Chapter 7: The Incarnational Tradition: Discovering the Sacramental Life
Chapter 7
The Incarnational Tradition: Discovering the Sacramental Life
We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
— 2 Corinthians 4:7
We are creatures of sense and of spirit, and we must live an amphibious life.
— Evelyn Underhill
7 
WE HAVE LEARNED how a prayer-filled life lays the foundation for both the virtuous life and the Spirit-empowered life, and how these in turn give us the ability to engage in social justice and the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom. The one element remaining is to understand how all of these components function in ordinary life, which is the task of the Incarnational Tradition.
The Incarnational Stream of Christian life and faith focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit. This sacramental way of living addresses the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.
SEEKING A HISTORICAL PARADIGM
At Susanna’s baptism her father, Dr. Samuel Annesley, was asked how many children he had. He replied, “Two dozen, I believe, or a quarter of a hundred.”1 The last guess was the correct one: Susanna was the twenty-fifth child of the renowned Puritan divine. Born 20 January 1669 in London, England, Susanna is my choice for a historical model of the Incarnational Tradition.
I chose Susanna because of her complete immersion in the details of daily life: finding God in the details and serving God through these same details. Susanna represents the millions of people who have learned to do ordinary things with a perception of their enormous value. Later in her life Susanna prayed, “Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in Thy presence. So may my every word and action have a moral content. … May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward Thy likeness. … Amen.”2 This prayer, by the by, is one of the finest expressions of the Incarnational Tradition you will ever find.
Susanna was a precocious child. Even though, as a female, she could not attend college, she received a substantial education at home. Her father, known for his intellectual acumen (M.A. and LL.D. from Queen’s College, Oxford), took an active part in her education. Under his tutelage she studied logic, metaphysics, anatomy, French, and possibly Greek and Latin.3 She has been called “a theologian in short dresses,”4 and for good reason. By the time she was thirteen she had carefully weighed the doctrinal debates between the Nonconformist groups (her father was known as “the St. Paul of the Nonconformists”) and Established Anglicanism and had decided in favor of the Church of England. Whatever Samuel Annesley’s inward anguish over his daughter’s decision, he gave Susanna his blessing, and she remained a favorite daughter, receiving all his letters and papers upon his death.5
The next major event in Susanna’s life was marriage, and the moment I tell you who she married, you will recognize the Susanna I am talking about. Not that her husband ever became well known — he did not — but two of their children were among the most famous figures in all of England. The two children I speak of were John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism; their father was Samuel Wesley; and their mother — the Susanna of this story — was Susanna Wesley.
The diminutive Reverend Samuel Wesley had also left the Nonconformist cause in favor of the staid and stately Church of England, so their interest in one another is not surprising. They married at St. Marylebone Parish Church, London, on 12 November 1688. Samuel became curate of two small parishes, rector at one other, and chaplain on a man-o’-war ship for a brief time, but by far the bulk of his ministerial life was spent as rector of Epworth Parish Church in Lincolnshire. And it was at Epworth that Susanna lived and worked and showed the world how sacred are the duties of living and working.
Mother and Educator
Susanna was first and foremost a mother. For her, motherhood was a calling — a vocatio — and she took up this work with a seriousness that is hard for people to comprehend today. The fact that she had nineteen children in a span of twenty years is, by itself, difficult for us moderns to wrap our minds around. To be sure, nine of these children did not survive infancy, but the remaining ten received a loving care that was special even in that day. And training — did they ever receive training! Susanna has received universal acclaim for the way she undertook to educate all of her children in a kind of “home schooling” environment.
This commitment to teaching her children was no small undertaking. She, in essence, set up a small private boarding school. All the children — there were seven girls and three boys — on their fifth birthday were taught the alphabet, and then they started immediately on the first chapter of Genesis. From there the homemade syllabus included grammar, history, mathematics, geography, and theology. Samuel, the father, occasionally helped Susanna with lessons in the classics.
The teaching schedule went from nine in the morning until noon and from two in the afternoon until five. Despite all the ups and downs of their eventful life Susanna kept up this six-hour-a-day schedule for twenty years. Each day she would watch over her children doing their lessons, all the while nursing the newest baby, keeping the household accounts, writing her letters, doing her sewing. In addition, she met individually with each child once a week. John’s tutorial was on Thursday nights, and all through his influential ministry he expressed his indebtedness for those Thursday night sessions. Susanna maintained this regimen, as I said, for twenty years, instilling into her children something of her rare personality in the process.
One aspect of that personality was an exceptional patience. Observing his wife teaching on one particular day, Samuel counted twenty times that she repeated a single piece of information. “I wonder at your patience,” he commented; “you have told that child twenty times that same thing.” Susanna, looking up, smiled and said, “If I had satisfied myself by mentioning it only nineteen times I should have lost all my labour. It was the twentieth time that crowned it.”6
Another of her personality traits was an exceptional love of learning. That Susanna passed this trait on to her children is apparent in the zeal with which they pursued learning when they went out into the wider world after the “home schooling” years. The three brothers all went on to advanced degrees, John becoming a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. In that day, of course, formal college training was not an option for the girls. But even so, John said of his sister Emily that she was the best reader of Milton that he had ever heard. Another sister, Martha, became a respected member of the great Samuel Johnson’s literary circle.
A third sister, Hetty, excelled even more. Samuel, recognizing this daughter’s extraordinary qualities, gave her special training in the classics, and by the time she was nine, she was able to read Greek and Latin. She also possessed “an exquisite poetic genius,” a gift that both she and her brother Charles inherited from their father. A contemporary described her as “Hetty of the high spirits, the clear eye, the springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them all.”7
“The Calamities of Life”
But everything, as I am sure you can imagine, was not all sweetness and light, and the mention of Hetty causes me to comment on the sadness, even tragedy, that struck Susanna and her household more than once.
Hetty was said to be the most attractive of the seven sisters. But Epworth was far from the most favorable environment for finding suitable young men. Hetty, in fact, once wrote these words to her sister Emilia:
Fortune has fixed thee in a place
Debarred of wisdom, wit and grace:
High births and virtue equally they scorn,
As asses dull on dunghills born …8
There was one man, John Romley by name, who was interested in Hetty. Oxford educated, he was a schoolteacher in a nearby village. Unfortunately, he offended Samuel Wesley by ridiculing the way Samuel changed his Tory and Whig loyalties to fit the prevailing political wind. Samuel ordered Romley out of the house and forbade Hetty from ever associating with him. She obeyed. Soon after, however, a young lawyer came courting Hetty, and when Samuel forbade that relationship too, she ran off with the young man. Her lover had given her every assurance that they were running away to be married; but the next morning he was gone, and she soon found that she was pregnant. Hetty was devastated, and Samuel was scandalized. If not for Susanna’s pleas, Samuel would have ordered Hetty out of the house immediately. With his only thought to avoid the disgrace of a fatherless child, Samuel arranged a marriage for Hetty with the first man they could find — an illiterate plumber who happened to be traveling through the countryside.9 The marriage was a complete disaster, of course, and Hetty suffered a lifetime for her one night of indiscretion. Compounding her sorrow, Hetty, the daughter who had showed such literary promise, was disowned by her father. They were never reconciled.10
This incident shows the rigid, self-righteous side of Samuel Wesley. It was a dark character flaw in an otherwise faithful and diligent husband, father, and minister. It did not surface often, but whenever it did, it caused misery in the Wesley family.
