This funny word was the theme at Urbana 09, InterVarsity’s triennial missions conference in Saint Louis.
Incarnation: God coming to dwell among us people in the person of Jesus.
It’s a word I’ve been sitting with as our South Central PA colleges gear back up. Ramez Atallah, the bible teacher at Urbana, suggested that incarnation is the:
- MEANS of how God will speak to us. God comes to us, lives with us, and speaks with us.
- MESSAGE of what God would like to speak to us. The point: God will serve people and honor people by paying us a visit. The idea of grace and saving flows from this humility of God taking on human form and living among us.
- MODEL of how God would see us minister in turn. God showed us how it’s done: to become the least, to humble oneself, to go to the other.
My reflections of the past few weeks is that as we endeavor to follow the MODEL of incarnation, to go and live among others with the beautiful message that this God we know would also like honor them with a humble visit, that as we go, this incarnation things CHANGES US. Simply put, I care about the stuff that goes on in my neighborhood, even the dumb stuff, because I’ve made this my home. And as this choice becomes more normal for me, as it becomes more and more difficult to ever imagine moving, this is incarnation changing me. That is the vulnerability of a posture of going among and living among: it changes me, it changes us.
As a new semester gets underway, this is my prayer for our college students: As you are sent to campus to study and work, may you choose to fully live among your peers. Really dwell among them in a posture of listening and service, and may you be changed by this, to care about their loneliness, their emptiness, their passion, their hopes, and even the dumb stuff going on. Live in the midst of campus, be changed, and carry God’s message of incarnation to those who need to hear it most. Amen.
Finally, here’s a video that kicked off the Urbana conference experience and beautifully illustrates the idea of incarnation. Enjoy!
