The Power of Our Incarnational Magnet
At an international gathering of ministry leaders called Simply Jesus, I interviewed 15 leading Christian influencers, all of them well-known practitioners of the way of Jesus. Each of these short interviews was fueled by a simple prompt: Who is Jesus to you? What I heard from this diverse cohort of remarkable people was sometimes stunning, sometimes upending, and always kindred. It’s amazing how deeply connected we can feel to strangers whose experience of Jesus’ love, like Paul’s, makes everything else seem like skubalon to them.
I thought I’d share one of those Simply Jesus testaments—the transcribed short-story of Leah Kostamo, a clinical counselor and author in Vancouver who co-founded a Christian environmental ministry called A Rocha (“the rock” in Portuguese). Leah is describing how a “winsome” presence in our surrounding community operates like a magnet for the deep longings of those who feel like lost sheep…
I think one of the things that has really attracted me to Jesus is summed up in a lovely quote by Wendell Berry—he says that “Jesus shows us that God is not an absentee landlord.” It’s the idea that Jesus was flesh and blood, that he came eating and drinking and living and touching people.
My husband and I run a Christian environmental center, and we had this group of students from the University of British Columbia come out. They were part of an earth sciences class, so they had to do a service project—they chose us as their project. They had to pick a theme, so they chose “Religion and the Environment.” They found out about us, and thought, Perfect, we’ll do something there.
So we gave these students a job—they had to restore a building on our property. At the end, we decided to host a lovely dinner for them to thank them. It seemed like a Jesus-act to have them sit down with wine and lovely food with us. The funny thing is, we just wanted to celebrate with them, but they wanted to ask us questions…
There were a few Christians, three agnostics, a Buddhist, a Wiccan, and others from diverse backgrounds. And they kept asking us questions—for example: What gives you hope? What do you think is the meaning of the universe? These are huge questions. And the one that they really zeroed in on was What gives you hope? Most of these students were environmental studies majors. They had seen the realities of environmental degradation, and especially how it was hurting the poor. So they wanted to know: How can you keep going in this work? It’s so depressing. So we reflected back to them the reality of the Incarnation—that God is not an absentee landlord. The person of Jesus shows us that God is willing to become part of the creation in this great act of solidarity.
When my husband and I finished answering their questions, one student named Ian, a Buddhist, just goes, “Whoa, I’ve never thought of that! I think I’m gonna be up all night thinking about that!” The interesting thing was that later, as we’re saying goodbye to him, he told us he was impacted by more than what we said about Jesus not being an absentee landlord. He said, “This is the first meal I’ve had with a family in 10 years.”
So it’s the combination of us incarnating the love of Jesus and giving him a good meal, connected to this idea that this is what God does with us all the time. And this is what Jesus did in his life. This is why this Buddhist environmentalist was now attracted to Him.
It’s fascinating to consider the magnetic impact of our winsome presence in the lives of those in our community who thirsting for hope. What does incarnational living, and incarnational proclamation, look like when you encounter your surrounding community?
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
