This is a picture of the incarnation, particularly the incarnation of Christ into the being of Jesus of Nazareth. From this we can understand something of the incarnating process of the Christ-forces in us.

One can consider that each of the four Gospels has a particular signature, something that makes it necessary to be included in the canon of scripture. We may ask why both Matthew and Mark make it into the canon. They appear to be very similar to each other. Matthew expands what Mark has established and there are elements in Matthew’s Gospel that are not found in any other Gospel. We shall use Matthew’s Gospel to accompany our consideration of the incarnation process.

We begin with an element that is found only in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 2: “And now, when Jesus had been born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the reign of King Herod, see, Maggi from the realms of the East came to Jerusalem and said, ‘Where is the newborn child who is destined to be the king of the people of Judah? We saw his star in the realms of the East and have come to bow down to him.’” In the first chapter of Matthew we have, in a very real sense, the story of the preparation of a human being that can bear the forces of the Christ, and in this star, this heavenly light that appears to the Magi, we have the first sign of the Christ-forces descending. It is the beginning of an incarnating process. This means that the incarnation has a direction: it comes from the heavens and must eventually, completely land on the earth. Matthew, in his Gospel, takes us through this process of the incarnation and the elements that appear.

We begin with the light in the heavens; this shining star, that we can say each one of us has. We each have our own particular heavenly light. We can imagine it as carried by our guardian angel. We can imagine it as the light of our guardian angel, carrying our higher self, so that we have a guiding light, one that guides the process. With this we can imagine the Christ-forces being seen by those who have the power to see them. The Magi are not so much seeing something that can be seen by everyone in the external world of nature, but rather that they can see something that exists in the super-natural world, in the world of spirit. The Magi can see this light manifest.

Matthew begins his Gospel with: “This is the book of how Jesus the Christ became human.” It is an extraordinary statement; surely Jesus was born a human being. It is the process of becoming the human being that we are all destined to become. We could therefore translate this as: “This is the book of how Jesus, bearing the Christ, became fully human.” Because, without the Christ-forces in us, there is no potential for us to reach our destiny; the Spirit Human that we are to be.

Then Matthew provides a genealogy, which tells us what it means to inherit a human body that has been worked on from generation to generation. This is worked on in many ways. We know from epigenetics that what we inherit from our parents is only a potential blueprint. Some of the blueprint will be awakened into life by the world around us. We become the person we are not only through nature, but also through nurture. What surrounds us and works on bringing the blueprint to life is not only the physical environment, it is also the social environment. The ways in which the child is raised determines not only their soul but also their physical nature right down into their physical health. Medical professionals know that a child who shows signs of anxiety will express these in their health, right down into their physiology. Thus, we strive to provide a nurturing environment that enhances all the aspects that can develop well in us. What we inherit is expressed through our environment and may become very prominently expressed in healthy and in unhealthy ways.

Matthew begins with the human being, Jesus, but it is the human being, Jesus, bearing the Christ that will become the future human being. In chapter 2 the Christ-forces are beautifully expressed in the guiding star which guides those who can see it, the Magi, to where the child is: “And after these words from the King they went on their way and behold the star, which they had seen in the realms of the East showed them the way.” In the Greek the literal meaning is the ‘realms of dawning light’. This means the realms of the rising sun, the coming into being, the birth. With the rising sun comes the quality of warmth along with the quality of light. The sunrise provides us with a different quality of warmth than exists before its rising. We have the quality of a guiding light, but it has not yet fully descended, it is shining. It is shining over the child and where the child lives. One can experience it as an embrace that now must find its way and descend.

We are dealing with a quality of warmth and light that the ancient world would have described as the element of Fire. Fire is mentioned before the moment of incarnation. After this description we move to: “In those days John the Baptist came…” He says: “I baptise you with water to lead you to a change of consciousness. He who comes after me is mightier than I, unworthy am I to carry his shoes. He will baptise you the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Something of the one coming after John the Baptist is connected to the Spirit, to fire, to coming to a place that we would describe as an experience of ourselves as the place of the I-organisation, the place of the spiritual fire that is essentially who we are and which must warm, and fill, and transform all the aspects of our being human.

