“Amidst the Grace...”
Confessio fidei
http://diversionaerie.tumblr.com/post/123924487481/answering-the-kings-cry
Be of the same mind as Christ Jesus, said Paul. The Deep Incarnation school of modern kenosis theology believes that in the Incarnation God as Trinity inserted Itself into human time, melded with earth, wind, and water, with flora, fauna and hominid, and from that moment on the pouring forth, the kenosis of Christ Jesus, changed our destiny.
But not in the way most theologians would have it. We were not somehow saved or redeemed in the Event, nor were our souls’ futures in the eschaton bought by the blood of the Sacred Sacrifice. On the contrary, Deep Incarnation closes that distance between us and God. It is not just Jesus who is changed or exalted; it is all of us and everything. We became part of God’s realization of Itself in humanity as well as in all of Its Creation. Everything, everyone, became our blood kin; our family tree became an entire ecosystem.
We who have “minds” received a special invitation - to become, as Paul suggested, Christ. Not so we could redeem others in some act of forgiveness that merely absolves the wrongdoer, but so we could reclaim others as our own in an act of care – that deliberate, persistent, obstinate refusal to let things simply be as they are.
In the face of cruelty, hatred, suffering, yes even in those simple stupid mistakes that cause us or others pain, we are all that stands between the promise of the Incarnation and its fulfillment. It is not our patience that is tested when we are wronged, spurned, abandoned, or cheated; instead it is our courage to be ourselves and to make things better for all concerned. Pray to God as we may in such moments, it is the echo of our own voice we hear in reply, for since the Incarnation we are that original Grace, we are its promise and its purpose and, most of all, its instrument.
If we are not imbued with the Spirit as was Jesus, or melded as closely with the Son as he, that is precisely the gift of that first kenosis. For in Deep Incarnation we were invited to prove ourselves to be as determined, as tenacious, with ourselves and others, as God has been with us. It is not a matter of self-discipline or forgiveness or tolerance; it is not “about us”; it is realizing our birthright, incarnating Grace for its own sake, in a selfless act of changing the world for others.
We stand, amidst the Grace that once we so egoistically and mistakenly thought redeemed us, against all odds and affronts in a seemingly Grace-less world, at whatever cost and without hesitation, without resentment of our lot or hope for our future … simply to be of that Mind, simply to be that Person we were invited to become, just because ………. because that is who, and why, we are.