Down-to-earth spirituality

Jurgen O. Schulz
Our God is a down-to-earth deity.
Literally.
The Word became flesh. The very stuff our bodies are made of. He became
humana term which derives from the root humus, meaning earth. This was
the raw material our Creator used to make us. The Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground (Gn. 2:7)
The staggering miracle of the Incarnation means that not only is man made of
dustbut now God is too! Deity took on humus. This is the ultimate circuit
blower! God didnt just visit our race; he became a part of it!
Theos and anthropos were organically joined.
A member of the Trinity now has skin color, eye color, hair color and fingerprints.
He has immersed himself in the physical realities of human existence, and his
favorite self-description became: Son of Man.
Martin Luther rightly stated,
The mystery of the humanity of Christ,
that he sunk himself into our flesh,
is beyond all human understanding.
J. B. Phillips concludes that we need to be shocked afresh by the audacious
central Factthat, as a sober matter of history, God became one of us.
The foundational article of the Christian faithThe Word became fleshis a
bombshell for the Gnostic who affirms that the material world is illusory and evil.

It also overturns the tables on Christians who subscribe to a world-denying

spirituality.
The Incarnation forces us all to rethink our ideas about nature and
matter and the physical world. It totally shipwrecks our dualistic
separation of sacred and secular.
This God become humus grew, breathed, walked, ate, drank, worked and wept.
He enjoyed taking walks, working with wood, eating dried figs, basking in
sunshine, cooking breakfast on the beach and laughing with friends. In the words
of one writer, Jesus . . . seemed as comfortable at a party as He was in the
Temple. The Creator, who at the beginning of time looked upon his creation and
declared it to be good, now tasted, touched, smelled and felt its goodness.
Time was when you could despise the body and love God, or despise God and
love the body. One could be an ascetic or a hedonist. says theologian Peter J.
Leithart. Then God got Himself a body . . . the incarnation made the ancient
choice of ascetic or hedonist impossible. Since the incarnation the only choices
are to love the body and God, or to despise both.
It is often heard in wedding ceremonies that, by His presence in the wedding at
Cana of Galilee, Christ blessed and sanctified marriage. However, a wedding was
not the only place he showed up. He toiled at a carpenters bench, strolled
through markets and meadows, went boating on a lake, enjoyed meals in friends
homes and hiked up mountains. The unavoidable conclusion is thisChrist
sanctified every sphere of human activity.
Jesus of Nazareth is our most compelling evidence that spiritual
and material cannot be separated, that supernatural and
natural belong together.
In one of his poems, William Wordsworth speaks of the light of common day, to

which G. K. Chesterton reacted angrily and in effect said, Dont you dare call it
commonthats blasphemous! A similar rebuke was given to the apostle Peter,
What God has cleansed you must not call common.
A Gnostic view of spirituality has led many to believe that only that which is
explicitly Christian is truly glorifying to God. Taken to its logical conclusion,
this would mean that true holiness requires one to wear Christian shoes, eat
Christian food, sleep in a Christian bed, listen to Christian music, drive a
Christian car and breathe Christian air. Obviously this is absolutely absurd! And
such thinking is inconceivable for anyone who seriously believes in the
Incarnation.
The fact that Holiness took on humanity
forces us to reconstruct our understanding of spiritual.
No longer can we view the secular as unsacred. No field of human endeavor is out
of bounds. For everything belongs to yoube it Paul or Apollos or Peter, the
world or life or death, things present or futureeverything belongs to you; and
you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God (1 Cor. 3:22,23).
Everything belongs to you moves the goalposts of spirituality to the ends of the
earth! Its all encompassing. The only thing to avoid is that which contradicts who
we are in Christ. The rest is ours!
We can honor our Creator, not only in prayer and worship, but also in farming,
medicine, business, music, landscaping and computer programming. Through
work we enrich one another and cultivate and care for the created world that God
made, sustains and loves.
A musician serves God by composing great music, and not just by writing songs
about Jesus. An architect honors his Maker by bringing beauty and excellence
into his work, and not solely by designing cathedrals. Human activities do not

require a Bible verse added on to make them valid.

When asked whether the world needs more Christian writers,
C. S. Lewis replied, No, we need more writers who are Christian.
We can cook, paint, dance, write novels, compose music, fly kites and grow
orchids to the glory of God. The duties and delights of daily human life are not
obstacles, but opportunities for spirituality. In Christ the joys, pains, pleasures
and struggles of earthly living are the very context of godly living and worship.
We are not called to take flight into some spiritual stratosphere of mystical
experience. We are called to live in a physical body in a physical worldto the
glory of God.
Christianity, affirms Brian Zahnd,
is a flesh and blood faith.
It is perfectly fine to have a human body. As a matter of fact, God now possesses
one Himselfand will do so forever.
The God of heaven is deeply involved in gritty activities such as creation,
incarnation, redemption, resurrection and re-creation. Evidently matter matters.
And when He writes the last chapter, it will not be about an eternal, ethereal,
disembodied existence. It will be about new heavens and a new earth where we
will live in perfected, human bodies in a physical, renewed world.
We are called to deny sinnot life.
Christian spirituality is not an other-worldly affair. It is about becoming truly
humanlike Jesus. It entails embracing the miracle of Gods real presence in our
life and in our world. It involves celebrating sunsets, roses, coffee, family and all
of Gods good gifts with gratitude and joy.

The reformer, John Calvin stated,

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world
that is not intended to make us rejoice.
So slow down. Stop. Look. And, like Moses, take off your shoes because holy is all
around us in the common stuff of everyday life. Spirituality is a down-to-earth
matter.
If God truly became humoshow could it be otherwise?