holy & human

The Divine wrapped on flesh and entered our world. We celebrate this mammoth event with Christmas. We acknowledge the waiting with Advent. 

I’ve been musing the incarnation. 

As I talked about it with friends, I realized that even the term “incarnation” should be reserved for the event when the seed of God entered a woman and produced Jesus. It is holy. That holy. But what’s got me going is that God’s spirit dwells in me... a sort of little “i” incarnation. Or, let’s don’t call it that, it’s something else. What do we call it? 

In the timeline, after Jesus ministered here on earth, he ascended into Heaven. He said he would not leave us as orphans and he sent the Holy Spirit a little while later. That Holy Spirit indwells me. That’s what it is... an indwelling.

His Spirit communes with my spirit. The spark of life. The holy in the human. 

This morning before dawn, I lit the Winter Forrest candle and turned on the Christmas tree lights. My hands smelled like OxyClean from the t-shirts I soaked in the sink just before I sat down with my Advent book. And I began to read about Zechariah, a herald of Advent. 

The laughter bubbled up from deep within me as I pictured him gesturing wildly to the breathless audience outside the Holy of Holies. You know he went in there at risk to his own life. They put a bell on his robe and a rope around his leg so they could pull him out if he keeled over. He must have jumped so at the sight of Gabriel there by the alter that he almost burned his robe with the incense. Gabriel announced that old man Zechariah would have a son, John the Baptist. Ole Zech didn’t believe. He said, “How can I know this is true?” Gabriel struck him mute because he did not believe. And out Zech goes to try to tell the audience why he can’t speak and why he is wild with anticipation and why his robe is smoldering.

I’m so thankful Zechariah is included in this story and his unbelief is no stumbling block for the gospel. Zechariah is a herald of Advent to us. And if Advent is nothing else, it is the celebration of the collision of the holy and the human.