Fancy Theological Jargon: Incarnation
what it is and 4 reasons it matters
Hello there!
Here’s where we’re going today: We’re going to explore 4 reasons it matters that God came to us in Jesus that are about the Incarnation (aka God becoming human), and not about Jesus dying and rising.
Why are we doing this? There are theological camps that focus so much on “Jesus came to die” that they basically represent Christmas’ importance as “plot point on the way to Good Friday.” What’s more, hyper-individualistic theology narrows Christmas to “Jesus came to be your (singular) savior”. And if that feels like it’s missing part of the story, well, that’s because it is.
Let’s dive in.
It is generally understood among folks who work with kids–teachers, kids’ pastors, etc.–that we have a favorite age. Mine is grades 4-6. My least favorite, by far, is grades K-2. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest has to do with how much work it takes to deal with tattling, because this is the age where kids have a growing sense of fair and unfair and need grownups to fix it when things are wrong.
Of course, this intense focus on fairness is a good thing, a totally understandable response to seeing more clearly: the world isn’t fair and that sucks.
And while it can get annoying when this shows up while trying to play games, that shouldn’t distract from the fact that even young kids are able to see unfair play out in bigger and far more important ways, as in:
The world isn’t fair, and that sucks, and there even seem to be people who don’t care that it isn’t fair, or worse, are not trying to help fix it.
Our 7 year olds feel it. And for us? For the adults? It wouldn't be possible to list all the ways the world falls short of justice, all the people who seem to be actively trying to make things less just, all the faceless systems that prevent change….
And that reality is, I’d argue, one of our best working definitions of Sin.
The Bible usually uses the word to describe exactly the dynamics we’ve just been talking about, how the world seems constantly to be falling short of justice, and usually we can’t even put our finger on who is causing it, because it seems to be far more pervasive than any individual. Injustice and oppression can almost seem like faceless forces that permeate everything, corrupt everything, deface everything. Inescapable. Powerful. Demoralizing.
That is what the Bible is getting at far more than the narrow view of personal choices made by individual humans.
I get a lot of questions from parents who are uncomfortable with the word “sin”, which I think is mainly because they’ve only been offered that narrow definition. If you’ve only ever heard the word used as a verb - the actions of a single person—thereby making the status of a person, however young, as ‘sinner’, then yeah, that’s troubling.
Here’s a related piece on this idea:
But Sin is not only a verb.
It’s an adjective, describing the ways the world works that are so opposite to the character or God.
And it’s a noun, a Thing, a force that works against goodness and life and joy, sucking all of us into ways of being that are far from what God dreams for us and the world.
Kids get all the evidence they need that the world needs saving just from looking around at how the world works. Because they see Sin, even if they don’t have a word for it yet.
At Christmas we can tell kids Jesus came to save the world from Sin, that force that keeps the world working in such unfair ways. And Jesus came to save us so that we could help make the world work in better ways. (Grownups might say “join with God in the redemption of all things”.)
And how does Jesus do this? By becoming one of us.
As in, not just by dying for us. And also, not by some other, less personal means. God chose this way.
The fancy theological term for Jesus coming is Incarnation.
Incarnation literally means that Jesus became flesh and blood. It’s how we capture the idea of the God of the universe in a human package. God with us. And this is good news for anyone who is starting to come to grips with the injustice of the world–from the shepherds in the fields to the seven year olds in your house.
Part of the theological work we need to do is to value the incarnation on its own instead of only seeing Christmas as a necessary plot point on the way to Good Friday. If Jesus only ‘came to die’, we are missing a whole heap of what the Gospel writers are showing us about God’s mission.
With that in mind, here are 4 big reasons the incarnation matters that we can share with our kids this Christmas:
One: the Incarnation means that we aren’t alone.
First century Jewish people would have already believed God was with them. Their collective story speaks to this over and over. Even so, God coming to be a person is next level. God is with us takes on deeper layers than ever before.
Two: the Incarnation means that God’s response to Sin is to see, come near, and help.
God sees that the world is unfair and unjust. God sees the effects of Sin just as we do. And God’s response to Sin is not to stay as far away from it as possible, but to come right up close. The Incarnation means that God, in Jesus, comes to live amongst the injustice of the world, to experience it personally.
Three: the Incarnation means God understands us.
There are things we know but have not experienced and things we know because we have experienced them. In Jesus, God chooses to know what it’s like to be one of us through experience.
One of the key truths of Christmas is that it shows us what our God is like. Our God is someone who does not stand apart, disapproving, but comes to wrap us in Their arms. Jesus knows the unfairness of the world at a deep, personal level, and cares that we are suffering from it too. Our God cares enough about things being wrong that They came to feel what it’s like.
Four: the Incarnation tells us where God stands and that we can trust that God is going to do something about all that’s wrong.
The Old Testament is full of God making promises to put the broken world back together again, and Jesus coming is the beginning of the rescue. The Incarnation is God entering in so as to transform the world from the inside out. It’s how we know God is on our side against Sin, not far from us because of it.
Another key truth of Christmas is that it shows how important what happens in this world is. God’s solution to the brokenness is neither to destroy it all and start over, nor to just beam people out of it to a sky city.
God’s solution is to enter in, to become a part of it all. The Incarnation tells us that if this world is important enough for Jesus to come into it, then we can trust Jesus to finish the job of restoring it. Christmas reminds us how much God loves this world, and how committed God is to putting it right again.
Good news of great joy, indeed.
If your kid notices/experiences unfairness—big or small—you could say something like, “That is unfair, isn’t it? One of the things I love about Christmas is that Jesus becoming a human means he knows how unfair things can be. What do you think is something Jesus thought was unfair when he was about your age?”
“Christmas is when we celebrate that God became a person like us!”
“Jesus wasn’t just any baby. He was God in a body. God with us in a whole new way!”
“Jesus coming shows us that God understands what we go through.”
A Group Edition of the Christmas Scavenger Hunt is here. This is a version that works in just one room for lots of kids at once, and it’s so fun! So kids ministry folks, you can find that here. (And the in-home version is here.)
My very favorite faith-related books are deeply hopeful and deeply honest. That criteria means my top-reads list is pretty short, but a recent book just joined that I think you may also love. Brave Love by Juli McGowan Boit tells stories and offers reflections from her experience as a nurse in a Kenyan Hospice. For decades now, Kenya has been her home, and answering the simple question: what does love look like in this situation? has led to the forming of a hospice in their community, staffed with deeply compassionate practitioners, who face suffering with brave love.
May we take comfort in the truth: we are not alone. We are understood. And all that Sin has wounded will be healed. All that Sin has broken will be mended. God is on our side. We know it is so, because God has become a person like us.
Amen.