SharePoint
Sign In
Help
ADN logo

The Feast of the Incarnation
 

  • Home
NavigationSearch
  • Home
    • About
      • Our Mission and Vision
      • Our History
      • Who Are Anabaptists?
      • Our Staff
      • Field Associates
      • Board of Directors
      • Annual Reports
      • Staff Openings
    • Get Involved
      • Congregational Advocates
      • Partner Congregations
      • Accessibility in all aspects of church life
      • Barrier-Free Grant
    • Newsletter
      • Latest issue
      • Previous issues
      • Subscribe
    • BlogCurrently selected
      • Latest Posts
      • Subscribe
      • All Posts
    • Resources
      • Accessibility and Awareness
        • Accessibility
        • Accessibility Audits
        • Awareness
        • Changing Attitudes
        • Emotional Support Animals (ESAs)
      • MC USA Accessibility Resolution and Study Guide
      • ADN Books
      • ADN Disability Language Guide
      • Barrier-Free Grant
      • Book and Media Recommendations
      • Caregivers
        • Circles of Care
        • Families
        • Support Groups
      • Congregational Assessment Survey
      • COVID-19 Resources
      • Disability Topics
        • ADHD
        • Autism spectrum
        • Disabilities of Aging
        • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
        • For the Deaf
        • Hearing Loss
        • Hidden disabilities
        • Intellectual disabilities
        • Mobility Impairment
        • Vision Disabilities
      • Faith Formation & Worship
        • Children
        • Classroom Accessibility
        • For Church leaders
        • Book Reviews
        • Our Speakers
        • Youth
      • From Other Faith Traditions
      • On Mental Health
        • Children and Youth
        • Depression and Anxiety
        • Healthy Boundaries
        • Mental Health Education
        • Mental Health Resource for Congregations
        • Mental Illnesses
        • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
        • Suicide
      • Speakers and Trainers
      • Webinars
      • All Resources
    • Donate
      • Support ADN: Donate Now
      • Legacy Giving
      • Honor And Memorial Gifts
      • Building the Future Partners
    • Contact Us
Left Menu
  • Pictures
  • Lists
  • Libraries
  • Recent
  • Blog
    • Latest PostsCurrently selected
    • Subscribe
    • All Posts

The Feast of the Incarnation

Posted by Jason Greig /
2/2/2012
Page Image
Image Caption
Opening paragraph
If  there is something that L’Arche taught me a great deal about it is the importance of celebration. While previously i often looked at gratuitous feasting as a waste or interruption, my time at L’Arche helped me see how essential it is to celebrate all of life. For many of my friends with intellectual disabilities – whose lives our culture does anything but celebrates and honors – the community feasts often became the highlights of the year.

Page Content

 

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).

Christmas was certainly no exception. The energy and preparations that go into celebrating the season in L’Arche are momentous and even (relatively) luxurious. Whether it be the community’s worship or eating life, Christmas felt like a time to pull out all the stops in gratitude and joy for life, and love, and God.

Minimalist that I am, I often struggled with the gaudiness of this “materiality.” It all seemed too much of everything: food, energy, people, work. The hoopla felt like a noisy hindrance to a deeper reflection upon God’s radical identification with the lowliest and most vulnerable among us. Most of the time, I secretly wished for a more “toned down” season.

Yet upon further reflection I began to wonder whether all of my friends were on to something. Could the love that so many core members – those in L’Arche who have intellectual disabilities – shared in the festivities of Christmas not point to the goodness of creation expressed in the birth of Christ? Is this not the mystery of the Incarnation, that God – the Almighty, Sovereign, and Omnipresent Creator of the Cosmos – would choose to embody himself in the one of us, bones, muscle and food that we are? And by doing so, does God not proclaim once and for all how much he delights in the material and earthy works of his hands?

In the words of the Gospel of John, the Word that existed before time and was there when the world was created became flesh. Perhaps we have heard this passage many times and no longer think about it. But can we see something marvelously scandalous here?

The word “flesh” has had a rather torturous history in the Christian tradition. Like the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis – most well-known for his (controversial) novels Zorba the Greek and the Last Temptation of Christ – most of the past 2000 years has been a “battle between the spirit and the flesh.” While we hear Ezekiel speak of God giving the people a “heart of flesh” (11:19), we also hear Paul say that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:8). While Paul uses “flesh” as a synonym for what we might call the “false self” or the “ego” alienated from God, too often it has been equated with the body. And much confusion and harm has come as a result.

