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Advent Reflections, Pt. 3: "Reclaiming Our Humanity"

“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

This prayer is taken from the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer book of the Anglican Church. We prayed it at two different points in the service this past Sunday as we talked about the Incarnation. In reflecting on both the prayer and what the Incarnation itself means for us, here are a few thoughts:

1. Jesus Redeemed Creation from Within
God didn’t broadcast a message or publish a tract or throw answers from the outside. He entered our world and worked His redemption from within it. There is so much to be said here about God’s slow, subversive ways and our penchant for turning to the quick and the dramatic. But most of that needs to be pondered more than proclaimed. 

2. Matter Matters
The Incarnation stands in the face of any Gnostic influence that may creep into Christianity. We do not believe in a dualistic world in which the “spiritual” is better than the “material”. The Jewish-Christian story begins with a good God creating a world– of matter!– and calling it good. Sin, then, infected God’s world and turned brother against brother and resulted in grossly depersonalizing acts of violence and cruelty against each other. But God’s response was not to “wipe it all out and start over”, as we sometimes imagine the Flood to be. A huge– and often-ignored– part of the Flood Story is that God goes to great lengths to preserves His original creation: Noah and his family, two of each creature, male and female, and so on.

Matter, it seems, matters to God. Not only was Jesus’ pre-death body physical, His post-resurrection body was material– albeit reconstituted to have some new properties like being able to pass through walls! The Gospel writers make it a point to show how Jesus ate meals and had scars on His body after His resurrection. He was no ghost. All this and more tell us that our goal is not to leave our bodies and escape to heaven (though we will indeed do that for a short while), but rather to learn now how to glorify God in His world now so that we will know how to live when we receive glorified bodies and live on “new heaven/new earth”, when the spiritual and the physical worlds will be united at last (Eph. 1:10; Rev. 21).

3. Our Vocation as God’s Image-Bearers is Reclaimed
There is no room to suggest that some vocations are “spiritual” and others that are just “normal.” (Of course, it remains possible that some vocations could be immoral!) Unless we’re engaging in a job that is sinful or oppressive to others, every vocation can be reclaimed.

How? By, first of all, doing that job “as unto the Lord.” Much has been said and written on this. But the second aspect is less discussed: when we do our jobs in such a way that reflects God’s image back into His world, we are living as God made us to. Every piece of art or music that is beautifully made, every employee that is thoughtfully led, every customer that is personally dignified and respected reflects God’s own wise and loving order into His world.

Consider this: Jesus spent the first 30 years of His life as a carpenter! How’s that for an “unspiritual vocation.” The Incarnation lifts and reclaims our “ordinary” human vocations and allows them to be instances to shine God’s image into His world.

Shall we pray, once again?

“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”