The Word Made Flesh

Church historians have been telling us for a long time that the center of Christianity has shifted from the West and to the global south. Christianity is vibrant and churches are growing rapidly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, while in European nations and the U.S., the church is in relative decline. These are broad generalizations, but I wonder what we can learn from the global south.

I am struck by the example of the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz. When he was appointed bishop in Chiapas, a largely indigenous state in southern Mexico, he often pointed out that it was the people he came to serve who evangelized him. Two points in his conversion were (1) recognizing the need for the church to respect and value the culture indigenous to the area and (2) recognizing that the gospel had something to say about people’s everyday lives and, in particular, about the economic injustice under which the majority of the population lived.

Bishop Ruiz created missional teams of catechists, thousands by the end of his term as bishop, who were trained to work in local towns and villages. These catechists, many of whom were later ordained deacons, were all indigenous and worked to make the gospel come alive in their culture and situation. They actively encouraged a faith that related in a concrete way to the people of Chiapas. In other words, they sought for the Word made flesh, for the gospel incarnated in a particular time and place. The impact of these teams was profound on the church in Chiapas.

One of the most revealing critiques I have read of ministry in the U.S. is from author and novelist Wendell Berry. Berry writes of a local minister who, much to his sorrow, realizes he is “the bringer of the Word preserved from flesh.” That is, he is so removed from the lives and realities of the people to whom he ministered and the community in which he lives that he cannot bring the gospel alive for them.

And I wonder. How can we recover a sense of the gospel as a living and active power in the world? How can we incarnate the gospel? I am currently working in a small town near the coast, a town with strong identification with several immigrant groups, a town struggling with severe poverty. What does the gospel mean to us, here and now?

Sarah