With this comes the baptism of Jesus, and only Matthew records it with these words: John says, “It is I who need to be baptised by you” – John recognises that he needs the baptism of the spirit. John is baptising with water and knows what it does for those he is baptising because he already carries that shift in consciousness. John recognises that Jesus also does not need the change of consciousness of the water baptism. This is the response from Jesus: “Let it be so. It is good thus so that we properly fulfil all that destiny requires.” This establishes the idea that we must undergo the stages of our incarnating experience. This is why, when the child is born, we must recognise that everything is there, but not everything is expressed in the way that it will be. The one thing that has not happened and that only now can begin to happen is this process of inner transformation: the process we can call transubstantiation – the substance of who we are has to change. That isn’t present at birth. It can only start from birth, in our earthly reality. We are not going to be able to transform the substance of earth until we are born on the earth.

Matthew’s Gospel takes us on a journey of how this light, that one can say is in the star, descends and starts to permeate, goes through these processes of Fire and Air, and Water to Earth. This is very strong in Matthew’s Gospel, the process of what it means to fully become an earth being. We can see in little children how they are still caught in the heavenly light. Slowly this light will permeate the child so that it can take hold of and finally, as an adult, not only stand on the earth, but ‘quake’ the earth. We can wake up the earth. The earth will not wake up if human beings do not wake up. Nature is not conscious of itself, but we can be conscious, not only of it but also of ourselves. And that is a bit of an earthquake that happens.

With the words of Jesus, John baptises him and Matthew describes that the heavens open and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove. It is the movement of the Spirit that resembles a dove. John hears: “This is my beloved Son, in him I reveal myself completely.” This is a complete revelation of the Father in the Son. And it is ongoing.

What happens when the Spirit becomes present in the man Jesus of Nazareth? He goes into a period of preparation. We, as modern human beings, should take note of this, that it requires time to transition from one experience of life into another. Transitions in life are a process that needs to be undergone, it is not like a switch that takes us from one situation into the next. We must honour this process. Jesus is taken by the Spirit into the loneliness of a desert experience. It is an experience of nurturing warmth, not a cold experience. After 40 days and 40 nights: a period of gestation – the period of 40 is the period of a process through which something can come into reality. One may imagine that the conception of Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth took place in the Jordan and after this period of 40 days and nights the birth of Christ into the person of Jesus of Nazareth takes place. It is at this moment, this moment as of a birth, that something extraordinarily human, filled with Christ-forces, can take place. Jesus can speak and assert Himself. He can discern what the Adversarial forces bring, and He can declare out loud what He stands for and not be swayed.

The Adversary says: “If something of the Divine is truly born in you (if you are the Son of God), let these stones change into bread.” He replies: “The human being does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Our nourishment comes from The Word, it comes from what we can hear and what we can understand. It comes from a relationship. When we are in a relationship we speak with one another. We find ourselves conversing with a newborn baby; we use tone, inflection and carefully chosen words. And there is a response from the baby, even though it is not at the level that a child or adult would give. The newborn recognises from the conversation that it has landed in a place that wants it, welcomes it and wants to know it. This is our first stage of incarnation: a capacity. This is the first thing we wait for in a child, its ability to speak. The capacity to stand and speak for ourselves is huge. It is important in these times to be able to say what we stand for. It is important, when we speak, to speak for what we stand for, not to simply speak in opposition. This is important in this Temptation. It is a confrontation and not a conflict. Jesus stands in front of the Adversarial forces and stands for something. Therefore, it is not necessary for Him to turn the stone to bread. He has another transformation that must occur: His Body is to become the Bread of Life. It is not the external substance of the world that needs to be changed, rather it is the internal substance that needs to be changed.

These are the first two steps of incarnation. The first step is from the light of the star into the body and into the capacity for speech in the human being. And for standing; speaking and standing. The two first elements that make us human.

Now we have to become masters of our world. In Matthew Chapter 8 we hear that the process of incarnation is deepening itself, descending from the heavens into the earthly constitution. One of the signs is when we have mastery of ourselves so that we can manage the chaos of the world around us. “Then He got into the ship, and His disciples followed him. And see, there was a great swell and movement in the sea, so that the ship was quite swamped by the waves. But He slept. Then they came to Him and said: ‘Lord, help! We are perishing.’ He said to them, ‘How full of fear you are, and how weak is your sense of self!’ (The translation is often: ‘how weak is your faith’.) They are not perishing. They are not mastering the conditions around them. The process of feeling fully incarnated into the reality of life is that we can do what He does. He stands up and commands the winds and the sea and there is great calm. Our capacity is to command the circumstances around us because the circumstances around us are usually of our own making. When we are able to master ourselves, we have an ability to do some mastery of the space immediately around us. I can calm this space which is the space around me. “And they said, full of wonder, ‘What kind of Being is this…?’” What kind of being has this level of mastery? In His incarnation He has full mastery of the elements around Him. We have not quite developed to that extent yet, but we have the ability to use the Christ-forces that are within us and do with them what we can to achieve mastery over our inner space to arrive at inner calm and quiet. Christ displays mastery over the air and the water. (Fire, now air and water.)

