Contemplating the Incarnation

"All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet: 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel' (which means God with us)." - Matthew 1:22-23

Since the beginning of Christianity, the church has wrestled with how to understand the paradoxical teaching that Jesus is both human and divine. Church councils over hundreds of years fought over the precise wording and formulations of this mystery as they developed creeds that would settle the debate. While most Christians today would consider the matter of Jesus' dual nature (known as the hypostatic union by theology nerds) settled, little thought is given to the broader implications of humanity and divinity finding themselves in perfect union within the person of Jesus.

While the church may have defined what incarnation (God becoming human) means for Jesus, it has never fully wrestled with what incarnation means for the rest of the world. The great mystery of the overlapping of matter and spirit has been reduced to a trite doctrine. Instead of contemplating what this might mean for reality itself, we have limited its scope to one unique historical person so that we never have to question our own nature. But questioning human nature is exactly what the biblical narrative is doing. It's a story that makes us ask whether our identity is united with God or apart from God. Do we hold and sustain our life independently, or do we recognize the divine life within us that also gives life to the whole world?

In the broader biblical narrative, the story begins and ends with the merging of heaven and earth - the physical realm and the spiritual realm becoming one. The Genesis 1 creation account ends on the seventh day with divinity resting upon the newly formed cosmos saying, "Thus the heavens and the earth were complete." The imagery of Eden in Genesis 2 depicts the garden as a place where heaven and earth are one - where humanity and divinity walk together. Humanity is made in God's own image and filled with God's own spirit to serve as divine representatives in the world. Eden becomes the template for the Jewish temple in which heaven and earth overlap and the divine presence fills the physical world. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures we see glimpses of God's glory, the divine presence, covering and filling people and places in a way that blurs the lines between sacred and mundane. Before Jesus is born, we see another merging of human and divine in Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the conception narrative. The pattern we should recognize is the repeated blurring and merging of heaven and earth, where the divine is made manifest in the physical world. Like the symbol of marriage, the two become one.

Jesus wasn't the first divine incarnation. The first incarnation was the cosmos itself, with humanity serving as a microcosm of this union of heaven and earth. This cosmic incarnation is described in the first chapter of John's gospel by employing the Greek concept of the Logos - a unifying principal Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC) spoke of saying, "Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one." The gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Word, and without the Word not one thing came into being. In the Word was life, and the life was the light of all people" (John 1:1-4). John later connects the Logos directly to Jesus who "became flesh and lived among us". The divine Logos is described as both a universal incarnation as well as a particular incarnation. We are meant to see both. The incarnation of Jesus serves as a perfect reminder of who we are and who we have always been since the beginning.

We (all of humanity) are made in God's image. We are filled with God's own spirit. We all came into being through the divine life and light given to all people. If we see the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus but miss the universal incarnation that includes us, we are missing the primary message of Jesus who prayed that we would be one just as he and God are one (John 17). The heresy (if i can borrow that terrible word) is not that we would claim the divine light within ourselves - that's exactly what Jesus is trying to show us (compare John 8:12 & Matthew 5:14). The real heresy is that we would deny the divine light in our fellow humans.

The ultimate revelation of Christianity, and many other religions, is that there is no separation between humanity and divinity. Heaven and earth are only complete when they are in perfect union. The final book of the Christian Bible depicts a new Jerusalem coming down from the heavens and forever uniting heaven and earth. This is described as a marriage in which two become one. The writer describes hearing a voice saying, "See, the dwelling of God is among humans." Divine incarnation didn't end with the death of Jesus. As the prophet Isaiah realized, "The whole earth is full of God's glory." We just need eyes to see it. Jesus came to open our eyes - both by embodying and teaching this non-dual reality. Heaven and earth are one. The divine is continually being birthed within humanity. Immanuel - God with us.