Incarnation’s Significance

Incarnation’s Significance August 19, 2013

The Incarnation of God in Christ has become fashionable. Not only does it mean God has taken up our case by becoming what we are, but it has also reached into a “theology of creation” — or the excellence of creation and the justification of life in this world. A recent example of probing Incarnation can be found in the mesmerizing book by Christian Wiman called My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.

Wiman’s approach is not from or through the world of science as someone in modernity or postmodernity seeks to make meaning of faith and religion after science but instead he approaches faith through the world of poetry and consciousness, all wrapped up in a body dying of cancer. Here are his words on incarnation, with my own formatting:

… there is no permutation of humanity in which Christ is not present.

If every Bible is lost,
if every church crumbles to dust,
if the last believer in the last prayer opens her eyes and lets it all finally go,

Christ will appear on this earth as calmly and casually as he appeared to the disciples walking to Emmaus after his death, who did not recognize this man to whom they had pledged their very lives; this man whom they had seen beaten, crucified, abandoned by God; this man who, after walking the dusty road with them, after sharing an ordinary meal and discussing the scriptures, had to vanish once more in order to make them see.

As one might see on a sheet of paper in a classroom, “Discuss.”


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