"Emmanuel: Glimpses of God Incarnate," December 9

Thursday, December 9

Genesis 2:4-8

“God as Creator”

ON THE ONE HAND, the Creator, transcending the whole of creation. On the other, a baby in a manger in first-century Bethlehem. The astounding distance is collapsed through kenosis fired by agape. Agape was “in the beginning”: if a single image could portray the Creator in Genesis who blesses, delights in, and cares for all creatures, it would be the image of a sweeping bow down and a gathering up of every creature in loving embrace, an image of kenosis fired by agape, a reality unnamed but vividly portrayed “in the beginning” and realized to the nth degree in its incarnation as a helpless infant amongst marginal peasants.

This divine passion—passion for others, passion in service to—is the “burning coal” on the lips of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, so that, as Amos cries out, “Who can but prophesy?” It is the passion of saints and prophets of every religious tradition, the passion of Gautama Buddha, the passion of bodhisattvas and, of course, the passion of Jesus—no supersessionism or divide among faiths here. Agapic passion for others disrupts modern Western rationality’s passion for self (enlightened or no) and for power over—the passion of Caesars, Herods, and their modern equivalents.

Agape is a passion worldly powers seek to crucify. It is no surprise that from Herod to our day, worldly powers have sought to “X”-out Christmas and to scapegoat faiths. It is no accident the brutal story of Herod’s merciless slaughter of infants and toddlers is a Christmas story. Modern Western secular historians like to point out there is no historical evidence for the story—“The Herod story is not true!” they exclaim—amidst a world of massive global inequity saturated in greed in which tens of thousands die of hunger every day. “Let those who have eyes see,” says agape incarnate, who cannot but prophesy on what is, thereby, a sure path to crucifixion, a sure path to a cross wherein the transcending reality, undefeated, shines all the more intensely: “forgive them, for they know not …”

– Dr. William Greenway, Professor of Philosophical Theology