+In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Just four Saturdays ago we were celebrating Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation.
The word "in-carn-ation" means, literally, the in-flesh-ment of God in Jesus Christ, as in St. John's wondrous announcement that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).
25 years ago, for my Christmas sermon in 1997, I coined a new word.
I had noticed, as many others had in 1997, that "Spirituality" had become a "Big Thing."
Lots of people were discovering that they had a spirituality, or were trying to discover what their spirituality might be.
When I searched the Internet, "Spirituality" outpaced "Incarnation" by a factor of 20 to 3.
One of the questions that people ask clergy, especially in difficult times like ours, is: "Why did God make the world this way?"
Of course, no one has the final answer to that question, but the Incarnation does mean this:
that God, who created the world this way, became a human being and submitted God's own self to the consequences of God's own creation.
As Christians, we witness to the fact that, in Jesus Christ, God suffered the consequences of God's own creation.
And we witness to the fact that, in Jesus Christ, God took on the risks of life and suffered as we do.
The Incarnation means that we know that God knows from experience what it is to be human, what it is to be hungry and thirsty, what it is to be to be rejected and ridiculed, what it is to be abandoned, and even what it is to "die as one of us."
And so, on that Christmas 25 years ago, I coined a new word for us to use instead of "spirituality," and that word is "incarnality."
Because although everyone has a spirituality, only Christians have an incarnality.
What does it mean to have an "incarnality?"
First, Christian "incarnality" means that the way to God is through human flesh.
As St. John writes in his first Epistle (4:20):
"Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen."
Second, Christian "incarnality" means that whenever human flesh suffers, God suffers.
Remember Jesus' Great Parable of the Separation of the Sheep and the Goats?
The King says to the sheep: "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; sick and in prison and you visited me."
And the sheep ask: "When did we do that?"
And Jesus tells them: "As you did it to the least these, you did it to me."
Buddhist and Hindu spiritualities say that the suffering deserve to suffer because they have bad karma.
Some so-called Christian spiritualities aren't much better.
A spirituality can ignore the suffering of a homeless person; Christian incarnality cannot.
A spirituality can ignore public policies which perpetuate poverty and prejudice; Christian incarnality cannot.
Finally, Christian "incarnality" means compassion for sinful, human flesh.
Every Christmas hymn and carol praises Jesus as the Savior who frees us from sin, and Christmas points us to the Cross, where Love made flesh died for us sinners.
So Christian "incarnality" means, in St. Paul's wonderful words, that "Everyone is a brother or sister for whom Christ died" (Romans 14:15).
Incarnality has a flip side, which is seen in the Collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas, which you will find at the top of page 214 in The Book of Common Prayer.
Please turn to it now:
"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 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."
But how can we share the divine life when we are merely human?
In exactly the same way that Jesus shared the divine life when he was merely human, and that brings us to the beginning of this morning's Gospel.
So, please turn to the Gospel reading in your lectionary insert.
"Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit. . . ."
We share the divine life in our humanity the same way Jesus shared the divine life in his humanity— by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit and Incarnality come together in Jesus' Mission Statement from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, because this Mission Statement combines both "sharing the divine life" and "compassion for human flesh":
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. . .
. . . to bring good news to the poor. . ."
Luke's Gospel is the Gospel of the poor.
In Matthew's Beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit"; but in Luke, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor."
It's only in Luke's Gospel that Jesus tells the parable of poor Lazarus at the gate of the rich man.
Jesus has compassion for suffering human flesh.
Jesus' Mission Statement continues:
". . . to proclaim release to the captives. . ."
The word translated "release" means forgiveness.
Luke's Gospel is the Gospel of forgiveness.
It's only in Luke' Gospel that Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son, whose Prodigal Father forgives his son before his son has any chance to confess.
And when we pray the Lord's Prayer, the word translated "forgive" is the same Greek word translated as "release" when Jesus says that he has come "to proclaim release to the captives."
In other words, we could just as accurately pray: "Release us from our trespasses, as we release those who trespass against us."
Jesus has compassion for sinful human flesh.
The Mission Statement concludes:
". . . and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And so it is that "incarnality" and "sharing the divine life" of the Spirit come together.
But wait! There's more!
Please turn to our reading from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, which will move us to a new and higher level of the mystery of Incarnality and Spirit.
Paul begins:
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ."
This is an astonishing advance in the mystery of Incarnality:
not only is Jesus God made flesh, we who are human flesh are the Body of Christ!
And that means that Incarnality is not only an individual reality: it is also a corporate reality.
Paul continues: "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free— and we were all made to drink of one Spirit."
This is an astonishing advance in the mystery of the Spirit:
not only does the Spirit empower the individual believer; the Spirit also empowers the Body of Christ.
And this corporate dimension of Incarnality and Spirit has consequences.
The first consequence is that none of us is unimportant.
"Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.
"If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.
"And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.
"If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
"But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
"If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body."
St. Andrew's, which is the Body of Christ in this place, needs each one of you, and each of you has a contribution to make to our life together.
The second consequence is that no one can claim superiority.
"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'
"On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this.
"But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another."
And the final consequence follows from the first two: we are all interdependent, we are all interrelated:
"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it."
And Paul concludes: "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."
May God continue to fill St. Andrew's with the Holy Spirit, so that we may continue to reach out in compassion to one another and to the whole world.
Amen.
