O come, O come,
Emmanuel. Amen.
What makes you, you? For the most part, every single one
of us is identical. Two hands, two lungs, a central nervous system, dependence
on food and water. One way of viewing us is that we’re all pretty much the
same. And while there is a commonality among us, there is also a diversity that
makes us unique. People are not interchangeable. I wouldn’t be okay if you
exchanged my family for another one. So there is something that makes you, you.
And the same is true for groups of people. When I’m
meeting with a couple as they prepare for marriage in the Church, a question
that I always ask is “what makes you, you, as a couple.” In other words, “What
would your friends say about your relationship that makes you unique.” It’s a
good question for all couples, and individuals, to think about. Whatever it is
that makes you you is important to cherish and nurture. Make sure you devote
time and energy to those things.
This logic also applies to different Christian
denominations. Yes, all Christians affirm things like Lordship of Jesus and the
importance of Scripture. But there are some real differences in focus that make
us each unique. For the Orthodox it is their view of the liturgy, for Romans it
is the authority of the Pope, for Methodists it is the place of growing in
holiness, for Presbyterians it is an emphasis on God’s providence, for
Lutherans it is an emphasis on the role of grace, for Baptists it is the role
of Scripture to encourage people to choose to follow Christ, for Pentecostals
it is the disruptive presence of the Holy Spirit. To be clear, I’m not a member
of any of those groups and my outside analysis might not match their own self-descriptions,
but the point is that denominations all have a different flavor of sorts. Now,
none of these attributes are uniquely held by those groups, rather they are
uniquely emphasized. It’s not just Lutherans who talk about grace, Baptists who
talk about Scripture, or Pentecostals who talk about the Holy Spirit – but those
groups have those things at their core.
So what
is it that is at our unique core as Anglicans? We are the inheritors of a
Christian faith that first came to the British isles in the 2nd century
and has been influenced by being a part of the Roman Catholic tradition until
the 1500s, followed by the English Reformation, and then English imperialism
which led to the establishment of the Church of England in the colonies, then
United States, as the Episcopal Church. And that history of developing on an
island apart from the continent of Europe and global expansion has given
Anglicanism a unique core and that is an emphasis on the Incarnation.
Incarnation
is a word that points towards us Christmas; it is the belief that Jesus is God
in the flesh. If you know any Romance language, or have ever ordered carne
asada at a Mexican restaurant, you know that “carne” means “meat” or “flesh.”
So Incarnation is about taking on flesh, about being embodied. Central for all
Christians is the belief that is expressed in the opening of John’s telling of the
Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And in the Anglican
tradition, it is this belief and its implications for our faith that is at our
core. Anglicans and Episcopalians emphasize the Incarnation in our theology,
worship, and understanding of ministry. It is this centrality of Incarnation that
makes us unique. The upcoming liturgical time of Advent, Christmas, and the
Epiphany is rooted in this belief that God came to us in Jesus, and so the
sermons over the next 5 weeks are all going to focus on the Incarnation and
what our emphasis on that means for us in the Anglican tradition.
Given
today’s readings on this first Sunday of Advent, we’ll start by considering
what it means to have an Incarnational faith. At its core, the Incarnation
shows us that faith isn’t a set of ideas, it is a way of life, a faith with
implications. This idea is right there at the start of our identity statement
at St. Luke’s – come and see. We say “come and see” instead of “come and learn,”
or “come and worship,” or “come and give,” or “come” and any other word because
with an Incarnational faith, we have a clear expectation that there is
something to see and experience because faith isn’t only intellectual, it is
embodied.
So
what does it mean to have a faith that is focused on Incarnation? Well, St.
Paul in today’s reading from Romans says it’s about waking up. He writes that “salvation
is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” In other words, salvation
is something to be experienced right now. This is at the core of an Incarnational
faith – God’s mercy, peace, and love are things that are presently incarnated.
The peace of God will be perfected in the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s
absent until then; it’s all around us even now. So we are told to wake up to
reality. And reality isn’t that email that you’ve been agonizing over sending.
Reality isn’t how the quarterly earnings are doing. Reality isn’t those
deadlines that you are facing. Most of what we stress and fight about aren’t
things that will matter in five days, let alone five years, and certainly not
in five centuries.
But
there are things that will matter for all eternity – things like forgiving our enemies,
things like respecting the dignity of all God’s people, things like knowing
that you are loved by God, things like caring for creation. In an Incarnational
faith, faith makes a difference. We live differently because faith primarily happens
in our lives. Sure, faith also happens in our hearts and minds, but it’s not confined
to those places. Instead, faith is compressive and all-encompassing.
