Thoughts on the Incarnation

In a few days it will be Christmas. Though there is much speculation on when exactly Jesus was born, for all intents and purposes we celebrate his birth in December. Looking back a couple thousand years, Mary must have been quite ready to give birth to Jesus by now. She probably was not in the mood too travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem on a donkey, knowing she would soon deliver her baby. Joseph was probably not very happy either. He was probably worried about his wife and unborn son. Even though they knew that Jesus was a miraculous baby, there must have been the typical fears about whether Mary would survive the delivery. The gospels do not mention any midwives being present at the birth, so perhaps it was only up to Mary, Joseph, and a few animals to welcome God incarnate into the world.

There is so much mystery surrounding the incarnation, and it is something we often forget during the Christmas season. How is it possible for God to become a human embryo that grows and is subject to all of the limitations and problems that any other human baby has as it develops. When you think about it, Jesus faced all the prospects of mortality that all infants faced. He had had to be cared for and fed by his mother or else he would die. Mary is called the "theotokos," or the "god-bearer," in Christian tradition. We remember that Mary is not only carrying a full human being, but also the eternally existing God.

I was thinking earlier this morning about the reason for the incarnation. So often we simply treat it as a necessity that Jesus had to go through so that he would die and resurrect just so we can go to heaven. We so often view Salvation simply like a business exchange (i.e. Jesus draws up the contract on the cross, you pay God your faith, He gets you out of Hell in return), that we see the incarnation as simply the way Jesus shows up so that he can get to work saving us. However, I believe we need to look at the incarnation and the cross as so much more than that. In the incarnation, God truly becomes one of us, like so many have said. If we view the life and mission of Jesus as having simply no other purpose but to get us a "get out of Hell free" card, we need to remember that God could have done some cosmic payment in the heavenly realms that we would not even be conscious of. No, in the incarnation, God comes to live with the human beings he made and loves. God lives life like we do; he experiences the things we experience. God learns how to be a carpenter as he grows up under Joseph. God learns Torah in the synagogue with the pharisees. God smashes his finger with his hammer as he works. Though Jesus was never married, I imagine that he knew what it felt to be attracted to the young Jewish women he was around.

In the incarnation we have the God bridging the gap between humans and Himself. As the early theologian Athanasius said, "God became man, so that man might become gods." That's not to say we will become "gods" like the Mormons would have us believe, but that because of the incarnation human beings are being set on a path to be glorified. Humans are special creations of God. Jesus himself says in John 10:34 "Is it not written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods'?" The doctrine of the resurrection of the saints says that we will be raised with perfect bodies one day and will live with God forever. The incarnation is God coming to live with us "on our own turf," so to speak, so that one day we might live with God on His. I wondered this morning about the idea of the incarnation if humans had not sinned. The Eastern Orthodox church believes that there still would be an incarnation. The Bible doesn't say, so it is all speculation. However, I believe that in some way there would have been an incarnation. I don't know what it would look like, but I do imagine that God the son would still have become human and lived among us. I do know that we would not have killed Jesus, but would have exalted him like we should have done in the first place. I imagine that the relational part of God is so great that the incarnation is a natural outpouring of his love. However, we will never know how things COULD be, but we know how things ARE. I think it is best to be thankful for the presence of God as a human being in Jesus as we celebrate this Christmas.