AFTERWORD
From the Incarnality and Spirit sermon:
"25 years ago, for my Christmas sermon in 1997, I coined a new word.
"I had noticed, as many others had in 1997, that "Spirituality" had become a "Big Thing."
"Lots of people were discovering that they had a spirituality, or were trying to discover what their spirituality might be.
"When I searched the Internet, "Spirituality" outpaced "Incarnation" by a factor of 20 to 3."
Here's "the rest of the story":
In 1997, when I searched the Internet for the word "Spirituality," there were 294 listings or "hits."
And then I wondered how many entries there might be for "Incarnation"— and there were only 44.
So "spirituality" outpaced "incarnation" by 85% to 15%, or 20 to 3.
Guess what happened less than a year later, in September 1998?
Something called "Google!"
Today if you Google "spirituality," you'll get about 4 billion, 690 million hits, and if you Google "incarnation," you'll get 1 billion, 280 million hits.
So "incarnation" has closed the gap, but it's still about 4 to 1 in favor of "spirituality" over "incarnation."
And so, on that Christmas 25 years ago, I coined a new word for us to use as Christians instead of "spirituality," and the word I coined was "incarnality."
I know that I coined the word because I searched for the word "incarnality" on the internet in 1997, and didn't get any hits whatsoever.
Today if you search "incarnality," you'll get a few hits, but they're all after 1997!
And now, here's that original Christmas sermon:
+In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
After the angels leave, the shepherds say to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they go with haste and find Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. Then they tell Mary and Joseph that the angels told them that their son is the Savior, the Messiah, and the Lord.
And Mary, smiling, says "Would you like to hold Him?"
"Would you like to hold Him?" That is the offer of Christmas. *
"Spirituality" is big these days.
Lots of people are discovering that they have a spirituality, or are trying to discover what their spirituality might be.
Last week I checked the Internet, and there were 294 listings under "Spirituality!"
Now you might expect listings for Christian spirituality, and there were some, including Jesuit spirituality, and Celtic spirituality; but there was also Islamic spirituality and Jewish spirituality, goddess spirituality, male spirituality, women's spirituality, gay spirituality, and even business spirituality.
And the offer of Christmas is, "Would you like to hold Him?"
Most if not all of you know this passage from St. John's Gospel:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
"The Word became flesh." The Word became in-carn-ate.
So I decided to look up Incarnation on the Internet, and instead of the nearly 300 entries for "Spirituality, I discovered only 44, and almost all of them were either the names of Episcopal Churches of the Incarnation or references to the latest incarnations of Star Trek, or Wonder Woman— there was even one about the latest incarnation of an Hawaiian Bed and Breakfast!
What a shame!
Lots of entries for Spirituality, but hardly anything for Incarnation.
And the reason it's such a shame is that while everyone has a spirituality, only Christians know the Mystery of the Incarnation.
One of the questions I hear both children and adults ask, especially in difficult times is: "Why did God make the world this way?" Of course I don't have the answer to that question, but the Incarnation means that the God who created all there is became a human being and submitted himself to the consequences of his own creation.
Only Christians witness to the fact that in Jesus Christ, God suffered the consequences of his own creation.
Only Christians witness to the fact that in Jesus Christ, God took on the risk of life and suffered as we do.
The Incarnation means that we know that God knows from experience what it is to be human, what it is to be hungry and thirsty, what it is to be to be rejected and ridiculed, what it is to be abandoned, and even what it is to "die as one of us."
And the offer of Christmas is, "Would you like to hold Him?"
And so this evening I want to coin a new word for us as Christians to use beginning here at St. Gregory's, instead of Spirituality, and that word is Incarnality.
Incarnality.
Because everyone has a spirituality, but only Christians have an Incarnality.
What does it mean to have a Christian "incarnality?"
First, Christian "incarnality" means that the way to God is through human flesh.
St. John in his first Epistle tells us that if you say, 'I love God,' and hate your brother or sister, you are a liar; for if you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, you cannot love God whom you have not seen."
Christian "incarnality" proclaims that the way to God is through human flesh.
Second, Christian "incarnality" means that whenever human flesh suffers, God suffers.
Remember Jesus' Great Parable of the Separation of the Sheep and the Goats:
The King says to the sheep: "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; sick and in prison and you visited me."
And the sheep ask: "When did we do that?"
And Jesus tells them: "As you did it to the least these, you did it to me."
Buddhist and Hindu spiritualities say that those who suffer deserve to suffer because they have bad karma.
Some Christian spiritualities aren't much better.
A spirituality can ignore the suffering of a homeless person; Christian incarnality cannot.
A spirituality can ignore public policies which perpetuate poverty and prejudice; Christian incarnality cannot.
Christian "incarnality" proclaims that wherever human flesh suffers, God suffers.
Finally, Christian "incarnality" means compassion for sinful, human flesh.
Every Christmas hymn and carol we sing praises Jesus as the Savior who frees us from sin.
Christmas points us to the Cross where Love made flesh died for us sinners.
So Christian "incarnality" means, in St. Paul's wonderful words, that "Everyone is a brother or sister for whom Christ died" (Romans 14:15).
And the offer of Christmas is, "Would you like to hold Him?"
And the blessing of Christmas is this:
when we say "Yes," and take him into our arms and hold him close, we discover that He is holding us.
Merry Christmas!
*This phrase is Martin L. Smith’s, from his collection of sermons in Nativities & Passions: Words for Transformation, Cowley, 1995, page 5.