{"id":21917,"date":"2022-12-19T10:10:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T15:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21917"},"modified":"2022-12-19T10:20:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T15:20:40","slug":"21917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21917","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jason Crabb - Good Morning Mercy (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aRb9C4v8XtA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The First Incarnation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. \u2014John 1:1, 3<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Richard Rohr views Incarnation as beginning first with the birth of the cosmos, long before the birth of Jesus:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began, or is there even such a thing as \u201cbefore\u201d? Why did God create at all? What was God\u2019s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it\u2014like Jesus himself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s admit that we will probably never know the \u201chow\u201d or even the \u201cwhen\u201d of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the \u201cwhy.\u201d Is there any evidence for&nbsp;<em>why&nbsp;<\/em>God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal, or do we even need a creator \u201cGod\u201d to explain the universe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the perennial traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this:&nbsp;<em>Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit.&nbsp;<\/em>This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and human beings. This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the&nbsp;<em>first Incarnation&nbsp;<\/em>(the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Christians hear the word \u201cincarnation,\u201d most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God\u2019s radical unity with humanity. But I want to suggest that the <strong>first Incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. This, I believe, is why\u00a0<em>light\u00a0<\/em>is the subject of the first day of creation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Incarnation, then, is not only \u201cGod becoming Jesus.\u201d It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God\u2019s presence in the general word \u201cflesh\u201d (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ we continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<strong>Christ\u201d is a word for the Primordial Template (<em>Logos\u00a0<\/em>or Word)<em>\u00a0<\/em>through whom \u201call things came into being, and not one\u00a0<em>thing\u00a0<\/em>had its being except through him\u201d<\/strong> (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity\u2019s unique contribution among the world religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Second Incarnation Flows from the First<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard writes of the Incarnation of Christ in the person of Jesus:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally outflowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world (see Romans 8:19\u201325). Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God. Since the very beginning of time, God\u2019s Spirit has been revealing its glory and goodness through the physical creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christians believe that this universal Christ presence was later \u201cborn of a woman under the law\u201d (Galatians 4:4) in a moment of chronological time. This is the great Christian leap of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We daringly believe that <strong>God\u2019s presence was poured into a single human being, so that humanity and divinity can be seen to be operating as one in him\u2014and therefore in us<\/strong>! But instead of saying that God came\u00a0<em>into\u00a0<\/em>the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came\u00a0<em>out of\u00a0<\/em>an already Christ-soaked world. <strong>The second Incarnation flowed out of the first, out of God\u2019s loving union with physical creation. <\/strong>[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus offered the world a living example of fully embodied Love that emerged out of our ordinary, limited life situations. For me, this is the real import of Paul\u2019s statement that Jesus was \u201cborn of a woman under the law.\u201d In Jesus, God became part of our small, homely world and entered into human limits and ordinariness\u2014and remained anonymous and largely invisible for his first thirty years. Throughout his life, Jesus himself spent no time climbing, but a lot of time descending,&nbsp;<em>\u201cemptying himself and becoming as all humans are\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>(Philippians 2:7), \u201ctempted in every way that we are\u201d (Hebrews 4:15) and \u201cliving in the limitations of weakness\u201d (Hebrews 5:2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus walked, enjoyed, and suffered the entire human journey, and he told us that we could and should do the same. <strong>His life exemplified the unfolding mystery in all of its stages\u2014from a hidden, divine conception, to a regular adult life full of love and problems, punctuated by a few moments of transfiguration and enlightenment, and all leading to glorious ascension and final return<\/strong>. As Hebrews 4:15 states, \u201cFor we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who was like us in every way, experienced every temptation, and never backtracked\u201d (my translation). We do not need to be afraid of the depths and breadths of our own lives, of what this world offers us or asks of us. We are given permission to <strong>become intimate with our own experiences, learn from them, and allow ourselves to descend to the depth of things, even our mistakes, before we try too quickly to transcend it all in the name of some idealized purity or superiority<\/strong>.\u00a0<em><strong>God hides in the depths and is not seen as long as we stay on the surface of anything\u2014even the depths of our sins<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em>[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2-500x352.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21919\" width=\"840\" height=\"591\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2-500x352.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2-300x211.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2-768x541.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2-1536x1082.png 1536w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-2.png 1652w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First Incarnation In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. \u2014John 1:1, 3 Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Richard Rohr views Incarnation as beginning first with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21917"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21917"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21925,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21917\/revisions\/21925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}