Susanna was herself the recipient of Samuel’s rigidity on one occasion. It seems that once during evening prayers she did not say Amen to her husband’s petition for William of Orange, then King of England. (Susanna had sympathies toward the minority who believed that the deposed James II still remained king by divine right.) Susanna recorded what happened next: “He retired to his study, and calling me to him asked me the reason of my not saying Amen to the Prayer. I was a little surprised at the question and don’t well know what I answered, but too too well I remember what followed: He immediately kneeled down and imprecated the divine Vengeance upon himself and all his posterity if ever he touched me more or came into a bed with me before I had begged God’s pardon and his, for not saying Amen to the prayer for the K[in]g.”11
Susanna, refusing to be intimidated, stood her ground. Samuel left in a huff for London and did not return for six months — and then only because a tragic fire had destroyed two-thirds of the Wesley home. The fire brought them back together again, and the most visible result of their reconciliation arrived the next June, a baby boy named John.
If one fire gave them their son John, another fire nearly took him from them. That is the well-known fire of Methodist lore in which John is said to have been “a brand plucked from the burning.” The night was Wednesday, 9 February 1709. Near midnight a fire, perhaps the latest mischief of the rector’s enemies, engulfed the house. In the frantic moments that followed, everyone was able to make his or her way out — everyone, that is, except five-year-old John (or Jacky, as he was known then). Susanna wrote that her husband heard Jacky “miserably crying out in the nursery and attempted several times to get upstairs, but was beat back by the flame; then he thought him lost and commended his soul to God and went to look after the rest.”12 But unknown to the father, young Jacky had climbed to the edge of the nursery window, where he again called for help. “Fetch a ladder!” shouted one man — but there was no time. One large man braced himself against the wall while a slender man climbed onto his shoulders. At the first try the slender man tumbled to the ground. But the second try was successful: he pulled little Jacky out of the window just as the flaming roof caved in — truly “a brand plucked from the burning.” Overjoyed, Samuel gathered his shivering family together beside the charred ruins of their home: “Come neighbours, let us kneel down! Let us give thanks to God! He has given me all my eight children: let the house go, I am rich enough!”13
Rich in family perhaps, but totally destitute in possessions. Everything had been lost: their home, their furnishings, Samuel’s library, all Susanna’s early letters, Dr. Annesley’s precious papers — everything.
This was not the only occasion when they had to go without, however. Samuel, while a diligent minister, was an extremely poor manager of his worldly affairs. He was constantly in debt and at one point was even thrown into debtors’ prison. On that particular occasion Susanna brought her wedding ring to him in the hope that it could be used to release him. Samuel — here we see his tender side — could not take it, preferring to stay in prison rather than have his Susanna deprived of her wedding ring. The bishop finally came to the rescue, clearing Samuel’s debts.
These incidents give you a sampling of “the calamities of life” that Susanna endured.14 And endure she did. The secret of her endurance was a faith that could see everything in light of God’s overriding governance for good, a hope that could carry her through the most difficult of circumstances, and a love that could overcome evil with good.
Listen to how Susanna sought to make tragedy a cause for spiritual formation: “Help me, O Lord, to make a true use of all disappointments and calamities in this life, in such wise that they may unite my heart more closely with Thee. Cause them to separate my affections from worldly things and inspire my soul with more vigour in the pursuit of true happiness.”15 Listen to her tough realism in these words: “Since I must expect to meet with many difficulties, much opposition, many disappointments and daily trials of faith and patience in my passage through this world, may it be my highest wisdom to disengage my affections as much as I lawfully may from all transitory, temporal enjoyments, and to fix them on those more rational and spiritual pleasures which we are to enjoy when we enter upon our state of immortality.”16 Listen to her wisdom (won, no doubt, by many years of difficulty) in these words: “The best preparation I know of for suffering is a regular and exact performance of present duty.”17
“A Preacher of Righteousness”
John Wesley declared that his mother “had been in her measure and degree a preacher of righteousness.”18 Susanna was never ordained or appointed to a parish. Why would John say this of her?
The most obvious reference is to Susanna’s famous kitchen services. When Samuel was away in London on church matters for an extended period one time, his assistant did a poor job of nurturing the congregation. Consequently, Susanna decided to have Sunday evening services at home for the family, in order to bring some added spiritual influence. They gathered in the kitchen to sing psalms, pray, and read a short sermon selected from Mr. Wesley’s library shelves. Soon friends and neighbors asked to join in, and before anyone knew it, two hundred souls were crowding into Susanna’s home.
Mr. Inman, the church assistant, was insulted and scandalized, mainly because the Sunday night gatherings were outdrawing Sunday mornings. He contacted Samuel Wesley in London and protested these irregular worship services. Mr. Wesley, in turn, wrote his wife, asking her to desist. Her response was a masterful balance of deference and defiance.
Susanna began by responding to his three major objections to the meetings: these were “first, that it will look particular; secondly, my sex; and lastly, your being at present in a public station and character.” She took up each objection with the most careful deference, providing an extended and definitive answer. She then concluded, “If you do after all think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me any more that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good to souls, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.”19
Need I say that the meetings continued unabated? Interestingly, Susanna referred to her kitchen congregation as “our Society.” John was nine years old at this time, and scholars generally feel that these meetings had a pronounced influence upon his eventual development of the Methodist Societies. Certainly the meetings offer the most obvious explanation for his designation of Susanna as “a preacher of righteousness.”
But there is another reason for that designation, and I think it is equally significant. It is the rich legacy Susanna left in her letters, journals, and catechetical writings. In Susanna Wesley’s letters, she continued her preaching role with family members who had left home. Throughout John’s tenure at Oxford his mother continued as his tutor in “practical divinity.” In one letter she carried on an extended discussion with him about zeal, prudence, and charity. In another she commented on William Sherlock’s book A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence. In others she functioned as a de facto adviser to the Oxford “Holy Club.”20 And more.
