WHOSE HOPE WAS IN THE WORD MADE FLESH

Dear Friends in Christ:

In a fairly spirited exchange of e-mails earlier this month, a retired priest mentioned his belief that “the Incarnation is essential as being the direct will of God, while the Cross is contingent.” Theologians have often made distinctions between God’s primary will and God’s permissive and contingent will, and although those discussions have often been hard to follow, the distinctions can be important. How we think about God’s will says something about our understanding of God’s character.

I share my colleague’s belief that the Incarnation is an expression of God’s primary will. God wants to be in relationship with us, or, as I put it once in a sermon, God wants to be God only in a relationship with us. The doctrine of the Incarnation speaks to us of One who was not content to be God at a distance, One who wanted to share our human life, One who wanted to walk humbly with us. It speaks to us also of One who invites us to share in the divine life of the Trinity. In Baptism we were made members of Christ, and “participants of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4) I believe the goal of our life in Christ is “that [we] may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19) As Philips Brooks put it in the last stanza of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter, be born in us today.

 I also share my colleague’s belief that the Cross is an expression of God’s contingent will and not of God’s primary will. When God chose to become Incarnate, God also chose to accept the possibility of the Cross.  If the Cross is to be seen as an expression of anyone’s primary will, it is an expression of ours. As we sing during Holy Week, “I it was denied thee: I crucified thee.” Rather than seeing the Father as One who demands that the Son be crucified, we see God as One who accepts crucifixion as what happens when sinful humans meet the Incarnate Son. God loves us so much that God chose to be one of us and, in that choosing, accepted the Cross.

Anglicans have tended to see the Incarnation as central to our theology. What is important to us is that God chose to become human in the holy child of Bethlehem. What is important to us is that in Christ God has “wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature.” (The Book of Common Prayer, page 252) Surely the Cross is important, but it is the Incarnation that is central to Anglican theology. For Anglicans, all of human life, from our celebrations of the Holy Eucharist to our family meals, from Vestry meetings to School Board meetings, from the work of the Bishop to the work of the dishwasher, all has been made holy by Christ’s Incarnation.

As we celebrate all the days of Christmas, may we see more clearly the love that came down at Christmas, the love that was Incarnate in the Christ Child, the love that restores our human dignity, the love that invites to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Your brother and priest,

Daniel