Session 7: Practicing the Sacramental Life: THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION

SESSION SEVEN

Practicing the Sacramental Life

THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION

THE FOOTPRINTS OF GOD

At our last meeting each of us agreed to try one of the exercises in the Evangelical Tradition. Let’s share our experiences by answering the following question:

What did you learn about God and about yourself while doing the exercise?

After a few minutes of silent prayer, open with a time of sharing that the leader begins by reading this opening paragraph and answering the question posed.

JESUS AND THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE

Gospel Passage: Luke 13:10-17

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

When everyone has had a chance to respond, ask a member to read this Scripture passage.

Reflection Question

Do you ever feel guilty for doing work on what many consider a “holy” day, such as Sunday or Easter or Christmas? If you do, why?

THINKING IT THROUGH

In this passage from Luke’s Gospel we confront the age-old division between work and faith. People, especially religious leaders, have tried to erect a wall between the two for millennia. In our time the business world is helping to fortify that wall, as is American culture in general: we see the work-faith issue in church/state debates over the place of religion in schools, legislative bodies, the courts, and more. Can children read a Bible during study break? Can a governing body open its meetings with prayer? Can judges post the Ten Commandments in their courtrooms? And on and on.

After a brief discussion, choose someone to read this section.

Jesus faced this dichotomy head on. Before we consider his response, though, we need to look at some background. Jesus had been teaching in synagogues on the Sabbath since the early part of his ministry. This was nothing new. He had become known throughout Galilee and Judea for his succinct, powerful lessons.

First-century synagogue services were similar to our present-day church services. The people sang songs (psalms), listened to the reading of Scripture, prayed, and heard a message, normally delivered by the local rabbi. But in this service Jesus was what we might call the “guest speaker.” We do not know whether the leader invited him to speak or whether he was the guest of someone who belonged to the synagogue. In either case, he was bringing the “message” on the Sabbath and worshiping with the local people.

But right in the middle of his talk “there appeared a woman,” an unusual happening in itself. Most archaeologists believe that men worshiped on the ground floor of synagogues while women observed the service from the balcony. If this is true, then any woman who “appeared” among the men was not where she was supposed to be. The description of this woman’s infirmity suggests that she may have been unable to go up the stairs to the balcony. In that case, she may have come late to the service and tried to slip in unnoticed.

Jesus did what he was called to do—”let the oppressed go free” (see Session 6)—and healed the woman. The leader then became furious and tried to regain control of his synagogue. He reminded worshipers that religious law was very clear about when work should be done—during the week, never on the Sabbath. And healing on the Sabbath was “work.” So Jesus responded with an illustration everyone readily understood: You two-faced legalists will work on the Sabbath to take your animals to water and keep them alive—he said, in effect—but you won’t lift a finger to help this woman! Are they worth more than she is?

We see no division between sacred and secular in the words and deeds of Jesus. In this Gospel passage, who Jesus was at the core of his being flowed out in an act of mercy as he observed the sacraments of his Jewish faith, shattering the fragile wall separating faith and work, sacred and secular.

How do you think you would respond if your minister stopped speaking to heal a woman? Or if a homeless person walked down the aisle during the middle of a choir number and asked the minister for money to rent an apartment?

Reflection Question

GOD AND THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION

Have one member of the group read this entire section.

We briefly mentioned the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in Session 4, when we discussed the Charismatic Tradition. Here we must treat it in greater depth because of the nature of the Incarnational Tradition.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most controversial and most profound teachings of the Church. Countless people have abandoned the Church, canceling their membership or starting their own fellowship, because they could not accept one or another of the Trinity as God. Numberless volumes trying to explain the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been written. Even other religions get involved in the debate, accusing Christians of worshiping three Gods. Clearly, then, the teaching is not easily understood or communicated.

But the Trinity is at the heart of the Incarnational Tradition, because Jesus Christ is the Incarnation. In the person of Jesus Christ, God became human, thereby putting his blessing upon the material, physical world in which we live. God as Spirit created a physical body to inhabit—a marvelous, wondrous, indescribable reality harmonizing spirit and matter. By taking on all of the limitations of physical existence and living among us, God told us without words that he loves matter; and because we are made of matter, what we say, what we do, and who we are is invaluable. God created humans as embodied spirits, and when he saw that we had lost our way, he became one of us—Jesus—to help us find our way back into his family.

As part of his earthly life, Jesus regularly attended local synagogues, worshiping and taking part in the practices of his faith. The Gospels also record that he went to Jerusalem often to pray and worship at the temple. Though we may disdain or recoil from one “sacrament” of early Judaism—animal sacrifice—we have no record that Jesus shunned its practice. In fact, Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus’ parents offered (killed) two birds when they presented him in the temple (2:22-24). Just as God affirmed matter by becoming human, so he affirms our sacraments and our liturgies, which are rooted in the physical.

Contrary to what some people think, though, God does not confine his affirmation of human activity to those actions we consider “religious,” important as they are. By growing up in a family and taking part in everyday human activities such as working, eating, laughing, washing, walking, weeping, talking, and more, Jesus put his imprimatur, his “stamp of approval,” on every aspect of human life. Nothing was exempt; everything received equal honor.

Likewise, Jesus affirmed our vocations, both blue-collar and white-collar, by becoming an ordinary laborer—a carpenter—and a teacher—a rabbi. Most paintings and films portray Jesus as a slight, pale-skinned man with soft, uncallused hands. But we ought to imagine him as robust and dark-skinned with rough, scarred hands capable of transforming raw wood into a cradle as smooth and unblemished as a baby’s skin. His transformative powers were equally effective in speaking: when Jesus taught, “people were spellbound by what they heard” (Luke 19:48), which tells us that his words were full of wisdom and power.

In the Incarnation, God affirmed the value of human life and the goodness of the entire material world.

