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Tabernacle Presbyterian Church Rev. L. John Gable “THE
THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION" During this season of Lent we have been exploring what it means to “follow hard after Jesus” by examining the six great traditions of the Christian faith, and given the response I’ve gotten from you I believe you’ve enjoyed and appreciated this exploration as much as I have. While it would be safe to say that each of us has experience and perhaps even a bias toward one, or maybe two, of these traditions, together we have seen the value of each of them. We have been encouraged to spend more time listening to God in the contemplative tradition and have appreciated the emphasis on purity of the heart in the holiness tradition. We have seen the importance of being open to the outpouring and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the charismatic tradition and have been motivated to actually get up and do something by the social justice tradition; yet in our doing we have also recognized the importance of making sure our doing is firmly grounded in the Word of God, which is emphasized by the evangelical tradition. Yet rather than seeing each of these as being a separate and mutually exclusive expression of the Christian faith, we have also seen that each is inter-dependent on the others. The social activist needs to recognize the importance of prayer, the charismatic must recognize the call to holiness, the evangelical must acknowledge that there are physical, as well as spiritual, needs to be met, and so on; which brings us to this last of the great traditions, the so-called “Incarnational tradition”, which appears to be something of a synthesis of all of the others, as it reminds us that our faith must be lived out, not only “in here”, but also “out there.” The
word “incarnation” itself
is rather earthy. “It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It
is undignified”, writes Frederick Buechner, “but according
to Christianity, it is the way things are.” On Wednesday
morning at the Pastor’s Bible study I was asked for a definition
of “incarnation” and what came to mind immediately was, “Have
you ever eaten chili ‘con carne’? ‘Con carne’ means ‘with
meat.’ So the incarnation is God with meat on Him; that is
Jesus Christ.” Someone said, they would never eat chili again
without thinking of that! In our first Gospel lesson this morning Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when a woman who has been crippled for 18 years comes into view. All sorts of things may jump out at us at this point in the story: a woman, a crippled woman for that matter, in the synagogue – a place generally reserved for men, and Jesus, in the midst of the worship service, takes notice of her, calls her forward and heals her. Is it any wonder that the Pharisees who were present there became irate? This sort of thing simply should not happen! There response was intense and immediate, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days to be cured and not on the Sabbath day!” Before we jump on the Pharisees too quickly for being hard-hearted and uncaring, how would we respond if a street person walked down the center aisle during our worship service and said, “Excuse me, could I get a bus ticket and a couple bucks for some food?” Wouldn’t we also be inclined to say, “Come back tomorrow! We are in the middle of worship here!” That is what is happening in this story. But Jesus takes a different tact. He doesn’t so carefully distinguish between the sacred and the secular, between the spiritual and the physical, between the time for faith and the time for work. He argues that if we are willing to feed and water our animals on the Sabbath, should we not also be willing to care for one of God’s children as well? Point well taken and hard to argue; and this is the emphasis of the incarnational tradition. In this tradition there is a desire to tear down the wall that naturally seems to exist between those activities which are religious and those which are worldly; the distinction between what we would commonly call faith and work. Just as Jesus was fully human (physical) and fully divine (spiritual), so He calls us to care equally about the physical and the spiritual, the needs of the body and of the soul, the sacred and the secular. Admittedly, we too struggle with this kind of compartmentalizing that we can do with our lives. We do the “religious” thing when we are “in here”, but then confess to struggling with how to apply that to the “secular” thing we do “out there”- at home, at work, in relationships. Yet we would all agree that in our desire to “follow hard after Jesus,” it is “out there” that what we do “in here” must be lived out, or else what we do “in here” becomes rather meaningless. If we talk about loving our neighbors in here, and all nod in agreement with that high ideal, but then walk “out there” and never actually get around to acting in a loving manner toward our neighbors, then surely the validity of what we do “in here” must be called in to question. In an interview, former President Jimmy Carter expresses this well when he says, “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something…I’m free