The Incarnation: Part 2

As I stated in my previous post, the utter beauty and tragedy of the incarnation compels me towards a deeper faith and a messier ministry. To claim "faith" in Christ is to claim that one is willing to abandon all for the one who abandoned all. But what does this mean for daily living in our place and in our time? Does following Christ and patterning our lives after him necessitate universal personal and communal responses to human brokenness and need? Am I to be "nice" because I follow Jesus? Am I to be "passive" and "naive" because I want to live incarnationally? Do I unwittingly condone and enable unhealthy personal and institutional commitments because I want to love my neighbor as myself? These are difficult faith-in-action questions that have no easy answers. To say we live incarnationally is to say we attempt to love both our enemies and our loved ones in a manner that promotes rather than hinders the unique image of God they possess. Am I promoting the image of God in my neighbor who is struggling with substance abuse by providing them with resources that deny personal responsibility and promote dependency? Moreover am I as a church leader instituting systems within my church and my community that foster deeply entrenched patterns of personal and communal oppression in the name of "love," "compassion," or "outreach.?" The incarnation is not a once-for-all moment in time that can be relegated to writing a check, donating clothes, or participating in a short-term mission trip. The incarnation is a life-style modelled after Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is a willful submission to carry another's cross through the mire and complexity of a world that both cries in anguish and rings with beauty. Living incarnationally means that we too place our bodies in a cruciform posture; at once reaching out with one hand towards the death and resurrection of Christ while with the other hand reaching towards the future when there will be no more mourning, death, crying, or pain. Our lives and our service to Christ meet at the intersection of these two realities. We too become broken bread and poured out wine praying, "Father forgive us for we know not what we do."