Christ’s birth is the incarnational mystery of our faith. The Christian story is one of a yearning humanity and of God tirelessly searching to be in relationship. But Christmas was a complete departure from the norm: God incarnate, embodied in the world in the form of the fully human and fully divine person, Jesus. In Matthew, he was Emmanuel, "God with us" (1:23). For John, "The Word became a human being, full of grace and truth, and lived among us" (1:14).

The embodiment of God in the human Jesus gave generations of theologians plenty to think, fight, and write about. Too often, their reliance on intellect and speculation overcame their ability to trust the radical departure, to trust that God was not a prisoner of predictability, to trust the surprising mysteries of the Divine.

Heresies, including their own, abounded as theologians struggled with God coming into the flesh and blood world in the very real form of flesh and blood. To Apollinarians Jesus was human on the outside and divine on the inside: you know, melts in your heart, not in your hands. To the Docetists Jesus was fully divine but disguised to seem human -- God in a scary Halloween costume, but not a real person.

Theologies of incarnation that freeze up and do not get beyond the God-became-human equation miss the practical application of God’s intention to be in a relationship with us that inspires and sustains lives of spiritual depth, and from that depth, right moral action. The step beyond the God-became-human-in-Jesus mystery is the Divine invitation to each of us to incarnate, to embody Jesus in our lives. We are invited to become fully-human-incarnations-of-the-divine, to complete our innate connection with God and to savor the fullness of existence.

How do we embody Jesus in daily life? How do we make our body work harmoniously with our spirit so that body and soul are the dwelling place of the divine and daily activities a reflection of that harmony, habitation, and union? The first steps require intention:

• we have to want to live in that way,

• then we need to invite Christ into our lives, and

• we then decide that what we do in every moment of every day is our holy work:

To say that our lives are sacramental means that we are fully and consistently conscious of Christ in and with us. In word and deed we represent God in the world! In preparation for guiding the 11:15 class today, Jan Reynolds wrote, "At this very point in my life! the ‘incarnational life’ is about transformed presence in the world -- in the every-day-ness of living -- that naturally flows from the renewal, the shalom (wholeness) we experience in prayer, the energy we gain from the Spirit, the manifestation of our good intentions. It is an integration; bringing our best selves into the world, uniting our authentic inner selves with appropriate outward action…. God’s grace somehow meets us in our deep desire to represent God in the world: miracles then happen."

To embody Christ is to daily invite him into every detail of our lives and to be fully aware of his presence with us in each action and moment: in power lunches and PTA meeting, in preparing a meal and signing a deal, in homework and housework, in commuting and communing. Richard Foster writes in our study book for this series, "God will not enter many areas of our life uninvited. So we invite God to enter every experience of life…. To heal our bodies…. To inform our minds with creative ideas for our business enterprises…. To touch broken relationships and resolve conflicts at work or home…. To make our homes holy places of worship and study and work and play and love-making. We invite…we invite."

Inviting and embodying Christ elevates our daily work to a Calling. We serve that Calling with sacred creativity, divine dignity, spiritual responsibility, holy purpose, and moral authority. When work is transformed into Calling the sacramental quality of daily life is lifted one dimension more.

Inviting, embodying, and making sacramental becomes a daily way of life that replenishes our spiritual reserves each day. We take time out and calm down so we are able to listen for the still small voice of the one we embody. Breathing God in and breathing love out, we quiet all of the voices that race through our minds, still all the troubles that will command our attention, and we charge the inner battery that holds positive intentions for all that we do in a day, for all whom we meet in the moments, for all that we hope in our deepest soul.

There are at least three movements on the journey of faith. The first is toward Christ: finding the one we long for and who searches for us. The second is with Christ: embodying him into the very core of our being. And third, here I want you to entertain the possibility of a most incredible, radical incarnation; a possibility deliciously close to heresy or a deep truth, the movement as Christ, which is the transforming integration of the first two movements into a life that no longer needs to distinguish between being fully human and fully divine!