December 19:  INCARNATION
     Do you not believe that I am in the Father 
and the Father is in me?  
The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; 
but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  
John 14:10



Reflection by Lisa Gibbs

John 14 begins just after the last supper.  Jesus has said puzzling and ominous things to the disciples during the night and they are anxious.  He tells them to set their troubled hearts at rest, to trust in God and trust in him. He tells them that as they have seen him, they have seen the father.  When Phillip asks for more he says "I am in the Father and the Father is in me."  And there they are in the mystery, the center of the knot, surely just as anxious and confused. 

How could they understand him?  I know I don't.   I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that Jesus is in his essence, both fully human and fully God.  I cannot understand why God would make the choice to be both human and divine.  For God, it is nothing to remain God.  But in Jesus, God the creator chooses also to be the creation, to become our brother.  I am mystified.  

It is so human to respond to mystery by trying to solve it.  Our faith ancestors worked hard at fleshing out the relationship between God the Father and the Son, constructing intricate subtle theological arguments.  It is so human to try to contain mystery- we can define God, diagram him, explain him, speak for him, judge in his name, and claim him as ours.  Mystery solved.  Anxiety sort of contained.  But we can also choose to pick up the challenge Jesus gives us in this verse, take what he says at face value, and rest in the mystery.  Perhaps it isn't necessary to understand how it is possible for God to be both fully human and fully divine.  We can make peace with what we can't understand.  We can choose, as Iris Dement sings in this really wonderful video, to let the mystery be.   

This Advent I will work on the "do you not believe?"  I will stretch to trust the faithfulness of my brother God, who has promised to stand with me to the end of time.  I will try accepting that in the right time, I will fully know whatever I want or need to know about the one who has fully known me.  Until then, I can live, if not peacefully, then at least patiently, with at least some of the things I will never understand.




Think Outside the Manger  is a daily Advent devotional written and produced by members of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Tifton, GA. Visit www.stannestifton.com to learn more.

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