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God with Us
Advent is my favorite part of the liturgical year. I love the hymns, the candles, and the general atmosphere of “good cheer.” But what I love most is the reason-for-the-season: the birth of Jesus.
Yesterday marked the first Sunday of Advent, and what I was most struck by during the sermon was a discussion of the names of Jesus we are given in scripture. There are many, but Matthew begins his gospel with the most important two: Jesus the Messiah and Immanuel, which means God with us. These names represent the good news Matthew was writing to share.
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). ~ Matthew 1:23 TNIV
The fundamental basis of Holistic Body Theology is our identity in Christ, who we are as the children of God. We receive our identity because of two theological truths: imago Dei and the incarnation of Christ.
We are only who we are because of who Christ is. We are only who we are because of what Christ has done for us — not only the death and resurrection of Christ but also the birth and life of Christ. Because God chose to come to us — physically, humbly, weakly, fleshly –, we have the opportunity to receive the gift of adoption into the family of God.
Advent is the perfect time to remind ourselves of what God has done for us — and to look forward to the continued activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
So this advent season, take the opportunity to dwell on just what it means to anticipate the coming of Christ into the world. Consider Henri Nouwen’s words in The Genesee Diary:
The expectation of Advent is anchored in the event of God’s incarnation. The more I come in touch with what happened in the past, the more I come in touch with what is to come. The Gospel not only reminds me of what took place but also of what will take place. In the contemplation of Christ’s first coming, I can discover the signs of his second coming. By looking back in meditation, I can look forward in expectation. By reflection, I can project; by conserving the memory of Christ’s birth, I can progress to the fulfillment of his kingdom….
I pray that Advent will offer me the opportunity to deepen my memory of God’s great deeds in time and will set me free to look forward with courage to the fulfillment of time by him who came and is still to come.
Happy Advent, lovely readers! May this season be full of joyful anticipation of connection with the God who created us and called us by name into the gracious, merciful, and loving family of God.
Holiness and Beauty: A Meditation
Being an amateur philosopher and a lover of the liberal arts, beauty and aesthetics have always fascinated me. The image of God as Creator, the ultimate source of creativity, has inspired unspeakable awe and wonder. The idea that beauty embodies holiness, or that we may find holiness in the experience of beauty (visually or through the beautiful act or the recognition of beautiful character), sends me back to my undergrad days, reading Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, meditating on the character and mind of God.
God’s holiness is reflected in the beauty of the earth God has created—with just a word! What creative power that Word holds! We, in response, can participate in that holiness when we participate in beauty—enjoying it and creating it.
Consider Isaiah 58:11 and Matthew 6:28-33. What do they tell us about God?
The nature imagery grabs my attention: the well-watered garden, the sun-scorched desert, the splendor of Solomon, the lilies of the field. And then the context of these verses strikes me: Isaiah 58:11 comes as a promise in the midst of fasting, observing the Sabbath, and serving the poor and marginalized. Matthew 6:28 comes in the midst of the sermon on the mount, as Jesus taught his listeners how to live and serve God.
These passages, these promises, require action on our parts. They require response!
Yet they also promise — in the midst of stress, grief, brokenness, doubt, uncertainty about the future — that God will sustain. They promise that whether we bear concerns of finances, employment, community, love, wisdom and discernment, gifts (creative, intellectual, or spiritual), God will provide.
My mind leaps from scripture to scripture.
Psalm 8—what are human beings that God is mindful of us?
Psalm 42—the deer pants for water.
Isaiah 6—the imagery-laden call in God’s throne room.
Revelation 22:17 – all who are thirsty come to the river of life.
1 Kings 10:23-25—an account of Solomon’s glory. Particularly with Solomon, I think it’s interesting that with all we can do and create on our own, with all the glory that Solomon amassed, it cannot hold a candle to the creative word of God that would speak a lily into existence.
God’s creativity and beauty, like God’s holiness, are so wholly other; yet we are made in the image of that creative and beautiful and holy God, and our words contain the power to create as well.
John 15:1-17—the fruit of the vine that results when we abide in the vine that is Jesus. It is from God that we get our creative gifts, but to use them properly and to their full abundance, we must remain attached to the God through whom flows that creative power. That holiness. That holy, holy, holy holiness. Otherwise we are nothing more than Solomon’s glory, amazing for a moment but lost forever after.
Psalm 29 – the beauty of holiness, this is not a new thought! The Israelites understood this deep connection between beauty and holiness, this innate part of God’s glory that must be recognized and responded to. This creativity is what we were created for (Gen 1-2), to bring forth fruit from the earth.
God provides. God sustains. God — by that creative word — speaks life into us, and we in turn are able to speak life into each other, into the world.
What a holy, beautiful truth.
Why Jesus Taught In Parables
Yesterday we looked at how story can be used to share truth in a way that can be more easily received or just more beautifully and creatively shared. Today, let’s look at the example Jesus gave us for sharing truth through story: parables.
