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Christmas – Disruptive Incarnation
Rev. Doug Floyd
Nativity, St. Catherine Monastery, Sinai, 6th century
Christmas – Disruptive Incarnation
Rev. Doug Floyd
John 1:1-18
The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined. (Is 9:2)
A sudden burst of light during the dark of morning sleep startles me awake. It stings like a splash of ice-cold water on the face. A sudden beep of the alarm clock shocks me out of bed. I leap across the floor to turn off this morning terror. After 34 years of marriage, Kelly is still puzzled by my traumatic waking habits when light and sound break into my dreams.
The Incarnation of the Word of God breaks into our sleeping world and startles us awake like a bright light, a loud sound, a stinging splash of cold water in the face. This Incarnation of the Word of God is disorienting, disruptive, and can be painful. This Incarnation of the Word of God is judgment.
When Jesus comes, he reveals that we are blind, deaf and dumb. When the True Form appears, all our forms are revealed as empty idols created by our broken hands and broken minds. The Incarnation of the Word of God breaks into our world as a baby in a manger, as a boy in the Temple, as a King on His Cross.
Reflecting upon the terrible suddenness of Incarnation brings to mind a traumatic encounter I once had with the Russian film Andrei Rublev. The impact of this strange film felt like something, someone burst into my world and left me speechless. I sat transfixed in holy awe.
Set in the 15th century, the film opens in the midst of a chaotic encounter between townspeople and a man launching his hot air balloon. He breaks free from the shouting people and ascends into the air. He floats over the town, over the creek, over the horses running along the bank, over the fields. The camera zooms in on a horse rolling in the dirt. Then he crashes and dies. End of story.
Then the story begins. A series of slow and loosely connected tales follow the Russian monk Andrei Rublev on years of pilgrimage. His craft as an iconographer leads him from monastery to monastery. Along the way, he encounters a mocking jester who suffers at the hands of officials, a betrayal by a close friend, a pagan spring solstice ritual that ends badly, a group of artists gruesomely blinded after completing their work for one prince (blinded so they cannot duplicate their work), a clash between two princes that eventually leaves one dead (along with many of his townspeople).
All through the film, long slow shots depict every detail of peasant faces, peasant earthiness, and peasant suffering.
Rublev begins his pilgrimage aloof from this grimy world, but again and again he is immersed into the stuff of living. During one violent scene, he kills a Tartar invader who is attacking a local mute woman. The muck of the world has infected him. Now he is covered with blood. Rublev gives up painting. He gives up his brush, and he gives up his words.
He takes refuge in a vow of silence, serving the monastery and providing for the mute woman. Eventually she runs away with one of the Tartar invaders.
In the final tale of the movie, a master bell maker is summoned to craft a bell for the Prince, but bell maker is dead. The son steps forward and claims he has mastered the ancient skill. The boy doesn’t fully know the secret of bell making, but he takes a risk, and the whole town takes a risk with him. After many challenges, the bell is finally complete, and the Prince comes to hear the bell. If it doesn’t ring, the boy and the town will suffer. The bell resounds across the land, and the boy falls into Rublev’s arms crying in relief.
After over three hours of watching black and white vignettes in Rublev’s life, this last scene fades to color. In the final moments of the film, we behold brilliant color images of Rublev’s icons, ending with his greatest work, Abraham’s Visitors (or the Old Testament Trinity).
As the film ended, I sat staring blankly. Overcome. I wasn’t sure what just happened to me, but I felt like God drew near to me, overwhelmed me, and left me without words. It is said that when ancient Celtic bards spoke, everyone lost their words and could not speak. When The Word of God draws near, all words fall silent.
Over the years, I’ve wrestled with why Rublev so deeply impacted me. I think it has something to do with Incarnation. As I think about the Incarnation of the Word of God, I return to the opening scene of Andrei Rublev. The man in the balloon wants to soar above the world, but the balloon crashes and he falls from the sky like Icarus.
Rublev seeks to rise above this world of changing forms by creating some permanent form. And yet, he is pulled down again and again into the ever-changing stuff of life. He is immersed in the struggle, the messiness, the suffering, the actual dirt and grime.
Incarnation is messy.
As we look up to the glory of the Creator, we may long to rise above this world into some spiritual plane that transcends the struggles, the suffering, the ache of our humanity. Man-made religion presses upward, striving, struggling to seize the divine.
