Through the incarnation, God takes that intimate relationship another radical step forward. This time, God comes not only to dwell by our side but to share everything about our condition, surrendering the privilege of heavenly consort to take up a dwelling place within humanity. Some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible is reserved to describe this wondrous moment, when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Creator, full of grace and truth” ( John 1:14). Upon joining us, Jesus extends himself to humanity, yearning to know and be known, to have us join him in the divine union he has shared with his Abba God from the beginning of time:
Abide in me as I abide in you. ... As my Abba has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Abba’s commandments and abide in that love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:4, 9–11)
Listen closely and you will detect echoes of perichoresis, the eternal, interweaving dance between the three persons of the Trinity. The Son abides in us and we in die Son, who also abides in his Abba and thus allows us to abide with his Abba as well. The dance of embrace, mutual embrace, never ends. Through Christ, the relational God has grasped us, and we are inextricably bound up in the joy of the divine life.
Nearly two thousand years later, healer, teacher, social critic, and mystic Henri Nouwen summed up the mystery, power and call of the incarnation in these words:
Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwells, has become our home. By making his home in us, he allows us to make our home in him. By entering into the intimacy of our innermost sell he offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place. That is the mystery of the incarnation.5
This is our God: a God who chose us as a preferred dwelling place and waits longingly for us to choose to dwell within God and align our lives with God’s own will. This is our God: a God who yearns for relationship with us, risks everything for relationship with us, and finally dies to be in relationship with us. If we ever wondered or doubted God’s yearning for relationship with us, the incarnation proves God’s desire with humbling clarity.
Grace is too good to believe. The world wants to exclude certain people, say they shouldn’t be allowed inside. The church says, No one is excluded. We’re radically open. God keeps getting bigger, and we have to expand with God.
HOWARD ANDERSON, FORMER RECTOR, ST. PAUL’S-DULUTH
Such incarnational theology is one of the hallmarks of the Anglican Way. The Church of England’s first systematic theologian, Richard Hooker, boldly proclaimed that something of God is present in all life, and that via the incarnation we are indeed “partakers” in the divine life. “All other things that are of God have God in them and he them in himself likewise. . . . All things therefore are partakers of God, they are his offspring, his influence is in them.”6 For Hooker, this means we are at once held by God and the ones who hold God. The Almighty God has chosen to be in union with us, taking on created nature and in the process joining us to God’s own life.
More than that, Hooker believed God has chosen to be vulnerable to us, chosen to need us, and even to impart a spark of the divine nature to us. “Sith God hath deified our nature (by the union confirmed through the incarnation), ... we cannot now conceive how God should without man either exercise divine power, or receive the glory of divine praise”7 God has established a radically mutual relationship with humanity, and based on those terms we are God’s partners, the ones on whom God depends. Those are the radical implications of the incarnation, and they reveal the profoundly relational being of God.
God invites us to share in that nature, not only by some pure, mystical connection to God in Christ, but through our flesh, blood and spirit relationships with one another. At times, the church has conveniently interpreted this call as one to uniformity. If anything, what Christ came to offer, and died making possible, was union:
[H]e is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross. (Ephesians 2:14–16)
God rejoices when we move beyond ourselves, beyond our hostility and ignorance and suspicion, past our “dividing walls” and into relationship with one another, signifying to the world that we are one reconciled body, the body of Christ. In this, we reflect the mutual relationship and union that is the very nature of Godself.
The God of Welcome
Looking closely at the witness of Scripture, we see a God who not only seeks relationship and union with the creation but who reaches out intentionally for everyone, and in particular for the outcast. Regardless of how unclean, unworthy, insignificant, or marginalized we may feel or others may claim we are, the God of grace and welcome shatters every barrier to embrace us and draw us home.
Lest we think the welcome is meant for us or our group alone, the Scriptures are filled with reminders to God’s chosen ones that they are not the only ones God welcomes. In Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the Israelites as they journey from slavery in Egypt and through the wilderness. The frightened, tired and confused clan no doubt sought comfort in the knowledge that their covenant with God made them special. They soon learned that there is no rest for God’s chosen ones. Instead, God’s people are called out for a special mission.
Online Extra: Bible Studies on the Biblical Foundations of Radical Welcome
[T]he Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:17–19)
It is true that God stands with God’s people through every trial, but not so that they will sit comfortably with the privilege of apparent divine favor. Now they have to stand in solidarity with, graciously receive and welcome the vulnerable ones within their community and beyond it whom they might find it most difficult to accept: the orphan, the widow, the stranger, The Other. God has done it for them. Now they are called to respond in kind, literally imitating the God who graciously welcomed them.
Isaiah rails at Israel for trying to please God with superficial religious acts while ignoring God’s yearning to extend justice and welcome. He shares this judgment as he has received it from God:
Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see them naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:6–7)
God has made it clear: if you love me you will work for liberation with the oppressed and marginalized in your midst, and you will share your home and food with those who have none. You will not hide from the brothers and sisters I have placed near you. Rather, you will actively go out to meet them and draw them to yourself, even if it is risky, even if you feel uncomfortable (and would you not be uncomfortable, after encountering the naked poor and welcoming them into your home?).
That message has certainly been muffled by people of faith over millennia. “If you are Christian,” we say, “be kind. Give charitably. Serve the needy” Each is a noble pursuit, but they are not hospitality and welcome the way God does it. God’s way is like Abraham, who greets the three angelic strangers at the oaks of Mamre