O come, O come,
Emmanuel. Amen.
This morning’s Collect is a fantastic one in our Prayer Book tradition, beginning “Stir
up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” That prayer is
answered in the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The Incarnation is the
foundational claim of our faith, that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God did
come among us with the might of love in the flesh of Jesus. And this claim that
God came among us is at the very heart of what and how we believe as Anglicans.
The thing about the Incarnation of Jesus is that it is
very, very specific. Some scholars refer to it as the “scandal of the
particular.” And it can seem like a scandal of sorts. God did not come to us in
an abstract way, or God doesn’t come once every decade so that everyone gets a
chance to shake his hand. No, Jesus was a very specific person born in a very
specific situation. We know the locations of his birth, ministry, and death.
And the Incarnation isn’t that God put on flesh as if it were an overcoat only
to take it off after the Crucifixion and return to being a disembodied spirit.
No, as we know from the beginning of John – and the Word became flesh. Jesus is God, and Jesus is also fully and completely
human, with all of the particularities that implies. Jesus stubbed his toes, he
sometimes got a bad night’s sleep, and if he had car keys, I’m sure he would
have lost them every once in a while.
What this all means is that context matters when we
consider the Incarnation. One Biblical scholar said that “A text without a
context is a pretext for a proof text.” That is to say, if we don’t
consider the context of a situation or a Biblical passage, we might draw some
bad conclusions and be headed in completely the wrong direction. Several months
ago, you’ll recall that we welcomed Victoria into the process of the
Catechumenate as she is preparing to be Baptized at the Easter Vigil. As a part
of this process, we regularly meet to discuss the faith and were recently talking
about Scripture. One of the things that we noted is that even though some
people claim it, there is no such thing as a literal meaning of Scripture.
Everything is interpreted.
As an example, consider the word “house” and what that
might mean. It could refer to a “household” as in a family, or a physical structure,
or even a dynasty as in the “House of David.” So when God tells David that God
will provide a house for David – what does that mean? Well, context matters. That’s
a small example, but it’s always true that context determines content.
So as we consider our own Anglican tradition, we see how
context shapes us. We don’t know how the Christian faith first came to England.
If you like legends, we have the story that Joseph of Arimathea, the person who
gave a tomb for Jesus to be buried in, was actually from England and brought
the Gospel with him when he returned home from a business trip in Israel. Even
if we say that’s only a legend, there is evidence that Christianity existed in
the British isles by the late 100s or early 200s. About 400 years later,
Augustine was sent by Rome to Britain and for 1,000 years the British church
was under the authority of Rome. Then in 1534, the Church of England again
functioned independently and we in the Episcopal Church are the products of
that Church going everywhere the British Empire did.
With an Incarnational focus, that historical context has
been allowed to shape our tradition. If the idea of the Incarnation wasn’t at
the heart of our tradition, it could have been different. While the history of
the British Empire is one of imperialism and domination, our faith tradition
has been much more contextually aware. To be very clear, we’ve stumbled along
the way and fallen into the sins of colonialism, but our tradition is one that
greatly values the idea that the faith must always be translated into the
vernacular so that faith can be understood and embraced.
This is why we have a Book
of Common Prayer. We don’t insist that all Anglicans around the world use
the same exact prayers, just changed from English into a regional language. Instead,
what we have is a family of Prayer Books
that bear a family resemblance but are not identical. In each context, different
cultural assumptions, values, and priorities shape the Prayer Book. What is shared is our common prayer – a commitment to an
overall structure and spirituality of worship while allowing freedom of local
expression and variation.
And this
is why some churches across the Episcopal Church are so different when it comes
to worship. This vestment that I’m wearing right now is called a “chasuble” and
is worn by the priest who celebrates the Eucharist, denoting special
responsibility and honor, not to the person wearing it, but to the Eucharistic
celebration itself. Here at St. Luke’s, I wear a chasuble every Sunday. But at the
first church I worked at, the only time a chasuble was ever seen was when children
dressed up as magi for the Christmas pageant. We have and respect this
diversity in style because our Incarnational heart reminds us that context
matters. And so Anglicanism embraces diversity and resists once-size-fits-all
solutions.
