What if God's presence in the world is much closer, more physical, and more dependent upon us than we ever imagined?There is a story Ronald Rolheiser tells in his book The Holy Longing that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
A young girl was frightened during a thunderstorm. Her mother tried to comfort her, reminding her that God was always with her, that God was watching over her, and that she had nothing to fear. But the little girl wasn't satisfied.She wanted someone she could touch. Someone who could hold her hand. Someone who could sit beside her until the storm passed. She wanted God with skin on.
I love that.
Because I suspect that little girl understood something about God that many of us spend our lives trying to figure out. We want to believe that God is present. We want to trust that God loves us. We want to imagine that somewhere beyond the complexity and uncertainty of our lives, there is a divine presence holding everything together.
But sometimes we need something more tangible.
Sometimes we need a hand on our shoulder, someone sitting beside us in the hospital, a friend who notices our sadness, a person who shows up when we have run out of words. We need love we can experience. And according to Rolheiser, this is precisely what the incarnation is all about.
The most extraordinary claim of Christianity
I've been reading Rolheiser's The Holy Longing, the first book in his trilogy exploring Christian spirituality and maturity. It has reawakened the way I think about spiritual formation, the church, and what it means to live a deeply Christian life.
But chapter four, titled "Christ as the Basis for Christian Spirituality," takes us somewhere particularly profound. Rolheiser argues that the incarnation is the central mystery of Christianity. The Gospel of John describes this mystery with remarkable simplicity: "The Word became flesh and lived among us." (John 1:14) Think about what that means.
The early Christians made an astonishing claim about the nature of God. The God who created the universe, the God who is beyond our comprehension, the God who cannot be contained by our religious systems or theological explanations, entered the world through the vulnerability of a human life.
A baby born into an ordinary family.
A child who needed to be fed, held, protected, and loved.
A person who experienced hunger, exhaustion, friendship, disappointment, grief, and joy.
A human being who touched lepers, welcomed outsiders, ate with people everyone else avoided, and wept at the death of a friend.
God became flesh.
And this tells us something extraordinary about the character of God. God is willing to be known through the ordinary stuff of human existence. Through bodies and relationships. Through meals and conversations. Through compassion and touch. Through the messy, beautiful, complicated experience of being alive. I think we sometimes move past this idea too quickly. We celebrate the incarnation every Christmas. We sing about it, preach about it, and build beautiful traditions around it.
But what if the incarnation is far more than something we remember each December? What if it is the foundation for understanding how God continues to be present in the world?
The incarnation is still happening
This is where Rolheiser's theology becomes especially compelling. He argues that the incarnation did not simply begin and end with the thirty-three years of Jesus' historical life. The incarnation continues.
Rolheiser writes: "God's physical body is still among us. God is still present, as physical and as real today, as God was in the historical Jesus." (p. 79)
That is a remarkable claim. Rolheiser draws upon the early Christian understanding of the church as the Body of Christ. The apostle Paul used this image repeatedly. The Christian community was invited to understand itself as a living expression of Christ's presence in the world. And Rolheiser wants us to take that idea seriously.
When Jesus walked the earth, he loved people through his physical presence.
He reached out and touched those who had been pushed aside.
He welcomed people to tables where they had never been invited.
He offered forgiveness to people who had been defined by their worst mistakes.
He looked upon people with compassion and saw possibilities that others could not imagine.
And now, Rolheiser suggests, we are invited to continue that work. The hands through which Christ reaches into the world are our hands. The eyes through which Christ looks with compassion are our eyes. The voices through which Christ speaks words of welcome and forgiveness are our voices. The communities through which Christ creates belonging are the communities we build together. I find that idea both beautiful and deeply challenging. Because it means that our spirituality can never be separated from the way we treat other people.
We are the presence we pray for
I have spent much of my life helping people discover a meaningful relationship with God, their neighbor and themselves. And I believe deeply in the power of prayer. I believe in creating space to become aware of God's presence, to listen for wisdom, to bring our fears and hopes into the light, and to open ourselves to the movement of the Spirit.
But Rolheiser asks us to consider something important. What happens after we pray? What happens when we ask God to bring comfort to someone who is grieving? What happens when we pray for those who are lonely? What happens when we ask God to bring healing to a divided world? Could it be that part of God's response to those prayers involves us?
Maybe the comfort someone needs will come through our willingness to visit. Maybe the lonely person will experience God's presence because we invited them to dinner. Maybe reconciliation begins because we found the courage to reach out to someone with whom we have disagreed. Maybe the person who has spent years believing they are unworthy of love will begin to imagine something different because a community welcomed them exactly as they are. This is what makes the incarnation so radical.
