An Advent invitation: sit with the depth and power and pain of the incarnation

God becoming human invites us into a radically different relationship with the world where everything and everyone matters writes Bairbre Cahill

As we approach Advent this year perhaps there is an opportunity to dig deeper into the idea of incarnation, to explore it, to reflect upon it. I would like to offer you four themes for these coming weeks.

The reason why the phrase ‘deep incarnation’ is coming to the fore is because it reminds us that we are ultimately deeply connected to all of creation”

We most frequently hear the word incarnation in connection with Christmas. Jesus was ‘made man’ – incarnated. And yet there is so much more to it than that. There is a phrase which is becoming more and more commonplace and it is ‘deep incarnation’. Incarnation expresses God’s desire for relationship. Every aspect of the created universe then is gathered up into this understanding of incarnation. The creative energy of God is given form in rock and tree, ocean and sky, woman and man. We begin to realise that all of created reality can speak to us of God, that God’s presence and power is deeply incarnated in all aspects of the world. Every atom plays a part. The clarity and completeness of this incarnation takes place in the person of Jesus. In him the Word and Wisdom of God find fullness of expression. We are told in the Gospel of John that “the Word became flesh”. Fr Dermot Lane points out that when John uses the word sarx he is being very clear. It is not simply that Jesus becomes a male vir or even that he becomes a human being homo but he becomes sarx – a living being. It is worth thinking back to Genesis, when God takes earth and creates Adam. So in Jesus, all of life, all that is living is gathered up. The incarnation of Jesus has implications for all of creation.

The reason why the phrase ‘deep incarnation’ is coming to the fore is because it reminds us that we are ultimately deeply connected to all of creation. We cannot look at Jesus, his birth in a stable in Bethlehem, the life he led, his death and resurrection as events that only have relevance for our personal relationship with God. Deep incarnation tells us that the whole of created reality is caught up in what happens in and through Jesus. Pope Francis reminds us constantly that if we are people of faith then that has implications beyond our own lives, our own families and parishes. Rather than allowing ourselves to be told that faith can only be lived in limited spaces in a secular world we are instead invited to recognise that we live in a universe oozing with the presence of God. As Thomas Keating said in his last poem, shortly before he died, “Only the Divine matters, And because the Divine matters, everything matters.” Incarnation invites us into a radically different relationship with the world, a relationship where everything and everyone matters. This Advent, how would it challenge and shape my faith to accept such an invitation? We are all very capable of closing doors on issues and challenges because, ‘that has nothing to do with me’. Are we perhaps like the innkeepers who insist they have no room, who reject the surprising possibility of Jesus being born within their lives?

Maybe take some time outside, notice creation around you. Look up to the sky. Look down to the details of leaf and stone and raindrop. This too is incarnation. Sit in the car in a busy place and look at the people passing by, this shared humanity. We too are incarnation.

Second theme

Moving into our second theme maybe carry with you some of those images of people you have seen. What have you noticed in their faces, their bodies? There are stressed and anxious faces perhaps, a body curled in on itself against the cold, rush, push, determination to get through and get home. Perhaps there are two holding hands, catching constant glances of each other and smiling with delight. Now put Mary in there – hassled perhaps, heavy and aching at the latter stages of pregnancy, worried about what is to come.

Incarnation, like creation, is messy. Can we this Advent sit with the depth and power and pain of the incarnation?”

How often do we ignore the human reality of Mary and Jesus? We are inclined to presume that incarnation is a well-ordered, well-dressed, tidy affair. In doing so we have surely stripped some of the power and passion out of it, white-washing God’s desire to be with us, domesticating it.

Someone said to me recently, “My image of Mary is of a strong woman’s work-worn hand”. How powerful is that! How distant from the plaster-cast statues. Maybe take some time to contemplate the physical reality of Mary and Jesus. Mary laboured Jesus to birth with pain and sweat, a young woman without even her own mother to accompany her, only poor Joseph who hoped he would know enough to help. Imagine Mary lifting a small, vernix and blood smeared infant to her breast and in the days ahead struggling to establish breastfeeding, dealing with swollen breasts and cracked nipples like pretty much any other mother. And in the back of all of this, God’s desire to be with us is finding form and shape.

Incarnation does not stop here. It continues to be evident in every moment and action of Jesus’ life. Incarnation is his very way of being. It is God-with-us. Fr Richard Rohr talks about how Jesus lives his life as a participation in the love of the Trinity saying, “His life embodied what God’s love intends for the world and demonstrated the Spirit’s power to transform, heal and make whole what is broken.” This applies to Jesus’ teaching and healing, the way he connects with those on the margins of society, how he challenges those in power, the desire he has to break bread with people, to build relationships, to wash feet. It also applies to Jesus who is arrested and beaten, who is hung on a cross and laid in a tomb which cannot ultimately contain him. This too is incarnation. This too is telling us something about who God is and how God desires to be with us. What happens at Christmas is intimately connected with what happens on the cross and all that happens in between. The artist Sieger Koder captures this well with his painting of the stable where Mary tenderly holds Jesus and they are overshadowed by the beams of the stable in the shape of the cross, the letters INRI chiselled into the manger.

