{"id":19632,"date":"2020-12-21T09:46:24","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T14:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19632"},"modified":"2020-12-21T10:24:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T15:24:58","slug":"the-trajectory-of-incarnation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19632","title":{"rendered":"The Trajectory of Incarnation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Incarnation<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The\nTrajectory of Incarnation<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fDecember 21,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6glQdaQUZ1U\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Christianity\u2019s\ntrue and unique story line has always been incarnation.<\/em>&nbsp;That means that the <em>spirit<\/em>&nbsp;nature of reality\n(the spiritual, the immaterial, the formless) and the <em>material<\/em>&nbsp;nature of reality\n(the physical, that which we can see and touch) are one. They have always been\none, ever since the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago. The incarnation\ndid not just happen when Jesus was born, although that is when we became aware\nof the human incarnation of God in Jesus. It seemingly took until 2,000 years\nago for humanity to be ready for what Martin Buber (1878\u20121965) called an I\/Thou\nrelationship with God. But matter and spirit have been one since \u201cthe beginning,\u201d&nbsp;ever since God decided to manifest\nhimself\/herself as creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our\nouter world and its inner significance must come together for there to be any\nwholeness and holiness. The result is both deep joy and a resounding sense of\ncoherent beauty. What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation\nof this one universal truth: matter is, and has always been, the hiding place\nfor Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. Perhaps this is what\nJesus means when he says, \u201cI am the gate\u201d (John 10:7). Francis of Assisi and\nhis female companion, Clare, somehow knew that the beyond was not really\nbeyond, but in the depths of <em>here<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John\nDuns Scotus (1266\u20131308) took the intuition of Francis and made it into a\nphilosophy. He said that Christ was not Plan B; God did not plan to remain\nabsent until Adam and Eve ate that darn apple and Jesus had to come save us.\nRather, Duns Scotus said that Christ was Plan A from the very beginning, the\nvery first idea in the mind of God, as it were (John 1: 1\u20134). [1] God, the\nformless, eternal, and timeless One essentially said I am going to manifest who\nI am in what we now call physicality, materiality, or the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means that\neverything you have ever seen with your physical eyes is the mystery of\nincarnation. The Christian word we give to that is <em>the Christ<\/em>, which comes from the word Messiah, or the Anointed One,\nused by Jewish people. The Anointed One is the one who would come to reveal\nwhat God is doing, everywhere and all the time. For Christians, that became\nmanifested in Jesus of Nazareth. Walter Brueggemann, my favorite scholar of the\nHebrew Scriptures, would call this \u201cthe scandal of particularity.\u201d [2] God is\nin a vulnerable newborn baby in a feeding trough. We need to see the mystery of\nincarnation in one ordinary concrete moment, and struggle with, fight, resist,\nand fall in love with it there. What is true in one particular place finally\nuniversalizes and ends up being true everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Incarnation<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Birth\nIs Just the Beginning<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fDecember 20,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We must move beyond a merely sentimental understanding of\nChristmas as \u201cwaiting for the baby Jesus\u201d to an adult and communal appreciation\nof the message of the incarnation of God in Christ. We Franciscans have always\nbelieved that&nbsp;<em>the incarnation\nwas already the redemption<\/em>, because in Jesus\u2019 birth God was saying that <em>it was good to be human, and God was on our side.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus\nidentified his own mission with what he called the coming \u201creign of God.\u201d We\nhave often settled instead for the sweet coming of a baby who asked little of\nus in terms of surrender, encounter, mutuality, or any assent to the actual\nteachings of Jesus. Too much sentimentality, or juicing up of our emotions, can\nbe a substitute for an actual relationship, as we also see in our human\nrelationships. When we are so infatuated with the \u201csweetness\u201d or \u201cperfection\u201d\nof another, we easily \u201cfall\u201d out of love at the first sign of their\nhumanity.&nbsp;Let\u2019s not let that happen with the infinitely compelling person\nof Jesus!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\ncelebration of Christmas is not merely a sentimental waiting for a baby to be\nborn. It is much more <em>an asking for\nhistory to be born!<\/em>&nbsp;Creation groans in its birth pains, waiting\nfor our participation with God in its renewal (see Romans 8:20\u201323). We do the\nGospel no favor when we make Jesus, the Eternal Christ, into a perpetual baby,\nwho asks little or no adult response from us. One even wonders what kind of\nmind would want to keep Jesus a baby. Maybe only one that is content with \u201cbaby\nChristianity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Any\nspirituality that makes too much of the baby Jesus is perhaps not yet ready for\n\u201cprime-time\u201d life. God clearly wants friends and partners to be images of\ndivinity, if we are to believe the biblical texts. God, it seems, wants mature\nreligion and a thoughtful, free response from us. God loves us in partnership,\nwith mutual give and take, and <em>we eventually\nbecome the God that we love.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nChrist we are asking and waiting for includes our own full birth and the\nfurther birth of history and creation. It is to this adult and Cosmic Christ\nthat we can say, \u201cCome, Lord Jesus\u201d (Revelation 22:20) with a whole new\nunderstanding and a deliberate passion. This makes our entire lives, and the\nlife of the church, one huge \u201cadvent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Christ includes the whole sweep of creation and history joined with him\u2014and each of us, too. This is the Universal (or Cosmic) Christ. [1] We ourselves are members of the Body of Christ and the Universal Christ, even though we are not the historical Jesus. So we very rightly believe in \u201cJesus Christ,\u201d and both words are essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"324\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-21-at-10.18.34-AM-500x324.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-21-at-10.18.34-AM-500x324.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-21-at-10.18.34-AM-300x194.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-21-at-10.18.34-AM-768x498.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-21-at-10.18.34-AM.png 1910w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Incarnation The Trajectory of Incarnation Monday, \u202fDecember 21, 2020 Christianity\u2019s true and unique story line has always been incarnation.&nbsp;That means that the spirit&nbsp;nature of reality (the spiritual, the immaterial, the formless) and the material&nbsp;nature of reality (the physical, that which we can see and touch) are one. They have always been one, ever since the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19637,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions\/19637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}