Some of her writings were intended for an even wider audience. She wrote an essay — at her son John’s request — on her method of educating her family, and John published it. She wrote a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed and an exposition on the Ten Commandments. She wrote a dialogue called “A Religious Conference” (obviously intended for publication) that sought to reconcile Christian faith with the emerging new science represented by Isaac Newton. Finally, toward the end of her life, Susanna entered the arena of public disputation in “Some Remarks on a Letter from Mr. Whitfield.” In this essay she waded into the complicated Calvinist-Arminian debate over predestination and showed that she could hold her own against a formidable public figure. All of this indicates that in Susanna Wesley we do indeed find “a preacher of righteousness” who knew how to articulate and defend her faith. The assessment of Adam Clarke — while in language that is antiquated for us today — remains telling: “If it were not unusual to apply such an epithet to a woman, I would not hesitate to say she was an able divine!”21
“Holy Living and Holy Dying”
Susanna Wesley lived sacramentally in the most common ventures of life. The details of her living were the arena for her interaction with God and the place where she built a history with God. And what was true of her living was also true of her dying.
Susanna brought from her Puritan heritage the conviction that dying as much as living was holy work — an opportunity to give glory to God and build up others in the faith. Her father, Dr. Annesley, great Puritan divine that he was, died with these words on his lips: “I will die praising thee, and rejoice that others can praise thee better. I shall be satisfied with thy likeness. Satisfied! Satisfied! Oh my dearest Jesus! I come!”22
Susanna had to leave her home at Epworth after Samuel’s death, for the new rector and his family were on their way. She was, therefore, dependent upon her own children in the declining years of her life. They cared for her graciously, and her final years were spent with her son John at “the Foundery,” a London center for Methodist activity.
It was there at the Foundery that Susanna performed one of her finest services for the burgeoning Methodist movement. Whenever John and Charles were out on their evangelistic missions, a layman, Thomas Maxfield, was left in charge of the gatherings of the Bands and the Societies at the Foundery. Not being an ordained clergyman, Maxfield was not allowed to preach, but on one occasion zeal ran away with him and he did indeed preach to the congregation at the Foundery. Catching wind of this, John rushed back to London. When he arrived at the Foundery, Susanna was the first to meet him. “Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I find,” John said curtly. Susanna (perhaps remembering her own experience with her kitchen congregation) replied, “John, you know what my sentiments have been. You cannot suspect me of favoring readily anything of this kind. But take care what you do with respect to that young man; for he is as surely called of God to preach as you are. Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching, and hear him yourself.”
John followed his mother’s counsel, and after hearing Maxfield preach, declared, “It is the Lord! … What am I that I should withstand God!”23 This decision changed the whole course of Methodism. One of the great marks of that movement was in the multiplied thousands of itinerant lay evangelists who fanned the flames of renewal worldwide.
On 30 July 1742 Susanna’s children gathered around her, for she was “on the borders of eternity.” John chronicled the event in his Journal: “I sat down on the bed-side. She was in her last conflict; unable to speak, but, I believe, quite sensible. Her look was calm and serene, and her eyes fixed upward, while we commended her soul to God. From three to four [in the afternoon] the silver cord was loosing and the wheel breaking at the cistern; and then, without any struggle, or sigh, or groan, the soul was set at liberty. We stood round her bed, and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little before she lost her speech: ‘Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.’” Holy living, holy dying — that was Susanna Wesley.
Perhaps now, after learning something of Susanna’s story, we are in a better position to appreciate Adam Clarke’s moving tribute: “I have traced her life with much pleasure, and received from it much instruction; and when I have seen her repeatedly grappling with gigantic adversities, I have adored the grace of God that was in her, and have not been able to repress my tears.”24
SEEKING A BIBLICAL PARADIGM
When we turn to the biblical roots of the Incarnational Stream, we immediately think of the example that stands above them all, Jesus Christ. Nothing can ever approach the perfect and unrepeatable reality of Jesus’ incarnation. Jesus, the Christ, is incarnation itself. We bow under the mystery of it.
Nor should we neglect to mention the role of Mary, mother of Messiah, who was given astonishing news: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35). What a revelatory, incarnational word! A virgin, conceiving in her womb and bearing a son — a son who shall be called Emmanuel, God with us. God made manifest to the world through a simple Jewish girl from an obscure village in the backwater of society. And Mary’s word of obedience must ever be our word, we who seek to live sacramentally: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Jesus and Mary, who made present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit, express the Incarnational Tradition in its fullness and utter beauty. We do well to linger on these incarnational mysteries long and often, pondering them in our heart. But frankly, they are unrepeatable events in holy history. We shall never express the Incarnational Stream in the way Jesus and Mary did. Never.
In order, therefore, to give a paradigm that we can look to and apply to our own experience, I want to take us back in time — way back. Back to the Exodus, where God, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, delivered the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. Back to Moses, who led the Israelites through the Sea of Reeds to Sinai, the mountain of God. Here the people received the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. And here they built the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant.
Divine Aesthetics
This is where I want us to pause and focus our attention. Up to this point the people had seen the manifest presence of God almost by divine fiat: the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, tablets of law hewn out by the finger of God, and so forth. But now God orders human activity, intense activity, skilled activity — the building of the Tabernacle and, inside it, the Ark of the Covenant. Then, as if in divine cooperation with this human effort, God allows his glory to be “housed” in the Tabernacle.
What a sight! There they are, a homeless, nomadic multitude, camping out in the wilderness of Sinai for nearly a year, building a strange-looking portable contraption that serves no apparent military or civic purpose. Can you imagine what the lizards and the ravens were thinking as they watched these unusual events?
Right at the center of this strange scene is one individual, Bezalel by name. In fact, he is called out by name: “The LORD spoke to Moses: See, I have called by name Bezalel … and I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft” (Exod. 31:1-5).
The crucial point for us to see is this: God chose a skilled artisan and had him use his artistry to show forth God’s manifest presence to the people. Bezalel worked as an artisan — this was his job, his profession — and it was through his vocation that he was to demonstrate the presence of God. And note this: he was described not only as a skilled artisan but also as one “filled with the spirit of God.” Now, this statement is all the more impressive when we realize that Bezalel was the first person in the Bible described in this way. “Filled with the spirit of God” is a description first used, not of a priest or prophet or patriarch, but of an artisan, a “blue-collar” worker. Perhaps this will give us a hint of how much God values the work of our hands.
But Bezalel was not alone in his work. He had an assistant, Oholiab, who was described as an “engraver, designer, and embroiderer in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen” (Exod. 38:23). And God inspired Bezalel to teach other skilled workers so that a goodly number were involved in the building of the Tabernacle (Exod. 35:34). In addition, the people were urged to help by bringing “gold, silver, and bronze; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine linen; goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, and fine leather; acacia wood, oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, and onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and the breastpiece” (Exod. 35:5b-9). This the people did, “both men and women; all who were of a willing heart” (Exod. 35:22).
So we see many people involved in this construction project. Bezalel, the general contractor; Oholiab, the job foreman; skilled workers, the subcontractors; and the people, the owners who paid for the construction project. Yes, and they paid lavishly. In fact, the people gave so much that Moses had to send out a command for them to stop: ‘“No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.’ So the people were restrained from bringing; for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work” (Exod. 36:6-7).
