Presby-Musings

I've been thinking a lot lately during this season of Lent about one of the most important (in my opinion) of all our Christian beliefs: the belief that through Jesus Christ, God became one of us.   This belief is known as the Incarnation, a word with Latin roots that essentially means "in the flesh." The Incarnation is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.  To say that Jesus was both fully human and fully God isn't something that should just trip off the tongue lightly. But it also is perhaps one of the most deeply transformative beliefs that Christians can offer to the world.   Think about it.  Because of Jesus, God intimately knows what it is like to be us.  God knows what it's like to mourn, to hunger and thirst, to feel frail, suffer loss and even to experience the seeming absence of God.   In other words, there is nothing that you could experience or endure that God has not already felt.  God gets it.  Which means any...

I've been thinking a lot this week about the deeper meaning of Christmas.  What are we celebrating when we celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace?   What does it really mean that God entered into history?   As Christians we know how to talk a good game about the arrival of Jesus, and how it changed everything for everyone, but how many of us really internalize the truth of what theologians call the Incarnation (God taking on human form)?   The Gospel of John declares:   "The [Eternal Creative] Word [of God] became flesh (Jesus) and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen God's glory of the one and only [Son], who came from the Father, full of grace and truth... No one has ever seen God, but the one and only [Son], who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known."   I don't think most of us really get what this means for us.  Think about it.  What John is saying is we don't...

17 For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. -  Hebrews 2:17-18 It's hard to imagine what it was like for Jesus.  He was so completely connected to God that he knew what God was like and did everything he could to show God's true nature to the world.  Jesus, we Christians believe, was God incarnate (in the flesh).  He was unlike any other human being as a result.   Through Jesus, God embraced humanity, and presumably all of the frailties of humanity with it.  We know that Jesus grew tired and hungry.  He often became frustrated with his disciples lack of faith, and sometimes became angry at the stubbornness of the religious elites of this day.  He wept at the funeral of...