literally, historically happened in space-time.

            But there’s another layer here, the symbolic.  The seemingly simple question, “What are you looking for?” now takes one enormous theological proportions.  Jesus turns to them, these two who are quick to follow, and he wants to know what they’re looking for, what are you really looking for?  What are you really seeking in following after me?  You see, it’s not a simple question.  Perhaps it’s the question, the first question posed by the Teacher to anyone who wants to be his student, to sit at Jesus feet and learn truth in his school of wisdom.  What are you really looking for in following me? Jesus says.  What are you searching for?   What hidden drive, deep in the recesses of your psyche, is causing you to make such a radical departure, to leave one teacher (John the Baptist) and follow me? Jesus asks.  There’s almost this sense that Jesus is a little suspicious of their motives, doubting their sincerity.

            Or – or – just maybe the question is intentionally offered, graciously directed at them, as any good teacher would do, in order to help raise their consciousness, that they come to know for sure why they are doing what they are doing, why they are walking in his steps and not another. 

            What do they say?  They’re searching for the place where the Teacher stays.  On the literal level they want to stay with him.  On the symbolic level they want to stay with Him, that is to dwell with him, to abide with him.  We can take up space with Jesus, hang-out with him, as it were, share a roof and a meal for a while.  But there’s also the possibility of sharing a life with him, of dwelling with him, of abiding in his presence, of him dwelling and abiding in us.  The word stay here can also be translated remain or abide.  It’s the same Greek word used later in John when Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you.  …..Those who abide [remain] in me and I in them bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  …As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide [remain] in my love” (John 15: 4-5, 9).

            “Come and see,” Jesus says.  Sure, I’ll show you where I live.  But with the eyes of faith, I’ll show you where I live.  In Greek, there are two words for life.  Bios and zoe.  Bios refers to natural, physical life, that which allows us to function.  And then there’s zoe, fulfilling life, overflowing life,  creative life, dynamic life.  Sure, I can show you where I stay, where I eat and sleep, Jesus says to us, “Come and see.”  If that’s all you want to see, here it is.  “Come and see,” is also the invitation to discover something else, to discover where Jesus stays, where he remains, where his presence dwells and fills life and gives life.  If you want this, if you want life, if true life is what you’re searching for, then, “Come and see.” That’s possible too; it all depends what you’re looking for.

            The two respond to Jesus’ invitation and find something more than they expected to see.  They remained with him and “saw” who he was – the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, the Christ.  They went from one level of knowing to another, from one perspective of reality to another, from the surface to the depths, and what they saw in the depths changed their lives.  John tells us it was about four o’clock in the afternoon.  John is a stickler for detail; nothing is wasted in his gospel.  Why 4 p.m.?  Does this, too, have two levels of meaning?  Maybe a particular hour of the day becomes a particular hour in a day unlike any other day; chronos, ordinary time becomes kairos, extraordinary time; chronos becomes kairos – a moment, an hour which marks the exact moment when these two become disciples, when they discovered their vocation.[4]

            What are you looking for?   This is where it all starts, isn’t it?  It’s such an open-ended question.  In the gospels, particularly in John, Jesus anticipates questions and thoughts and feelings in the observer and responds first.  Very often Jesus will ask questions or even answer questions indirectly in order to allow those whom he encountered to discover the truth about him for themselves.[5]  Jesus doesn’t want passive faith, but active faith in which we are personally engaged.  Throughout scripture Jesus has extraordinary respect for us as other.  Notice, he doesn’t  respond to these religious seekers by saying, “Here’s what your looking for.  Here’s what you ought to believe about me.  Here’s the truth.  Here’s what I mean.  Here, this is the only way to interpret me or scripture.”  Instead, he says, graciously, out of respect, with deep love and compassion, “What are you looking for?”  He creates enormous space just in the asking of that question.  Then he moves back and allows us to step into that space with an answer, he leaves it up to us to respond. 