When Bezalel and the others had finished their work, Moses, seeing their exquisite craftsmanship, “blessed them” (Exod. 39:43). Then came the final benediction over their efforts: “The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exod. 40:34).
What a wonderful model of the Incarnational Stream Bezalel is. A person of skill, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft. A person able to work artistically with gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood. Most of all, a person filled with the spirit of God. And what he produced gave the people a continual vision of God throughout their wanderings in the wilderness. In the midst of a stark, barren landscape, the Tabernacle was a magnificent aesthetic experience. Worshipers could absorb the faith, not just by hearing about it, but by reliving it through the cherubim overshadowing the mercy seat and the table of acacia wood for the shew bread and the lampstand of pure gold and the altar of incense of acacia wood and the holy anointing oil and the pure fragrant incense and the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood and the court of the Tabernacle of hangings of fine twisted linen and the entrance screen of embroidered needlework in blue, purple, and crimson yarns and fine twisted linen.
Accomplishing the building of the Tabernacle took not only special skills in craftsmanship, but unusual personality qualities as well. Just look at some of the qualities Bezalel possessed.
First, he was imaginative. He caught the vision for what this project could be. He had to see it as a thing of beauty in his mind’s eye before he could build it.
Second, he was articulate. He had to communicate this vision of what the Tabernacle could be to his subcontractors. They had to see it as he saw it and work with the same kind of imagination and skill.
Third, he was an effective administrator. He had to choose the right workers and organize them. He had to set priorities and make sure the work was done in the right order — curtains, standards, furniture, and so forth. He had to delegate well, because any worker who did poorly reflected on the entire project.
All of these qualities, and more, gave Bezalel the ability to oversee the building of the Tabernacle — making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit.
At the beginning of this Scripture study into the Incarnational Tradition, I mentioned Jesus and Mary. I would like to conclude with them as well. When we reflect on the Tabernacle in the wilderness and all that it represents, we realize that in the fullness of time Mary’s womb became the dwelling place, the “tabernacle” of God. Even more, we see that in Jesus Christ, God has truly “tabernacled” among us. And, as if that were not enough, we are to be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, making the reality of God visible and manifest everywhere we go and in everything we do.
SEEKING A CONTEMPORARY PARADIGM
Around midnight on 17 September 1961, in the heart of Africa, the airplane of the secretary-general of the United Nations crashed in circumstances that forever will be shrouded in mystery. In that flaming instant the world lost one of its greatest leaders, Dag Hammarsköld. “Hammarskjöld was the greatest statesman, and the best ‘matched with his hour’, since Abraham Lincoln,” suggests Philip Toynbee.25
Within days of that fateful night a former aide, Per Lind, flew from Stockholm to New York to care for Hammarskjöld’s personal effects and private papers. In the bedroom of the secretary-general’s spacious East 73rd Street apartment he discovered a buff-colored folder, worn and faded by age and use. Paper-clipped to the top of the folder was a small envelope of United Nations Secretariat stationery. Typed on the envelope was the name “Leif Belfrage,” and in the lower left-hand corner was the Swedish word Personligt — “Personal.”
Without opening it, Per Lind took the folder and attached envelope to Sweden and handed it to Dr. Leif Belfrage, a colleague of Hammarskjöld and an intimate friend of many years’ standing. Inside the envelope was an undated note typed in Swedish:
Perhaps you may remember I once told you that, in spite of everything, I kept a diary which I wanted you to take charge of someday.
Here it is.
It was begun without a thought of anybody else reading it. But, what with my later history and all that has been said and written about me, the situation has changed. These entries provide the only true “profile” that can be drawn. That is why, during recent years, I have reckoned with the possibility of publication, though I have continued to write for myself, not for the public.
If you find them worth publishing, you have my permission to do so — as a sort of white book concerning my negotiations with myself — and with God.
Dag26
Belfrage did indeed recall such a conversation some years back and naturally assumed that the folder contained something in the nature of a political memoir of Hammarskjöld’s achievements at the United Nations. Imagine his astonishment when, on turning the cover of the folder, he saw over six hundred individual entries revealing Hammarskjöld’s most private reflections covering a period of more than thirty-six years. The entire manuscript, introduced on the title page by the single word “Vägmärken,”27 had been typed by the Secretary-General himself on an ancient machine he kept in his apartment. No other person had seen a page of it — indeed, no one had even been aware of its existence.
And so it happened that the enduring spiritual classic Markings was given to the world. Interestingly, in all 175 meticulously typed pages Hammarskjöld does not make a single direct reference to his distinguished career as an international civil servant; neither does he mention the many presidents, kings, and prime ministers with whom he had dealings, or the dramatic historical events in which he played so central a role. Instead, with merciless scrutiny and absolute honesty, he plots the intricate and sometimes tortured path of “God’s marriage to the soul.”28
Markings would be a remarkable book if it had emerged from the prolonged meditations of the monastic retreat. But it becomes an even more astonishing piece of writing when we realize that it was penned in the midst of modern civilization’s most volatile international stage. W. H. Auden, in his foreword to Markings, calls it a “historical document of the first importance as an account — and I cannot myself recall another — of the attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa.”29
And so the author of this slender volume provides us with a shining contemporary model for the Incarnational Tradition. Hammaskjöld’s vocation became the supreme place for living out his deepest spiritual convictions. In so doing he bridged the chasm between the world of devotion and the world of work. His political work was sacramental living of the deepest sort. Indeed, he himself used the language of “calling” and “vocation” to describe the work he had been given. And the unflinching inner struggle through which he traveled formed in him a rock-solid character capable of supreme moral leadership — what his biographer called “moral magistracy.”30
Dag Hammarskjöld was a man of international affairs, thoroughly schooled in contemporary intellectual thought, and close friends with avant-garde leaders in literature and drama and philosophy. At the same time he possessed a living faith that he quietly and unobtrusively brought to bear upon this most exacting and responsible office for peace and good order. At the very apex of his international diplomacy31 he wrote, “In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”32
Deep Roots
For more than three centuries the Hammarskjöld family has been known in Sweden for outstanding civil service. Dag’s father, Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, had a distinguished political career that included posts as minister of justice, minister of education, ambassador to Copenhagen, governor of Uppland at Uppsala, and prime minister of Sweden. “On my father’s side,” wrote Dag, “I inherited a belief that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country — or humanity. This service required a sacrifice of all personal interests, but likewise the courage to stand up unflinchingly for your convictions.”33 The elder Hammarskjöld’s paternal influence can be summed up in the single word “duty” — indeed, an exacting and relentless devotion to duty — a theme that would pervade Dag Hammarskjöld’s entire life. His respect, even reverence, for his father had a far-reaching impact on his mind and life.
