Its All in the Details

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

This one verse from the opening passage from the gospel of John is very familiar to many Christians. The prologue to John’s gospel is poetic, and artistic in its articulation of the the concept of a preexistent Word that co creates with God. It has a beauty all its own as it conveys the nature, character, and power of the preexistent Word. Those opening 13 verses establishes the preeminence of the Word of God and its all encompassing scope in the plan of God for creation. 

But the above verse, in particular, provides an important and cosmic insight…

And the Word became flesh…

The Word- cosmic in scope, eternal in being, and spiritual in nature- became flesh. This one sentence summarizes the idea of incarnation. Said differently, the whole of Christian revelation about God and Jesus Christ is summarized in these words. The implication is that the cosmic and universal God decided to be particular and specific. God chose in Jesus, to be enfleshed, incarnated, and particularized. 

Most Christians rightly assert that this singular act of God conveys a lot about God. Eternality choosing mortality begs a lot of questions that most of the discipline of theology seeks to address. While I am not rehashing theological questions here, I simply offer the following observation: The Word became a specific flesh. 

Enfleshment isn’t a generic concept. Skin wraps bodies. Human bodies are physical with shapes, colors, and contexts. They interact with other bodies. Those bodies also have shapes, colors, and contexts. Bodies inhabit communities, systems and structures in order to establish societies, powers, and ways of being in the world. When God chooses flesh, God chose all that came with it- the particularities, the specifics and the uniqueness therein. 

In other words….

God, in the incarnation, is concerned about the particular- always has been. God chooses a particular body to be incarnated through. God does this, in part, to value that body (and others like it) in the face of all that bodies like his would experience. God in Jesus, comes to know what it means to be brown, oppressed, and overlooked in life. Eternity understands finality and limitation firsthand.

God gets involved in the details…

 I am continually puzzled at the way many Christians view the Black Lives Matter conversation and movement. Many churches have refused to embrace the particularity of focusing on Black lives, because “God cares and loves everybody” or “theologically speaking, all lives matter to God”. And while I understand the meaning behind those sentiments, they reality of scripture does not make those sentiments true in and of themselves. IN fact, I can say that those statements about God are true just as much as scripture does not affirm that message. Scripture actually conveys a God who very often puts the lives of certain people over others. A quick set of questions:

Did Egyptian Lives Matter during the Exodus?

Did Canaanite Lives Matter during much of the conquests in Joshua?

Did Goliath’s life matter in front of David’s army?

Did the Syrophoenician woman’s life matter when she asked Jesus for assistance?

If you are honest in reading your Bible you will realize the answers are not what an “all lives matter to God” crowd would want them to be. The revelation of scripture conveys a God is always particular. So particular that God chooses a particular body to engage humanity. 

And yet, God, as revealed in Jesus, provides for a more expansive view of God’s own love and what lives matter to God. In some respects it is the founding mission and legacy of the Christian church that shows us who matters. Paul and the great commission charges the followers to make sure that all lives matter- “in Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world”. 

Black Lives Matter offers both an assertion about the particularity of human life and a prayer on seeing and affirming that life. God is always particular about human life. Being able to recognize that God’s particularity is not about favoritism, but about dignity is the vision of truth. Just remember, its all in the details…