If lameness means restricted mobility, God entered the world limping. It is called the incarnation.
Polio visited me before my first birthday. I’ve limped all my life. The physical lameness came uninvited, an unwelcome intruder.
God the eternal Word – constrained yes, but only by love – became flesh. Voluntarily. With no illusions.
Who can take this in – the incarnation? How can it be considered? What mind can think this way? Really.
Jesus – Fully human God. I labor to see this.
‘See’ the creator and sustainer of the cosmos. See Him as the human preborn, the human baby, human child, human adolescent, human adult. . . Yielding to human death.
God’s lameness (diminished mobility) is his goodness physically embodied – coming to us, to our rescue. Coming for us – we other humans – limping as we are, disfigured by and in our sin.
Taking our crippled lives to his soul; see this God – Word-made-flesh – inviting spikes to his feet. Display of lameness – disclosing his helplessness.
His human life absorbed judgment for every human wrong. For anyone. Ever.
And three days from yielding to torturous death – this Jesus of Bethlehem, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Golgotha – rises. Rises.
Astonishing. Everything about it. About him.
Baby’s birth, teacher’s life, sacrificial offering’s death, the Savior’s resurrection. To what end?
To deliver. To bring us to the thing he brought to us. His kingdom.
To what end? To the end that, by his kingdom life, he transforms us to be as he is in this world. Cosmic mystery.
To the end that, out of our limping strength we enter into – as he did – the lameness of others. Incarnating among them so to speak.
Thy kingdom come.
The end, it seems, must be hope And transformation.
Bringing Joy.
To the world.
Love has been perfected among us in this. .
because as He is,
so are we in this world
– 1 John 4:17
©2015 Jerry Lout