A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of traveling back to Santa Barbara and presenting some reflections on Christmas to an ecumenical Christian group. The title of my presentation was:

The Word Becomes Flesh: Christmas as a Holy Invitation to Incarnational Living

     It’s always good to begin with a story, so here’s one that’s been around:

     Excited about Christmas, a little boy was finishing a letter to Santa with a list of the Christmas presents he badly wanted. And then, just to make sure he had covered all of his bases, he decided to send his Christmas wish list to Jesus as well. The letter to Jesus began, “Dear Jesus, I just want you to know that I’ve been good for six months now.” Then it occurred to him that Jesus knew this wasn’t true.

     After a moment’s reflection, he crossed out “six months” and wrote “three months.” He thought some more, then crossed out “months” and replaced it with “weeks.” “I’ve been good for three weeks,” his letter now read. Realizing Jesus knew better than this, he put down his paper, went over to the Nativity set sitting on a table in his home, and picked up the figure of Mary. He then took out a clean piece of paper and began to write another letter: “Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again …”^[i]

     The Word Becomes Flesh: Christmas as a Holy Invitation to Incarnational Living

     I titled my presentation before I really knew what I would say – I only knew that I wanted to reflect on what Christmas means to me. I’ve always thought of Christmas as an invitation – an invitation to more fully understand God’s deepest dreams for our lives and our world, that we might become more fully human and reflect the divine image within us, embracing just how unconditionally loved and accepted we are. Jesus is the exemplar of what it means to live a vibrant human life deeply connected to the Source of Life … the Divine Center! 

     Christmas is a season of special significance for those of us who follow the Christ of the Gospel. It is a season that brings to fulfillment the promises God made to humankind from the very beginning – that God comes near to us when our hearts are open and attuned to the Divine Presence. In the fullness of time, Jesus came near to us in human flesh and lived among us as the very revelation of God’s love, grace and peace. This Jesus of history becomes for those of us who believe the Christ of faith. 

     In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, he quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying, “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” (Matt. 1:23) We use the word Incarnation to describe what we believe God has done – in God’s child Jesus the divine Word “becomes flesh.” It’s like having all the promises of scripture revealed in the clearest possible fashion as God is enfleshed in the Human One, Jesus of Nazareth.

     How this happens remains a mystery, and I won’t try to further explain it. Rather I want to spend the next 20 minutes talking about why God would come to us in Jesus and what this incredible gift of Divine Life among us might mean for the ways we choose to live in this world!

     As we approach Christmas, I encourage you to see this season as a holy invitation to incarnational living! As you contemplate the mystery of Emmanuel, “God with us,” in the days ahead, I hope you will begin to more fully celebrate all the ways you already believe that to be true – where you notice the nudges of the Holy in your life, where you experience God moments, where you glimpse the Sacred amid the ordinary moments of life, and where Grace becomes especially real and transparent to you as you move through each day. 

     Those of you who know me, know that I include poetry in just about anything I do, since the language of poetry is especially suited to convey mystery.

     So, because we are in the season of Advent, we begin with a portion of a poem by Ann Weems, called “In Search of Our Kneeling Places”

In each heart lies a Bethlehem,
    an inn where we must ultimately answer
         whether there is room or not.
When we are Bethlehem-bound
    we experience our own advent in his. …
This Advent let’s go to Bethlehem
    and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us.
In the midst of shopping sprees
    let’s ponder in our hearts the Gift of Gifts. …
In the excitement and confusion, in the merry chaos,
    let’s listen for the brush of angels’ wings.
This Advent, let’s go to Bethlehem
    and find our kneeling place.^[ii]

     We only begin to appreciate the Incarnation when we approach it from a place of awe as we kneel in wonder, prayer, and praise!

     The life of a Christian is by definition a life that seeks to follow the Christ, and this act of following begins in adoration. So we need to find our kneeling place each morning as we set out on the journey of faith.

     If the birth of the Christ child prompts within us a holy invitation to take up lives that incarnate the love of God, it’s wise to take some time to reflect more fully on how this kind of incarnational living is embodied or comes alive in us. 

I want to suggest three possible ways of living incarnationally. They are, of course, not the only ways, just a start!