However, two unfortunate legacies from his father persisted throughout Dag’s life. The first was a tendency to feel like an outsider, remaining aloof and distant. Hjalmar Hammarskjöld was a forbidding figure, autocratic and authoritarian. Forty years after the fact Dag recorded this painful childhood memory:
A box on the ear taught the boy
That Father’s name
Was odious to them.34
The second legacy contributed to Dag’s decision to lead a single life. We learn of it from the Queen Mother of Sweden, who (while visiting the UN headquarters in New York) asked Dag Hammarskjöld why he had never married: “He explained that having watched his mother suffer so much from his father’s absences on public business he did not feel that he wanted to subject a woman to such a life.”35
By contrast Dag’s mother, Agnes Almqvist, was warm, radically democratic, and enormously generous to friends and strangers alike. She was able to transform the ancient and foreboding governor’s castle at Uppsala into a comfortable home for Dag and his three brothers: Bo, Ake, and Sten. She had a great influence on Dag as well: “On my mother’s side 1 inherited a belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God, and should be met and treated by us as our masters in God.”36 In a simple but moving tribute to his mother, Dag wrote to a friend, “My mother … had the qualities I admire most: she was courageous and good.”37 After his parents, perhaps the most formative influence upon the young Hammarskjöld was mountain climbing, a sport he engaged in often. For him mountaineering was far more than a source of pleasure or physical exercise or even intellectual camaraderie; it was a means of character formation. Upon his arrival in New York to assume his new responsibilities as UN Secretary-General, he spoke to reporters at the airport of how mountaineering developed the qualities most needed in public office: “Mountaineering calls … for endurance … perseverance and patience, a firm grip on realities, careful but imaginative planning, a clear awareness of the dangers but also of the fact that fate is what we make it and that the safest climber is he who never questions his ability to overcome all difficulties.”38
After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1924 from Uppsala University at the early age of nineteen,* Hammarskjöld moved quickly into government service. His positions included secretary of a Royal Commission on Unemployment, undersecretary in the Ministry of Finance, and secretary and later chairman of the Bank of Sweden, the oldest bank of issue in the world. Following the Second World War, he was drawn more and more into foreign affairs: renegotiating Sweden’s trade agreement with the United States, serving as vice chairman of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, serving as secretary-general and then vice minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving in the Swedish Cabinet as a nonparty “minister without portfolio,” and more.
During these years of growing prominence Hammarskjöld began recording his private inner reflections, his “markings.” In his very first notation (written at the age of twenty) we see a foreshadowing of the kind of intense self-scrutiny that pervades Markings:
I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land. …
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.39
These lines also foreshadowed the great darkness to come.
The Darkest Night
In 1950, at age forty-five, Hammarskjöld was at the apex of Swedish public service. He was viewed by friends and colleagues as the epitome of the successful man of affairs. Yet his “markings” show us another man — a man of acute solitariness, of deep anguish, of near despair.
By now Hammarskjöld had been writing his “markings” for twenty-five years, but those notations comprise less than one-sixth of the book. In the next three years his reflections intensify and deepen, together comprising fully one-fourth of Markings. They are a key to his internal struggle and to understanding all that comes after. Those reflections show that he is entering a “dark night of the soul” — one that will last for three years.
In 1950 Hammarskjöld initiates a practice that he will follow for six of the next eight years. The first entry — typed in capitals and likely written on New Year’s Day — is a line from an 1814 Swedish hymn: “SNART STUNDAR NATTEN” — “NIGHT APPROACHES NOW.”40 Hammarskjöld’s mother has read this hymn — titled “The Little While I Linger Here” — to the family circle every New Year’s Eve as a meditation on the brevity of life. Following this startling reminder of life’s transience, Hammarskjöld writes:
In a whirling fire of annihilation.
In the storm of destruction
And deadly cold of the act of sacrifice,
You would welcome death.
But when it slowly grows within you,
Day by day,
You suffer anguish
Anguish under the unspoken judgment which hangs over your life
While leaves fall in the fool’s paradise.41
One year later, New Year’s Day 1951, he writes, ‘“Night Approaches Now — ‘ So another year it is. And if this day should be your last. … The pulley of time drags us inexorably forward towards this day. A relief to think of this, to consider that there is a moment without a beyond.”42 And his cryptic notation at the beginning of 1952: ‘“Night Approaches Now — ‘ How long the road is.”43
But on New Year’s Day 1953 the mood changes dramatically:
“— Night is drawing nigh —”
For all that has been — Thanks!
To all that shall be-Yes!44
And a few notations later he writes, “Not I, but God in me.”45 From this point on this affirming tone dominates his reflections. Why? Why the striking contrast between the brooding darkness of 1950-1952 and the expectant outlook of 1953 and beyond? Is it possible to discern what caused such a dramatic transition?
Yes, most assuredly.46 Far and away the most significant single entry in Markings occurs on Whitsunday 1961, when Hammarskjöld is looking back to that decisive period in his life.
I don’t know Who — or what — put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment 1 did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
From that moment I have known what it means “not to look back,” and “To take no thought for the morrow.”
Led by the Ariadne’s thread of my answer through the labyrinth of Life, I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that the price for committing one’s life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation. After that, the word “courage” lost its meaning, since nothing could be taken from me.
As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and one man’s experience. Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it. Also behind each of the words from the cross.47
“I did answer Yes.” Those words parallel his affirmation on that first day of 1953: “To all that shall be-Yes!” New Year’s Day 1953 is the first occurrence of this confessional-like affirmation — this Yes — but it is far from the last. Hammarskjöld repeats it often, frequently in italics, and with growing meaning and precision. In fact, it becomes a refrain echoing through the rest of the book. After his election as United Nations Secretary-General, he writes jubilantly, “To be free, to be able to stand up and leave everything behind — without looking back. To say Yes — .” Then two entries later, “To say Yes to life is at one and the same time to say Yes to oneself. Yes — even to that element in one which is most unwilling to let itself be transformed from a temptation into a strength.”48
In 1956 he writes:
You dare your Yes — and experience a meaning.
You repeat your Yes — and all things acquire a meaning.
When everything has a meaning, how can you live anything but a Yes.49
Again after his re-election as Secretary-General: “Yes to God: yes to Fate: yes to yourself.”50 And finally, only weeks before his tragic death:
Asked if I have courage
To go on to the end,
I answer Yes without
A second thought.51
How providential that three months before his election as the leader of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld passed through the most profound spiritual crisis of his life — a crisis that became a vital interior preparation for all that he was to face on that international stage.
And, as we say, the rest is history. Others have documented thoroughly the many accomplishments of Dag Hammarskjöld in his eight-and-a-half-year tenure at the helm of the United Nations, so rehearsing them here is unnecessary.52 Suffice it to say that, from his first bold mission to Peking in 1955 to his intervention in the Suez Crisis in 1956 to his mediation in the Congo in 1961 — the mission that claimed his life — he transformed the United Nations from a forum for conference and controversy into an agency of creative action for peace. As Henry Van Dusen has written, “Probably no other individual in history has effected so large a work of mediation and pacification among nations.”53
We can be profoundly grateful for this man’s immense contribution toward world peace. Further, we can be grateful that he experienced devotion and work as a seamless garment.
