Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are continuing our discussion on incarnation. Incarnation. So far, I've set up the Christianity I experienced without much incarnation. Then I tried to show how I came to understand the centrality of incarnation for the Christian.

This isn't just the importance of Jesus incarnate, but the call for the Christian to be incarnate as a part of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Over the next four episodes, I want to explore a different way in which we can be incarnate to the world. There might be more ways out there, but these are the four that I've identified so far. The first type of Incarnation is what I will call Proximate Incarnation. I used to call this Physical Incarnation, but Physical Incarnation, by Physical Incarnation you might be thinking that I mean like Jesus taking on flesh and becoming human.

However, I would actually classify that probably as a different type of incarnation which we'll get to later. So instead, I'll just stick with proximate incarnation. It is the incarnation that comes through being in proximity to others. Now while you don't necessarily need to be close in space to someone in order to have a meaningful relationship with them, it certainly helps in different ways. I've recounted two stories in this series that give a prime example of this.

When our church received Samantha's request for assistance, she lived in a lower class town 10 down the road, while most of our church body lived in a more upper class town ten minutes in the opposite direction. We were twenty minutes apart from each other and in two very different parts of the area. Our lack of physical proximity in Samantha's community meant that we didn't have many direct connections to assist her and any need she had would take time to meet. And it would just the logistics would be a little bit more challenging. Samantha didn't have reliable transportation which meant that we'd always have to be coming to her and traversing that distance.

There's a similar thing that occurred with Alexa in the Roma community. While the town we lived in was pretty small and the Roma village was only about two miles away, Alexa had to walk anytime she was going to meet us somewhere. She didn't have a car and taxis would have cost money. And that two miles which separated us, the layout of the town changed quite a bit from shanties to apartments to decent homes. Beyond the physical landscape and the logistics of meeting up anywhere, there was also the fact that Alexa's ability to meet at any given time was difficult because she didn't have a phone or any devices to tell time.

Alexa didn't want to tell us where she lived exactly and because we weren't in her community, we never did figure out where she resided. So meeting up was an absolute challenge as we had to take into consideration her inability to tell time and the distance she'd have to walk to meet us. Not being in close proximity to those with whom we worked had some significant impacts on our relationship and assistance. And I'm sure that where we lived, the houses we lived in, and all of that kind of stuff caused us to stand out in a way that made Alexa and Samantha feel inferior. I remember having Samantha over to our house for Thanksgiving and she was just enamored with our house.

Now keep in mind that we had bought our house for a $120,000 which was at the top end of what we felt we could pay and and that house was on the very low end of what pretty much everyone else in our church owned. Like it was it was a a relative, like it was a decent house by by standards of everyone else around us in our communities, coworkers, all that stuff. It was it was an okay, decent house, like fine neighborhood, fine house, but it wasn't like huge and immaculate landscaping and crazy like 100 20,000. But man, when Samantha came in, it was like we lived in a mansion. And it was helpful for us to have that perspective laid bare as she came into our house and couldn't believe what she was seeing and experiencing.

It made us feel pretty awkward and troubled and that was good, that was good for us. It was a good wake up call because we spend our lives comparing what we have to those above us but knowing so few below us and not really wanting to compare with those below us because we like to think that we're at the bottom. It was very sobering for us. So it is possible to help those with whom you aren't in close proximity, but we found that it's pretty difficult to do so meaningfully. At the same time, and Americans should know this pretty well, it's possible to be right next to someone and not live incarnationally.

We personally did a very bad job of this when we lived stateside. We hardly knew our neighbors at all because most of our life was lived out in the world at our jobs, our church, etcetera. When we were home, we were home, home, inside the house. It was our base where we would refuel and reload and go back out into the world. When we moved to Romania, the culture was was very different plus we had kids so we did a lot of walking and going to parks around our house.

We got to know our neighbors pretty well. The neighbor who was right next to us was actually the neighbor we got to know best. And ironically, we got to know her the best because of her reputation of being the worst. Our landlords had actually erected, it was like a 20 foot fence to block the neighbor out because they thought that this neighbor was just so obnoxious. And even with the 20 foot fence when we arrived, our neighbor would actually peer over the fence and call out to us and our kids when we were in the backyard when the kids were playing.

She just wanted to communicate and she wanted relationship and we obliged her. I mean, she found a ladder to climb over the fence to get relationship with her neighbors. It was crazy. But our landlords who had the same opportunity had tried to block her out. They lived right next door but made attempts to keep their neighbor who is approximately very close at greater distance.

So the first way in which we can be incarnational is really simple. We can be physically close to someone. We can be in proximity to them. Placing ourselves next to someone doesn't necessarily mean we will act on our proximity and help out, but it puts us in a unique position to understand their perspective, their needs, where they live, their routine, and it allows us to actually literally see when they're in need and respond with haste. This type of incarnation is one way in which non violence tends to work well.

It's a place that you can actually see more overtly non violence playing out. If you listen to our season on non violent action, you might remember our episode on UCPs or unarmed civilian protectors. This group of individuals would enter villages threatened by violent forces and through their presence, they often prevented massacres. Similar sorts of group groups work in urban settings and attempt to be mediators between gangs and communities. Being physically present isn't something that we should discount as unimportant because it's so simple, because it can actually be extremely meaningful and effective.

Proximity alone doesn't necessarily produce a deep connection, though it does seem apparent that it can. UCPs can earn the respect of those with whom they live, they can help to reconcile groups, and they can protect through their presence. Living in a location can also give one a specific connection to others in the same location. Nations, states, and cities often have a pride and connection which is grounded in one's physical location. So again, even though this is a very simple form of incarnation, it can't be written off.

It can be a very meaningful one and at least a first step. Well, that's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.