Incarnational Theology
/by Rev. Eric Folkerth
On Sunday, we got a preview of our Advent season with the Parable of The Last Judgment.
Although it’s never included in the Advent/Christmas season Gospel lessons, this is one of the touchstone scriptures in “Incarnational Theology.”
More in a moment. But first, a brief advertisement about the next few Sundays…
During this Advent Season we will be unpacking incarnational theology in a number of ways.
Our Sunday worship and the Prism Sunday School class will be using the theme “Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation.”
So December will be a marvelous time to visit Prism Class in that you will feel a direct connection between that study and our Sunday worship.
Also during Advent, I’ll be leading a four-week gathering called “Being a Christmas Christian.”
In that class —the next three Sundays from 5-7 pm in the chapel— we’ll unpack scriptures that, while not specifically the “Christmas story,” clearly teach us the power of “Being a Christmas Christian.”
That gets me back to the “Parable of the Last Judgment.”
There is perhaps no more powerful example of God’s incarnational nature than this parable. It helps us see with our spiritual eye that incarnation didn’t just happen “once upon a time” through the person of the historical Jesus, but that it happens all around us every day.
And the way to truly live out what God wants from us is to do the things Jesus teaches us here…
“I was hungry and you gave me food to eat.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear.
I was sick and you took care of me.
I was in prison and you visited me.”
Notice how *personal” Jesus makes this…
“*I* was hungry…”
Jesus teaches us that when we love and serve the least, the lost and the left out, we are not just doing nice or kind things; we are not just performing some perfunctory moral duty. We are, in the most literal way we can imagine, loving and serving God.
This is the heart of “incarnational seeing.” It’s the heart of what Jesus means when Jesus teaches the great commandment.
Loving God IS loving our neighbor and loving our neighbor is loving God.
Jesus wants us to develop these kinds of spiritual eyes.
It’s hard. Nobody sees this way all the time. In fact, in the Parable of the Last Judgment neither the “sheep” nor the “goats” seem to understand that they have been doing God’s will. It’s entirely possible —even likely then— that in our time many human beings are doing exactly what God most wants us to do without having any conscious knowledge that they are “loving God.”
They’re just loving and serving humans….and in doing so, they are doing the greatest of all religious work God wants from us.
But this takes seeing our “enemies,” our “adversaries,” and the least, lost and left out not as subhuman animals but as incarnations of God as well. This is the powerful heart of incarnational theology.
And it’s a challenge in ethic for ANYONE to live. Because we all tend to “miss-see” others.
On Mockingbird Lane —just down from Love Field, amidst gun clubs and other strip mall shops— you can whiz past the statue in this picture (or a statue just like it). It’s titled “Homeless Jesus,” and it was installed just in front of Catholic Charities Offices there.
Without a careful glance it appears to be an ordinary homeless person asleep on an ordinary park bench. But on close inspection, one sees the holes in the feet signifying that this is indeed a figure of Christ.
“Homeless Jesus” statues have caused quite a stir in other parts of the country. One that was installed on the grounds of a local church in a wealthy Ohio neighborhood led nervous neighbors to call the police…twenty minutes after it was installed!
You can’t make this stuff up…
But don’t judge that caller too harshly. The point of the statue, the point of the Parable of the Last Judgment, is to remind us that ALL OF US regularly fail to see God in the lives of other humans.
We fail to see God in the migrant, cut by State of Texas-funded razor wire barriers in the Rio Grande.
We fail to see God in the life of a child killed in Gaza or in a terrified Israeli family.
We fail to see God in a trans child and their families.
We fail to see God in MAGA hat wearing white men.
We fail to see God in the homeless person who right now sleeps under the bridge near where you live.
We do not SEE the way God hopes we will see.
We instead see an “Other,” an “Enemy;” a rival team or tribe.
Really seeing the way God wants us to see means we have an ethical obligation to treat all human beings as if we are encountering Godself. (Because we are.)
The ethical/moral responsibility of incarnation theology is immense and vast.
As Thomas Merton once said:
“Whoever believes that Christ is the Word made flesh believes that every person must in some sense be regarded as Christ.”
Incarnational seeing, and the moral ethic inherent inside of it, is the true meaning of Christmas.
It’s the true meaning of the “good tidings of great joy” from that holy night.
Join us throughout this season as we celebrate and remember these holy truths.