Tidings of Great Joy (or: why I'm not "incarnational")

I've been thinking quite a bit these days about the incarnation. And not just because 'tis the season; it's because I've been working on a course about "the missional church" for my denominational ordination, and one of the recurring themes in the material I'm reading is the idea that because "the Word became Flesh," in the remarkable way that he did, the church is called by implication to be "incarnational." This logical move, from "incarnation" to "incarnational," is so common among missional-church literature these days that it goes almost unexamined: because God became flesh in Jesus, we're supposed to "enflesh" our message.


For those of you who don't spend a lot of time perusing missional-church literature, let me explain a bit more: when they say "incarnational," what books like this mean is that we can't just "tell" people that God loves them, we need to give that message "flesh," by loving them ourselves (and it has to be in concrete ways, feeding those who are hungry, clothing those who are shivering, embracing those who are outcast). When they say "incarnational," they mean that it's not enough for us just to "believe" in inward-looking, isolated ways and places, but we have to give our faith "flesh" by "getting out there" with the message, going where the people are (and again it has to be in concrete ways, usually (at least in the books I've been reading) in conveniently cool ways like opening a cafe where people can talk about spirituality, or visiting the local pub to talk about Jesus, or hosting rock concerts and poetry readings for secular people).


Before I say what I'm about to say, let me say that I agree with books like these when they say that if what we believe about Jesus stays in the abstract and we don't live it out in concrete ways, then we aren't experiencing biblical Christianity. I hold as much to the authority of James 2:20 as to the authority of Romans 10:9. And so I'm all for feeding people who are hungry, rubbing spiritual shoulders with people who don't know Jesus, even poetry readings (see here and here). In this, at least, they have my ear.

But the other day it occurred to me that, when we call all this "being incarnational," or when we use the doctrine of the "incarnation" as a foundation for this, we're probably not experiencing biblical Christianity, either. My friend David has some thoughts on this subject that are worth reflection (he actually uses the "b" word). But since some of us will sing the words "Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel" more than once this month, let me offer a few more reasons why, theologically speaking, I'm not "incarnational," at least not the way the books I've been reading tell me I should be.


First: When we talk about "being incarnational" we reduce to death-dealing Law one of the most profound declarations of life-giving Gospel ever announced to the world ("Unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord") Put differently: the Incarnation is about what God has done for the world in Emmanuel, not what we must do for the world as followers of Emmanuel; and when we move from the doctrine of the Incarnation over into "Incarnational mission," we just throw people back on themselves, telling them to do for themselves what only God can do, instead of offering them the unquenchable grace of God, who comes to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Put differently again: the Historic Faith has always understood the incarnation as a fundamental piece in the puzzle of soteriology (so Gregory of Nyssa on the incarnation: "What God has not assumed, God has not saved"); and maybe only in the utilitarian, semi-Pelagian, materialistic paradigm of late Evangelicalism, where salvation is strictly limited to a transaction made (so quickly) at the cross, could anyone talk with any seriousness about the Incarnation as work we're called to do (so Hybels: "the local church is the hope of the world.") Put differently one last time: Incarnation is about God's act to save us; Incarnationality is about our act, in essence, to save ourselves (and if that sounds over-blown, note how most missional church talk ties our need to be "incarnational" with the fact that the church is in serious decline in the west-- i.e.: if we don't "get out there," our thing won't survive).


Okay, that's First. Now Second: The Bible already has a pretty clear and direct way of talking about how we are supposed to live in response to the Gospel, and it's not "incarnational," it's "cruciform." We're explicitly called to take up our cross (Matthew 16:24), to share in the sufferings of Christ (Romans 7:18), or as Paul so audaciously puts it, to fill up the sufferings of Christ (Colossians 1:24). Biblically speaking, the mould for the Christian life is shaped like a cross, not a manger; and only if we let the Incarnation be the good news that it really is (instead of turning it into cheap Law) could we ever talk about answering the call to the cruciform life with any seriousness (i.e. only if we are fully assured that God really is with us in the muck and mire of our deepest suffering can we have any hope in taking up our cross and following the suffering Christ). And this distinction matters, because I can be "incarnational" by doing what I already enjoy doing (say: going to the pub or the rock concert), I just need to tag Jesus onto it to make it somehow "missional"; but I can't be "cruciform" without a radical and fundamental realignment of how I see the world and what I care about in the world. And as I say this, I wonder: could this relatively new reading of the Incarnation be Modern Evangelicalism's subconscious effort to salve it's throbbing conscience over the fact that, by and large, it's returned a vacillating "I cannot come" to Christ's invitation to the cruciform life?