“When God wanted to redeem a people He didn’t save us through a philosophy or a bunch of ideas. He saved us through a person, a flesh and blood person.
Incarnational ministry that is modeled on Christ is an ‘en-fleshed’ ministry. The Christian faith is very much a ‘fleshly’ religion. Jesus took our sins in His body and suffered in His body. He commands us to love one another and demonstrates how to love by washing the feet of His disciples. James warns us about the emptiness of a religion of mere words that says ‘be warm and well fed,’ and does not meet the needs of the actual physical body that is cold and malnourished. We are commanded to greet one another with a holy kiss (anyone ever experienced a cyber-kiss). We extend the right hand of fellowship. When we set apart someone for ministry we do so by the laying on of hands. Our most sacred practices of baptism and the Lord’s Supper involve the senses – we feel the water, we see the cup and the bread, we smell the bread and the wine, we taste them. I love the description that the Heidelberg Catechism gives of the Lord’s Supper – it reminds us that as surely as we see the elements with our eyes, touch them with our hands and taste them with our lips, so surely has the blood of Christ availed to atone for our sins.
All of this is very sensual stuff. Grace is communicated through these sensual means. So, I really don’t see how you can call something a church which is not ‘en-fleshed.'”
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