like to Facebook

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Merry Incarnation!

Who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross!
As a result God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow - in heaven and on earth and under the earth - and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:6-11 New English Translation)

So here's the question for the season: what is the most significant fact about the birth of Jesus? Some would point to the mean circumstances of his birth: no room at the inn, born in a stable surrounded by livestock and their offal. Some would point to the miraculous signs: the unnatural star that moved and guided the wise men (according to some scholars, Zoroastrians from Persia), the host of angels who lit the night sky with their glory and terrified the sheep herders with their thunderous song of declaration. Some would point to the virgin birth.

But I submit that the most significant fact is that in Jesus birth, God became man. This is a mystery so difficult to comprehend that it has presented an insurmountable obstacle to many through the centuries. Yet this is one of the central and indispensable truths of Christianity. This is where those heretical variants of Christianity that deny the deity of Christ break down, for if Jesus were not God, but rather a created being, his sacrificial death would not have atoned for any sins but his own. For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, (Romans 8:3 NET)

Religious mythology is replete with gods walking the earth or taking human form, most notably the avatars of the Hindu deities; but the language is always fanciful, the imagery fabulous or whimsical with most of them animals, chimeras, or, if in pure human form, kings or princes. But Jesus is rooted in time and place--Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus to register all the empire for taxes. This was the first registration, taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone went to his own town to be registered. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David. (Luke 2:1-4 NET)--and therefore grounded in a tangible reality unlike anything that came before. Who, other than a modern Western novelist exercising the contemporary techniques of verisimilitude, would invent a story so unlikely as the creator of the universe not just relinquishing his divine glory to suffer the relative indignities of mortality, but to be born to a family of poor tradesmen in a tiny village in a remote backwater of the prevailing power structure of the day. These very improbabilities lend credence to the truth claims of Jesus' birth.

But it is also the great marvel of the incarnation, that Jesus divested himself of his divine majesty, that he "emptied himself," as the scripture says, not just to take human form, but destitute human form. From the moment he agreed to the Father's plan, he knew the outcome: he who had spoken all that exists into being would be born a helpless babe, toil for years in obscure poverty, and end his short life in a hideous death of torture. It's a descent unimaginable, infinitely further than if you or I agreed to give up our lives to be reincarnated as insects. But he did it out of love for the Father, and love for us, all to redeem his fallen creation.

Finally, the incarnation establishes the knowledge of God engendered through solidarity. We can never say, as perhaps men did before, "you don't understand!" to God. He does understand, because he's been there himself. This is why the advocacy and mediation of Jesus is so infinitely profound: he knows us as creator, but also as brother, as "Son of Man," as one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness. (Isaiah 53:3 NET)

If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous One, and he himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the whole world. (I John 2:1-2 NET)