Incarnation: an Expression of the Beauty of Body

Incarnation: an expression of the beauty of Body

John’s Gospel depicts incarnation beautifully as “the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1: 14). In our theological talks we usually make a distinction between spiritual and carnal dimensions of life. This is not a neutral way of seeing things, but as we make this distinction between these two aspects our existence we add value to each and make one superior to the other. As one would rightly infer, it is always the spiritual that is given a superior status over the carnal, which many a times is regarded as something that has a sinful inclination. The world could not ever think about the flesh becoming this beautiful as John reports it in his gospel.

But in the Old Testament narrations of bodily existence, especially when it talks about the creation, we come to realize life as a result of the indwelling of the divine in the body (Gen. 2:7). God breathes life into the body and thus human become a living being. And in this being Spirit and body has hardly any distinctions but they are seen as going together as a unit. But it speaks about occasions in which this divine breath is displaced by the evil (Genesis 6:3, 1samuel 18:10), which makes the human lose their divine image imprinted in them by the master Creator. We see the bodily existence becoming very ugly in such occasions. Therefore the OT presents body as a gift and blessing from God. Body is also seen as the medium that carries the divine mandates of caring for God’s creation as a whole. Body helps the human realize the interconnectedness of life. It speaks to one through the experience that life suffering at a point in the vast network on this earth brings sufferings to the whole created order. It is through the body only we feel that we are part of vast matrix of life created and sustained by God the Creator.

But it was the Greek philosophical thoughts that become widespread towards the latter part of the 4^th century BCE (especially through the conquest of Alexander the Great in and around Palestine ca. 322 BCE), which initiated a very negative attitude towards body. Gnosticism was one of the major Greek philosophical strands and it talked about knowledge (Gnosis) as the core of the existence of our being. And this knowledge was not something that the human acquired through the experiences of their bodily existence, but it was a knowledge that had to come from above and release the being from the captivity of the body. Therefore the Greek philosophical schools emerged to train the people in acquiring this celestial knowledge to lead them to salvation. Body or flesh in Greek thoughts were expressed as bondages that we experience as we exist and every being is said to be longing for that perfect knowledge to get released from their bodies.

John the gospel writer pens his gospel in a context like this, where the body was seen negatively as something that each being has to overcome. When the dominant philosophy of the dominant religion of the time talks about salvation and fullness as a movement away from the body, he wants to counter it by saying that salvation on the contrary is a movement towards body. God in Jesus moves towards body to make its existence beautiful and complete. The word“Incarnation” connotes this movement of God towards body (In-Carnation or into the body). According to John, Incarnation is an incessant movement of God towards the world (Ch. 1: 10). That movement keeps on happening eternally as God loves the world through God’s only son eternally (John 3:16).

John wrote the gospel in a world governed by a dictatorial government that unleashed horrendous violence on the bodies of the men and women of that time. And it justified such violations using the philosophies that negated the value of body. Many bodies were thrashed down, many were discriminated on the basis of their “imperfections” in terms of color, ritual impurities, disabilities etc. The time and cultural context of the writing of this gospel had an obsession with perfection of the bodies. The understanding that led to such an overemphasis on perfection of body was that only a perfect body in ideal ritualistic settings can contact the divine. People with bodily infirmities and ritual uncleanliness were not allowed to enter the temples and worshipping places in those times. The whole rituals and the worships were attempts do away with the imperfections of the body. While the animal sacrifices were done, they made it sure that no animal with any imperfections are sacrificed.

But incarnation brought new understandings on the bodily existence. Incarnation was historically experienced as a search of God after the shattered bodies. In his gospel John presents a lot of bodies which were broken, discriminated and declared ritually unclean. Jesus, God’s incarnation, depicted in the gospel renders healing, completeness and moreover holiness to all the bodies he touches or encounters. Incarnation makes God one among our bodies. It makes God vulnerable as we see Jesus’ body been crushed eventually at the cross.  But on the other hand God’s holiness and wholeness become something contagious and it presents body as a real blessing from God. Jesus’ acts of healing, casting of demons, forgiveness of sins, feeding of the bodies, touching the bodies, blessing the bodies were all acts that redeemed the blessedness of bodies that was created by God. Incarnation in short affirms the goodness of body and it declares that life becomes beautiful when bodily existence is taken seriously.

How do we deal with our bodies now a days? Many times we do employ a narcissistic approach towards body. Our body is our own and it has to be kept sanitized from all outside intrusions that pollute it. We hate pain and troubles, we hate proximity unless it benefits us and we love to resign from everything to remain disengaged. We love leisure than involvements, thus our attempt in these days is to make the body as much as “comfortable” as it can be. But incarnation left for us a paradigm of engagement, where we get proximate to our neighbors risking us to be hurt by the “harshness” of our neighbors in an attempt make our bodies as well as the bodies of our neighbor whole. This paradigm tend to ask the most pertinent question in these discussion, that is nothing but why we have our bodies? God’s gift of Body is definitely with a particular purpose of God. The biological nature of body is, it wears as it grows older. But as it grows and wears God intends it to contribute to the nourishment of bodies around. Jesus speaks about the wheat grains and says “unless the grain fall and die it will remain single and if it falls and dies it will bring forth many grains.” We are gifted with the body to live in this body as a living sacrifice to the Lord of the body, so that the bodies created by God in this world will be enriched. It makes the body and its existence meaningful and of course beautiful.