Longing for Incarnation

The shots rang out at 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon--broad daylight on the Sabbath. The shooting victim was making a call at a sidewalk phone when somebody pumped seven rounds into him from an automatic weapon.

The murder occurred right outside the Sojourners intern house. Our newest group of interns had been here just two weeks. All but one of the seven interns were home, and they were among the first witnesses to one more senseless act of violence in our neighborhood. It was a baptism by fire for these men and women newly arrived in the city, and it prompted deep questions of faith.

The police went through their now common routine and, eventually, took the body away. Afterward, long-time Sojourners Community member George Gentsch came out with a pail of water and scrubbed the blood off the sidewalk. His simple act was one of both courage and faithfulness.

We know the causes of such violence only too well in the addictions to drugs and money, the root economic injustice, the culture of violence, the disintegration of families, the structures of racism, the lack of political will, and more. Underneath it all is the palpable presence of evil--in our institutions, our values, and deep within the human heart.

The following Sunday we celebrated the Feast of St. Francis, one of Sojourners' patron saints. Marie Dennis, a member of the Assisi Community here in Washington, D.C., reflected that Francis was "attuned to the suffering and pain of the world and yet embodied both hope and joy." That is both the mystery and power of the incarnation that we will all soon celebrate once more.

To celebrate the incarnation in these days is to do so in the face of great evil and the virtual unraveling of our social fabric. That is precisely why it is so important. To embody the incarnation is the most concrete form of hope that can be offered in our time. To demonstrate the belief that the way of Christ is the ultimate reality is to radically assert that present realities are not ultimate. To steadfastly put our trust in the gospel is to boldly proclaim that violence, oppression, and chaos will not have the last word.

It is a much deeper kind of hope than that of placing our confidence in different political policies or new social movements. We should continue to work hard for both, but neither will ever remove the pain and suffering of the world or finally overcome the evil in our human condition, social institutions, and cultural habits. We need so much more than the promises of social reform and even political liberation. In the midst of such very human efforts, the presence of evil always will reassert itself.

WHAT WE LONG FOR is nothing less than the concrete inbreaking of the reign of God--incarnation. Whenever the Word is made flesh, incarnation occurs and history opens up again, revealing new possibilities for human life. That is why Sojourners has kept the tradition, each December, of telling the stories of those brothers and sisters among us whose lives have taught us the meaning of the incarnation. In their story, we see the true hope of the world.

This, indeed, is the primary Christian responsibility--to make the gospel a reality in the face of the world's realities. Nothing else is more important, and no other priorities should distract us from this most central vocation.

This Advent season is a good time to reassess our priorities and decide what is most important to us. Advent means new beginnings and announces the birth of hope in a world that longs for those new possibilities. Never has that longing been greater.

There has been a lot of late night conversation at the intern house, struggling to make sense of the events of that bloody Sunday. Why are we here? Are we safe? What good does our presence do? What difference do we make? One intern said it well when she testified that her ideals and commitments were not enough to answer the questions. To live with such evil at the front door asks us how much faith we really have.

You don't have to be on the front lines of urban violence to recognize that the evil is at all of our front doors now, and the question for all of us is one of faith. Do we believe in the incarnation and are we willing to become signs of that Word made flesh in a world whose aching moan is a desperate cry for hope?

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.