The Sunday before Advent starts, we actually get a pretty good reminder of the power of Incarnational Seeing. Incarnational seeing is my language for what others call the spiritual practice of “paying attention.” There is a lot of buzz in the culture right now around the concept of “mindfulness” as a tool for reducing stress and coping with life. To my heart, though, Incarnational seeing goes well beyond this.
Despite the fact that we very rarely equate this parable with the Christmas season, there is perhaps no more powerful example of God’s incarnational nature.
Luke’s story gives us the “who, what, where, when” of Christmas.
John’s “prologue” gives us a bit of the “why.”
But the Parable of the Last Judgment puts it all together and reminds us that these things are not “once upon a time” events, but “every moment, every time” events.
It’s God’s roadmap for both our ethical and moral action in t:he world, and also how we are to SEE that world:
“I was hungry and you gave me food to eat.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear.
I was sick and you took care of me.
I was in prison and you visited me.”
Notice how *personal” Jesus makes this…
“I was hungry…”
Jesus teaches us that when we love and serve the least, the lost and the left out, we are not just doing nice or kind things; we are not just performing some perfunctory moral duty. We are, in the most literal way we can imagine, loving and serving God.
This is the heart of “incarnational seeing.” It’s the heart of what Jesus means when Jesus teaches us to “Love God” and “Love our Neighbor” in great commandment. This parable shows us just exactly how the rubber meets the road in that greatest of God’s laws.
Loving God is loving our neighbor and loving our neighbor is loving God.
Jesus wants us to develop just these kinds of spiritual eyes. Jesus wants us to see the world through Incarnational eyes.
It’s hard. Nobody sees this way all the time. In fact, in the Parable of the Last Judgment neither the “sheep” nor the “goats” seem to understand that they have been doing God’s will.
They say…
“When did we see you?”
“When did we not see you?”
You see? This parable is about SEEING. As I like to say it’s about understanding that there is no place, no time, no person, beyond or outside the presence of God. Every single time, every single place, every single person…has some bit of God in them. It’s just often very hard to see.
It’s entirely possible —even likely then— that many human beings are doing exactly what God most wants us to do without having any conscious knowledge that they are “loving God.” By this I mean, people who are not doing anything remotely “religous,” like attending church, reading the Bible, or even praying prayers.
This parable makes crystal clear that its absolutely possible to spend a life loving and serving humans….and in doing so, perfrom greatest of all religious work God wants from humans.
But, whether we are relgious or not, this is hard work. Because this takes seeing our “enemies,” our “adversaries,” and the least, lost and left out not as subhuman animals but as incarnations of God as well. We are so terribly adept –people who religious and non-religious, conservative and liberal, people of every culture, race and religion– at “seeing” our enemies and adversaries as “less than human.” Because they are other, because they belong to different “tribes” we have an almost genetic ability to “Otherize” people into “US verses THEM” groups.
But this is the very OPPOSITE of what Jesus wants, and is a negation of the power of incarnational seeing.
On Mockingbird Lane —just down from Love Field, amidst gun clubs and other strip mall shops— you can whiz past the statue in this picture (or a statue just like it). It’s titled “Homeless Jesus,” and it was installed just in front of Catholic Charities Offices there.
Without a careful glance it appears to be an ordinary homeless person asleep on an ordinary park bench. But on close inspection, one sees the holes in the feet signifying that this is indeed a figure of Christ.
“Homeless Jesus” statues have caused quite a stir in other parts of the country. One that was installed on the grounds of a local church in a wealthy Ohio neighborhood led nervous neighbors to call the police…twenty minutes after it was installed!
You can’t make this stuff up…
But don’t judge that caller too harshly. The point of the statue, the point of the Parable of the Last Judgment, is to remind us that ALL OF US regularly fail to see God in the lives of other humans.
We fail to see God in the migrant, cut by State of Texas-funded razor wire barriers in the Rio Grande.
We fail to see God in the life of a child killed in Gaza or in a terrified Israeli family.
We fail to see God in a trans child and their families.
We fail to see God in MAGA hat wearing white men.
We fail to see God in the homeless person who right now sleeps under the bridge near where you live.
We do not SEE the way God hopes we will see.
We instead see an “Other,” an “Enemy;” a rival team or tribe.
Really seeing the way God wants us to see means we have an ethical obligation to treat all human beings as if we are encountering Godself. (Because we are.)
The ethical/moral responsibility of incarnation theology is immense and vast. As Thomas Merton once said:
“Whoever believes that Christ is the Word made flesh believes that every person must in some sense be regarded as Christ.”
Incarnational seeing, and the moral ethic inherent inside of it, is the true meaning of Christmas.
This is the true meaning of the “good tidings of great joy” from that holy night.