1. Incarnational living means recognizing the Divine Presence in all of creation, including you and me.

     Richard Rohr – Franciscan priest, author, and teacher – whose work is grounded in practices of contemplation and compassion for the marginalized, writes that “the core message of the incarnation of God in Jesus is that the Divine Presence is here, in us and in all of creation, and not only ‘over there’ in some far-off realm.”^[iii]

     In 2 Peter 1:4, we read that God “has given us something very great and wonderful … we are able to share the divine nature!” Or, as The Message paraphrases this verse: ^“We were … given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God…”

      So, the Divine Presence – the eternal Christ presence – is here in this place, in each one of us, and in all creation. There is a Life at the heart of all life that is holy. There is an essential interrelatedness in all that lives within God’s good creation. We are able to link our lives with the Divine Life. This is an amazing truth to contemplate, because it means that wherever we go the Divine Presence – the eternal Christ presence – is already there, and whatever we do we are potentially participating in the life of God.

      I like how one modern-day teacher of Celtic wisdom, John Philip Newell, calls us to practice sacred imagination in our day. He believes that for the sake of our world we need “to truly wake up to the sacredness of the earth and every human being and do what we can to serve this sacredness in one another and the creatures” of this earth. He says we need “a consciousness of soul” to wake up to the sacred interrelationship of all things, “a strength of soul” to commit to live in accordance with this interrelationship, and “a beauty of soul” to be willing to serve this oneness with love, even at the cost of sacrifice.^[iv]

      So, in saying that incarnational living has to do with recognizing the Divine Presence in all of creation, we are saying that the gift of Christmas is that it invites us to expand our narrow vision of who and where God is. Jesus comes to help us see with compassionate eyes the whole world – a creation deeply and eternally loved by God! Christ is present among us to help us see how our lives are lovingly interconnected with all life on this swirling planet we call home!

II. Incarnational living means exercising your capacity for blessing.

     You are an instrument of blessing from the very heart of God, for blessing is God’s incarnate love unleashed on the world. Think of Jesus blessing the disciples and commissioning them to go out and bless all they meet, even those who mean them harm (Luke 6:27-31). “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” Jesus commands. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

      Blessing is a commitment to truly seeing others. Has anyone ever said to you that they feel seen by you? Seeing someone as the unique person they are is an essential first step in blessing them. 

      Blessing literally means “to speak well of someone,”^[v] and Jesus instructs us to do so whether that person is a friend, a stranger, or an enemy. Blessing is a way of communicating the amazing grace of God who pours out grace upon grace in our lives! “Life itself is grace,” Frederick Buechner likes to say. It is a “fathomless mystery.”^[vi] So we need to listen with care to our own lives and to the lives of others as well.

      “Listening is a form of worship,” says poet James Crew, “but you don’t have to kneel / on the floor with folded hands / or mouth the perfect prayer. / Just open the door of yourself / to another, become the space / they step through to show you / who they are. This is holiness: / two people seated together / on the pew of a park bench, / at the altar of a kitchen table. / Even if no one says a word / for a while, receive the silence / until it’s like a language / only the two of you can speak.”^[vii]

      Blessing is our gift to the world. We bless others by seeing them, by listening to their lives with them, and by giving away some of our own life so that they can experience more life.

      Ronald Rolheiser compares the act of blessing to “a blessing grandmother or a blessing grandfather, not suffering but joyful, smiling and beaming with pride at the life and energy of the young, basking in that energy and radiating from every pore of his or her being the words of the Creator: ‘It is good! Indeed, it is very good! In you I take delight!’”^[viii]

      Still, blessing takes different forms at different times. When someone is grieving a deep loss in life, blessing needs to be filled with compassion. When my wife Dallis died four years ago, the book of blessings for times of grief written by Jan Richardson consoled me. Here’s one of her blessings, written following the death of her husband Gary, that may help you understand better the gift of blessing you have to offer someone as they wade through the troubled waters of grief. 

The Blessing You Should Not Tell Me^[ix]

Do not tell me 
there will be a blessing
in the breaking,
that it will ever
be a grace
to wake into this life
so altered,
this world
so without.

Do not tell me
of the blessing
that will come
in the absence.

Do not tell me
that what does not
kill me
will make me strong
or that God will not 
send me more than I
can bear.

Do not tell me
this will make me
more compassionate,
more loving,
more holy.

Do not tell me
this will make me
more grateful for what
I had.

Do not tell me
I was lucky.

Do not even tell me
there will be a blessing.

Give me instead
the blessing
of breathing with me.

Give me instead
the blessing
of sitting with me
when you cannot think
of what to say.

Give me instead
the blessing
of asking about him—
how we met
or what I loved most
about the life
we have shared;
ask for a story 
or tell me one
because a story is, finally,
the only place on earth
he lives now.

If you could know
what grace lives
in such a blessing,
you would never cease
to offer it.