There is even greater mastery in Matthew chapter 14. This is a capacity that we are working on in our soul-spiritual capacity, which is to walk on the water. “The ship was already many stadia from land and was being beaten by the waters, for the wind was against them.” They are again in the surge of air and water. “In the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea they were frightened (Again the disciples experience fear. They are observing something they have not been able to manage in themselves.).” They think they are seeing a phantom, but Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.” John’s Gospel says it more powerfully, “Take heart, I AM, have no fear.” Jesus is not a spirit, He is an embodied spirit, with the full presence of the Christ in Him. “Then Peter says, ‘Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you over the water’. He says, ‘Come!’” It is something Peter can do. He gets out of the boat and walks to Jesus. “But when he felt the wind he became afraid and began to sink, and he cried out: ‘Lord, save me!’ And at once Jesus reached out His hand and drew him near and said, ‘How weak is your heart! Why did you become unsure?’” It is the same thing He said on the previous occasion: Why did you become unsure? Why did you doubt yourself? You had mastery over yourself, so what brought on the doubt that you could not continue, and resulted in fear?

This is the next step in the incarnation of Christ into Jesus: He can stand and declare His position to the Adversary. He has mastery of the elements of wind and water. He can even walk on the water. One can see it as having taken hold of those forces that storm in us and out of us. He can hold the calm and bring everything back to where He is master over it and not subject to it.

Matthew chapter 16: Peter declares that he can see the Christ in Jesus. He can see that He is the one who is anointed. He can declare the Jesus is not John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet of old; He is the one, the Christ. After this Matthew and Mark say six days go by while Luke counts the day of the confession and the day of the event and so arrives at eight days going by (an octave). Jesus takes Peter, James and John, “as an intimate group, up on a high mountain. And He was transformed before them. His countenance shone like the sun, and his garments became shining white like light itself.” Here is a radiance that comes. It is a radiance in conversation. They see Moses and Elijah. In the original Greek Moses and Elijah are in a ‘community of conversation’ with Jesus. It is the conversation of the human being. We are structured in a lawful way. We are connected to the law. And we are connected to the inspiration of the prophets, to what they bring. We balance what they bring of structure and form with freedom and aspiration – Moses and Elijah. Jesus needs both the sources – He needs that conversation to radiate out. There is a history here that must be taken into me in order to take hold of something. And they hear again the words that are very similar to what was heard at the Baptism. Now the three disciples hear them. “This is my Son, the Beloved. In Him I have been revealed. Listen to Him.” The power of the Divine is in this human being. What he says will further reveal the Divine. Matthew endeavours to reveal a process from the Baptism, through what happens after the 40 days in the desert, to the mastery of the wind and waves, to the radiance of light. There is something that is becoming ever more real in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We see a mastery of the warming forces, a mastery of the wind and air, a mastery of the water, and a radiance that can now shine, not out there as in the star, but now in the very being of Jesus.

Now we look at the Mystery of Golgotha. The preparation for this happens in the Garden of Gethsemane and reveals something of the incarnating process for each human being. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays that what is about to happen to him not happen. “If it is possible, let me be spared this cup, yet not my will but Yours be done.” There is an acceptance that we are here to fulfil something, that we are sent into this world. This links back to the words that Jesus said to John the Baptist: “Let it be so. It is good thus so that we properly fulfil all that destiny requires.” There is a plan and a destiny. Yet, we do not have to follow this plan. But if we follow the plan, we incarnate consciously onto the earth. Jesus prays this three times, really anchoring it. Jesus recognises that He is not on earth to indulge His wishes but to fulfil a mission. It is the Divine will He must get hold of. We carry in us an aspect of the Divine will, which is that we develop into the human being of the future, which was the original concept of what a human being is. It is not our will to drive us to that point, it is God’s will. It is not going to happen if we refuse to follow the plan.

