Encompassing Power of the Incarnation
Incarnational Christianity is rooted in a shared experience of the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit is one, so the life we live as Christians is one. There can be no division among those who are living according to the 'breath of life'. In Christ there is no Greek nor Jew, no Coptic nor English. Even while we recognize that there are differences in culture, these are not allowed to divide because division among and between Christians is not of the one Spirit. We are not made one because we do the same things, or have the same liturgical language and customs, but we are one because we have One Life.
In my own small congregation in Kent, we experience this diversity. We are drawn from a variety of backgrounds - British, Coptic, Indian, Syrian, Russian and Bulgarian - yet we experience a oneness in Christ which transforms and transcends culture and ethnicity. In Christ, we are a new creation and a new people. This is only possible for us when we leave behind 'doing things' for God and seek to live out the Incarnation in our own lives by the power and presence of the Spirit of God.
The Incarnation calls us to live together in peace and allows us to worship together even though we are from different tribes and cultures, and speak with a variety of tongues. The confusion of Babel is overcome in the Church. But the Incarnation also reaches out into all cultures and peoples. There is a genuine brotherhood between Copt and Greek, Russian and Briton in the Church because we share one life. But the Church is also genuinely manifested in Coptic, Greek, Russian and British culture. Indeed, when Kenyan Orthodox worship God in their own languages, it is as natural an expression of Orthodox worship as in any church in Egypt, Greece, Russia or Britain. This is because all cultures can be transformed into vehicles for participation in the Divine life.
There was a time when the Coptic culture was pagan, but it has been transformed by becoming an expression of the universal Church. There is no reason why American and British culture should not also be transformed into a life-giving expression of the Body of Christ. The Word of God has become Emmanuel, 'God with us', and this guarantees that all human cultures can be transformed.
When the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, replied to the Angel Gabriel saying, "Let it be to me according to your word" (Lk. 1:38), everything changed. From that moment on, God was no longer external to His creation, supporting and sustaining every atomic and sub-atomic particle in being, but He had Himself, in the Person of the Divine Word of God, entered into the deepest possible union with His creation and had become part of that which He had made. As the Agpeya teaches us: “the Father chose you, and the Holy Spirit overshadowed you, and the Son condescended and took flesh from you”.(Prime or 1st Hour)
In the Incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we discover that God Himself has become as we are. He shares our human condition in all things yet without sin. As the author of the book of Hebrews says, "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren". (Heb. 2:11) How are we 'all of one'? Surely because in His humanity, Christ shares with us the same heavenly Father, teaching us to pray to 'Our Father in heaven'. He simultaneously shares the same earthly father Adam and thus shares the same nature of humanity.
As the author to the Hebrews adds, "Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, … Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, … For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted." (Heb. 2:14-18) The fullest meaning of the Incarnation is found only when we consider the whole life of Christ. It is no accident that He willed to experience the human mode of existence in every stage. He chose to become fully human, yet sin is no part of human nature. Rather the Fathers teach us that it is a moral corruption of the will. Therefore Christ, the Incarnate Word could be both authentically human while also being free from sin. Through his experience of hunger, tiredness, even fear, he genuinely participated in the natural weakness which we all share, but in the Incarnation we are shown that it is not necessary to fall into sin.
How can this be?
In the first place, because Christ experiences his humanity while living entirely in the will of the Father. And in the second place because this renewed humanity is offered to us by Christ, so that we might ourselves participate in it through baptism, the Eucharist and the spiritual life. Christ is not simply a good example of how to be a human; indeed we could never follow His example on our own. Rather, he is the second Adam, a new beginning for our own life, and for all humanity. But we must participate in Christ even as he participates in our humanity.
In some Christian communities, the great fact of the Crucifixion seems to overwhelm all other aspects of the Incarnation. I have belonged to Protestant groups where the Sunday communion service is similar in many respects to a funeral service. There is what might be called a 'Real Absence'. Christ is recalled as someone who has died, died for us indeed, but is not experienced as our life and light. He is not present, even while His passion is recalled with gratitude. Such a form of Christianity misses most of the glorious substance of the Gospel.
If there is no participation, then there can be no salvation because we are not saved without sharing in the Life and the Light of the world. We are called to be ‘partakers of the divine nature’ and this precludes a reduction of salvation to the simply juridical.
