The Implications of an Incarnational Faith
by Fr. Tom Ryan, CSP

Where the body is concerned, Christianity has by and large not walked its talk. It has resisted the radical nature of its own good news. On the one hand, it has the highest theological evaluation of the body amongst all the religions of the world, and on the other hand, it has given little attention to the body’s role in the spiritual life in positive terms. High theology; low practice.

What’s the basis for saying that? Let’s take a look at the biblical record. For Jews and Christians alike, the opening chapter of the book of Genesis affirms that we are created male and female in God’s own image and that the body reflects God’s own goodness. With the events written about in the New Testament, an incarnational (from in carnis, literally: in the flesh) faith is born. To find the significant New Testament reference points, one need look no further than the major festivals of Christian faith.

In the festival of Christmas, it is precisely God becoming flesh in a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, that is celebrated. In the feast of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, Jesus is not only revealed as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, but he also gives us a glimpse into our own human dignity and destiny. At Easter, Christians celebrate Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead. And forty days later, on the feast of Jesus’ bodily Ascension into heaven, Christians find a foreshadowing of the entry of their own embodied nature into the intimate embrace of God’s life.

Ten days after the Ascension comes Pentecost: the Holy Spirit, God’s own life, is given to vessels of clay, given in this mortal flesh. In short, there is every indication that salvation does not mean getting out of this skin, but being transfigured and glorified in it. A spiritual body, yes, but a body. No wonder, then, that the apostle Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? So glorify God in your bodies!” (1 Corinthians 6: 12-20).

In the face of all our devaluations of the flesh that embodies God’s life-giving Spirit and of the earth that is God’s home, God sent us a message. From here on out, God is identified with and discovered within this bodiliness, this fleshiness, this materiality, this sensuality, this worldliness, this passion. In the Incarnation, Jesus took the world as part of himself. Ever afterward, we have no right to dismiss this world as some second-rate practice field for the real life in heaven. The Incarnation states that there is no practice, and nothing is second-rate. Life in this world is already penetrated with the very divinizing energies of God.

So we have not been burdened with this world and this flesh in order that we might weasel our way out. Rather, we have been gifted with this planet and these bodies because this is where God dwells. All flesh is holy and the ground of all human endeavors is sacred. It is in these bodies that we will work out our salvation. Since the only life we know is earthly and sensual, it follows that this is the stuff of our spirituality.

Therefore the “body language” of our relationship with God includes fasting and feasting, exercise and rest, suffering and sexual intercourse. It extends as well to the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and burying the dead. It involves an active concern for the body of Christ that finds visible expression in your church community, and for the body of citizens who make up your civic community. It reaches even to the health and well-being of the earthbody on which we walk, whose water we drink and whose air we breathe.

If you thought that there wasn’t enough challenge for you in being a Christian, think again. The implications of an incarnational faith are so far-reaching one can only allude to them here in the broadest of terms. On a personal level, they extend from the food we eat to ceasing the violence we inflict upon ourselves through negative self-talk and our aspirations for some idealized designer body. On a societal level, they relate to all forms of activism for racial equality, human rights, economic justice and peace-making—in short, anything that affirms others in their inestimable dignity and worth.

Living the implications of an incarnational faith is a strrrreeeeeeetch that takes you right off your mat into conscious and response-able living. Yoga is more about providing you with a strong and resilient “container” to stand on your feet in your life than it is about standing on your head on your mat. If what you’re doing on your mat is not strengthening you to engage with the wider context around you, perhaps you’ve not yet realized the implications of the Word of God becoming flesh for the life of the world.