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?

Trapped in a Tree only to be Set Free!

The crunch of footsteps following Jesus suddenly stopped. An eerie stillness surrounded the confused crowd as a gentle afternoon breeze ruffled the leaves of one single fig tree standing above them unprotected. The subtle noise of something unusual in the tree drew the spectators' eyes upward. In amazement, one by one they spotted him. The small stubby frame of a man latched awkwardly around the smooth bark of a low hanging branch. Instantaneously, a piercing anger shot through the crowd as they realized it was him—the greedy, selfish, annoying tax collector. As they recognized his wide eyes and burning cheeks, their anger hastily changed into a loud clap of laughter that ripped through the silent vacuum that stood between them.

Insecurity encompassed him like a fierce, suffocating wave of emotion. The overwhelming feeling made him forget why he had climbed the tree in the first place. Then, clearly, distinctly he heard a calm voice break through the orange noise of laughter: “Zacchaeus, come down, I must stay at your house today.” Startled, he looked down to observe Jesus addressing him unfazed by the jarring crowd. Zacchaeus would never be the same. Jesus makes this plain in His assertion: “Today, salvation has come to this house.”

The Truth of Love: Better felt than defined

“Where love is lacking, there can be no truth . . .” Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Certainty is a feeling. That strange sensation we get in those rare moments of clarity. That moment that caresses us like a light stroke of yellow sun brushing through the gray clouds converging on our skin. That crisp feeling of stepping out of a rumbling, confused, crowded cabin into a pristine morning of fresh snow.

It is in that glimmer, if we are to view it spatially, that we realize the disturbing bankruptcy of our predicament—an impoverished soul. It is in that instant, if we are to view it temporally, that we realize all that we know is absurd and most certainly wrong. Sure, we had some form of knowledge: an experience maybe, possibly a piece of information, or even a fact from a book. Sure, we had tasted a tinge of ecstasy: perhaps a warm glance of acceptance or perchance the firm strength of control. We had become quite accomplished. We found respect and admiration. We discovered security and meaning. We had it—truth!

Nothing was wanting but love.

Jr. High Sucks: A Reflection on my adolescent years

Do you remember that one kid in Jr. High that was three years ahead in math and had no social skills?

I was that kid.

In my middle school the halls were segregated by grade. To journey into another grades territory was to invite torment into ones already shaky adolescent existence. This transverse of agony was part of my regular schedule. The long gray trip down a long line of gray lockers bringing me to the 8th grade math room—the place of my affliction. My small sixth grade frame traveled generating the silent reverberation of footsteps in the empty hall muffled by the hectic orange noise of students in the distance; a noise, along with my dread, that increased with each step. Shuffling with my head drooped, I studied the checkered floor hoping to distract myself from the looming crowd and what I knew was about to take place. No one ever noticed me at first and I always hoped that, somehow miraculously, I had become invisible. But, without fail: “Hey guys! Look who decided to show up, Doogie Howser!” a struggling misfit, who spotted me as easy prey, would ecstatically squeak. Then their daily ritual began as they circled me as goliaths around David bouncing me back and forth like a human pinball. The memories still haunt me: girls laughing, the warmth of red on my blushing face, my backpack jarring from side to side as the older boys pushed me with increasing force until I crashed onto the floor.

I hated myself.

Insecurity encompassed me like a fierce, suffocating wave of emotion. Insecurity will do strange things to a boy who is trying to find his place in the mess of this world. It did strange things to me as it manifested its ugly head in different ways as I discovered various false refuges (and religions) of security. More to come on this . . .

Out of Control

If I have a love affair with anything, it is with the desire to control. If I was a superhero, the ability to control would be my superpower. I would do stuff like stop time to work on my 5 year plan, or read peoples’ minds to know for sure what they thought of me, or fast forward in time to verify my future. I would be a narcissistic, boring superhero. (Shoot, I’m simply narcissistic and not even a superhero—boring.)

Life continually leaves me void of control; full of emotion, but absent of control. Motion, circular motion, my life is an ever increasing circular motion, like a carousel gone wrong—out of control. Motion creates emotion. I hate that. You can’t control emotions. They blindside you. One second you’re giddy and the next you’re crying. I never used to cry; now I feel like I’m never not crying. I cried the other day when I saw the trailer of a movie. The frickin’ trailer of a movie!

A friend told me infants after being molested or abused will hit their heads against the wall. They have lost any sense of feeling or emotion. They bang their skulls against the cement, so they can feel something—anything! We cut ourselves, so we can control what we feel.

My whole life is about control, or atleast, trying to control what I feel.

I think God has us right where he wants us when we realize we have no control. Control robs us from the beauty of the dynamic motion of life, exchanging it for something static and sterile, something lifeless. Love is the antithesis of control. I guess that is why for me love is the scariest feeling in the world. There is more control in fear and hate than in love. Look at what love did to Jesus. Love murdered him. He couldn’t help but go to the cross, He loves us so. At the apex of his display of love he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” I know Jesus was God and all, but that doesn’t sound to me like he felt he was in control. Only love would drive someone to do this, to go there.

I am glad Jesus is the superhero and I am not. Jesus’ superpower is love and he uses his superpower to free me from my love affair with control.