One of the finest statements we have on the Incarnational Tradition, the sacramental life, was penned by Hammarskjöld on Christmas Eve 1956, when the resolution of the Suez Crisis finally was assured: “Your own efforts ‘did not bring it to pass,’ only God — but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in his work.”54 And again two days later, “We act in faith — and miracles occur.”55
If his life had not been cut short, how much more could he have accomplished? We will never know. His untimely death is a genuine loss to us, but perhaps he spoke more prophetically than he knew when he wrote these words:
For him who has faith,
The last miracle
Shall be greater than the first.56
DEFINING THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION
The Incarnational Tradition concerns itself with the relationship between spirit and matter. In short, God is manifest to us through material means.
Now, the spiritual and the material are not in opposition to one another, but are complementary. Far from being evil, the physical is meant to be inhabited by the spiritual. We are created so as to receive life from God, who is Spirit, and to express that life through our bodies and in the physical world in which we live. The material world is created, in part, so as to make visible and manifest the realm of the invisible spirit.
God loves matter. In his original creative acts God affirmed matter again and again, declaring it good at every point along the way. We, therefore, should take the material world quite seriously; it is the “icon” of God, the epiphany of his glory. We must not dismiss material things as inconsequential — or worse yet, as genuinely evil. The stuff of the material world — what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called “holy matter” — has been created by God and again he declared it to be good, very good (Gen. 1:25, 31). The material world is intended to enhance human life.57
It is also the realm or the place where we are to develop our spirit under God. One of the main functions of matter is to mediate the presence of an infinite God to finite minds. The Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle were divinely appointed arrangements so that God could be with human beings without destroying them. The same is true of the coming of the Messiah as a babe in a manger. These material realities are all graciously designed to allow for the necessary space between us and God. In this way God can come to us and we, in turn, can come to God. Divine realities are thus mediated to us through the finite realities of our personal histories, our social experiences, our physical bodies.
Now, there are fundamentally two arenas or dimensions of incarnational life. The first is what we, from a human point of view, would identify as the specifically religious dimension. The second is the arena of everyday life.
The Religious Dimension
The specifically religious dimension is most fully expressed in our corporate worship. Here we utilize the physical and the material to express and manifest the spiritual.
In this dimension of our life together it is important to underscore that all of us are liturgical. That is to say, we all use material and human “forms” to express our worship of God. There simply are no nonliturgical churches. Monastics rising to recite the Night Office and Quakers waiting in silent assurance upon the Spirit, Catholics praying the rosary and revivalists singing hymns of devotion to the name of Jesus, Russian Orthodox ritualists bowing amid incense and icon and Salvation Army evangelists marching to drum and tambourine — all are engaged in liturgy. We have a choice of liturgy, but we do not have a choice of whether to use liturgy. As long as we are finite human beings, we must use liturgy; we must express ourselves through forms of worship.58
Liturgy — liturgia — simply means “the people’s work.” Our task in liturgy is to glorify God in the various aspects of our worship life. We are to let the reality of God shine through the human or physical forms. This is true whether we are singing hymns or burning candles, dancing in ecstatic praise or bowing in speechless adoration.
It is useful here to draw upon the Apostle Paul’s imagery of “the treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4). The treasure is “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” as Paul put it (v. 6). The earthen vessel is the human body, along with the various cultural forms we use to manifest the treasure. To apply Paul’s imagery to the issue at hand, the “earthen vessel” is, very simply, our form of worship. We must always remember that the form itself is not the treasure; we worship God, never the form.
Understanding this imagery helps us appreciate others who do not worship in our way. We can recognize the treasure they are showing forth even though they worship in a different earthen vessel from us. Many earthen vessels, one treasure; many forms, one God and Father of us all.
We can even learn to rejoice in the beautiful variety of worship forms among the people of God. Evelyn Underhill (along with many others) speaks of forms of worship as “sacramentals,” by which she means that they are “more than symbols and less than sacraments.”59 In other words, these physical and material forms are efficacious signs helping the worshiping soul apprehend spiritual reality. In the eighth century John of Damascus argued in exactly this manner for the icons of Eastern Orthodox faith as signs or reflections of the eternal and spiritual reality.
This discussion of forms refers, of course, to far more than the icons of Eastern Orthodoxy. Consider the music of J. S. Bach and Charles Wesley and Fanny Crosby. Consider the profound silence of Quaker worship — the silence is itself a form, a liturgy of worship. Consider the rich tapestry of Anglican worship. Consider the warm vibrancy of Pentecostal worship. Consider foot-washing in the Brethren services or the laying on of hands in Charismatic circles or the Love Feast in House churches. The list could go on and on. Our worship becomes a magnificent, all-encompassing aesthetic experience. We see, we smell, we touch, we taste, we hear. We absorb the faith by reliving the gospel and the passion in the liturgy. In short, God is manifest to us through material means.
The Sacraments of the Church most completely demonstrate God’s use of matter to make present and visible the invisible realm of the spirit. They are, in fact, often called, “visible means of an invisible grace.” Sacraments are concrete actions by which we are marked and fed in such a way that the reality of God becomes embedded in our body, our mind, our spirit. The Holy Spirit grafts us into the Trinitarian life by burying and then raising us up in baptism. And the Holy Spirit continually feeds us by enacting the death and resurrection of Christ in the Communion service, or Eucharist.60
The Arena of Everyday Life
But the religious dimension is the beginning, not the end. We are to take this life and incorporate it into all we are and all we do. We bring it into daily life: into our homes, into our work, into our relationships with children and spouse and friends and neighbors and, yes, even enemies. Here we come to the most fundamental arena for the Incarnational Tradition: the arena of everyday life. It is the place, par excellence, in which we make visible and manifest the invisible realm of the spirit.
To move into this sacramental way of living, we must take deep into our heart and mind Paul’s words, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).
The most basic place of our sacramental living is in our marriages and homes and families. Here we live together in well-reasoned love for everyone around us. Here we experience “the sacrament of the present moment,” to use the phrase of Jean Pierre de Caussade. We miss the point of this way of life if we are off conducting prayer meetings and other churchly enterprises when the duty of the present moment is to be home, playing with our children or caring for other domestic responsibilities. C. S. Lewis wisely observed, “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”61
Work is another everyday place — perhaps the most substantive place — for incarnational living. By “work” I am referring not merely to our job; I am referring to what we do to produce good in our world. I am referring to our vocatio, our vocation or calling.