            This question is directed to religious seekers.  They’re followers of John for a while and then they leave him to follow Jesus.  This question is designed, I think, to open up us to our  own desires and our motivations  What are we looking for in walking after Jesus? Sometimes religion can be a very selfish thing.  For some it’s a form of addiction, going from one faith to another, one belief to another, one church to another.  For some, religion is a kind of drug used to dull the pain of existence, or to make us happy, or provide comfort, or ease anxiety we might have about death and what the afterlife will look like.  Some people go to church or follow out of fear, to play it safe, to hedge their bets, as a kind of insurance policy against the unknown.  Utilitarian faith can be expressed in a variety of ways, both within and without the church, when we turn to religion or faith to serve our own ego needs, to meet our own personal agendas, for what we get out of it.  I guess there’s really nothing inherently wrong with utilitarian faith, but it seems to me that these are expressions of a kind of surface faith or religion, not the life that Jesus came to offer people.  It’s something, but Jesus comes with something more; not the kind of faith that is simply satisfied to see where Jesus lives, but the kind that is discovered when we stay with him and discover who he is.

So, come and see.  What are you looking for?

            “For in him was life [zoe],” John tells us earlier in his gospel, “and the life [zoe] was the light of all people” (John 1:4).  That afternoon when they stayed with him, I believe they saw a person through whom life poured, an encounter with life itself who called them to life, and propelled them out into the world with conviction and with a new vitality, inviting others to “come and see.” 

            Calling people to life.  Increasingly, these days, this is how I’m viewing the heart of Jesus’ ministry, it’s what God desires for all God’s children, it’s why God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn it, that it might be saved, that it might live abundantly (John 10:10).  It’s how I hear Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).  It’s echoed in the early church father, Irenaeus (2^nd century – c. 202), when he said, “The glory of God is revealed in a person fully alive.”  It’s behind, I think, Howard Thurman’s (1900-1981) marvelous statement about vocation and the purpose of our lives:  “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”[6] 

            For the sad truth is that there’s so much in our lives that does not satisfy, so much that deadens, so much in our culture that is not calling people to life, so much which is not participating in creative, fulfilling, meaningful living.  We see this in the escalation of violence at all levels of our society – individual, communal, and national levels – violence brought on because of a deep frustration within people, a hunger in people for something more.  The shooting in Tucson, AZ, and the ensuing debate over why anyone needs to own a gun in a civilized society, is only part of this larger problem of violence –violence always destroys.  For to destroy life is to be fundamentally at odds with God.

            The Lord of Life says to us, “What are you looking for?”   And in his grace, the response to us will always be, “Come and see.”  If we follow, then who knows what we’ll discover spending an afternoon with him.  Just don’t take this literally – it could take more than an afternoon.  It probably will.  It could take a lifetime.  But what matters most is that we remain with him, that we stay with him and discover what it means to live.

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[1] Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study of Idolatry (Wesleyan, 1988), cited in James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (Harper & Row, 1975), 149. 

[2] See Hillman, 149ff.  “Literalism prevents mystery by narrowing the multiple ambiguity of meanings into one definition.  Literalism is the natural concomitant of monotheistic consciousness – whether in theology or science – which demands singleness of meaning.  Precisely this monotheism of meaning prevents mystery….  Seeing through our literalisms is a process of resacralization…,” 149-150.

[3] Norman O. Brown, a response to Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) in his Negations (London, 1968), cited in Hillman, 149.

[4] Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, 3 vols. (New York:  Seabury, 1982) 1:309, cited in Gail R. O’Day, John in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1995), 531.

[5] O’Day, 530-531.