St.
Paul says to cast aside works of darkness and put on the armor of light – that is,
faith is something that we take with us throughout our day. We are to put aside
reveling, drunkenness, debauchery, and quarreling. Speaking of which, I hope
you all had a good Thanksgiving dinner. But we are to put these aside and live
in the light of Christ. Isaiah gives us an example of what this might look
like. He says that people will beat their swords into ploughshares and their
spears into pruning-hooks. In a faith that does not focus on being Incarnational
this sort of thing might be approached differently. We could have read that the
nations would sign treaties or come up with border agreements, but that would not
be a faith that’s incarnational. Instead, there are to be physical
manifestations of faith, hope, and love. So it’s not enough for nations to say
they are at peace, they need to destroy weapons of war and turn them into tools
for feeding people.
And
the same is at the core of our Anglican faith. The things that we believe have
direct correlations to our lives. We believe that God so loved the world that
he gave Jesus to give us new and abundant life, which means that life is holy,
not a chore. It means that the metrics of life are not accolades, account balances,
or accomplishments, but things like being in loving relationships and reaching
out in love to those in need. An Incarnational faith might mean that our budgets,
our priorities, our schedules, our routines might need to be changed just as
spears are transformed into pruning hooks. And the way that happens is through
heat and hammering, think about a blacksmith. Well, if we’re going to have
faith shape our lives, it will take an intentional process that very well might
cause some sparks to fly as faith takes root in us.
Another
example of Incarnational impact is the belief that Jesus rose from the dead.
One way to view that belief is how wonderful that must be for Jesus, or how
wonderful it will be for us in the future. But an Incarnational faith says, how
wonderful it is that we don’t have to live in fear or the shadow of death. And
if we’re not afraid of death, just imagine how we might live differently. We
might realize that life isn’t a contest to see who can have the most fun before
they died If we trusted that eternal life is ours, how might we use our time
differently? If we knew that joy is a gift from God and not the product of our
striving, maybe we’d be able to slow down and enjoy what God has given us.
In
Advent, there’s a focus on the coming of Jesus and our preparations for that,
both in terms of remembering the fact that he came at Christmas and that he
will come again. That belief could easily just be something that we push to the
side, thinking that Christmas is about the past and Christ’s return is in the
future. But those beliefs, while being rooted in the past and future, are very
much presently manifest. The fact that Jesus came to this planet means that all
the earth is holy ground, and ought to be treated as such. And the belief that
Jesus will come again as our judge means that we are accountable for our
actions and inactions. To be clear, our Judge is none other than the gracious,
merciful, and loving Jesus Christ, so we don’t need to be afraid of judgment.
But we are still accountable. And the reason why we are accountable is that God
wants us to participate in the love with which this world has been created and
redeemed. If nothing was expected of us then we wouldn’t need a judge. And so
an Incarnational faith is deeply concerned about things like justice, ethics, and
how we live our lives in faith. Jesus as God took on flesh in Jesus, it is a
signal that our faith is to take on flesh in our lives.
The
list could go on and on. The point though is that an Incarnational faith doesn’t
stop in proclaiming the truths of our faith, it asks the next question, “And
what does this belief mean for my life?” Over the next several weeks, we’ll
continue to explore the Incarnation of Jesus and consider how transformation comes
through asking that question of how our faith is lived.
For
today though, bear in mind that the Incarnation means that life matters and it
means that faith has consequences. Whether we want it to be or not, December is
a month of stress and anxiety. For those who suffer from seasonal affective
disorder, depression, or grief, this month can be especially challenging. God
came to us in Jesus, taking on flesh to help us to wake up to reality, to the
things that really matter, things like loving others, things like serving one
another in love, things like laughing together. If this is a hard time of year
for you, please, reach out to me or someone else because the Incarnation means
that life is precious and that God loves you enough to come and be with us so
that we might see his love in the face of Jesus. The Incarnation gives you permission
to put faith into action and not apologize for it – forgiveness, generosity,
rest, fellowship, and compassion are the true marks of a meaningful life.
At the
core of our Anglican faith is the proclamation that the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us. As we grow in our ability to trust that very Good News, we’ll
start to see the fruits of faith grow in our life as we encounter the abundant
life that God intends for us. My prayer is that the power of the Incarnation be
a light in our darkness and a light upon our path. Amen.