Now, I really must bear down on this point of our work as the place for living sacramentally. While some have a special calling to pastoral or priestly work in order to equip the people of God, the calling or vocation for most of us is smack in the midst of the workaday world. And even here we often miss the point of a sacramental life. One business leader piously announced, “I instruct my secretary to set aside one noon hour a week when, instead of going out to some power lunch, I close the door on the dog-eat-dog world of business, open my Bible, and spend time alone with my Lord.” Now, this may well be a wise practice, but it is not yet sacramental living. The real issue is how we live and act and react in the midst of the dog-eat-dog world of power lunches and business dealings and board meetings. Or the dog-eat-dog world of restaurant managers and servers, of contractors and subcontractors, of middle management and office staff. Or the dog-eat-dog world of law and education and entrepreneur-ship. This is where people desperately need to see the reality of God made visible and manifest.
And this is where we learn to do our work as Jesus would do our work if he were in our place. Now, in understanding how this works, we need to underscore Jesus among us in his office as resurrected and exalted Lord, free from all the localizations of time and space, geography and history, gender and race, nationality and vocation. For he is in our place. He continually moves among us as our ever-present Teacher. He is, you see, the Lord of all vocations, and he really can teach us how to fulfill our calling. If you are a dentist, Jesus can teach you to do dentistry as he would do it if he were you. The same is true if you are a court stenographer, a computer programmer, a research scientist, a janitor, or the CEO of a multinational corporation. It is just as true if the thing you do to produce good in the world is raise a family or paint pictures or create stained-glass windows or peel potatoes. Whoever, whatever, wherever — he will teach you. Learn from him.
The third place — in addition to home and work — that we learn to live sacramentally is in society at large. Here we are to bring the reality of God to bear upon cultural, political, and institutional life. The theologians call this “the cultural mandate,” a teaching that is deeply rooted in the creation narrative, where God gives the human pair stewardship authority to care for and manage the earth (Gen. 1-3). And so we do. We work to lift our culture, not just through the commonsense moral standards of decency and honesty, but through art and literature and drama, justice and beauty and shalom. We nurture “the good, the true, the beautiful” throughout society — through the person-centered caring of the schools we run, through the beauty of the parks we build, through the entrepreneurial empowerment we offer the poor, through the imaginative and redeeming literature we write, through the ecological sensitivity we bring to land use and development, and so much more.
Family, work, society — these comprise the arena of everyday life. Now, it is of utmost importance that we keep a constant and intimate link between the specifically religious dimension and the arena of everyday life. This connection, incidentally, is seen in many of the “sacramental” passages in our New Testament — passages that carry this double reference to both the religious dimension and everyday life. In the sixth chapter of John, for example, where Jesus gives an extended teaching on “eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood,” we immediately see both the reference to Communion and the call to our continual feeding on his life. As Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63b). The same thing can be seen in Jesus’ discourse on “living water” with the woman at the well, where baptism stands in the background of his teaching on the sustaining life that he gives to all who trust in him.62
Martin Luther profoundly linked the religious sphere with common life when, in writing about baptism, he said, “For as long as we live we are continually doing that which baptism signifies, that is, we die and rise again. … [T]hat which baptism signifies should swallow up your whole life, body and soul, and give it forth again at the last day, clad in the robe of glory and immortality. We are therefore never without the sign of baptism nor without the thing it signifies.”63 This bridge is also seen in the Reformation principle of “the priesthood of all believers.” To be sure, this principle teaches us that “the plow boy and the milk maid” can do priestly work. But even more profoundly it teaches us that the plow boy in his plowing and the milk maid in her milking are in fact doing priestly work.
Have I given enough substance for you to grasp the concept of the Incarnational Tradition? I could say more, but my guess is that you have the sanctified imagination to take the central insight of this sacramental way of living and contextualize it into the many situations you face day in and day out.
DISCOVERING THE MAJOR STRENGTHS
The strengths of the Incarnational Tradition are myriad. I shall briefly mention seven.
First, it underscores the fact that God is truly among us in the warp and woof of our very earthy existence. God is not distant, nor is he disinterested. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” writes Gerard Manley Hopkins; “Christ plays in 10,000 places.”64 We, you understand, are not alone. God stoops to our need and allows himself to be glimpsed in the material world.
Second, it roots us in everyday life. It saves us from a spirituality divorced from the stresses and strains of ordinary living. We cannot retreat from the “secular” world in the hopes of finding God elsewhere. Indeed, the very presence of God is manifest in the smallest, most mundane of daily activities.
Third, it gives meaning to our work. We have a heightened sense of the sacramentality of work. We work to “the audience of One.” We are becoming co-laborers with God as we bring good into the world. We get beyond ourselves and, in so doing, become more of what we were meant to be.
Fourth, it is a valuable corrective to Gnosticism. The central Gnostic heresy is that spiritual things are wholly good and material things are wholly bad. This Gnostic dualism is just as appealing today as it was in earlier centuries, for people gravitate toward ideas that are clear-cut and uncomplicated even when those ideas are clearly false. But the Incarnational Tradition reminds us again that our God created a good world, that “the earth is the LORD’S and all that is in it” (Ps. 24:1).
Fifth, it constantly beckons us Godward. We are often weak and forgetful, distracted and confused. But, in the religious dimension especially, the visible signs of worship are a constant Ebenezer reminding us that “hitherto the LORD has helped us” (1 Sam. 7:12, RSV). Most particularly the Sacraments shock us back into reality by making specific and concrete our Christian identity.
Sixth, it makes of our body a portable sanctuary through which we are daily experiencing the presence of God; learning, ever learning, to work in cooperation with God and in deepening dependence upon God.
Seventh, it deepens our ecological sensitivities. We grow in our stewardship of the earth, for we know that it is God’s good creation. We plant evergreens and compost garbage, we clean a room and put coasters under glasses, and in these ways we help to tidy up Eden.
These are some of the strengths of the Incarnational Tradition. Perhaps you can think of others.
UNDERSTANDING THE POTENTIAL PERILS
Dangers abound. Two stand head and shoulders above the rest. The first of these is the pitfall of idolatry. It comes at us from several directions. When we confess that God is made manifest to us in and through the created universe, for example, we can be tempted to take that next easy step of identifying God with the universe. It is not difficult to see why. Frankly, this material universe is so stunning, so spectacular, so beyond us that we can understand why people would want to worship it. This helps explain why pantheism is experiencing something of a revival in our day.
This problem also crops up when people fail to distinguish between a sacred object and the spiritual reality it signifies. Idolatry is the inevitable result. No doubt this is why the Bible has such strict prohibitions against making any graven image of God.
These are issues that Christians have wrestled with constantly through the last two millennia. Earlier I mentioned the great theologian John of Damascus and his argument for icons as a kind of window between the earthly and the spiritual worlds. Many, however, disagreed with him, fearing that people would end up worshiping the icon rather than God. This difference of opinion precipitated the great iconoclastic controversy of the eighth century. In the seventeenth century the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell sought to purify the Anglican Church of its objects of veneration by defacing the statuary in the cathedrals and throwing out candles and other objects of “popery.” The Quakers took the matter even further by rejecting all outward symbols, including baptism and Eucharist, as a testimony against the superstitious religious practices they saw around them.
