A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN
My apologies for the delay in publishing this post… although I do have a good excuse! I’ve been working full-on, alongside the usual busy schedule, to get the book ready for print. And now it’s done! The official launch date is May 29th, but the book is available now in paperback from Amazon and Ingram, and in ebook from Kindle and Apple Books. Hurrah!
Image: https://jesswandering.com/how-to-climb-the-sky-ladder-in-austria/
You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. John 1:51, ESV
Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference of Catholic and Protestant missional leaders in Rome. My fellow keynote speaker was Johannes Reimer, a remarkable theologian and church-planter. He and I were due to tag- team the main sessions. Unfortunately, we didn’t find time to co-ordinate our plans, and to make matters worse Johannes arrived late, so that he came into the conference partway through my first presentation. I was unpacking a cluster of themes around missional engagement, landing on the incarnation and taking an approach popular at the time: the idea of mission as ‘moving into the neighbourhood.’ Jesus came to us where we are, so we should go to our neighbours where they are. Incarnational ministry is a call for us to move out from our churches and into the culture, embodying the way of Jesus.
When Johannes came to the platform to deliver his first presentation, he introduced himself, apologised for his late arrival and said how inspiring and encouraging my words had been. ‘But of course nothing Gerard said,’ he went on, ‘had anything at all to do with incarnation.’ He then delivered a masterclass in the historic and orthodox understanding of the incarnation, and how vital it is that we rediscover it today. The incarnation of Jesus is a unique event in all history, in which God takes on flesh. We can’t ‘become incarnate’ because we are already flesh. Only Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father, could do such a thing. I was gripped, and never again made the mistake of substituting our missional activities for the one-off, transformative and unique event of the incarnation.
Johannes wasn’t suggesting for a moment that we shouldn’t move into the neighbourhood – his entire presentation was an appeal to do just that. He was urging us, though, not to think that in doing so we are in any way repeating the incarnation of Jesus. Rather, we go into the world carrying with us the story of a unique and unrepeatable event, in which the God who is above and beyond us by an immeasurable margin took on our flesh to become one of us, and carried our human nature with him to the throne of heaven. Now more than ever, I see and appreciate the validity of Johannes’ corrective intervention. The message of the Church is not ‘Look at us,’ it is ‘Look at Jesus.’ The story of his incarnation – the exaltation of the Son of Man – is the only story that can truly transform our world.