[6] Cf. a related quote from Thurman, “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

Called Through the Waters

Matthew 3: 13-17

Baptism of the Lord/ 9^th January 2011

Baptism.  Temptation.  Vocation.    This is the flow of events in Matthew 3 and 4.  Jesus arrives along the River Jordan, he goes down into the water to be baptized, that is, washed, prepared for the journey of his life.  He comes up; the crowd hears the pronouncement of God’s favor.  Here is a Son of God.  Then wasting no time, the Spirit of God whisks him off into the wilderness to be tested and trained, and eventually arrives in Capernaum to preach the Kingdom of God.  Baptism (Matthew 3: 13-17).  Temptation (Matthew 4: 1-11).  Vocation (Matthew 4: 12-17).  They’re all connected in Jesus’ life.  They’re all connected  for whoever shares in Jesus’ life. 

            Throughout Advent, especially in the sermon just before Christmas, I made the claim that Jesus’ life is the pattern for our lives.  What we see God doing in and through Jesus tells us something of what God can do in and through all of us.  God enfleshed in Jesus, God born in the depths of the human psyche, suggests that this is what God continually desires, to be enfleshed in our lives, to be born in the depths of our psyches, our souls, to grow with grace in us and through us so that we, like Jesus, with Jesus, may offer something of God’s love to the world.  If Jesus shows us the way to be human with God, if Jesus shows us how to live, then the pattern also continues for us here with baptism, temptation, vocation.

            We don’t know what went through Jesus’ mind and heart prior to his baptism, the existential wrestling, no doubt, that led him to the River Jordan.  We’re not even sure what Jesus believed about himself when he entered into the water.  But he knew he had to be there and no other place.  He knew he had to be washed, to be initiated and prepared for what was emerging in his life.  He went under with one reality and came up out of the water to discover a new reality, a truth that forever changed the course of his life.  “This is my beloved Son.” 

            It’s the nature of Sonship, of realizing one’s identity as a child of God, which changed his life.  It’s the realization that his identity and what he would do with his life would be forever identified with the identity, purpose, and work of God.  He could not be himself apart from who he came to know himself to be in God.  The experiences in the wilderness, the temptations or testing were attempts to make him forget who he was, to sever the relationship between him and God, to be someone other than himself.  Knowing that his future and God’s future were inextricably linked, his identity in and with God indissoluble, that his work would be God’s work, his joy would be God’s joy, his love would be God’s love, Jesus begins his ministry in Capernaum and inaugurates the transformation of the universe.

            All because he went down into the waters.  His calling came through the waters.  The waters weren’t talking  or gurgling or whispering to him, it was the act of going down into and out of the waters that he discovered his call.  That’s why baptism, then and now, has always been a risky thing, a matter of life and death.  In the early church baptism meant being engrafted into the life of Christ.  Going down into the water meant death; rising up meant resurrection.  It meant going down into the water as one person and coming up another.  It meant dying and rising, of putting aside one way, giving up the former way, the childish, selfish way and rising into a new way, toward the mature way, beyond the self-centered way.  There’s always a cost involved, something is lost in following God’s way, before something is gained.  Values, perspectives change.  What was must be given up in order to take up what needs to be realized through Christ. 

            The calling of our lives comes through these waters too.  In our baptism, when we think of it as more than joining the church, when as adults we indwell its meaning, when we reflect upon it, pray in its knowledge, when we listen to the voice of God that sounds forth to us, we too discover what the shape of our lives might be as children of God.  The point I’m trying to make here is that there’s a direct correlation between baptism and vocation.

            Vocation is often associated only with religious professions – like Jesus, if we can view him as a religious professional (which is something he would have rejected).  Often in Roman Catholicism, for example, to have a vocation means to have a calling to be a priest.  In our Reformed tradition, however, we have always believed that ministers are not the only ones with a calling or vocation.  There are many callings because there are many jobs to do in God’s Kingdom.  Actually, everyone has a calling.  There isn’t a Christian soul without one.  Why?  Because it all starts at the font with our baptism.  If you’re baptized, then that means you have a calling. God has a job for you to do, and usually not just one job, one calling for a lifetime, but many, and they change throughout the course of one’s life.  To be baptized means you’re a child of God and God has blessed you – already – with every gift, every talent, every skill, dream, hope, idea, feeling, passion needed and the energy required to heed the call. 

