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Our thoughts about the ‘incarnation’ tend to be most focused at Christmas time. Moments of child-like wonder may settle upon us as we sing; “mild he lays his glory by…pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel”. What a leap Jesus made, of unimaginable magnitude, from heaven to straw-y stable, from the seat at the right hand to the suspect crib!

It’s unlikely that the manger was what the writer of the gospel of John had in mind, though, when he wrote that Jesus had “dwelt among us”. John’s concern was the big picture, and to reflect upon it from the viewpoint of a shared experience of grown-up life.

We have tended to consider the ‘us’ that he dwelt among as the church at large, or at least our particular genre of validated Christian. We may thrill, now and again, that the divine seems to offer a heart-warming alongside-ness with us in our flawed humanity.

Did John, however, intend the ‘us’ to be all the Jesus-followers he knew at the time and those that would follow thereafter or was the ‘us’ of whom he spoke the ‘us’ of his reality, as shared with the Christ? Was he not referring to those whom Jesus had particularly come to dwell amongst?

Who then, was this ‘us’?

Was it not those on the margins of society? Was it not those ostracised from the self-congratulatory, self-interested religious groupings of the day? Was it not those considered too dirty – morally, legally and physically – to participate in the activities and meetings of upstanding citizens? Was it not the poor, the excluded, the powerless and the voiceless? Was it not those who had every appearance of wanting to live licentious lives rather than participate in the coiffured circles of the religious and civil establishment? Was it not those with whom ‘all right thinking people’ should have nothing to do?

Of course this was the ‘us’ amongst whom Jesus chose to dwell and have the currency of his life. This is amongst whom the cut and thrust, the bump and bruise, the embrace and the spit of the incarnation happened.

So…what?

Well, what if the essence of Jesus’ mission, and thus ours, remains the same? What if the clamour of his teachings about money and justice, and his reproach to the diffidently comfortable and self-assured is the same now? What if he is dwelling edgily amongst the poor and excluded and condemned and the church is not there? What if the church has become the bearer of uninterested, condemnatory malfunction against which he railed (and rails)?

If we look at the church from within, we may see relatively healthy units of mutually caring, flawed disciples. If we look at the whole of society we see the church and we see swathes of marginalised, excluded, voiceless and disempowered humans with whom the church has almost no shared life.

If the incarnation means now what it meant then, if the incarnation was a set of values around which we should build a new type of kingdom where the unworthy and dirty were raised up and the certain and secure were demoted, if the ‘us’ amongst whom we are supposed to be is the ‘us’ amongst whom our Christ was (and is) what must we do? Where must we go?

Matt 25: 45 “Truly I say to you: whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me”.

Ken Humphrey