The Word of God took human flesh and He became man so that we might share in His own life. As St. Cyril and St. Severus teach us, it was necessary that a man remedy the fault which a man had introduced, but it was beyond any man, corrupt in his will, to take up again the conflict with Satan, our ancient foe. What Adam lost in the Garden of Eden was not the nature of our humanity, but the presence within him of the Holy Spirit, the true 'breath of life'. The Word of God is not afraid to become truly human, while remaining unchanged in His Divinity because the human condition is not sinful by nature; rather it is made so by the corruption of will. St. Severus follows St. Cyril in professing that sin itself is not hypostatic, it is not a reality itself, it is rather a perversion, and a choosing that which is less than God. Therefore, when the Word of God becomes man, a man whose will is turned properly and perfectly towards God, he makes our humanity fit for the presence of the Holy Spirit and restores to us the 'breath of life'. He has become a 'second Adam', since in Him humanity has a new beginning and is restored to the Garden of Eden even though this promise is only partially fulfilled in this present life. The whole of creation is renewed by the coming of God, as the Agpeya teaches us: "You came into the world through Your love for mankind, and all creation rejoiced in Your coming".
This perfect and perfected human life is personally and properly experienced by the Incarnate Word from conception, through childhood and adulthood, even as far as the Cross, and beyond the Cross into the transformed and transforming life of the Resurrection. This life is more than a model for us as we struggle in our own human experience, rather it is a life in which we come to participate, most especially through the sacraments, and the spiritual life.
We do not merely look at the Cross and give thanks that Christ died for us; rather we are called to die ourselves through baptism and the daily death of self, so that our wills might be renewed. So that we might also become the place where the Holy Spirit dwells. We are to live an Incarnational Christianity, one which touches all aspects of our lives and which desires nothing less than to become entirely united with the Will of God.
Why are we often afraid to accept the teaching of the Apostles and the Fathers that the end of human existence is to be united to God by grace? There is a proper rejection of the idea that we become God by nature. Sometimes this caution spills into a rejection of any sense of participation in the life of the Holy Trinity and our Christian faith becomes a fruitless moralism. I have experienced this in a very gradual manner, coming to understand that I am not transformed by my own efforts, but rather I am enlightened only by the presence of the Holy Spirit within me.
This does not mean that I fast or pray less or do not need to share in the Eucharist and other sacraments. But the direction of my spiritual life is subtly different. I am no longer trying to do things to make God happy with me. I am no longer working hard to be a 'successful' Christian. I am simply trying to live in and with Christ by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps outwardly it looks like I am doing a lot less for Christ, but I hope I am doing a great deal more with and in Christ.
An Incarnational Christianity is that which St. Seraphim of Sarov taught his disciples when he said to them, "acquiring the Spirit of God is the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ's sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God". (Seraphim of Sarov, On the Acquisition of the Holy Spirit) This is how we become truly Christian, living the human life which Christ lived, indeed participating in the same life, as far as it is possible for us.
There is no life in fasting or other good works if they are pursued as ends in themselves. But to become a person in whom the Holy Spirit can dwell, not only on Sunday but throughout every moment of every day, this is the goal of all properly human life and allows us to participate in true life. St. Severus says, "man has been marked by the spirit of life, acquiring, by an intimate relationship with God, a blessing which exceeds nature. For 'He breathed into his face the breath of life and the man became a living soul'"(Severus of Antioch, Critique du Tome, p. 19)
Just as the Incarnate Word has experienced all stages of life, so we must live these also in Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must be born into a new humanity by baptism, even as Christ sanctified the waters by His own baptism. We must enter into the wilderness and struggle against Satan and temptation with prayer and fasting. We must experience rejection, misunderstanding and even persecution. We must come to the Garden and in the face of the Cross participate in the words of Christ: "not My will, but Yours, be done." (Lk. 22:42)
And having died to our self, and living to Christ, we will also participate in his Resurrection, both now as a true principle of existence and in eternity. We are called to embrace the Incarnation with a sense of maximalism. We do not ask how little we need to do to be called Christians because we desire nothing more than to be filled to overflowing with the life of Christ, which is the Spirit of God.