            One of the responsibilities and joys of the Christian life is discerning one’s calling, attending to the voice that calls.   It’s an amazing gift to know one’s vocation.  Unfortunately, sadly, there are many who never fully believe they are called, who never discern their true calling or callings, who never come to see that their lives matter infinitely to God, that the meaning of their lives matter to God, and that God has a job for them to do that will both bring them enormous joy and serve the ends of God’s Kingdom.  The good news is it’s never too late to discover God’s will for our lives.  And that will changes throughout our lives.  What matters is that we stay close, that we listen to the voice of our calling, that we trust the wisdom and goodness and truth of that voice.

            Consider the alternative, of living a life where one has missed out on one’s purpose.  The evangelical writer, Rodney Clapp, put it this way:  “Imagine living your whole life according to a standard that is rendered meaningless at your death.  Imagine striving your whole life to achieve a goal that is completely ignored at your life’s end.  What a tragedy.”[1]

            Frederick Buechner suggests something similar in what has become his well-known definition of vocation.[2]  Vocation is more than your purpose in life, more than what you want to do with your life.  It’s not living a life with the standards, values, and expectations of society at large, what every tells you you ought to do, striving after what matters most to everyone else –endlessly driven by achievement, always trying  to get ahead, becoming richer or more comfortable.  It’s not about being driven by self-interest or what will make us the most happy.  These are all important (to a degree), but they don’t make a calling.  Actually, we could see them as contemporary temptations that lure us away from what matters most, things that matter little to God.  

So what is a calling?  What are we called to do?  You have to listen to the voice.  “No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny / the voice,” as Eliot (1888-1965) said.[3] We have to attend to the voice.  But my guess is that Buechner is right, the voice will lead us to the place we need to be, “…the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  That was true for Jesus and it’s true for us.

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[1] R. Scott Rodin, Stewards in the Kingdom: A Theology of Life in All Its Fullness (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), cited in Rodney Clapp, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004). See  www.journeywithjesus.net.

[2] “Vocation:  It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.  There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than the voice of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.  By and large a good rule for finding out is…the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking:  A Theological ABC (New York:  Harper & Row, 1973), 95.

[3] T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” Selected Poems (New York:  Harvest/ HBJ, 1964), 90.

In the Flesh

Matthew 1: 18-25 & John 1: 1-18

Fourth Sunday of Advent/ 19^th December 2010

At the Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve this week we will hear (again) the majestic Prologue of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  It’s read as the church is full of darkness and shadow, read from the light cast by the Christ Candle in the center of the Advent wreath.  We then share the light from the Christ Candle with everyone in attendance, each holding a candle.  The effluence of the light soon fills the space with a warm, soft glow.  Toward the end of the reading from John we then hear these words, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” 

            This is how John tells the story of Jesus’ birth.  The Gospel of John was probably written around 90 AD, which means he could have been aware of Matthew or Luke’s version of the birth; but there’s little evidence to suggest this.  There’s the minority view among scholars that John was actually written prior to 70 (when Mark was written) and smuggled out of Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed it in 70.  Matthew and Luke probably never read John.  In John, we don’t find dreams to Joseph, annunciations to Mary, no shepherds or magi or angelic choirs.  John’s account is heady; it’s grand, actually it’s philosophical through and through, making extraordinary claims – this is theology using philosophy to make an amazing claim: that in the birth of Jesus we have witnessed the source of all Being now become flesh.  The Creator has become creature and taken on the weight of the created order. 

