whose hope is in the LORD their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry. Psalm 146:5-7
I've been thinking a lot lately about call, not so much in terms of individuals' calls, but rather the corporate calling God gives the church. One of the concepts I've been mulling over as a part of this is incarnation. The incarnation is mostly used to speak of Jesus enfleshing God, the Word that became flesh. But I've been prodded by Fr. Richard Rohr to see another side of the incarnation, that of the church incarnating God.
Most church people are familiar with the biblical idea of the church as the body of Christ. It's a very popular idea with a number of songs and hymns that celebrate it. But I've never really understood this as anything more than metaphor, and I've not heard others suggest something beyond metaphor, at least not until I read Rohr's words. And if Jesus could make God fleshy, and the church is given the gift of the Holy Spirit, can we not then incarnate God as well?
I take the answer to be yes, which is not to say that we always do enflesh God to and for the world. In fact, it is not something we can do on our own, it can only happen as the Spirit works in and through us. Still, we can probably devise some measures that help us recognize when God present in us, moving and empowering us. Surely we would start to look more God-like that we otherwise would.
Which raises the question of what it means to look God-like. All of us are quite capable of imagining a god who generally agrees with us on most issues and who disagrees with those we disagree with. So one measure of becoming more God-like would be that such a move would challenge our own conceits and assumptions, of whatever their stripe. But beyond that, there must be particular characteristics of God that we could point to and say, "We would become more like that."
That brings me to the phrase that jumped out at me when I was reading Psalm 146 as lectio divina or spiritual reading, listening for a word or phrase that might touch my heart. I heard "executes justice," a phrase connected to God's deep concern for the hungry, the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.
It strikes me that the church is often reasonably good at doing some things to help the poor and hungry. Congregations often run or support food pantries, clothing drives, homeless shelters and such. We are adept and comfortable doing good for those in need. But the phrase "execute justice" speaks of something more, something that is more challenging for many of us.
Executing or bringing about justice for the oppressed is bigger than assistance. It is about creating a more just society. In our country, that is the arena of politics, and entering that arena makes a lot of Christians and a lot of churches very nervous.
Faith has been very much personalized in America, often focused primarily on one's personal standing with God, not the stuff of politics. Interestingly, when Jesus begins his earthly ministry, he announces it with the political term, kingdom. Perhaps he would have used a different term had he first come in our day, the government of God or the dominion of God. Regardless, Jesus shows up proclaiming an alternate ordering of things on earth, one that has very different ramifications for the poor and oppressed and for the rich and powerful.
And if God in the flesh unnerves the rich and the powerful, then it would seem that any current incarnation embodied in the church, would have similar effects. Which brings me back around to the question of the church's calling, any congregation's calling. If we are to embody and enflesh a God who "executes justice for the oppressed," what does that look like?
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