Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

Christmas is the season during which the whole church celebrates the theme that is most central to process theology: God’s incarnation. That God is present in us and in the world, working for our healing and growth, our direction and our comfort, our reconciliation and our redemption, is our message. The church historically has been somewhat ambivalent about how fully to affirm God’s presence in the world, sometimes limiting it to Jesus or to the church. It is to Jesus and the church, and the understanding of God that these gave us, that we owe our awareness of God’s immanence. Also in Jesus we see a distinctive, perhaps even unique, working of that presence. But the God we know through Jesus is always with us and in us whether we recognize that presence or not. We discern it and celebrate it in all people, indeed, in all living things. The awareness of God’s immanence, aided by the church’s teaching of incarnation, enables us to respond to God’s call more fully. Our faith enables God’s enlivening presence to work more strongly within us. Our understanding of incarnation strengthens our respect for all creatures, and especially for all people. The story of Jesus’ birth in a stable checks any tendency to think that God’s presence in the world supports the structures of authority and prestige than humans construct. God is present in the CEOs of great corporations. But we are called to attend in particular to God’s presence in beggars and prostitutes and lepers. ~ John B. Cobb, Jr