            This is heavy stuff.  “In the beginning was the Word.”  It begins with an echo of Genesis 1, “In the beginning…,”pointing to the creative act of God.  ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος  (en arche en ho logos).  John says in the beginning was the Word or, in Greek, the Logos.   Logos doesn’t mean “word” in a conventional English sense.  Logos is not a part of speech.  Logos was actually a common philosophical term in the first century.  Many philosophical schools, including the Stoics, referred to the Logos as a way to describe “the deepest structure of the universe, more fundamental than anything studied by physicists then or now.  The Logos was the creative or ordering principal of the universe, giving rise to the laws and patterns that science discovers.  The orderliness of nature, the elegance of mathematics, the beauty found in music and art, the complexity of the human mind are all expressions of the Logos.”[1]  Logos is the beginning, the arche, the source or origin of all that is.    John is making the point that “the original source and sustaining power of the universe is the Logos energy that is revealed in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth.”[2]  And, what is more, the source, the ground, the origin, the divine creativity that creates and recreates the universe and holds it all in being (see Colossians 1: 15-20), the very pulse and rhythm of life itself has now become enfleshed in this person Jesus. 

            Matthew does it his own way.  He has his own reasons to tell the story from a different angle.  His audience is not the Hellenist philosophical world, he’s not writing to intellectuals, yet what he offers isn’t any less intellectually demanding.  Matthew makes a similar point to a primarily Jewish audience and provides us with a narrative, a story. The revelation comes to Joseph in a dream.  Mary will bear a child, a son, to be named Jesus – Yeshua – meaning, Yahweh saves.  They will call him also Emmanuel, meaning, “God is with us.”

            It’s unusual to link John and Matthew, but they both raise the one point I want to focus upon.  They’re both making the same mind-boggling, earth-shattering, gracious claim:  God is with us…in the flesh.  Sure, we find plenty of places throughout the Hebrew scriptures where we are told that God is with us, that God’s presence goes before us, leads the way, is known in the still small voice.  And yes, we find in the religions of the Greco-Roman pantheon the gods were also a kind of presence in one’s life.  There’s nothing new about this.  However, it’s the manner or way of God’s presence that’s different.  Yes, the Roman emperors were viewed as deity, starting with Caesar Augustus (63 BC- 14 AD) who was actually called, in his lifetime, “son of a god,” he was worshiped and revered as a god (that’s why he was given the title Augustus, “revered one.”).[3]  But no emperor could ever take credit for actually creating the very world in which he inhabited.  What we find in the Christian claim is something different and new.  In his poem, “The Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” the eighteenth century English poet, Christopher Smart (1722-1771), captures this point:

God all-bounteous, all creative,

Whom no ills from good dissuade

Is incarnate, and a native

Of the very world he made.

            Smart here alludes to the mystery of the Incarnation.  That’s really what we’re talking about here.  Incarnation.  Et incarnatus est, from the Nicene Creed, “and was made flesh.”  This is one of the central claims of the Christian experience.  God embodied in human form.  If there’s one think you leave with this morning, I hope it is this:  we come to know conclusively in the birth of Jesus that God is one who desires to be with us and desires to be embodied in the world and desires still to be embodied in our lives.

            Unfortunately, the history of the Christianity has done a terrible job actually conveying this to the world, living as if this were true, living from it.  The Incarnation stands at the heart of the Christian experience and yet we’ve done a really good job disincarnating Jesus; that is, thinking of Jesus as if he didn’t have a body. There is a very deep and destructive anti-body heritage in Christianity that made its ways into Christian thought and practice quite early.  It’s found in the rise of asceticism that made its way into the church from Greco-Roman sources.  Actually, it was the Greeks who did a good job separating spirit from body and favoring spirit over body. (This has contributed to a mind-body dualism that continues to plague the church, science, and even the way we treat illness.  Even the contemporary ecological crisis is an extension of this divide, that is, how we treat the earth.  If spirit is more important than matter, then it doesn’t matter how we treat matter.)  This antagonism runs deep.  A lot of the blame can go to the 4^th century theologian, Augustine (354-430), who possessed all kind of fears regarding the body as sinful, viewed sexuality outside procreation as sinful, and had a low view of women.  These ideas continue to inform the way the church approaches a whole variety of issues today.  These ideas make it difficult for Christians to be, well, human – real, embodied, with feelings and emotions, and bodies that freely know desire and pleasure and respond to beauty – and to do all of this without guilt or shame.  I’m told the hanging of Christmas stockings originated in Germany, where each stocking contained five gifts, one for each of the senses in celebration of the Incarnation.[4]  And yet, that said, the guilt and shame associated with being human runs deep.

