The Pastor’s Pen

The Incarnation in Lent and Easter

I love the Incarnation, God becoming human and living among us in Jesus of Nazareth. We often think of God’s Incarnation and its implication around Christmas, the time of the Nativity, or birth of Christ. Most everybody, Christians that is, love the idea of God coming to us in the baby Jesus. How could we not? It is the beginning of a big new thing that God does for us. But there are reasons to love the Incarnation even more in Lent and Easter.

In Lent, we read and reflect upon the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus did amazing things when he came to Galilee and Judea. God living as a human, Jesus did not necessarily have all kinds of supernatural powers in infinite supply. Yes, there are miracle stories. But if he used supernatural powers to live a human life, it wouldn’t have been human, would it? Other kinds of religions and mythologies (as we call them) had stories of gods who looked or pretended to be human beings. This was usually to get over on some human or other and satisfy the deity’s desires or whims. Occasionally a god might be trying to help a human or a whole people, but not often. When we look at the God of the Hebrews, the God of Jesus as depicted in the Bible, we see a deity whose major concern was helping people to be all that they could be: loving, caring, responsible, observant, and communally minded people of promise – a promise made with each other and God; a people created to be like God.

It would be easy for God to look like a human and fool us. But to be a human, God had to put limits on God’s self. This is something God had already done in creating humans to be free (in God’s image) to be able to choose the good or the evil, the selfless or selfish. Jesus, embodying God in a human, could have been really bad for humans, but he chose instead to live a life of perfect submission to God’s will. God’s will, shown in and by Jesus’ life, is for full human flourishing for all. Helping one another to live fully is the Jesus way.

When I think of the events of Jesus teaching and ministry, I am reminded of how selfless he was, how selfless God is. Toward the end of his earthly life, his time nearing and in Jerusalem, Jesus suffered much – physical pain, emotional pain, and spiritual pain as well. And he did this because it was what God needed us to see him do. Why, so we can try to fathom the depth of God’s love for each of us, Christian or not, Jew or not, believer or not. Jesus went to the cross, not to die for all the wrongs we might commit in our lives, but trusting God to raise him to new life to demonstrate that no one, NO ONE, is beyond God’s love, care, and redeeming grace.

In the Easter event, God raised Jesus to life to show that death need not be the most powerful enemy in our lives. Living only for ourselves and not for others, trying only to get the highest score of health, wealth, and number of days that we can achieve, always ends the same. It ends with death. Living to God and to others transforms the world from a selfish and self-centered hellscape of personal death and destruction to a foretaste of God’s realm of peace, justice, and love.

The incarnation gets its start in the infant Jesus. The incarnation achieves God’s highest design and purpose for humankind when we perceive and receive God’s love made real for each and all in Christ’s resurrection. Christ rises not only from that grave on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but most importantly, from the potential grave that each human heart could become.

Join us to celebrate the final days of Lent and the beginning of the new Easter season at BUCC. The information is contained within this newsletter.