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Thoughts on the Incarnation

I have finished reading the wonderful book by Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being.  As I have indicated, Delio is a Franciscan Sister.  That appeals to me, since I deeply appreciate Franciscan spirituality.  I have often told people, the Franciscans are the closest thing to Quakers one can find within the Roman Catholic Church.  I’ll save that comparison for another day.

The other thing I very much appreciate about Delio is the fact that she is a trained, knowledgeable scientist.  She knows what she is talking about when it comes to evolution, genetic development, etc.  Because of rapidity of scientific knowledge, I feel very uninformed, despite my attempts to read widely.  Delio does a great job of being knowledgeable scientifically and theologically.  It is like she is bilingual.  I am a theological monolingual

An area that she has helped me re-think some of my personal theology is the incarnation.  The incarnation has been central to my own theology since graduate school days.  Maybe it is because I like John’s Gospel and, perhaps, because I am a Quaker, but the incarnation is central.  That does not discount the Easter story and its powerful influence on western Christianity.  It still has meaning for me.  Maybe it is because I did a doctoral dissertation on a Greek Father of the Church that I have always been attracted to and formed by the Orthodox Tradition. 

The key New Testament text for the incarnation is John 1:14.  If you know anything about the Fourth Gospel, that verse is in the Prologue.  The Prologue begins with John imitating the opening verses of Genesis.  John’s Gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (1:1)  The key idea here is the focus on the “Word.”  It is important for the Fourth Gospel that we understand the Word was there in the beginning before the creation of the world.  And we also need to understand that the Word in some sense is God or divine.  And then, we can appreciate the power of the 14th verse, when John affirms that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”  Another way of saying this is to acknowledge that God became human.  That is the incarnation.

Literally, the Latin word, carnis, means “flesh.”  Hence the incarnation means God’s “enfleshment” or “embodiment.”  Now I can choose one line from Delio’s book about the incarnation and show how it informs my thinking in this inspirational piece.  Delio comments on the incarnation.  “The self-emptying of God into everyday life is what the Incarnation is about.  God becomes ‘nothing’ so as to appear as something, a human person.” (118)  Delio has a fairly simply, but actually profound definition of the incarnation.

The incarnation is God’s self-emptying.  This is her way of understanding John’s Gospel that “The Word became flesh.”  It does not mean God ceased being God.  But God self-emptied.  Look closely at her first sentence.  God self-emptied into everyday life.  This sets her up to offer what is, on the surface, a paradoxical statement.  God becomes “nothing” in order to become “something.”  In Christian terms, the “something” God becomes is Jesus. 

When Delio says God becomes nothing, she is not denying that God exists.  This is what the “death of God” theologians in the 1960s and 70s wanted to argue.  Rather, what Delio is suggesting is to focus on the fact that God wants to become something.  The “something” that God becomes is particular.  The God of the universe (Genesis creation account) is the non-specific God who is responsible for everything that is and will come to be.  And that expansive, inclusive and infusive God wants also to particularize.  And the particularization we call Jesus.  

The incarnation is this “nothing to something” move God made.  The story of Jesus is unique---he uniquely incarnates the creative God of Genesis.  But Delio is also convinced that the incarnation is not simply a story about Jesus---as important as that is.  The story of the incarnation is an ongoing story of particularization.  What this means in simple terms is that God also chooses to become nothing in order to become something in each one of us.  Now I certainly have no illusion that I am Jesus.  He incarnates and lives out of the fullness of God in a way that I have surely not done.  I am no one’s savior!

The incarnation is so important to me because it is a statement about God’s involvement and God’s participation.  God dearly wants to be “in it” with us.  And so, God becomes human.  God becomes particular and, if you will, normal.  If I try to put Delio’s perspective in funny terms, I would say God chose to be abnormal in order to be normal, like us.  And Jesus models the normality of being human.  Of course, he does it better than I am doing.  But he shows it is possible.

Thinking about the incarnation is this fashion is both challenging and reassuring.  It is a challenge because it suggests and shows that I also can do it.  God also chooses to particularize in me and in you.  We can’t simply shrug our shoulders and let Jesus do the heavy spiritual lifting.  We have to put our hand to the task of infusing the world with the love of God which John’s Gospel affirms in a different well-known passage: “God so loved the world…” (3:16)

I am reassured that I can do it, because Jesus could do it.  And God is with me, too.  That’s how I am thinking on the incarnation. 




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