If you could glimpse
the solace and sweetness
that abide there,
you would never wonder
if there was a blessing
you could give
that would be better
than this – 
the blessing of 
your own heart
opened
and beating
with mine.

      No one escapes loss or grief in this life – it’s part of the human condition. Jesus knows the suffering of the human heart and he chooses to heal, to forgive, to love and to bless everyone he meets. In Jesus – “Emmanuel, God with us” – we see the compassionate heart of God for the world.

      Shortly after I retired and moved to Ashland, I joined the spiritual care team at a local residential Hospice house. In our training, we learned that our role as volunteers was to be present, to be kind, and to be honest.Notice the phrasing “to be” rather than “to do.” In the company of those experiencing deep losses, it was important for us to understand our role as those who accompany another on life’s journey through death. These guidelines also seem to me to be a good philosophy for living in relationship with others in the spirit of Christ. 

      As we read the gospels, so often these are the ways that Jesus meets whoever is before him. He is presentwith them. He sees them exactly as they are, but through eyes of compassion. He is kind. He illumines the loving-kindness of God. And he is honest. He tells the truth without recrimination and only so that the one before him can recognize it and decide what they will do with it.

      We who follow Christ have the capacity to bless others as well with our presence, our kindness, and our honesty. We can look upon the world with eyes of compassion for we know we have been recipients of such generous love ourselves. We can see others through the lens of grace for it is only grace that has saved us. 

      Incarnational living means breathing in the life of God and breathing out blessing for all that God has created and loved.

III. Incarnational living means doing the work of Christmas every day.

      Christian preacher and teacher Tony Campolo once said, “Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.”

      Christmas is an invitation to follow Jesus into the world and embody the same kind of compassionate presence that he did. It’s an invitation to befriend the lonely, heal the broken, bless the one wounded by life. Incarnational living means picking up the mantle of Jesus’ ministry and letting it live through you. It is to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” as we read in Philippians 2:5, and emptying yourself in order to serve those around you. 

     To mark the day when the Christmas season comes to an end on the feast of Epiphany, Howard Thurman, an African-American theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, wrote this benediction.

Now the Work of Christmas Begins^[x]

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

     “Jesus came to incarnate God’s presence and love to humanity. But before he left this earth, he called us to do the same in his name. Jesus’ followers are intended to put flesh on the invisible God, to incarnate God for the world. We know what this looks like because we see incarnation in Jesus as we read the Gospels. (The apostle) Paul … (calls) the church … ‘the body of Christ.’ We are the ongoing incarnation.”^[xi]

      We who seek to incarnate the unconditional love of God for the world can choose to live as justice-seeking, love-creating, truth-telling, hope-birthing people!^[xii] Or as biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann states it: “Like the ancient prophets, we are dispatched back to the good work entrusted to us. It is the work of peace-making. It is the work of truth-telling. It is the work of justice-doing. It is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay it, even in the face of forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for a season.”^[xiii]

      Christmas is a holy invitation to:

1. recognize the Divine Presence in all of creation,
2. exercise your God-given capacity for blessing others, and 
3. continue the good work of Christmas every day.

      May we, by the grace of God, more fully embrace incarnational living this Christmas so that our lives are a blessing to others and to the world, showing forth the light and love of Christ!

Mark Lloyd Richardson

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^[i] Adam Hamilton, Incarnation: Rediscovering the Significance of Christmas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), pp. 46-7.

^[ii] Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1980), p. 19.

^[iii] Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 29. St. Athanasius (296-373) says that God reveals God’s Self everywhere in creation, “so that nothing was left devoid of his Divinity … so that ‘the whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters fill the sea.’’” (Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi 45).

^[iv] John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2021), p. 143.

^[v] The English term “to bless” comes from Latin benedicere, literally “to speak well of” (as in bene – meaning well or good, and dicere – meaning to speak). Thus, at its root, to bless someone is to speak well of him or her.

^[vi] Frederick Buechner, Listening to your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.

^[vii] James Crew, poem “How to Listen,” San Luis Obispo County Arts Council email. 

^[viii] Ronald Rolheiser, Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity (New York: Image, 2014), p. 242.

^[ix] Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrows: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (Orlando, FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016), pp. 53-4.

^[x] The poem “The Work of Christmas” is from Howard Thurman’s The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations and is used by permission of Friends United Press. All rights reserved.

^[xi] Adam Hamilton, Incarnation, p. 112.

^[xii] From an Academy for Spiritual Formation email.

^[xiii] Walter Brueggemann, quoted on Progressive Christians.