Incarnational Theology

I need to respond to “incarnational!”

By definition Christianity is incarnational, consequently Christian theology is incarnational! Our central Christian hermeneutic is that our transcendent God of glory and majesty lived on this earth and died on a tree of shame as one of us, in the course of ordinary linear human history; in Jesus we discover the mighty God of all creation most fully and wholly self-revealed in those who are the weakest, the most defenseless, most insignificant and least consequential in their relationships to reputable society and to the economic and political establishments; Jesus showed us and told us the presence of the Holy One of Being is most abundantly and completely found in the “least of these,” hidden yet apparent in the manger, in the everyday words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth, the “Human One”; apparent and hidden in the human Jesus dying defenseless on the cross of death which for us becomes the instrument of our new life: in Jesus God “shared our common lot,” as the UCC Statement of Faith concisely says of God’s incarnation, God’s “enfleshment” in Jesus.

And Jesus tells us whenever we serve one of the “least of these” in essence we serve him and therefore we serve the Holy and Living One, the God beyond Time and beyond Space, since we confess Jesus as the definitive demonstration and expression of God’s glory and majesty – and power.

Mother Teresa really “got it” – to Mother Teresa her people were the Christ and to her people she was the Christ! But more than Mother Teresa personally “getting it” herself, the Spirit of God and of the Christ – the Spirit each of us received in baptism – indwelt Mother Teresa and worked through her life and ministry.