            The shame runs very deep.  True story.  Here’s a good example.  Four years ago when I was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land our group went to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.  It’s an enormous Roman Catholic Church built, as tradition has it, on the site of the home where Mary first heard that she was going to bear a son. Deep underneath the church is a cave.  There’s been an altar there since about 384 AD.  Carved in the floor in front of the altar are these words:  ET INCARNATUS EST HIC.  And was made flesh here.  Right there!  Now, earlier that day we were working at an archeological dig – at a site that had been left untouched since the first century.  We were dusty, dirty, sweaty, cleaned up best we could and then drove off to Nazareth.  The women were told to make sure they brought something along to cover up their shoulders, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed into the church.  They were prepared.  What the guys didn’t know is that we couldn’t wear shorts – and we had on shorts.  As we approached the high wall around the church we found the guard at the gate who was checking for skin.  The women went in first.  Some of the guys got through because their shorts covered their knees.  Not mine.  I was barred from entry.   I was mad.  I came all this way and I was not going to be kept from seeing this place.  So I pushed my shorts down as far as I could and still walk and then stretched my t-shirt down to cover the difference.  It was quite a sight.  I was let in and had a very funny walk through the church.  Now, in Nazareth there are two churches of the annunciation.  One is Roman Catholic, the other one is Greek Orthodox and they’re just as strict about skin, if not worse.  I tried my trick again, but they wouldn’t let me in.  How ironic that there in a town that claims the actual site of the incarnation itself, the church still has a problem with bodies, skin, flesh.  Obviously, God thinks they’re pretty good.  How can exposed shoulders be an affront to the gospel?  And – for God’s sake – what’s so scandalous about my knees?

            The controversial Italian filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), gets it right in his film, “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964), when he has the wise men approaching the infant Jesus, kneeling before him and then kissing his feet. They didn’t kiss an idea of Jesus; they didn’t kiss his teachings; they didn’t kiss the spirit of Jesus. Et incarnatus est. “Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”[5]

            The Incarnation is the mystery of God’s embodiment in the world.  It tells us something about God’s style, God’s way, what God values and honors; that the world is saved through a body.  God seeks embodiment in the world in Christ because of love, God’s love for us as bodies, and God’s love for creation as heavenly body.  The way of Christ is the way of God and the way of God hasn’t changed.  God continues to seek embodiment – wants to dwell in us, dwell with us, around us, through us, for us, God wants to tabernacle with us, hang out with us, and, most of all, grow in us.

            God wants to be born in humanity.  Throughout Advent I invited us to consider the journey to Bethlehem.  Yes, we know the story of Joseph and Mary and the Magi, of God’s own journey, as it were, to earth in the birth of God’s son.  It’s this story, of course, that drives this season, as it should.  But it’s also about realizing our story, how we fit into this story.  It’s not just about their journey to Bethlehem – it’s also about ours.  What matters is that we get to Bethlehem too.  It’s also about our journey to the place of birth, of hope, of love.  Bethlehem – meaning, the house of bread – is the place where we are nourished, where we are given life.  That’s where God is born in us and that can be any place.