God reveals his Incarnate Word by descending into the depths: he enters into the depths of our messiness, the depths of our grime, the depths of our humanness. Jesus, the Incarnate Word, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
The Word of God offends our sensibilities because Jesus is just a Jew born in the griminess of human flesh. He lives on the outskirts of world power, descended in a fallen house of a defeated nation. How could he make the audacious claim of intimacy with the Creator of Heaven and Earth? How could he speak of His Father instead of bowing before the unutterable name? How could this Jew, this outlaw, this man be fully divine and fully human? How could He be the only complete revelation of God the Father?
Jesus is irreverent. He eats with the wicked. He embraces the prostitutes. He tells stories of “Good Samaritans” instead of judging them for their idolatry. If He hasn’t offended you, it’s because you’re not reading closely. He offends of all us–all of our sensibilities.
He bursts into this grimy, painful, broken, colorless world with the light of glory. This relentless light exposes every detail of our peasant faces, our grimy hearts, our suffering souls. We want to rise above our frail humanness, but the God of glory bursts our balloon by stepping into the middle of our humanity.
And Jesus never leaves our humanity.
In Himself, Jesus brings humanity before the Father interceding for us continually. But He also dwells in our midst. His light is still shining into the depths of our humanness. Echoes of grace resound across this suffering world. By His Spirit, our Savior stands in the midst of the suffering.
As we look for His coming, let us not look away from His world. He is here speaking to us. Calling us to step into the brokenness. Just as Rublev entered the life of the mute woman and the bell maker’s son, we must enter the lives of the troubled and troubling people around us. Christ the Word of God is calling us even now into His love as we enter into the lives of the person across the cubicle, the person across the street, the person across the world.
Can we look into their faces? Can we smell the muddy earthiness of rich and poor alike? Can we hear their stories of suffering, desperation, anger, emptiness? Can we rest in His love and dwell in His love and move in His love by embracing them?
Can we let go of our own visions of self-glory long enough to behold their broken images and acknowledge our own broken reflection?
We’ve been dreaming of a winter wonderland, but He is waking us to world of brokenness that reveals our own hidden brokenness. Can we see him, hear him, follow the call of His Spirit into the midst? Like Rublev we are being baptized into a world of pain and death.
In the midst, we discover the Risen Lord who has conquered death and is bringing all things into glory. We stand mute before the Word made Flesh, worshiping the Creator of Heaven and Earth who in His depths is worthy to be hymned in the heights with all glory and honor and power and wisdom.
(Adapted from an essay I wrote in 2009.)
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By Rev. Doug FloydRev. Doug Floyd
Nativity, St. Catherine Monastery, Sinai, 6th century
Christmas – Disruptive Incarnation
Rev. Doug Floyd
John 1:1-18
The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined. (Is 9:2)
A sudden burst of light during the dark of morning sleep startles me awake. It stings like a splash of ice-cold water on the face. A sudden beep of the alarm clock shocks me out of bed. I leap across the floor to turn off this morning terror. After 34 years of marriage, Kelly is still puzzled by my traumatic waking habits when light and sound break into my dreams.
The Incarnation of the Word of God breaks into our sleeping world and startles us awake like a bright light, a loud sound, a stinging splash of cold water in the face. This Incarnation of the Word of God is disorienting, disruptive, and can be painful. This Incarnation of the Word of God is judgment.
When Jesus comes, he reveals that we are blind, deaf and dumb. When the True Form appears, all our forms are revealed as empty idols created by our broken hands and broken minds. The Incarnation of the Word of God breaks into our world as a baby in a manger, as a boy in the Temple, as a King on His Cross.
Reflecting upon the terrible suddenness of Incarnation brings to mind a traumatic encounter I once had with the Russian film Andrei Rublev. The impact of this strange film felt like something, someone burst into my world and left me speechless. I sat transfixed in holy awe.
Set in the 15th century, the film opens in the midst of a chaotic encounter between townspeople and a man launching his hot air balloon. He breaks free from the shouting people and ascends into the air. He floats over the town, over the creek, over the horses running along the bank, over the fields. The camera zooms in on a horse rolling in the dirt. Then he crashes and dies. End of story.
Then the story begins. A series of slow and loosely connected tales follow the Russian monk Andrei Rublev on years of pilgrimage. His craft as an iconographer leads him from monastery to monastery. Along the way, he encounters a mocking jester who suffers at the hands of officials, a betrayal by a close friend, a pagan spring solstice ritual that ends badly, a group of artists gruesomely blinded after completing their work for one prince (blinded so they cannot duplicate their work), a clash between two princes that eventually leaves one dead (along with many of his townspeople).
All through the film, long slow shots depict every detail of peasant faces, peasant earthiness, and peasant suffering.
