Early in his life Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian minister in Boston. He lived in arguably the most formative years of our country. Was born in 1803, lived through the Civil War, and died an international figure in 1882.
Unitarians held that God is One. We hold that too. But what they meant was: Jesus is not God. Jesus is just a man. Emerson said that the idea of the incarnation was a “gross Gothic offspring.” That is, the idea that God would incarnate himself as a man was a disgusting medieval thought. God was too pure, too holy, too divine, to ever do such a thing.
Paul said, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” And he also said, “the Cross is foolishness.” But why? Why it is foolishness? Well, who could believe that God, as holy and pure as Emerson believed him to be, who could believe that he would get himself mixed up in the mud and the blood? In order to save us, God threw himself right into everything human. All of it. For to save someone, you have to be their neighbor. God came to be our neighbor.
But if that is how God conducted himself, can we be saved on our own? Apart from our neighbor? Unless we risk it all for the sake of others, can we really participate in the life of Jesus?
Can we just believe and have him in our heart?
But that’s exactly what he himself did not do. He did not keep us as just a thought in his mind. He came and found us.
Why is the Gospel read among the people every Sunday? Jesus dwells among his people. Why is the most holy act of the church, the Eucharist, given to mere men and women? The Most Holy One has come to live among his people. In the Body of Jesus Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
If we would know him, if we would have the life of Jesus in us, we must go and do likewise for our neighbor.
Tom+