Again in 2008, I took a category with Mark D. Jordan titled Queer Incarnation. As you’ll be able to think about from the title, the subject was the incarnation of God in Jesus inside Christian understanding however although a queer principle lens.
The concept that God took flesh and made God’s house amongst us.
God took flesh.
Once I was in school and people phrases had been spoken out loud, I knew why I nonetheless liked Christianity. I remembered what it’s that made me maintain on to the custom even whereas recognizing Christianity’s dangerous manifestations – due to its declaration that God/ess took flesh; that we are able to know God/ess in human kind and that she dwells amongst us (I do know, Jesus is recognized as male, however the class was about queering faith, in spite of everything). Christianity affirms and loves a God/ess who’s bodily interrelated to us, with us, and that Final Intimate Actuality shares in our existence and experiences the nice, the unhealthy, the ugly, and the attractive. God/ess affirmed our existence by being one among us.
And on the identical time, I puzzled why I used to be drawn to this message, this gospel excellent news, within the first place? Why did the phrases, “And God/ess took flesh,” (John 1:14) imply a lot to me? I do now suppose that it was as a result of I used to be not conscious of the innate worth of my very existence. I feel I struggled to consider that I was sacred. So, to suppose that I’m flesh and blood with the Divine, with God/ess, with Final Intimate Actuality, was refreshing in a fantastic manner.
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I’ve at all times hated the dichotomy folks make between “being” and “doing.” In seminary folks would usually make the purpose of claiming that ministers needed to be taught to “simply be” and never at all times need to “do.” I’d at all times cringe at listening to that remark. I knew that there was one thing about that that simply appeared plain incorrect to me.
Partly I do know it’s as a result of consider that the very actuality of present is an energetic actuality – not a passive one. Be-ing is a verb, and it doesn’t make sense then to separate be-ing and doing; be-ing is simply as energetic as do-ing.
However then I had an expertise that gave me one thing so as to add to this concept…
A buddy as soon as gave me somewhat purple pockets as a present, and in it she wrote a customized meditation for me; it stated, “I’m allowed to only be.”
I’m allowed to only be.
A couple of months earlier than I’d have been bothered by what I’d have thought was an implied dichotomy – a false separation between doing and being. However now I see the worth within the meditation my buddy wrote for me – as a result of I got here to know the implicit worth it declared about me:
I’m worthwhile, I’m love-worthy, I’m sacred simply by my very existence
(I don’t need to “do” one thing to make that be true – it already is)
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Christianity declares that God took flesh. I nonetheless actually recognize that message. In Jesus we all know God/ess in a completely human embodiment. The error, I feel, is to suppose that this occurred as a manner of “rescuing” folks, of “saving” us by this supposed sacrifice (of taking up flesh) on the a part of God, as if we’re solely worthy now as a result of God took our “lowly” flesh. That is a component that has by no means rang true to me – the implication that we people are so horrible that God taking flesh is a manner of saving humanity has by no means made sense to me. I moderately suppose that “God/ess took flesh” as a manner of reminding us who we’re.
It’s like we overlook. We overlook that we’re inextricably associated to the Divine; that we’ve by no means been void of divinity. So maybe Jesus, acknowledged by some because the wholly human embodiment of the Divine, was a reminder of that actuality…She was like, “Heeeeelloooo – YOU are sacred! Look, you and I are one! Humanity just isn’t separate from Divinity – we’re of the identical flesh!”
Queer Incarnation, certainly.
“To start with there was the divine phrase and knowledge.
The divine phrase and knowledge was there with God,
and it was what God was…The divine phrase and knowledge grew to become human
and made itself at house amongst us.”–John 1:1,14a ( from the Scholar’s Model of the Gospels)
It’s good to revisit the acquainted in new methods, typically crucial, and to take a second to be nonetheless and conscious of the Divine Presence inside and throughout us.