The point is that the danger of idolatry is a genuine danger. Constant vigilance is needed. It is almost as if we should write in bold letters across all icons, symbols, and liturgical exercises, “Beware of worshiping the creation rather than the Creator.” But such vigilance must be accompanied by great humility of heart, for there is no absolute line of demarcation between the proper use of rite and ritual to reflect spiritual reality and the idolatrous use of these material things.
The second great peril lies in the way we seek to manage God through externals. Cain with his grain offering was the first to try this strategy, but he certainly was not the last. The story of Ananias and Sapphira’s land deal (recorded in the fifth chapter of Acts), is only another verse of the same song.
Perhaps this peril reaches its highest expression in religious structures that seek to confine and control the work of God through ritual systems. We encounter this peril when a particular group declares its religious system to be the only system that can ensure the full blessing of God. If you want God, really want God, you must come through that church and its ritual system to find him. Statements like the following — and their number is legion — are warning signals that we just might be trying to manage God through externals. “You must become a member of our church [or denomination or prayer group or whatever] if you really want the blessing of God.” “If you haven’t responded to an altar call, you haven’t responded to God.” “Our baptism is the only efficacious baptism.”
This, you may remember, is one of the major dangers Jesus dealt with in his famous Beautitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. People in those days were bound to a temple ritual system in order to receive the blessing of God, and Jesus, in effect, said, “This temple and all its rites can dry up and blow away and your blessedness under God will remain.”
You see, all these little systems of blessedness only succeed in binding people all the more tightly to us rather than freeing them to God. Indeed, one of the best signs that we are avoiding this danger is seeing in people an ever-decreasing dependence upon us and an ever-deepening dependence upon God.
PRACTICING THE INCARNATIONAL TRADITION
The first action in practicing the Incarnational Tradition is the invocation of God’s manifest presence into this material world of ours. Here the initiative rests squarely upon us (even though we know that we are only responding to God’s prior initiation upon our heart). God, you see, will not enter many areas of our life uninvited. So we invite God to enter every experience of life. We invite God to set our spirit free for worship and adoration. We invite God to animate our preaching and singing and praying. We invite God to transform the bread and wine of Communion.65 We invite God to heal our bodies. We invite God to inform our minds with creative ideas for our business enterprises. We invite God to touch broken relationships and resolve conflicts at work or home. We invite God to make our homes holy places of worship and study and work and play and love-making. We invite … we invite. Perhaps we could speak of this as “invited grace” — the grace of God coming in loving response to our invocation.
A second action comes as we recover a Christian spirituality of work. We are helped in our thinking by the Benedictine notion of the dignity of manual labor and the Franciscan ideal of serving the poor as a way of worshiping God. We can add to this Martin Luther’s conviction that “the menial housework of a manservant or maidservant is more acceptable to God” than the work of monks or priests.66 And we can learn much from the Puritan notion of calling or vocation.
In our day special emphasis needs to be placed upon the sacredness of the work of our hands and our mind. If ours is God’s world, any true work for the improvement of human life is a sacred undertaking. As Elton Trueblood has noted, “We should see the ordination to the priesthood as a sacrament; but we should likewise see ordination to any worth-while human task as a sacrament.”67 You see, we can never confine the “call” to “full-time Christian service” to clergy-related vocations. Farmers and plumbers and secretaries can be equally “called” and equally “full-time” and equally “Christian,” and they can equally render “service.” The really crucial decision comes, not when we decide to be a pastor rather than a biologist, but when we decide to allow our entire life to be a channel of divine love.
So what does a Christian spirituality of work look like? I can give only the barest essentials here.68 We have a sense of calling, a God-given ability to do a job linked with a God-given enjoyment in doing it. We have a sense of responsibility to do something in our own time that has value. We have a sense of freedom from the burden of the workaholic, for we are not asked to do more than we can. We have a sense of creativity that enables us to place the autograph of our souls on the work of our hands. We have a sense of dignity, for we value people over efficiency. We have a sense of community, for we know that our life together is more important than the end product. We have a sense of solidarity with the poor to empower them to do what they cannot do by themselves. And we have a sense of meaning and purpose, for we know that we are working in cooperation with God to bring the world one step closer to completion.
A third action comes through the recovery of marriage and family life. From prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his fiancée Maria, “Our marriage shall be a yes to God’s earth; it shall strengthen our courage to act and accomplish something on the earth.”69 Bonhoeffer affirmed this in spite of the fact that his world — indeed, the whole world as it was then known — was crumbling. We need Bonhoeffer’s courage.
Marriage is covenantal. Marriage is no marriage at all if it is conditional or partial or entered into with fingers crossed. It involves an uncalculating abandon, an utter and mutual outpouring of love and loyalty. It is a “one flesh” reality in which the two become one functional whole, not unlike the way a computer disk drive and its disk form one functioning unit or the way a bow and arrow are essential to each other. And so a home is formed and children most normally follow.
Family life should be expressed in its fullness in the home, because this is the place where the specifically religious dimension and everyday life meet. The home is intrinsically a religious institution, and the family table is the center of the home. The idea that a meal can be a sacred occasion is so deeply rooted in many religious traditions that it cannot be accidental or of passing significance. The Jewish Passover and the Christian Love Feast are among the more familiar examples of sacred meals. Of special significance for us is the fact that in the Gospel accounts the risen Christ was recognized by his disciples at the moment they began sharing in a ordinary meal (Luke 24:31-35). This leads to the hope that every common meal may be, if we are sufficiently sensitive, a time when we are conscious of the real presence of our risen Lord.
Common labor too should be found in the home. Our grandparents’ farmhouse was large because it was far more than a place to eat and sleep: it was a place to work. In the past the home was a workshop, a school, a church, and a club all rolled into one. True, those days are gone forever, but it is still possible to discover work together in the home. Floors need cleaning and windows need washing. In addition, modern computer technology makes cottage industries once again a genuine possibility. It is worth our best thinking and most creative efforts to make the home not just a rooming house, but the center of family life, the place for work and worship and play and love-making.
THE CALL TO SACRAMENTAL LIVING
QUESTION:
What is the Incarnational Tradition?
ANSWER:
A life that makes present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit.
QUESTION:
Why should we explore it?
ANSWER:
Because through it we experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.
All of us are called to sacramental living. Redeemed by God through Christ, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and experience a growing transformation of character as our bodies come into a working harmony with our spirit. Hence our embodied self becomes a habitation of the Holy — a tabernacle — where we learn throughout our daily activities to function in cooperation with and in dependence upon God. Through time and experience we discover that everywhere we go is “holy ground” and everything we do is “sanctified action.” The jagged line dividing the sacred and the secular becomes very dim indeed, for we know that nothing is outside the realm of God’s purview and loving care.
* His areas of concentration were in the history of literature, philosophy, French, and political economy. He later completed a doctorate in economics. His dissertation was entitled “The Spread of Boom and Depression.”