‘God in the flesh’ can spur us to seek, be our best

Those of us in the Christian tradition are five months away from celebrating the birth of Jesus. However, the implications of incarnation (God in the flesh) are worth considering now. I invite you to join me as I reflect on incarnation through some of the stories of the Bible.

In creation, God continually stated that life was good, and “very good” (Genesis 1:31) when humanity came into creation. Jesus’ birth presses the goodness of creation further, suggesting that life on Earth is good enough for God to experience. In forming the people of Israel, the Lord made a covenant, one of the promises being “through you, I will bless all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3). In his incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord fulfills that promise through faith, to all the families of the

Earth, suggesting that God wants blessing, forgiveness, and new life to be experienced by all people. Through the prophets, teachers and leaders with whom the Lord worked through the ages, God sought to bring justice, mercy, repentance, understanding and forgiveness, and continued that work through the incarnation. Finally, in the death and resurrection of Christ, the incarnation finds its completion, in both the promise of Christ’s return and in the promise of resurrected life and power to humanity as well, encapsulated in the promise that “I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Though we are just a few months away from celebrating the birth of the Messiah, we seem eons away from the promises right now. People are divided among themselves in innumerable fashion: divisions among people of different colors, men, women, transgender, Democrats, Republicans, and the divisions of all kinds of conspiracy theories running rampant across our nation and the globe, all of which point to a humanity so hopelessly divided that we cannot seem to handle the very real enemy we face: a virus capable of taking millions of lives. Adding insult to injury, the very things about an embodied life that makes it wonderful — the capacity to hug, touch, shake hands, rub shoulders, and physically comfort one another — are the same things that threaten our very existence. Of course, good stories, good people and good news abound all around us, and I am painting a bleaker picture than is warranted, but how can it be good to be human in this time and place, and does our faith give us any tools to make life better in the here and now?

It seems to me that we are in an “in between” time. Later, when we look back at 2020, we will likely measure the world as it was before and after this time, just as we have marked 9/11 and other transformative events and times. However, we do not yet know how we will look back, because we are not through it yet. Will we come out more united or less, more loving or less, more creative or less, more willing and able to see the goodness of life, or more fearful of anyone and anything that does not fit our personal definition of “human” or “good?”

No single leader has emerged to rally humanity to a better future, which suggests that this time, we need to lead ourselves.

Changing Mahatma Gandhi’s phrase, here is my plea: Be the goodness you wish to see. Embody the hope of incarnation by your life. Do not settle into anger, hate or insults; rise above them. Be humble and realize you can be wrong. Do not insist on your own way or insult those who insist on their way, but be as generous as possible; everyone is on edge with worry these days. And for those who claim a Christian tradition, look for Jesus in others. Find ways to affirm the goodness of being human.

I do not think we need traditional heroes right now. I think we need human beings to do what we were designed to do from the beginning: Use our minds, our bodies, our talents, our time and our gifts to bless and make life better for others — to embody what Paul suggested: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). We are in this together. May we bear witness to the goodness of creation, the possibilities of redemption, and the hope of resurrection by our words and actions. Lived theology, as in incarnated theology, is needed today.

I do not think we need traditional heroes right now. I think we need human beings to do what we were designed to do from the beginning: Use our minds, our bodies, our talents, our time and our gifts to bless and make life better for others.

Brian Sixbey is the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church Fox Hill in Hampton.