The Whole Story

The Incarnation of Jesus is likely the most remarkable event in history. The God of the Universe, who transcends all of time and space, chose to demonstrate solidarity with his creation in a most unparalleled and

unprecedented manner, submitting himself to the mundanities of that creation. The Creator embraced all the complications and predicaments of his originally harmonious but now compromised handiwork in the most humble, sacrificial, and devoted display of existential identification ever.

He could have simply regarded the world from afar and refrained from investing his own blood, sweat, and tears.

Instead, God committed to literally getting his hands dirty: he would show us the way by enduring the human experience with us, confronting all its struggles, discomforts, and frailties.

The gospel of John testifies that God dwelt among us (John 1:14). This meant that he had to enter the world through the grueling ordeal of being born; then withstand the wondrous and harsh complexities of human life; and finally suffer the cruelty and anguish of death.

In such manner God fully experienced the human condition in the most personal and intimate means possible by becoming, as the song says, one of us.

As much as we may be inclined to focus on “baby Jesus” during this period of reflection and reverence, it behooves us to maintain an effective perspective based on the broader context. As any parent can attest, a baby doesn’t remain a baby for very long. The Incarnation was but the beginning of Jesus's terrestrial sojourn, being one of many important facets of the entire

redemption drama.

Of course, at the other end of that adventure in humanity was the Resurrection, fulfilling the promise of restoration.

Furthermore, Jesus of Nazareth was not merely an anthropomorphic apparition that appeared out of nowhere, nor simply an amalgamation of legends, myths, and hero complexes.

The historical reality of Jesus is not easily denied — or at the very least, is so integral to God’s complete redemption plan that any effort to deny it undermines the very essence of the redemption itself. The apostle John asserts this when he reminds us that any repudiation of the truth of Jesus “coming in the flesh” is not of God and is, in fact, a deception (1 John 4:2-3, 2 John 1:7). The apostle Paul also affirms the phenomenon of the Incarnation throughout his many writings (Romans 8:3-4, Galatians 4:4-5, Philippians 2:5-8).

Our modern society has performed impressively in repressing the whole story by co-opting and euphemizing manifold traditions that emerged from the Christian consciousness. (Here, “modern society” refers to both secular and ecclesiastical influences.)

Even if one could argue that the Christmas commemoration was originally intended to aid the advancement of the gospel message, one need only observe contemporary behavior to realize that in the midst of the “hustle and bustle” of the holidays, any sincere motive to recognize the integral role of the Incarnation may have become diluted or discounted over time.

What we sometimes observe throughout the seasonal cascade of purported soul-seeking and feel-good philosophizing is that the actual premise of the Incarnation can seem just out of reach. In typical fashion, facts become

mythologized, reduced to just additional idealized fables employed in entertainment media campaigns marketing affected relational sentimentality or vague universal kinship. We are left with a commoditized Christmas,

disconnected from the authentic gospel of Jesus.

Any such shortcomings in properly contextualizing the Incarnation might ultimately contribute to the negative connotations that some individuals possess during this season.

For some, modern formulations of holiday festivities signify a troublesome veneer obscuring the discontent, disquiet, and displeasure that plague a multitude of minds and hearts. It is unlikely coincidental that reports of

depression and anxiety appear to escalate and intensify during this time of year, and not uncommon for Christmas to be associated with angst, guilt, conflict, disappointment, and disillusionment.

For such folk, a story of a baby born in a feeding trough a couple millennia ago may seem irrelevant or inconsequential.

For those struggling with hopelessness, the appeal of singing angels and worshiping shepherds might not seem readily apparent. As often happens, fragmentary facts, presented with a semblance of lore or guise of dogma, do not effectively offer insight to the truths they profess to embody.

Indeed, such abridged information can lead to misrepresentation, cultivating all sorts of erroneous conclusions.

In an episode of the television series “Star Trek: Voyager,” the interrelationship of some alien species is impacted in unforeseen ways following their brief encounter with the starship Voyager and its crew. Several centuries after this formative event, the history of the aliens' interaction with Voyager has emerged as one of intense strife and conflict, resulting in resentment and prejudice between two factions, with the ultimate blame attributed to Voyager and its crew based on scant evidence.

Fortuitously, a backup copy of Voyager's Emergency Medical Holographic program (EMH) ends up in the possession of a museum curator on one of the aliens’ planets. Upon activation, the EMH doctor quickly sets about attempting to overhaul the extreme fallacies regarding Voyager and its role in the historical hostilities. His challenge seems initially insurmountable due to the intensely ingrained assumptions of the aliens, reinforced through centuries of institutional inculcation, despite being derived from remarkably minimal artifacts and documentation.

QUARREN: All of our evidence shows that you were a war criminal.

EMH: Evidence? What evidence? Like this, for example? Triple-armoured hull? Thirty torpedo tubes? Twenty-five phaser banks? This isn't what our ship looked like.

QUARREN: We reconstructed it from a partial schematic found in the Cyrik ocean, which was badly damaged by corrosion. We were bound to get a few details wrong.

EMH: Voyager wasn't a warship. We were explorers.

QUARREN: Yes, I know. Trying to get home, to Mars.

EMH: Earth! You see, you couldn't even get that right. This is a nightmare.

Is there such as thing as getting Christmas “right?”

For the believer, the Incarnation is about more than counteractive variations of secular seasonal rituals and cultural customs. While it might seem useful, even respectful, to set aside specific times to focus on certain facets of one's faith, such practices can readily devolve into a kind of “scheduling” of spiritual experience. This in turn can lead to an attitude of arbitrarily limiting various expressions of worship as only acceptably occurring at certain times and in certain places.

Put another way, I have yet to encounter a rational and legitimately Biblical explanation as to why music which extols the awe and wonder of the Incarnation should not be sung or heard throughout the year.

Perhaps part of our challenge as believers is to maintain the framework of the whole story of the gospel that includes the Incarnation, and to remind

ourselves and others that the complete gospel, like God himself, is not limited to time or space, calendars or locations.