You could say Christians have an incarnated worldview, an “en-fleshed” worldview. This isn’t just because incarnation is part of our spiritual imagination—meaning, the divine made visible in Jesus and indeed in all of creation—but because Jesus’ work addressed physical and emotional needs, needs that were en-fleshed, or experienced by actual human bodies. The Christian life is not merely about an inner, individual experience of faith and peace; even less about beliefs in our heads or hopes for the afterlife. We as Christians are here to care about real, everyday needs: aching, off-putting, inconvenient human needs.
In some Eucharist services, we summarize Jesus’ work by repeating the phrase: “he broke bread with outcasts, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor.” And in Luke 4:14-21 [lectionary during week this essay was originally published], we read similar language. Near the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus reads from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” Then he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” referring to his own ministry. He leaves no doubt that the effect of his life and ministry will have a tangible effect on real, this-worldly needs. This is the en-fleshed, incarnated ministry Jesus was all about. This message and work is what we too must be about.
Now, when I translate Jesus’ in-the-flesh emphasis into the language of my own social context, I think that proclaiming release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and setting the oppressed free leads us to greater compassion and advocacy for those emotionally and psychologically sick with addiction; those beset with mental anguish, disease, working-class poverty, or the threat of runaway incarceration; or those in bondage to materialism, which includes most of us. If certain modern-day expressions of Christianity have nothing healing, transformative, or hopeful to say to these in-the-flesh problems, they have nothing to say. Any expression of Christianity that is only about a “personal relationship with Jesus,” or about life after death has lost a connection to the Jesus Movement.
This is why even someone as conservative as the last leader of the Southern Baptists, Russel Moore, recently wrote that in the U.S. we’re living in a time of a “post-Christian church.” What does he mean by a “post-Christian church”? He’s saying that much of the white Christian movement in the U.S. has become so estranged from anything to do with Jesus that it can no longer be called Christian. He (himself an evangelical) points out that survey after survey shows alarming numbers of white evangelicals believing the lies that sparked the insurrection at the capital. This movement aligns more with the cause of white nationalism and white grievance than with Christianity—even if it poses as Christian and uses Christian slogans. The separation of this large segment of American Christianity from anything resembling the life and ministry of Jesus is, to quote Moore, “the sign not of a post-Christian culture but of a post-Christian Christianity, not of a secularizing society but of a paganizing church.” These are potent words on the lips of a prominent evangelical leader.
Many who express white grievance believe that people shouldn’t be compelled to support those of lesser means. Yet while this may be a popular political position, it is not a Christian position. Others believe people should be generous and share wealth, but without involvement of the government. Yet government budgets reflect the values of a people, and people who decline to support social programs that don’t benefit them personally are unlikely to marshal private efforts to lift up similar programs. They may attend to the needs of their in-groups (and often do), but not significantly to those beyond tightly maintained margins. This is why pushing responsibility for care of the marginalized onto individual persons fails, especially when individualism, personal liberty, and in-group loyalty are seemingly prized above all else.
The agenda of white nationalism does seem to favor personal gain and liberty, military might, and individualism above all else. It is almost anathema to “love your neighbor” if it means sacrificing one’s own autonomy or one’s so-called freedom in extending that love. What does Christianity have to say to this? It says that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free. These are to be the values of those following in Jesus’ way, and they bear no resemblance to the values of white nationalism. These values are challenging. But they are, undeniably, the values that characterize the Christian life.
Followers of Jesus must ask: Does our faith make a difference for people suffering with in-the-flesh, unmet needs? Does our faith help us to see and care about those needs? Early in his ministry, Jesus stood up in a religious gathering and aligned himself with those challenging words of Isaiah. And people tried to throw him off a cliff! Yet, he stood up anyway, as did Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday we celebrated last week. May we be inspired by such courage.
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