Incarnation. My first thought when I hear this word is “the Word made flesh.” God taking on a human body in the form of Jesus. “Westminster Theological Dictionary” defines it like this: “The doctrine that the eternal second Person of the Trinity became a human being and ‘assumed flesh’ in Jesus of Nazareth. … The doctrine holds that Jesus was one divine person with both a divine and a human nature.” We could then define incarnation in one word: Jesus.
What does that word – “incarnation” – mean for me? For you? It is a big deal in the study of theology, and yet there is only one Jesus.
As I think about this word, this theological concept, I can’t help but think about our own relationship to the incarnation. I do not mean this in the way that we profess Jesus as savior but in the way we embody our own faith. People are curious about how we see God among us so much so there are books, songs and movies created about the idea of what it looks like to see God in the here and now. In “When God Was a Little Girl,” David R. Weiss explores how God was a little girl when She created the world, making the story relatable to his young character and his reader. Joan Osborne in her ‘90s classic, “What if God Was One of Us?” sings about what God might look like. What if God is a stranger on the bus? If God has a face what would it look like?
This story and song explore a deeper question within all of us where can we see the embodied God in the here and now. Jesus has been gone for 2000 years and we want to see something that reflects the essence of God at work in this world. I suspect Ms. Osborne was on to something — it is possible to see God in the face of a stranger. While we are not God, we hold within us the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world. Our very faith is embodied in the bodies we believe were created with intention by God. While much of what we believe happens in our head space and in existential conundrums we work out throughout our lives, it is with our bodies that we live our faith. It is in the physical work of feeding people, in the labor of loving the people of God, in the many ways we respond to faith and serve humanity that our faith is embodied beyond words or thoughts.
If we pay attention, we’ll find little reminders of the incarnation everywhere we look. Indeed, we can see the face of God in a stranger on the bus. In the church volunteer who never quits. In kindhearted people paying it forward in the drive-thru line. In the friends that come alongside us when our lives fall apart. In the person who picks up litter. In the family that adopts kittens. In the face of a kid who splits their dessert with a hungry friend. We see this embodiment of faith in our beloved communities where we care for one another. Where we take seriously the call to live in community that desires the best interest of everyone over the individual. We welcome each other into the fold, we journey together toward our home, reunited with the divine and along the way we serve our communities leaving the world a little better than we found it.
REBECCA GRESHAM-KESNER is pastor at Faith Presbyterian Church in Medford, New Jersey. Outside of church and family life, you can find her in nature, finding fun ways to be creative or asking awkwardly deep questions of people she just met.
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