There are a lot of scholarly arguments out there for why Jesus spoke in parables, and I encourage you to study up if you’re interested in further analysis. For my purposes regarding holistic body theology and what we do with our bodies in the world, I have four reasons to share with you today.
Jesus spoke in parables…
1) so that only those whose hearts were ready would understand. Part of Jesus’ reason for sharing truth in parables was to fulfill the Isaiah’s prophecy that some would hear and not understand (Is 6:9-10; Mt 13:13-15). In fact, Jesus even used a parable to explain why he spoke in parables in Luke 8:4-15. As he later explained to his disciples, the hearts that were ready to hear God’s truth would understand, and the seed of truth would take root in their hearts and grow (vs. 15).
Sometimes we’re not ready to hear a truth from God. Maybe we’re locked in sinful behavior. Maybe we’re overcome with guilt and shame. Maybe we’re already wrestling with different truth from God, and adding one more would be too much all at once. God knows us intimately, from the hairs on our heads to the deepest secrets we won’t even admit to ourselves. God knows just when to reveal truth to us, when we’re finally ready to receive it and make use of it in our lives, and that revelation will never come too soon…or too late.
2) so that there would be more room for people to relate to the story in different ways. Most of the time, when Jesus told a parable, he was speaking to a crowd of people. These people were made up of both men and women, children and adults, poor and wealthy, religious leaders and laypeople. Often when Jesus was teaching, he had a different message for each audience, but rather than address each group individually, which would have taken forever, Jesus told one story that would teach each group a different lesson.
Take, for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37). Now, Jesus is speaking to the “expert in the law,” so the most obvious meaning of the parable is directed at people who fit in that category. But not everyone listening to the story was an expert in the law. Should they have just watched a fly land on some bread or pick blades of grass while Jesus was teaching a lesson that didn’t apply to them?
Consider the characters in this story:
a traveler – the victim of multiple crimes
a group of robbers – the perpetrators, motivated by greed (maybe hatred or anger) but not brave enough to act alone
a priest – the “man of God” who was more concerned about keeping the letter of the law (blood was considered “unclean” and required purification rituals) than showing compassion
a Levite – the member of the “priestly” clan, see above, also a man of importance and influence in the community
a Samaritan – the member of a group hated by Jewish people for their conflicting beliefs on correct worship of God who provided sacrificially to help the traveler despite racisim
an inkeeper – the man who provided the means to help the traveler heal, but only because he was paid
Ask yourself, who would you be in the story? Be honest. Maybe you take advantage of people when they’re vulnerable. Maybe you feel working with victims is beneath you or too much trouble. Maybe you are willing to help, but only if you get something back.
Jesus’ parables are multidimensional, multilayered, and designed with every member of the audience in mind–not just the people present on the hillside that day, but the people who have been reading the parables for centuries after.
3) so that he could get to the deeper truth behind the black-and-white Jewish law in a short time. For all his 33 years on earth, Jesus only spent 3 years in ministry. In only three years, Jesus had to squeeze in all the truth and promise and love available to the community of God in the present time and in all the time to come. Jesus had only three years to usher in the kingdom of God. And that was before the Internet and Skype and media and blogs and all the technological advances of our day. Jesus had only three years to bring the truth to the world, and he had to depend on human minds and hands to remember his teachings and write them down for future generations.
At the time that Jesus was teaching, Jewish law had expanded from the 10 Commandments of Moses’ time to hundreds of detailed, specific laws for every daily action, word, and thought. If Jewish law were a funnel, the 10 Commandments would be at the broad end at the top, and the law in Jesus’ day would be the little tip at the bottom. They had a law for everything, an exhaustive list of dos and don’ts that spanned a person’s entire existence from birth to death. So when Jesus showed up in town and started teaching, the experts wanted to know what laws Jesus was upholding, what laws he was breaking, and why.
But Jesus reminded his listeners in Matthew 5:17 that he had come to fulfill the law, to bring God’s truth for righteous living to its fullest completion, in freedom. That’s a tall order for only three years of ministry. Jesus’ parables were a way to reach down into the deeper truth of God, cutting through the black-and-white theology of their day. By refusing to engage in endless debate, Jesus was able to leave a timeless message of love, grace, and mercy through story.
4) so that human beings with human ears could through a human story relate to the divine truth in the human/divine Jesus. More than anything else, Jesus’ parables are a reflection of God’s choice to relate to us through the Incarnation. God sent Jesus–the Truth–in human form to walk like us, talk like us, and be like us. Jesus, the divine/human being, chose to speak to us in story, with human characters and a divine message. Our Emmanuel, this God-with-us, chose to bridge the gap between divine truth and human understanding with stories that allow us to meditate, ruminate, debate, delve, dwell, and finally discover some kernel of the Truth that God loves us, knows us intimately, and designed us to love and know God and each other in just the same way. The story of God is more than just written words in the Bible; the Word of God came as living flesh to live out the story of God among us.
If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how we can follow Jesus’ example to love and know intimately our brothers and sisters in the community of God, the body of Christ.
Holistic Body Theology 