Now when it comes to matters of worship those
differences, while real, are fairly easily tolerated. But when the matters at
hand are doctrines and ethics, things can be more heated. Sometimes our
Anglican tradition is described as a “messy” one.” Our tradition is messy because
we resist doctrinal statements and edicts. Many churches have published stances
on a whole variety of issues, but we don’t really do that in our tradition. Is
war wrong? Is it ethical to invest in the stock market? Is divorce allowable?
In our tradition, if you ask that question the response is usually going to be “Tell
me more about the context.” Other traditions though tend to draw clearer lines
around such issues. This isn’t to say that one approach is better than the
other. While we like freedom, too much freedom can lead to indecision and
confusion. This Incarnational appreciation for context is what makes our
tradition messy.
It’s been said that, in Anglicanism, we have soft edges
and a firm center whereas many other traditions have firm edges and a soft
center. There are some, but very few, things that Anglicans have at their core.
But about those things we are unwavering. These are things like the inherent
dignity of all people, of God’s love for Creation, of Jesus’ Incarnation, saving
Death, and Resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the centrality of the
Eucharist. Those are rather broad. Our edges though are softer and more
inclusive – we don’t tell you how to read the Bible, or how to vote, or what to
believe about specific doctrines.
In this morning’s readings we can see a
contextually-sensitive approach to the Incarnation of Jesus. In the 700s BC,
the prophet Isaiah was given a vision by God of the wilderness and the dry land
blossoming. The fearful will be made strong, the blind shall see, the deaf
shall hear, the lame shall leap, the dessert will become a pool, and the
sorrowful will rejoice. This was a vision of hope for the people of Israel.
When we fast-forward nearly 800 years, we find John the Baptist
in prison and wondering “Is Jesus the one who is to come, or are we to wait for
another?” John knows that the Messiah’s reign would be an Incarnate reality –
not just a revival of faithfulness and morals, but that things would actually
happen when the Messiah came. But John’s sitting in prison because he spoke an
inconvenient truth to Herod. From inside a prison cell, this isn’t looking like
the Messianic age that John was expecting.
But notice that Jesus doesn’t give a straight answer to
the question. Instead, Jesus says “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the
blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf
hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” In
other words, Jesus is saying “pay attention to the context all around you.” In
an Incarnational faith, this is how we encounter the love, peace, and grace of
God – by paying attention. The very things that Isaiah prophesied about were
all seen in Jesus’ ministry, but many people, including John the Baptist,
missed out on those signs because they were focused on content without context.
If our minds are already made up, we just might overlook God all around and
within us.
Isaiah mentions that the crocus will blossom in the desert.
It’s a contextual sign. If we can’t see the crocus in the desert, a sign of
something new and different, we certainly won’t see the Messiah in the manger, or
the Body in the Bread, or dignity in the face of the stranger, or the love of
God in the mirror. Our Anglican heritage is one that is deeply rooted in the
Incarnation, which means that context always matters. So we pay attention to
the signs all around us. Sometimes those signs will take us in one direction,
sometimes in others. This flexibility is one of the greatest assets of our
Anglican tradition, giving us unity without demanding uniformity. But it also
means that we have to work more consciously and courageously to guard the
center as we hold the edges with openness and grace.
There’s a book that I’ve never read, but I like the
title. It’s called The Sin of Certainty.
These days there so much division and anxiety between different sides, both of
which claim certainty and ignore nuance. The Incarnation is about paradox and mystery,
and that’s where real truth is found. How does the limitless take on flesh? It’s
a mystery. How is Jesus both God and human? It’s a paradox. But we profess that
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And because Jesus was a particular
person who lived at a specific time, we know that context not only matters, but
context is where the holy happens. God is present in the particular details of
your life, in the day-to-day grind. The Incarnation means that holiness
surrounds us.
In Advent, as Christmas is nearly here, the Incarnation
reminds us to pay attention to signs of God’s presence and love all around us.
There are crocuses of God’s grace blooming all around us. There are inexhaustible
joys around every corner. When John the Baptist asks about the Messiah, Jesus
tells him to pay attention to his senses; to what he sees and hears. And that’s
why having a firm center is so important so we know what to look for. Keep an
eye out for beauty, for forgiveness, for generosity, for unexplainable joy, for
peace that passes understanding, for love that defies explanation. “The Word
became flesh and dwelt among us” isn’t just the doctrine of the Incarnation, it
is the path of faith that allows us to, like Mary, exclaim, “My soul proclaims
the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