to choose what that something is, and that something I’ve chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands, this is not optional, my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have, to try to make a difference. The older I get the less attention I give to what people say, and the more and more attention I give to how they live and what they do and the causes they work for and support. Your life and mine validates for good or evil what we really stand for. Words are nothing unless and until they are field-tested on the battlefield of experience.” Throughout the ministry of Jesus we see Him curing the body AND saving the soul, teaching the masses AND feeding them as well, seemingly making no distinction between the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the physical. On this Palm Sunday as He completes His journey to Jerusalem and enters in to this holy week of intimacy and ecstasy, of betrayal and torture and death, we can’t help but recognize how fully invested Jesus was in this ministry, physically and spiritually. He didn’t just come to tell us about the love of God, in the cross of Calvary He showed us the depth and cost of that love. He incarnated the love of God and this becomes the model for the church, for you and for me today. “When
we start abandoning the distinctions such as spirit/matter, sacred/secular,
faith/work, body/soul, religious/worldly, we begin to move toward integration
and completeness (in our lives of faith). Jesus showed us by
His actions that life can be unified and seamless, that we can move
readily in the power of God, everyday of the week, not just on the “holy” days…When
our life becomes integrated and seamless in this way, we are free to
reveal God to the world, in everything that we say and everything that
we do, in who we are. We become God’s representatives, His
ambassadors and He does His work through us. Our mind become the
mind of God helping His children understand His love. Our hands
become the hands of Jesus nursing the sick. Our voice becomes
the voice of God announcing the Good News of the Kingdom of God…As
we let the power and life of God flow through us, we become the person
He created us to be and God becomes known to the world through us.” (Spiritual
Formation Workbook, p. 71) One day, as he agonized over the demise of the monastery, the abbot decided to ask the advice of the rabbi to see if he had any ideas on how to revive the order. The two men of faith talked at length, but the rabbi only sadly lamented that he had no words of wisdom. As he said his good-bye to the abbot, the rabbi said the only glimmer of hope he could offer was the possibility that perhaps they might discover the Messiah to be living among them at the monastery, then they parted. In the days and weeks that followed, the abbot pondered the strange parting words of the rabbi, and finally shared them with the other monks. They almost laughed at the absurdity of the comment. Certainly the Messiah could not be among them! Yet the more they spoke, the more each of them began, deep down, to wonder and consider the possibility. If the Messiah was among them, which of them might he be? There were definite reasons why each of the five couldn’t be the Promised One, and yet, the more they reflected, they also saw that each of the old monks had a special quality that indicated that God was working in and through them. Maybe, just maybe, the old rabbi was right. Maybe the Messiah was among them. After this, they began to see one another in a new light, and began to treat each other with extraordinary respect. Because the area around the monastery was so beautiful, people occasionally came to picnic on the grounds or pray in the dilapidated chapel. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed a difference in the life among the brothers there. A renewed hope and a profound respect seemed to radiate from the five old monks. There was something compelling about their attitudes, and people began to return much more often. Soon, they were bringing their friends, who in turn brought their friends. Some of the younger men who came regularly started to visit with the old monks, and soon one of them asked if he could join them in the order, and then another and another. With in a few years, the monastery was, once again, a thriving order, a vibrant center of spiritual light and hope, all because they recognized the possibility that the Messiah just might be among them. Friends,
may we go out from here committed to looking for the Messiah among
us. May we seek
Him as we bow our heads to pray, as we strive after purity in our hearts
and thoughts, as we lift our voices in worship and praise, as we extend
an act of loving kindness to a neighbor in need, as we immerse ourselves
in the study and sharing of His Word and as we seek to live out our faith
in all that we do and say and are, not just “in here”, but “out
there”, not just on the “holy” days, but everyday;
to the honor and glory of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Tabernacle Presbyterian Church Lenten Series Exercises:
Resource: A Spiritual Formation Workbook, James Bryan Smith and Lynda Graybeal; A Renovare Resource for Spiritual Renewal, HarperSanFrancisco Publishers, 1999. |