The Incarnation
1297, "embodiment of God in the person of Christ," from O.Fr. incarnation (12c.), from L.L. incarnationem (nom. incarnatio), "act of being made flesh" (used by Church writers esp. of God in Christ), from L. incarnatus, pp. of incarnare "to make flesh," from in- "in" + caro (gen. carnis) "flesh." (From the Online Etymology Dictionary).
Though many religions claim various incarnations of spirit into flesh, the origin of the word is the coming of the Christ. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." The encasing of infinite spirit with limited flesh is astounding beyond words. When my imagination tip-toes toward God with His outside-of-time perspective and infinite knowledge, power and presence, if I take the claim of John seriously, that the Christ was with God in the beginning, and that nothing was made without Him, then His sacrifice to leave that existence and reality, and empty Himself first into a womb, and then to be birthed into plain jane humanity...well, it is, for many people, beyond belief.
But for those of us who place our faith in the reality of this coming, it is infinitely elegant, graceful as only God could be. I have an image of God wondering (but how could He wonder? He knows), "How can explain who I am to my creation? How best to give them an understanding of the kind of God I am? How can I show them the very nature of love?" The sacrifice of God-hood might do it, the letting of infinite power and knowledge to become human, "not counting equality of God a thing to be grasped."
We go on and on about Jesus' death. As we should. But frankly, many women, many men, have died on behalf of others. There have been more cruel deaths. But the sacrifice of Jesus that stands alone is the passage from one state of being to another, the passage from God's pre-creation reality to the human reality, from the state of the Creator to the state of the creature. Can you imagine having been limitless, to empty yourself of that, and take on limits? "Greater love has no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends." We think of the crucifixion, but it strikes me with great force that Christ had already done it, laying down the life of God to come walk among His friends.
Thomas Merton suggests the search for God and the search for self are one and the same. That to find God is to find our selves, for only God knows the identity He has born into us. And the New Testament writers make clear that to know the Christ is to know God. "Don't you know that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?" The Christ prayed that we might have the glory that God gave to Him, and is that glory anything more than the intimate knowledge of who we are, set free by the love of God?
The coming of the Christ: a necessary coming to fulfill the demand of a law God simply cannot escape? Or the defining act of communication, a strategem employed so that human beings might finally be given a chance to receive a touch of understanding about the eternity they intuitively experience in their hearts? The Messiah of God, the incarnation of God, not only in death, but in every moment of His life. To look at the Christ is to see the relationship between God and humanity as God meant it from the beginning.
...rivers of living water...standing on the banks...
6:08:06 AM 
