Incarnation 08/20/88
The traditional picture
I grew up with the firm belief in Incarnation that this spirit in heaven came down and took on human flesh -- looked and acted like a man -- but had all these divine things hidden in there. He really knew what was going to happen in the future.
He knew the insides of people - could read their hearts. He could do no wrong, suffer no fear, feel no pain. He lived his life as an example for us. He spoke words that his Father gave him to speak -- that he himself knew as God would stir men's souls, and leave a tradition of selfless service that the centuries would come to know as Christianity.
So, you listen to the words because they have divine backing -- they have to be right -- even though translated through the oral traditions, and clouded by the culture of the age and world he spoke in. It all makes such simple sense -- and it seems so easy to believe in.
What if Jesus were really human?!
Let's just step out of that skin of belief for a couple of minutes. Join me over here on the side of the true incarnationist. Let's assume that Jesus was really human. I mean, really. You know, this is the solid Christian belief -- he really was human -- as fully as you and me. That's the point of the temptations, the crisis in the garden, the pain and despair on the cross. There have been some aberrant Christian sects that discounted that -- they just could not bear the consequences of fully believing that.
So, in this respect, the Christian tradition, and most assuredly, the Catholic tradition, firmly believes this. He is human. What does it feel like now, to hear his words, and read the tale of his impact on the men around him? This man was so full of so many amazing things. Even discount these miracles, if they are too much to believe that a mere mortal could make stuff like that happen. But even throwing those out -- just look at the amazing things he is supposed to have said and done. Look at the amazing vision of selfless love, and human values, that he envisioned, and that drove those few people around him to set out to tell the world. This type of person does not happen all that often.
Gandhi
When I look around for comparisons, there are none quite as good, quite as washed by time, quite as visionary -- but there are some who come fairly close. I particularly like the values that Gandhi espoused. Here's a young man who returns to his native India from South Africa and sets out to see his country. He returns from this trip with a burning mission, and a vision of a means to achieve it. Freedom, political independence, solidarity -- and all effective through a deep belief in the strategy of love and non-violence.
He looked about him, tried to make some sense out of what was going on, and took hold of a vision, a solution, that drove millions of people to believe it as he did.
Martin Luther King did much the same thing -- albeit with a bit more clay in his feet.
What if this Jesus were just like these two? What if he heard this call to be this 'savior', this 'prophet', this 'visionary' to free his people, to free all people from the slavery he saw they labored under. What if he had to muster up the courage just as Gandhi did, or Martin did? What if he doubted just as they did? What if he had as many problems, worries, evil things going on inside of him as they did? What if he had all of this, and he still did it!
Isn't that really the Christian belief that he was really as human as we are? Let's just take this another step. What if he was just like me? It's easy to discount Gandhi and Martin Luther King and all those saint types. They were special, and rare, and, Lord knows, we could stand another one. But what if he felt just like me? I mean, what if those fears of being inadequate, of standing up in public, of not being liked, of being selfish, or losing control, or -- gads, there are tons of things wrong with me that those folk didn't have. Or did they? Or did he?
What if it cost him as much as it costs me to let someone else go first, to give them my shirt, to give them my back to beat, to give them money and friends and love, to give them my life!
I suspect that he, and they, are just like me, just like you -- exactly. Human beings don't come forth intact and mature and selfless. They grow to that, they choose to be that, they work to become that. Each of them, Jesus included, worked to become that -- just like you and I work at it. And they had no more help that we have, no special gifts, no divine light, no inspired courage -- no more than you and I have.
Don't you hear the calling now? Haven't you heard it many times in your life -- times that you've turned and said -- "not me", "why bother", "it won't do any good." Doesn't it happen every time someone asks you to help, to do something beyond yourself, to be of service. Aren't you asked any more? Or have you just stopped hearing? Don't you walk downtown where the poor and homeless are? Don't you go out of your way to see them, so you can hear the call? Don't you listen to friends who hurt any more? Don't you call them when you know they are in pain, and could stand a friendly word, a few bucks, a helping hand. Don't you get outraged at the crooks, and the child abusers, and the lazy and the arrogant, selfish types that you run into every day? They don't bother you anymore? You don't hear the call anymore?
I think the difference with them, with Jesus and Martin and Mahatma, was that they kept hearing, they kept looking, they kept caring. They couldn't let go of it -- it would not let go of them. In spite of all the evil things they knew about themselves, in spite of all the selfish things they knew they had, the fears, the needs and the hungers -- they still heard, and they still answered. It wasn't divine -- it was them. But, what if it was divine? What if that is what divine really is -- listening, and caring and doing? Doesn't that sound like traditional Christianity? God is love. Love is God. God isn't up there, and out there, and all knowing, and all powerful -- God is right there -- incarnate in that person who loves. That's what God is, and that's all that we know of God. Does the God thing need to be more? And what real difference does it make if the God thing does happen to be more -- some more that is beyond anything we can see and feel and understand. What difference? None that I can see. The God thing in this remarkable selfless man is all the call we need to change the world. No promise of eternal life can be as effective as this promise of freedom here and now.
Gandhi was free - he loved, and he saw, and he gave, and needed nothing -- not even his own life. Jesus was the same. He needed very little, and what he needed was provided -- it was provided because he was of a mind that this was all he needed -- what came his way. We can be free too. We can be God incarnate. It'll take some work -- it'll take some time -- and you and I may never make it on the scale that these others have -- but we are on the same road, we have the same makeup, we have the same opportunity. All we need do is choose to be divine, choose to be as selfless as we can muster right now, choose to hear the needs of others, choose to think about them, and to work to help them.
I hear you now -- "it won't make any difference". I tell you it will. How you are, and who you are will make a very great difference to everyone you meet. To some of them, it may be a life and death matter. To others, a moment of help, some less painful step, some warm touch, some insight you could share. What did Jesus and Martin and Gandhi share with those about them but these things? Were they great achievers in fund raising, and organization, and holy wars? But they will not be forgotten!
Why isn't this part of the normal Christian tradition of incarnation? Jesus was God, just as fully as he was man. Who ever said that he was the only one who incarnated the deity? Where does the New Testament say there will be only one? Why aren't all of us the deity, in varying shades and colors. Aren't there phrases and beliefs in our traditions that sound like that? We are all children of God, sons and daughters of God, called to put on Christ, to be Christ to each other, and on and on. We have just never listened to them with quite this sense.
Look at it this way. Every new human, every new life, is born with the potential to be divine, just as fully as Jesus was God to his time. It is a blank slate -- ready to be raised to love and care and live and die. For us adults, it may be difficult to change very much in that direction -- but these new ones among us, our children -- don't they deserve the vision and the help to be Jesus to their times? Don't the times need that vision?