As we enter into this advent season, preparing to celebrate God coming to earth and being born a human, the incarnate Christ is all the more prominently on my mind. Incarnation is a core principal for Servants, it is the reason team members move into the slums. We worship and follow a God who is not far off but has come close, sharing our flesh, our blood, our tears, our joys.
Nouwen's words are especially poignant to me here as I seek to recognize the shared humanity with brothers and sisters who can seem so different from me. The way of Christ, is the way of relationship, of entering into our world. In the same way, Servants seeks to move in and share life with the poor, not as part of a project or program or group to fix, but as neighbors and friends. The poor are no longer a group of people they come to help, but friends, neighbors, that they learn from and depend on in ways. Ideas for community development sprout within the context of relationship, constantly submitting ideas to what the community actually desires and will benefit from. It's challenging for sure, but seeking God and His kingdom in the context of relationship-even to the point of being neighbors and sharing the same roof- seems to be a beautiful way that the incarnate God of love is made known. I'm challenged and grateful for the taste I have had of this way of ministry--a balance of 'method, message, spiritual discipline, and Christ's model' (John Hayes).
Henri Nouwen writes in Lifesigns:
"This is the mystery of the incarnation…God so much desired to fulfill our deepest yearning for a home that God decided to build a home in us...We cannot live in intimate communion with Jesus without being sent to our brothers and sisters who belong to that same humanity that Jesus has accepted as his own. Thus intimacy manifests itself as solidarity and solidarity as intimacy...It is not a nervous effort to bring divided people together, but a celebration of an already established unity…those acting within the house of God point through their action to the healing, restoring, redeeming, and recreating presence of God."
Nouwen's words are especially poignant to me here as I seek to recognize the shared humanity with brothers and sisters who can seem so different from me. The way of Christ, is the way of relationship, of entering into our world. In the same way, Servants seeks to move in and share life with the poor, not as part of a project or program or group to fix, but as neighbors and friends. The poor are no longer a group of people they come to help, but friends, neighbors, that they learn from and depend on in ways. Ideas for community development sprout within the context of relationship, constantly submitting ideas to what the community actually desires and will benefit from. It's challenging for sure, but seeking God and His kingdom in the context of relationship-even to the point of being neighbors and sharing the same roof- seems to be a beautiful way that the incarnate God of love is made known. I'm challenged and grateful for the taste I have had of this way of ministry--a balance of 'method, message, spiritual discipline, and Christ's model' (John Hayes).
This Christmas season, as we prepare to celebrate Jesus' birth, as we let ourselves be embraced by the incarnated Christ, may we also be challenged by the radical move of Jesus into our world.
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