The first verses of John’s Gospel, however, tell us something very different. Here “flesh” becomes the medium for God to enter into the world and reconcile all things to himself. God did not choose to enter into the world solely by way of people’s “minds” but through contact with their bodies. Jesus even makes the continually radical suggestion that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (6:56). Far from being a symbol of the baser dimensions of the human condition, here Jesus uses flesh as the means for his most intimate communion with us. It is as if Jesus is demanding that we have faith in his whole person, utterly divine and utterly human and material.

This is the kind of faith that so many of my friends in L’Arche relate to. In my (limited) experience, people with intellectual disabilities want reality “with flesh on it.” They do not wish to relate to a Facebook page but a body next to them. Most cannot share a highly abstract theological conversation with me, but can heartily share food and drink. my L’Arche friends usually do not pray for world peace or the eradication of poverty, but for “my friend” or “sister/brother/parent.” People like Susan and Brian and Michael generally find the beautiful prayers of worship less inspiring than the bread and cup of communion, and the bodies of their friends by their side.

And so they love to celebrate and feast, never alone but together. In this way, people with developmental disabilities have taught me what the church has taught all throughout history: the life of faith can never be lived in isolation but must always be shared with others. And not just “virtual” others but with material and fleshly bodies. In this way we can continue Jesus’ giving of his body to us through one another. We are the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27) and thus called to become bread for each other. So many times in L’Arche I experienced how the core members truly understood this reality, and embodied Paul’s words on how the members who seem the weakest actually become the most indispensable (1 Cor. 12:22).

So let us truly celebrate this feast of the Incarnation of God as a sign that our salvation comes through the earthly and material reality that we are. And may those prophets among us, who demand that our faith takes on human flesh, lead us in the delight and joy of matter that God has done ever since he looked at the world and proclaimed, “It is good” (Gen. 1).


​Jason Greig was a Student Associate for Anabaptist Disabilities Network when he wrote this article in January 2012

Subscribe to Opening Doors Subscribe to Opening Doors

 Related posts

  • From Cure to Community
    YouTube video presentation by Christine Guth: From Cure to Community: Biblical Interpretation that Challenges the Stigma of Mental Illness.
  • Certificate in Disabilities Ministry
    Western Theological Seminary announces a Graduate Certificate in Disabilities Ministry to prepare pastors and others for ministry with the many people who live with disabilities.
  • The Lord is My Strength
    ​Erick Sawatzky brought together Anabaptist beliefs and lived experience with disability to suggest elements of an Anabaptist disability theology
  • It's all in the face
    While I see a face with Down syndrome and think of home and life, our culture looks at this face and sees only abnormality.
  • Will you be my friend?
    For the first time I understood that people with developmental disabilities asked the same questions and shared the same hopes that I did.
  • The Wisdom of God
    By choosing to become the scapegoat of humanity’s violence, Jesus radically identifies with the suffering “other”

 Latest posts

  • Loneliness: It Affects us All
    M.Div. student Michelle Robichaud offers a few ways churches can support lonely youth who lack a feeling of connection.
  • 2023
  • Epiphany: See Our Guide!
    Brandon Grady draws a connection between navigating life as a blind man and searching for Jesus as a magi.
  • Immanuel: God with Us
    God is with us in our pain, suffering, and isolation. Jesus's incarnation brings us hope.
  • The Kin-dom of Heaven
    Sarah Werner provides an eloquent imagining of what it feels like to be wholly welcomed into God's Community
  • Wounded and Whole
    Why does the Resurrected Jesus have wounds? Laura Stone muses in her sermon on disability and wholeness. Plus a sneak peek of Laura and Peggy Gilbert's performance poetry.

 Read more about

  • Church leaders

Contact us

P: 877-214-9838 (Toll Free)
P: 574-343-1362
3145 Benham Avenue
Suite 5
Elkhart, IN 46517-1970
Visit the Anabaptist Disabilities Network on Facebook!

Support ADN

Use your credit card to contribute online:

Donate Now Through Network for Good

Donate Now Through PayPal

    Resources

  • Staff
  • About
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Donate
  • Employment
  • Sign In
  • © Anabaptist Disabilities Network 2019