The Ongoing Incarnation

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Eight, Number One
November/December 1998

This is a theology about seeing all Creation as the Body of Christ. It is by no means entirely new. This model of Incarnation is ancient, but it has not been the main stream of Christianity. It has been a crucial side channel, and in our times it needs to become the main stream.

This theology starts by taking a look at who Jesus is. It then asks, "What are the implications for how we view Jesus?" This theology also asks, "What does this then demand of us?"

First, we begin with the way we look at Jesus. We Christians say that Jesus is the "Word become flesh" (John 1:14). We say this with complete determination. Through the Nicene Council and through the Chalcedonian Council we have come to say that Jesus is God and Jesus is fully human. Predating all the formal theological definitions, we have St. Paul's conception of humans as being the Body of Christ (cf. I Corinthians 12).

When as Christians we say Incarnation (the Word become flesh), we not only mean that Jesus is God, but we also have to say that all humans are brought into the fullness of God. We are co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), his brothers and sisters, and members of God's Body. We cannot say that God has become flesh without saying that we are included in this flesh.

This is a crucial understanding; because if it is just the case that Jesus was the only one in whom God was incarnate, then this is an historical event 2000 years ago and is important to us as an impulse to religion for that reason, but it would be historical religion — religion that is not of the present day.

No. We are the Incarnation, now. This means that the Christ-event happened once, yes, but it also continues happening. This is a fundamental underpinning for Christianity to be a living religion.

But what does it mean — to be incarnate? Focusing again on the person of Jesus: he breathed, he ate, he took in water and other inanimate materials, he gave off material wastes, he gave off energy in the form of heat. This is where modern ecosystem science comes into play. There is no way for any creature to be isolated from other creatures and from the inanimate world. Life as we know it means that we are in a flow of energy and materials, and that the inanimate world is very much a part of this flow as well.

There is no way for Jesus to become flesh without being fully engaged in this web of flows. If he is fully flesh, this means he had to have lived in just the way that we all live. The fish that Jesus ate, the grain that he consumed, the water he drank, the air that he breathed and exhaled, the entire environment in which he lived is necessarily brought into the Incarnation.

We are the Body of Christ; and the rest of Creation, we now must say, is the Rest of the Body of Christ.

We have had a line connecting Jesus with us as humans. Now we must have a triangle with another line that connects Jesus and the non-human part of Creation, which also must be part of his Body.

And since we as humans participate in nature just as Jesus the human did, there is also a line between humans and the rest of Creation. So we have a triangle: at one pole is Jesus, at a second pole, humans, and at a third co-equal pole we have the rest of Creation.

This triangle is what we mean now when we say Incarnation. What we do to the rest of Creation is what we do to God. When we make it so that the rest of Creation cannot live out its life as part of God's Body, then we are killing the Body.

Christ cannot be human unless the entire Creation is taken into what it means to say "God becomes Flesh." Therefore how we treat this Flesh is, by its very nature, how we treat Him, or Her.

THE ONGOING INCARNATION