Incarnation, by Will Willimon

Chapter 2

1. We are forever saying that we want God to show up. “If only you would tear open the heavens and come down!” pleads the prophet (Isa. 64:1). We find ourselves in a mess and know that the mess is so great that no one could get us out but God. A consistent biblical claim is that God always shows up, not always when we demand, but shows up nevertheless.

- What examples can you share from your life where God showed up?

2.These days, the challenge of believing the Doctrine of Incarnation is not in believing that God might come. After all, we are such adorable creatures, we modern people. The challenge today is the same as it has always been in our reception of God: to receive God as God comes to us. The jolt is not so much that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself; it’s that God was in Christ.

- Where have you bumped into difficulty receiving God in this way?

3. Perhaps last Sunday there was a respectable number at your church to worship God. But even a big crowd is still a minority of people in town. Most of these non-attenders are not hostile to the Christian faith; they just don’t get it. For them, Christmas is a holiday, a grand time to eat and to drink too much, to spend too much, and to travel too far. When Christians gather to sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!” the majority of the world he came to save just doesn’t get it. The people “comprehend it not.”

- As Christians, what might our response be to this lack of response?

4. So if my exposition of the Incarnation is incomprehensible, relax; take heart. That’s a typical reaction to the Word Made Flesh. If, however, as strange as this word sounds, you hear an address to you, John says that you are a new creation; like Genesis 1–2 all over again, the light really does shine in the darkness for you. 

“Those who did welcome him, those who believed in his name, he authorized to become God’s children, born not from blood nor from human desire or passion, but born from God” (John 1:12). Furthermore, if you stick with these words, words that you cannot speak to yourself, they become the very source of your life: “If you continue in my word . . . you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31 NRSV). These words proclaim God’s gracious solution to the problem between you and God: “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3 NRSV). You are a new creation. You carry God’s light with you in a dark world.

- How would you describe the “light” you bear?  Where does it shine?

5. I’ve seen the world try to turn a child into a grasping, materialistic, self-centered dolt, the embodiment of some people’s “American Dream,” only to watch God work through the church to transform that child into a caring, compassionate Christian. The world tried to overtake the Light of the World, and surprise, the world got overtaken!

- Share an example of this transformation in someone you know well.

6. As the Word spoken by the prophets, made manifest in the commandments, becomes flesh in Jesus Christ, the Word is then preached and given flesh and blood in the preaching, hearing, and active witness of the congregation. When you consider all of the possibilities against the faith, it’s amazing that so many—when faced with a strange, inexplicable wonder like Incarnation—comprehend the truth, believe, and bow before it. That you are taking the trouble to read this book about the Incarnation, that you are able to stand and sing at the Feast of the Nativity, “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King,’” is a virtual proof of the reality of Incarnation. Shine, Jesus shine.

- How have you seen the Word preached, heard, and witnessed among us at church and in our community?

- Why is this “power” so influential and transformational?