Reflections on the Incarnation in all the mirad places that I live

Dear faithful and much neglected blog readers.

I have been thinking a lot over the last several months about what the incarnation means in my life, especially in light of my friend Lisa's illness. What does it mean that God became flesh? What does it mean for those of us who live as flesh now? What does it mean for how we are to approach those around us?

Many different thoughts have been simmering in my mind on these issues, but I have no answers yet. Perhaps I will never have a true answer this side of heaven. However, I wanted to meditate a little on some of the writings I have encountered along the way, and I thought I would share the meditations/writings with you:

These are excerpts from several books I have been reading. Although I must admit that the most profoundly influential book on me over the last several months has been a rather badly written, beautifully clumsy book by Marva Dawn called Powers, Weakness and the Tabernacling of God. However, I just returned this book to the friend I borrowed it from in September, so I won’t be quoting directly from it.

The place in God’s word to which I keep turning these past few months is 2 Corinthians, so I will start my meditations with a few of the key passages in this book.

2 Corinthians 1:5
“For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows”

2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10
“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body…” And the passage goes on to describe how we are gaining an eternal glory that far outweighs our “light and momentary troubles” and how though we long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, we are confident as we wait in the tent of this body, and make it our goal to please Christ.

In the book A Spirituality of the Road by David Bosch, he reflects on this passage:
“[The apostle Paul] moves between two worlds…I believe that Paul’s existence on the borderline between the already and the not yet, in the reaching out for what lies ahead and pressing toward the goal, is of tremendous importance for our missionary existence today. It ought to be the very antithesis of neutral aloofness, contentment and passivity, as it ought to be the antithesis of shallow enthusiasm and hyperactivity.”

The book is focused on what it means to be a missionary ministering through weakness, but the phrase that hit me light a lightening bolt was “existence on the borderline between the already and the not yet”. That is what I want to be, in my own life, in relationships with those around me, in living in this neighborhood. I want to be one who in my body contains the reality of the unseen Kingdom.

2 Corinthians 12:7
“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Somehow this discussion of weakness draws me into meditation on what Lisa’s suffering means, what the weakness of the children I serve means, and what I means to myself be weak in this way.

Henri Nouwen was a prolific and beautiful writer, who spent the last years of his life living in community with those whose bodies were very weak. In his book Adam: God’s Beloved, he reflects on the life of one of the severely physically impaired men who lived in the Daybreak community, in light of the life of Christ.

“The word ‘passion’ is derived from the Latin verb patior, which means “to undergo.” It is related to the word “passive.” Jesus’ passion came after much action. For three years he went from village to village, town to town, preaching, teaching, responding to people’s questions, healing the sick, confronting the hyprocrites, consoling the sorrowing, calling the dead back to life…But at Gethsemane – the Garden of Olives – all this action came to a sudden end. There Jesus was handed over by one of his own disciples to undergo suffering. From that moment he could no longer do anything; everything was done to him. He was arrested, put in prison, led before Herod and Pilate, flagellated, crowned with thorns, given a cross to carry, stripped of his clothes, nailed on the cross, and ridiculed until he died. He could no longer act. He was only acted upon. It was pure passion. The great mystery of Jesus’ life is that he fulfilled his mission not in action but in passion, not by what he did, but by what was done to him…iIn was when he was dying on the cross that he cried out “It is fulfilled.”

After reflecting specifically on Adam’s life of “passion” as someone who spent most of his time ‘undergoing’ the action and decisions of others, Nouwen turns to what “passion” looks like in our lives:
“The truth is that a very large, if not the largest, part of our lives is passion. Although we all want to act on our own, to be independent and self-sufficent, we are for long periods of time dependent on other people’s decisions. Not only when we are young and inexperienced or when we are old and needy but also when we are strong and self-reliant. Substantial parts of our success, wealth, health, and relationships are influenced by events and circumstances over wheich we have little or no control. We like to keep up the illusion of action as long as we can, but the fact is that passion is what finally determines the course of our life.”

I wonder, if passion means “to undergo”, what is compassion?

A final book I have been reading through is Joni Eareckson Tada’s A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You, a reflection on the “precious rubies” of wisdom God has given her through 40 plus years of quadriplegia. Here is one “ruby” that stood out to me the other day:
“The power of the Good News is released in your life when you allow your weakness to showcase the awesome the awesome might and love of our Savior. When we serve Him and model Him in our suffering, we have opportunities to extend His salvation farther than we ever could in our strength.”