Have you ever considered that the everyday aspects of your life—cleaning house, loving your spouse, going to work—are as important to God as the spiritual aspects? Discuss.

Reflection Question Allow each person a few moments to respond to this question.

WHAT IS THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION?

We have discussed God the Father’s affirmation of all life in becoming a human—God the Son—but we have not addressed the role of God the Holy Spirit in the Incarnational Tradition. As we learned in Session 4, the Holy Spirit dwells in the children of God, and his presence is necessary for us to practice the Traditions. This is particularly true of the Incarnational Tradition.

As before, have a member read this entire section.

As physical beings we find it easy to focus on the material—the things we can see and touch. We need food to live and we enjoy eating. Our bodies get cold so we buy clothes. When we hit our thumb with a hammer, it hurts until we take a painkiller. Because we are sentient beings, everything we know about ourselves, other people, and our world comes through our senses. We are matter ourselves, so we perceive matter easily.

This presents a huge problem when we start exploring the world of the spirit. We cannot smell, taste, touch, see, or hear the spiritual, so we hesitate to believe it is real. We relegate it to a special category, a “pigeonhole,” allowing it out only on special “holy” days or when we have a specific need (such as a need for physical healing).

The Holy Spirit helps us overcome this disunity by promoting the harmony of the physical and the spiritual. At their creation, Adam and Eve’s bodies and spirits were in perfect harmony. But at the fall, their bodies took charge and started warring with their spirits. The apostle Paul clearly describes this problem when he exclaims, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15b). In his book Miracles, C. S. Lewis describes this condition as “estrangement” and envisions a day “when nature and Spirit are fully harmonised—when Spirit rides nature so perfectly that the two together make rather a Centaur than a mounted knight” (p. 161).

The primary means that the Holy Spirit uses to heal this estrangement is our practice of the spiritual disciplines. When we fast, we are telling our body that matters of the spirit are important. Serving another person puts his or her needs ahead of ours. In simplicity we are freed from the tyranny of always getting our own way. Worship reminds us that we are “dust.” The spiritual disciplines put our bodies in a place where God can work his goodness into us and bring harmony into our lives.

And when our bodies and our spirits start to come back into harmony, we do away with categories. We easily move between religious and everyday activities, treating them as of equal value because God is present in both. And all that we say, all that we do, all that we are becomes a means to make God’s presence real to those around us.

When our life is a “seamless garment,” we are free to reveal God to the world. Wholly available to God, we become his representative, his emissary, and he does his work through us. Our mind becomes the mind of God helping his children understand his love. Our hands become the hands of Jesus nursing the sick. Our voice becomes the voice of Christ proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Our arms become the arms of the Holy Spirit loving the sinner unconditionally. As we let the power and life of God flow through us, we become the person he created us to be and God becomes known to the world through us.

How does it make you feel to think that God works through you to do his work in the world? Describe your thoughts and feelings.

Reflection Question Give each member a chance to respond to this question if he or she wishes.

PRACTICING THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION

Up to this point in the session we have been talking in abstract terms. That is the easiest approach to a subject such as incarnational living, which centers on the interior more than on the exterior—centers on who people are more than on what they do or say. Now, though, we need to move to the concrete, to practical changes that help us integrate our divided self. In that process of integration, the Incarnational Tradition forces us to change the interior first; it looks to the source of what we do and say.

Again, choose a member to read these paragraphs.

We first start cooperating with the Holy Spirit rather than resisting. Most of us put up a barrier that excludes God, even though we are his children. We might think of this as an invisible shield, an extra layer of protective skin that we cover ourselves with to keep God out. When we pray, “God, I remove this barrier; I ask you to penetrate my life and make me whole,” God responds and energizes us.

We start thinking about life as a harmonious unit, abandoning such distinctions as spirit/matter, sacred/secular, faith/work, soul/body, religious/worldly as we move toward integration. Jesus showed us by his actions that life can be unified and seamless, that we can move readily in the power of God every day of the week, not just on “holy” days.

We consider our vocation to be as much a “calling” as that of minister or priest or religious. In the carpenter’s shop Jesus served God when he served other people, making tables and chairs and cradles. We similarly serve God by helping a woman select a dress or answering a man’s question about telephone service or filling an order for a book.

We view the family as a place where God can be served rather than as a means to fulfill our own needs and wants. All of us desperately need to make connection with other people, to feel needed and loved. The family meets those needs and more. This view of family life may catapult us into service that some think is demeaning, but we find God even while we change diapers and wash windows.

We stop thinking in terms of what comes first or who is on top or what is most important. A truly integrated person brings God, family, and vocation together, spending time with each as needed rather than as dictated by a legalistic scheme such as ten minutes with God, two hours with the family, and eight hours at work. Since the CEO and the secretary are equally valuable, equally precious, equally loved by God, we respect and treat each person equally. All of our actions and activities are important in God’s economy, because we show forth the presence of God to the world.

We remember that our interior transformation takes time and occurs gradually. In concert with the other Traditions—Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, and Evangelical—the Incarnational Tradition leads us deeper into the interior and guides our actions so that we can truly bring the presence of God to those in our family, in our work, and in our society. Through us the invisible world of the spirit becomes visible.

EXERCISES IN THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION

Have each member read over the exercises silently, or have members read them aloud, one at a time. Spend a few moments considering them as each person chooses the exercise he or she will do before the next meeting.

ENDING AND BEGINNING

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen.

Allow each member time to share which of the above exercises he or she plans to do during the week. Encourage each other in this venture. After everyone has shared, join hands in a circle and pray the Lord’s Prayer aloud and in unison.

Ask for a volunteer to lead the next meeting. Tell people to bring at least one photocopy (per person) of the Worksheet found on pages 103-104 to the next meeting.

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