Rublev begins his pilgrimage aloof from this grimy world, but again and again he is immersed into the stuff of living. During one violent scene, he kills a Tartar invader who is attacking a local mute woman. The muck of the world has infected him. Now he is covered with blood. Rublev gives up painting. He gives up his brush, and he gives up his words.
He takes refuge in a vow of silence, serving the monastery and providing for the mute woman. Eventually she runs away with one of the Tartar invaders.
In the final tale of the movie, a master bell maker is summoned to craft a bell for the Prince, but bell maker is dead. The son steps forward and claims he has mastered the ancient skill. The boy doesn’t fully know the secret of bell making, but he takes a risk, and the whole town takes a risk with him. After many challenges, the bell is finally complete, and the Prince comes to hear the bell. If it doesn’t ring, the boy and the town will suffer. The bell resounds across the land, and the boy falls into Rublev’s arms crying in relief.
After over three hours of watching black and white vignettes in Rublev’s life, this last scene fades to color. In the final moments of the film, we behold brilliant color images of Rublev’s icons, ending with his greatest work, Abraham’s Visitors (or the Old Testament Trinity).
As the film ended, I sat staring blankly. Overcome. I wasn’t sure what just happened to me, but I felt like God drew near to me, overwhelmed me, and left me without words. It is said that when ancient Celtic bards spoke, everyone lost their words and could not speak. When The Word of God draws near, all words fall silent.
Over the years, I’ve wrestled with why Rublev so deeply impacted me. I think it has something to do with Incarnation. As I think about the Incarnation of the Word of God, I return to the opening scene of Andrei Rublev. The man in the balloon wants to soar above the world, but the balloon crashes and he falls from the sky like Icarus.
Rublev seeks to rise above this world of changing forms by creating some permanent form. And yet, he is pulled down again and again into the ever-changing stuff of life. He is immersed in the struggle, the messiness, the suffering, the actual dirt and grime.
Incarnation is messy.
As we look up to the glory of the Creator, we may long to rise above this world into some spiritual plane that transcends the struggles, the suffering, the ache of our humanity. Man-made religion presses upward, striving, struggling to seize the divine.
God reveals his Incarnate Word by descending into the depths: he enters into the depths of our messiness, the depths of our grime, the depths of our humanness. Jesus, the Incarnate Word, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
The Word of God offends our sensibilities because Jesus is just a Jew born in the griminess of human flesh. He lives on the outskirts of world power, descended in a fallen house of a defeated nation. How could he make the audacious claim of intimacy with the Creator of Heaven and Earth? How could he speak of His Father instead of bowing before the unutterable name? How could this Jew, this outlaw, this man be fully divine and fully human? How could He be the only complete revelation of God the Father?
Jesus is irreverent. He eats with the wicked. He embraces the prostitutes. He tells stories of “Good Samaritans” instead of judging them for their idolatry. If He hasn’t offended you, it’s because you’re not reading closely. He offends of all us–all of our sensibilities.
He bursts into this grimy, painful, broken, colorless world with the light of glory. This relentless light exposes every detail of our peasant faces, our grimy hearts, our suffering souls. We want to rise above our frail humanness, but the God of glory bursts our balloon by stepping into the middle of our humanity.
And Jesus never leaves our humanity.
In Himself, Jesus brings humanity before the Father interceding for us continually. But He also dwells in our midst. His light is still shining into the depths of our humanness. Echoes of grace resound across this suffering world. By His Spirit, our Savior stands in the midst of the suffering.
As we look for His coming, let us not look away from His world. He is here speaking to us. Calling us to step into the brokenness. Just as Rublev entered the life of the mute woman and the bell maker’s son, we must enter the lives of the troubled and troubling people around us. Christ the Word of God is calling us even now into His love as we enter into the lives of the person across the cubicle, the person across the street, the person across the world.
Can we look into their faces? Can we smell the muddy earthiness of rich and poor alike? Can we hear their stories of suffering, desperation, anger, emptiness? Can we rest in His love and dwell in His love and move in His love by embracing them?
Can we let go of our own visions of self-glory long enough to behold their broken images and acknowledge our own broken reflection?
We’ve been dreaming of a winter wonderland, but He is waking us to world of brokenness that reveals our own hidden brokenness. Can we see him, hear him, follow the call of His Spirit into the midst? Like Rublev we are being baptized into a world of pain and death.
In the midst, we discover the Risen Lord who has conquered death and is bringing all things into glory. We stand mute before the Word made Flesh, worshiping the Creator of Heaven and Earth who in His depths is worthy to be hymned in the heights with all glory and honor and power and wisdom.
(Adapted from an essay I wrote in 2009.)