The God of all flesh

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27).

It’s not a surprising statement, really: He made all flesh, it belongs to Him. But to a careless or unsuspecting reader it could come across as, “I am the God (made of) flesh.” Of course we know better than that: God is Spirit. Even pagans, New Agers, and the generic believer-on-the-street know that. They describe themselves as “spiritual” because they occasionally think about the spiritual world—even spend some time there, if they can pay the fares. The “spiritual” realm varies from soul to soul—mine won’t look like yours. But they all, I would venture to say, have one thing in common: They’re not here. They observe a sharp divide between spirit and flesh, and one more thing: Whatever God is, he/she/it dwells in a serene place undisturbed by human strife, greed, pettiness, ambition, and jealousy. It’s beneath him (her, it) to get involved with day-to-day moralizing or two-bit politics, or even the fate of nations. He (she, it) is what we escape to.

In this worldview, a God who identifies with humanity is something to escape from.

How primitive He looks, this Old Testament “God of all flesh,” dabbling in politics, of all things! Arranging kings on a chessboard, knocking off nations, bringing down and raising up for obscure purposes. Or not always so obscure: He wants to be worshipped by such as us. To have all humanity bow down to Him and bring His gifts and sacrifices of praises. To the “spiritual,” He’s not a great improvement over Zeus (for example), who hurled thunderbolts when angry and might be persuaded to send rains or good harvests if you slaughtered enough bulls. Zeus was even an improvement in a way, because unless they yanked his chain he had little interest in the souls of men. (The daughters were another matter, to judge by the stories about him.)

Point is, Zeus left humans alone for the most part. So (for the most part) do Vishnu and Kali and Buddha most of all. They appear to have little interest in our affairs or concern for our petty ambitions except (perhaps) a vague paternalistic nod toward some state of well-being hereafter.

To the common brand of spirituality, whatever gods there be are probably responsible for the natural world but have no interest in what makes it tick. And that, the common brand holds, is as it should be. Involvement in the world is misplaced curiosity at best and meddling at worst. The Great Spirit shouldn’t be getting his hands dirty; even a god such as Allah, who has definite likes and dislikes regarding humanity, would be dishonored by real involvement with it.

Gods who don’t meddle sound like the best kind until you need them. A spiritual life sounds lovely except that you can’t really get there from here. The whole point of “spirituality” is to get above it all by meditation or levitation or concentration.

That’s why it’s so stunning when the God of all flesh actually becomes the God of flesh, and the Lord of men becomes the Son of Man. As David mused in Psalm 139, “You hem me in, behind and before”; God performed an ambush. We are encircled by immanence, transformed by transcendence. Where, indeed, can I flee from Your presence?

We humans, especially contemporary Americans, demand our space, marked by invisible borders defined by ourselves. This far, and no farther, we silently tell strangers in the parking lot (Don’t get in my face!), acquaintances met at Walmart (Keep your hands to yourself), colleagues at the office (I don’t want to hear about your domestic woes), even intimates (Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my first cup of coffee). In a normal lifespan, those lines are invaded only at birth and death. Birth, because babies have no sense of self and therefore no regard for personal space. Death, because the dying give up their boundaries with each step down into total helplessness where personal space dissolves.

Birth and death are precisely where Jesus joined Himself to us. The God of all flesh apprehended flesh, fused with flesh, wed with flesh, and will never, never let it go: a scandal to the spiritual, life itself to those who believe.