The love of God becomes tangible through the way we love.
At Saint Matthew, we often talk about God's radical love. I think Rolheiser helps us understand just how radical that love really is. God's love is meant to take flesh in the world. It becomes something people can experience through the relationships we create, the compassion we extend, the justice we pursue, and the care we offer.
This also means that the way we treat one another matters enormously. Our kindness matters. Our hospitality matters. The way we speak about people who disagree with us matters. The attention we give to someone who is hurting matters. Every one of these moments carries the possibility of making God's presence visible.
What does the church look like when we take this seriously?
I keep thinking about what this understanding of incarnation means for the church. For many people, the word church brings to mind a building, an institution, a worship service, or a collection of religious beliefs. And those things certainly shape the experience of church. But Rolheiser invites us to imagine something much more dynamic. What if the church is fundamentally a community through which people encounter the living presence of Christ? What if the most important question about our church is how people experience God's love when they encounter us? What does someone experience when they walk through our doors for the first time? Do they feel welcomed? Seen? Do they sense that there is room for their questions, their doubts, their experiences, and their complicated lives?
What happens when someone shares that their marriage is struggling, their child is having a difficult time, or they are frightened about what the future might hold? Do they find people willing to listen? Do they discover a community that will walk beside them? And what happens when people leave our campus and return to their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and families? Does the love they have encountered continue to find expression through their lives?
These questions matter to me because I believe the church has an extraordinary opportunity to help people experience God in deeply human ways. At Saint Matthew, we say that belonging precedes belief. For me, this is rooted in the very heart of the incarnation. We encounter people as they are. We make room for their stories. We build relationships that allow love to become something real. And sometimes, through those relationships, people begin to recognize the presence of God. Sometimes that happens long before they have language to describe what they are experiencing.
I think that's beautiful.
God is already in the ordinary
There is another dimension of Rolheiser's thinking that I find particularly meaningful. If the incarnation reveals that God is present within human life, then we have to rethink where we expect to encounter God. We often imagine that spiritual experiences should be extraordinary.
A profound moment of prayer.
A mountaintop experience.
A sudden realization that changes everything.
And those moments can certainly be meaningful.
But some of the most transformative experiences of divine love happen in the ordinary rhythms of life. A parent comforting a frightened child. A friend who remembers the anniversary of someone's loss. An adult child patiently caring for an aging parent. A neighbor bringing dinner to someone who is sick. Two people choosing forgiveness after a painful disagreement. A community gathering around someone who has experienced tremendous loss. These moments may never make headlines. They might not even register as particularly spiritual to the people involved.
But they are sacred. They are moments when love takes flesh. One of our great challenges is that we become so accustomed to the ordinary that we stop noticing the extraordinary possibilities within it.We search for God somewhere beyond our daily lives while overlooking the countless ways God's love is already moving through the relationships around us.Rolheiser reminds us that the incarnation invites a different way of seeing.
Becoming the people through whom love becomes visible
One of the insights I have been carrying from The Holy Longing is that the foundational lessons of Christian spirituality are lessons many of us spend our entire lives learning. Rolheiser's trilogy explores the movement toward spiritual maturity, and this first book gives us the foundations upon which that maturity grows. But I suspect most of us arrive at the middle and later seasons of our lives still learning how to embody the love we profess.
We are still learning to forgive.
Still learning how to listen.
Still learning to see people beyond the categories we place them in.
Still learning how to be present rather than distracted.
Still learning how to love without needing to control.
And perhaps that is part of the beautiful invitation of the incarnation. We are continually being formed into people who can make God's love more visible in the world.
God with skin on
I keep returning to that little girl in the thunderstorm. She didn't need someone to explain God's omnipresence. She needed someone to hold her. And I wonder how many people in our world are longing for exactly the same thing. People are exhausted. They are lonely. They are carrying grief, uncertainty, and fear. They are trying to make sense of a world that can feel increasingly divided and unpredictable. Many are asking questions about God. Where is God in all of this? Does God see what is happening? Does God care about what I am going through? And I wonder whether one of the most important ways we answer those questions is through the kind of people we become.
Through our willingness to show up.
Through the relationships we build.
Through the compassion we extend.
Through our commitment to creating communities where people experience dignity, belonging, and love.
Through ordinary people.
Through imperfect communities.
Through small acts of courage and kindness.
Through us.