It is time that we become ever more aware of what is being asked of us, so that we build ourselves as human beings according to this plan and that we don’t build something that appears human but actually isn’t.

We may wonder why in the Communion of the Act of Consecration of Man (the Human Being) the priests repeat the words three times of taking the bread and the chalice. There is a spiritual reality in saying it three times; it represents something, and the reality is present in a different way. Jesus does not repeat his prayer to the Father three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, each time the words are filled with more and expanded, until they land as a reality. This is the preparation for what will happen at the Crucifixion.

In Matthew 27 we read; “And see, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks split, and the tombs opened and many of the dead who had sanctified themselves, arose.” This describes the power of resurrection into the very earthly reality – the earth shook. “And the Roman centurion and his men (100 men) who were keeping watch over Jesus were awestruck when they saw the earthquake and everything that happened, and they said, ‘this really was the Son of God.’” We should read this as taking hold of earth-reality and shaking it; it is a spiritual reality that even the Roman soldiers experienced. Through this we know that something has completely landed in the person of Jesus, having taken hold of every aspect and fibre of His being, right down into the physical body.

Matthew chapter 28: “When the Sabbath was over, in the early morning light of the first day of the week (Sunday), Mary of Magdala and the other Mary came to see the tomb”. If we imagine that up to this point we have lived only the first great week of Creation, then this first day of the week, Sunday, is the beginning of a new week and a new creation. It is the eighth day since the first day of the first Creation.

It is the early morning light, the dawning light from the East. This was the same experience of the Magi when they experienced the star.

“And behold, there was a great earthquake – it is the second earthquake that happens at the moment of realisation that the Resurrection has happened – the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, came and rolled the stone away and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his garment was shining white like snow. – He has the radiance that we know existed for Jesus; the forces of the Divine that were real and apparent at the moment of the Transfiguration. – His presence terrified the guards, – Whenever an angel appears, human beings become overwhelmed, overawed and fearful. Therefore, the first words an angel speaks are, ‘fear not’. – they trembled and fell down as if dead. And the angel said to the women, ‘Have no fear.’”

Whenever some substantial element of the incarnation takes place the people around are fearful. When He calms the sea, when He walks on the water, even at the Transfiguration when the disciples fall to the ground and Jesus goes up to them and touches them and it is only Jesus as they had known him. “’He is not here. He has risen, as He Himself said. Come and see the place where he lay. Now go quickly to his disciples and say to them: He has risen from the dead and will lead you to Galilea where you will behold Him. Behold, that is what I have to say to you.’ Quickly they left the tomb, filled with both fear and joy, and they ran to take the message to the disciples.” The great power of this message is not that He has risen but that He has risen AND He will lead you to Galilea where you will behold Him.

In other words, He will take to you to where you need to be. We are on a journey. The whole idea of incarnating onto the earth is that we have something to do and somewhere to go. We are not here by accident. That is very important. It is an extremely powerful reality. We live in a time when we are subject to certain insinuations, certain suggestions, that we really do not need to incarnate onto the earth properly. That we can escape our responsibilities as human beings; that we can hand them over. An Artificial Intelligence can do it better than we can. Someone else can decide it for us. Someone else can take control instead of us. That we can step back, that we can escape. That we do not have to incarnate. Incarnating is not easy, but it is absolutely necessary, if we are to achieve anything.

The one thing that we have to achieve is becoming the future human being. We can only do that by incarnating onto the earth and working on ourselves so that it is possible that the opening words of Matthew’s Gospel are something we can also say about ourselves: This is the book of how I, bearing the Christ, become ever more a full human being.

The process of incarnation is beautifully captured in Matthew’s Gospel, also in its power of how the elements are transformed: fire, wind, water, earth. The earth quakes at the moment of death with a new power that is released and the earth quakes when the women arrive to realise what is the power of Resurrection. Because of the word ‘and’ it means that it is not just the power of the present moment in which something is resurrected and renews, it is the power of the present moment that takes us, because of the ‘and’, into the future; behold, there is a place to go. The power of Resurrection is not the end of the picture, it is the beginning of the next step.

That is why it is relevant for our time that we feel ourselves forever held in that renewal. Because, if we don’t, we feel that the world is coming to an end. The reality that we must not only comprehend, but live, is that the world is in need of the renewal that takes us on the next step and nothing will happen if it does not happen in us. Incarnation is the way that it happens, the incarnation of the Christ-forces in the human being.