            In my own journey this season I have come to see in a new way that God really does want to be born in humanity.  A guide for me this season has been the writings of the Dominican master theologian, philosopher, mystic, Eckhart von Hochheim (c.1260-c.1327), otherwise known as Meister Eckhart.[6]  In his commentary on the Prologue of John, Eckhart draws our attention to John 1: 12b, “He gave them the power of becoming sons of God.”  For Eckhart, the mystery of the Incarnation is not just that God took on flesh in one particular person Jesus, but it also points to the deeper theological truth that what Jesus experienced is being offered to everyone who is also in Christ.  He pushed his hearers to move beyond celebrating just the fact of the Incarnation, that it happened, but to ask, why?  What is the purpose of Incarnation?[7] 

            This is what he said, God’s intention in sending the Son was that “man may become by the grace of adoption what the Son is by nature.”[8]  This is his way of saying the ancient motto from the early church, best known in the Eastern Church (not so much in the West); in the words of Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 293-373),“God became man that man might God.”[9]“Why did God become man?” the Meister asked in a sermon, “So that I might be born God himself.”[10]  He is not saying that we become equal with God.  There is always the distinction.   But he’s trying to lift up the value of humanity. 

            This is radical stuff.  Not surprisingly, he was charged with heresy and was tried in Avignon and Cologne.  He didn’t survive the trial and was condemned as a heretic after his death.  If this is heresy, then put me in that camp too.  I think he was on to something.  The point here is that the purpose of the Incarnation shows God’s desire to take humanity into Godself and gives to humanity more and more of Godself.  The Incarnation brings something new into the world; it changes us.  Or, to put it a different way, Meister writes, “It would be of little value for me that ‘the Word was made flesh’ for man in Christ as a person distinct from me, unless he was also made flesh for me personally so that I too might be God’s son.”[11]

            That I too might be God’s son…  That I too might be God’s daughter…  That I might come to see myself, personally, existentially as one in whom God dwells, “full of grace and truth.”  That God is among us, within us, with us.  This is your birthright; this is your royal claim. Oh that the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve might know who they are, that we are daughters and sons of God, that we might know who we truly and authentically are – the object of God’s immeasurable, fathomless love that moves through the cold, dark expanses of the universe in order to be born and born again and again in us.  The birth of Jesus is the pattern; this is how God does it for all of us.  In this sense it can be said that Jesus truly was and is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:5) for us.

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[1] James W. Jones, The Mirror of God:  Christian Faith as Spiritual Practice – Lessons from Buddhism and Psychotherapy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 23.  See also Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries:  His place in the History of Culture (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1985), 57ff.  Basil of Caesarea (330-379) refers to Jesus as the Cosmic Christ, the Word of God who pervades the creation” from the beginning to the present day.   Gregory of Nazianus (c. 329-389/390) said, “This name [Logos] was given to him because he exists in all things that are.”  Humanity participates in this presence of the Cosmic Christ by “mirroring forth the presence of the creating Logos,” as Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335- after 394) put it.  See also Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Comic Christ: The Healing of the Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (HarperOne, 1988), 108ff.

[2] Jones, 23.

[3] See Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth (HarperOne, 2007), 159-160.

[4] Thanks to Fritzi Scott for this reference.

[5] “Good is the Flesh,” hymn text by Brian Wren (b.1936).

[6] Meister is German for Master, referring to his academic title Magister in theologia, obtained in Paris.

[7] Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thoughts of Meister Eckhart:  The Man From Whom God Hid Nothing (New York:  Herder & Herder, 2001), 116-117.

[8] Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem (LW 3: 5-167), n.106, cited in McGinn, 118.  Emphasis added.

[9] See also 2 Peter 1:4, we are “partakers in the divine nature;” or Clement of Alexandra (c. 150 - c. 215), “The Logos of God has become human so that you might learn from a human being how a human being may become divine.”  Cited in Fox, 109.  Also, Irenaeus (2^nd century AD – c.202), “God became man so that man might become God.”  Adversus haereses (Against Heresies), the earliest rendering of this understanding.

[10] Predigt and Predigten (DW 1-4), Pr. 29, cited in McGinn, 118.

[11] Iohannem, n. 117, cited in McGinn, 117.