Countdown to Christmas: Re-Imagining the Celebration, 5 of 7
Part 5 of 7: When we say "God became flesh at Christmas," which "god" are we talking about?
N.T. Wright often recounts the time when he was a college chaplain at Oxford and one of his duties was to greet the undergraduate freshmen and let them know that he would be available for them if they ever wanted to talk, etc. He remembers that some of the students would say to him something to the effect of, "Thank you for the offer, but you probably won't be seeing much of me because, you see, I don't believe in God," to which he would routinely reply, "Really? Which 'god' is it that you don't believe in?" Most of the students would stumble out a few popular notions about this 'god,' like "A being who sits up in the sky and looks down disapprovingly at the world, who occasionally intervenes with 'miracles,' and who will eventually send bad people to hell and good people to heaven," to which he would respond, "I'm not surprised that you don't believe in that 'god.' I don't believe in that god either."
At this time of year when we begin to think seriously about the notion of "God Incarnate," when we begin to grapple with the notion of the relationship between a human being and the Creator of the Universe, when we ponder the claim of equivalence between the Almighty and a Jewish man born to an unwed mother in a feeding trough, we should (but often don't) ask ourselves, to what, or rather to whom, does the word 'God' refer and, especially, to whom did it refer in the minds of the New Testament writers and the other early Christians?
Because unless we ask that question, unless we immerse ourselves into understanding what Jesus and his contemporaries meant by the word "God," we will allow ourselves to be deceived by sub-Christian views of Christmas, of simplistic arithmetical notions of "Jesus=God," with the resultant grade-school dilemmas like "If Jesus was God, who was running the world while he was alive," etc.
Like any great truths that are worth understanding, this one takes some work. It is a difficult thing for us 21st century Western souls to get into the mindset of 1st century Jewish categories of thought. But, again, unless we do, we will forever be doomed to walking around proclaiming that "Jesus is God" without fully understanding what that phrase meant 2,000 years ago in the Mediterranean world, without fully appreciating the rich, nuanced depths from which devout monotheists could bring themselves to utter those strange words.
And it is to that end that I once again link to the following lecture by Bishop Wright, the third of a 4-part series that I had previously posted. I pray that you will take some time out of your busy schedule surrounding this celebration of the anniversary of "God becoming man" to begin to grapple with what precisely that phrase means. And if you come away from it feeling a bit overwhelmed, as I am every time I listen, don't be alarmed. Shouldn't the notion of the Incarnation of God, if nothing else, be overwhelming?
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Jesus was God?
Was all of God on the cross, or just a part of God?