What in the Incarnation?

Ben and I have been attending some pretty thought provoking workshops here in Miami at the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) conference. In the world of Christian Community Development people talk a lot about living “incarnationally”. This word, incarnational, keeps showing up in every workshop we attend. It is not a word you will find in the dictionary. Incarnational is a coined term popularly used by many Christians to mean, ‘a person’s embodiment of the gospel in a concrete location.’ It’s not a novel idea, right; we as the Church are the body of Christ, so it logically makes sense to refer to this as living incarnationally. Not so fast though. I think we need to remember a few important things when we use the term incarnational to describe our outreach. This is not semantics; it could mean the difference between pointing to Jesus or displacing Him. Here are two important qualifications I would like to offer on the subject:

One, there is only one true incarnation, and he is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the only pure embodiment of the gospel; we are not. I think we would all agree with this statement. Yet, I find myself at times eclipsing Jesus in my attempt to be incarnational rather than simply pointing people to Jesus (as well as looking for them to point me to Jesus), the one full incarnation. When we say we are living incarnationally this does not mean we are Jesus but that we represent and point to Jesus.

Second, we must acknowledge that incarnational living is a two way street. If we are able to embody the gospel through the spirit in a concrete location, then it would follow that we will at times also have the gospel embodied before us by others. We reciprocally point one another to Jesus. I know when I think of living incarnationally, I think of it as my behavior towards others and not others’ behavior towards me. We must expand our view of living incarnationally to also include learning from others’ incarnational living.

What do you think? Do you think speaking of living incarnationally in our neighborhoods undermines the incarnation of Christ, why or why not? What other dangers do you think there are in using this language? How would you define living incarnationally? And what does living incarnationally mean to you?

Becoming New Wine

As a New Wine intern I have often had the task of answering the question: ‘what is New Wine?’ You too may still be asking yourself this question. Well, I have come up with many short, pithy explanations I offer on the subject. Such as, ‘New Wine is not just defined by what we do; it’s about what we cause people to do.’ And, ‘New Wine connects the theological abstract with the practical concrete.’ Nevertheless, these short statements also fail to fully draw a clear picture of New Wine. The truth is the lives that have been changed by New Wine make it known best. My life, among many others changed by NW, is one that helps explicate not only ‘what is New Wine, New Wineskins’ but, more importantly, ‘who is New Wine.’

Insecurities entrench us all. Mine extend to my adolescent years of humiliation at the hands of ruthless peers. Insecurity rooted in my young torment is what led me to cling to many false securities into adulthood. I didn’t know it at the time but academics, popularity, and even Christianity became a way for me to control my value and worth among my friends.

Like the Apostle Paul, my Christian resume was exquisite: a Christian of Christians; in regards to the law, bible reading and prayer daily; as for zeal, sharing my faith with strangers on the streets every weekend boldly. Along these lines, I came to Multnomah Seminary with high expectations of mastering biblical education and proving my worth to the Christian world, not to mention God.

During my first year of Seminary I became involved with New Wine, because I felt I shared its value for engaging culture. However, I learned overtime that my form of cultural engagement was an awkward, aggressive attempt to validate myself to culture, instead of loving those who don’t validate me. New Wine exposed my false securities as the brick and mortar of a fortress that had for so long imprisoned me from engaging both God and culture.

The community of New Wine has led me into a repeated discovery of what it feels like to be loved by God when our walls of security are stripped away—vulnerable yet secure. Through my trips with Dr. Metzger and other New Wine students to PSU, KPDQ, and OSU, I observed and experienced the possibility of engaging culture in the freedom of a new found security in God’s love. Such engagement looks much different than what I knew before being a part of New Wine. It is standing in front of a PSU psychology class and looking with love at a girl that just asked you, “do you think I am going to hell?” It is six Multnomah students sharing meals with six Buddhists and learning about their hurts and pains. It’s painful, beautiful, and simply life changing.

I am one of the many who have become forever changed through the theological extending and practical experiencing of New Wine. Another who has been changed, my roommate and good friend, Benjamin Malick, likes to say: 'we are not human-doings; we are human-beings'. Likewise, New Wine is more than the sum of its activities; we who have collectively been marked by the love of God in a way that frees us to engage culture are New Wine.

Was Christ a Clown?

As I read the Bible sometimes, I picture Jesus in his humanity with a sort of halo around his head during his treks through Galilee. The French painter Georges Rouault captures the humanity of Jesus (seen in the above picture) in a much different way. His depictions of Christ are not with a halo but as a clown, as one despised and mocked. A clown represents the victims of society, the refuse of the world, the perishable, the transient, the foolish (1 Cor. 1:26); this is what Christ took on in his humanity according to Rouault’s art.

Rouault was born 1881 in Paris into a poor family. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer. This early experience as a glass painter is the likely source of the heavy black contouring and glowing colours which characterize Rouault's mature painting style. When you view Rouault’s work, as in the picture above, what do you feel?

The sorrow and suffering that comes with everyday life is something Rouault fully engaged in his art. In both Rouault’s depictions of clowns and Christ, there is the same downward curve of the lips, the same elongation of the face, and the same deep emanation of suffering from the eyes. This is the tragic plight of humanity according to Rouault.

There are those who have criticized Rouault for his melancholy depictions of Christ. Some have even labeled him irreligious. He explains, however, that his art was meant to give a taste of the extent of God’s compassion, “I saw clearly that ‘the clown’ was myself, ourselves . . . this rich, spangled costume is given us by life, we’re all of us clowns . . . wear a ‘spangled costume,’ but if we are caught unawares . . . who would dare to claim that he is not moved to his very depths by immeasurable pity . . . King or emperor, what want to see in the man facing me is his, and the more exalted his position the more misgivings I have about his soul.” (Harvey Cox, A Feast of Fools, p. 139)

I think often we want the resurrection without the cross, the promise of hope without any suffering, new life without the death of the old. Rouault reminds us that it is through the pain and suffering that God’s joy and promise comes. In the same way that Rouault’s paintings were made to have light shine through them, the light of God’s hope goes through the cross to the resurrection.

As a group of us reflected on a few paintings of Rouault’s today, we were astounded at how this master painter could portray Christ in utter sorrow but at the same time in amazing serenity. We came to the following conclusion: in the midst of taking on our shame and pain, Christ entered into a new confidence and peace in his Father’s love. There is symmetry between Christ’s endurance of pain and the embrace of his Father’s love. Christ only enters the pain because of the warmth of love he first feels from the Father and that warmth grows in the midst of the suffering.

This made us think about how Christ’s engagement of humanity as the clown impacts our interactions in society today. How do you think the metaphor of the clown informs how we should relate to others? Have you experienced a ‘clown encounter’ in your life?