Incarnation, like creation, is messy. Can we this Advent sit with the depth and power and pain of the incarnation?

Third theme

We can take that awareness of the physical reality and cost of incarnation with us into our third theme – what incarnation, embodiment, means for us. We enter into Advent this year in a world that is changed in so many ways from previous years. Never have we been so aware of the reality and implications of our ‘bodiliness’. At this stage we have had more than eight months of coronavirus precautions and restrictions. We wear masks in busy places, we wash our hands, we refrain from touch. We have been forced into a physical disconnection from people around us which feels alien and unnatural to us.

Perhaps then we are more finely tuned than ever to be aware of how much it matters to us that we are embodied, that we do not exist simply as spirit. Take time to think, in this world of disconnection what is your body yearning for? Is it the physical touch of a hug or handshake? Is it the cuddles of children or grandchildren, their casual tenderness, their nurturing softness? Is it the power and heave of a crowd of spectators at a match? Or the welcome weight of a pint passed from the barman’s hand to yours? Is it the sense of wellbeing and welcome experienced when you sit down for a cuppa with a friend? Or the weighty significance of the Eucharistic host placed in your hand? Allow the Spirit to speak to you through the lonely ache of your body. Listen to the wisdom within.

Humanity

We are part of creation. Our bodies are God’s gift. God’s wisdom and beauty are expressed in the multi-faceted variety of humanity. We recognise more than ever the sacredness of touch, the beauty of physical presence, the power of tenderness. Yet the Church has been culpable in many ways of making people ashamed of their bodies. Too often the impression has been created that our bodies create opportunities for sin and are an obstacle in our relationship with God. Such an attitude flies in the face of incarnation. We have seen this in attitudes towards sex, sexuality and even childbirth, with the practice of ‘churching’ women lasting into the early 1970s in Ireland. In this practice, some weeks after childbirth, a woman had to be blessed with holy water by the priest at the altar rails before she could be re-admitted to the sacraments and to her community. The suggestion was that childbirth was the result of sexual intimacy and concupiscence and was therefore implicated in the handing on of original sin from one generation to the next. Although this impacted vastly more on women than it did on men it is no wonder that many people were left with a sense of shame about their bodies and saw them as a stumbling block to holiness.

If we are to take incarnation seriously then we need to take our own incarnate, bodily reality seriously. Perhaps take some time – how has your body been God’s gift to you? What has your body taught you about life? What have these months of disconnection revealed to you?

For Pope Francis it is very clear that this is what it means to be a Christian and to participate in the ongoing incarnation of the Word, Wisdom and Spirit of God”

Our fourth theme builds on everything that has come before. It is the conviction that incarnation is an ongoing reality. As we have said, incarnation begins with creation and finds its high point, its greatest clarity in Jesus Christ but it does not end there. Jesus is the showing forth of the Word, Wisdom and Spirit of God. As Christians, baptised into the body of Christ, we are called to be the ongoing incarnation – the making present – of Jesus, his message, his values, his way of being. This cannot simply be about personal, religious practice. Remember those words of Thomas Keating, “Only the Divine matters, and if the Divine matter, then everything matters.” This realisation moves us in the direction of what Pope Francis – in Laudato Si’ and now again in Fratelli Tutti – refers to as an integral theology. Quite simply, everything is connected.

That has huge implications for how we live our lives and our perception of what it means to be people of faith. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis makes it clear that we are created for relationship and the living out of those relationships – with creation, with each other and with God – is the core meaning of life. Moreover these relationships are not confined just to those who think, believe or live like we do. Fratelli Tutti pushes us beyond our comfort zones and challenges us to recognise our connectedness with those who are poor and oppressed, those whose political or social views differ from ours, those who believe in God and those who do not. Together, through empathy and dialogue we should seek the common good. For Pope Francis it is very clear that this is what it means to be a Christian and to participate in the ongoing incarnation of the Word, Wisdom and Spirit of God.

What then is incarnation asking of us as we approach this coming Christmas season? If we take seriously our interconnectedness and interdependence with all of creation how does that shape our actions, our choices and our relationships? In the time of Covid-19 when even our ability to gather for the Eucharist is compromised and restricted, what does it mean for us to be Christians? Have we allowed our focus to become narrow, where religious observance and practice have become the key criteria of our Christianity? Inspired by the Spirit, is this Advent the time for us to take seriously the meaning and implications of incarnation, the invitation to a radically different relationship with the world and to live accordingly?