The average person walks three miles an hour. With a little effort, we can increase that speed, but not by much. Our inherent mode of transportation does not get us from A to B very quickly. Japanese theologian, Kosuke Koyama was riveted by this fact when he considered the incarnation.[1] In Jesus, timelessness wears a watch, omnipresence lives in a neighborhood, immediacy observes a speed limit.[2] The enfleshed God takes full humanity and therefore subjects himself to creature limitations. In other words, in Jesus of Nazareth, God walks at three miles an hour.
Jesus walked, a lot.[3] Take for example, the geographical shift Jesus made at the beginning of his ministry: “leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum which was by the lake” (Matt 4:13). Nazareth to Capernaum was a forty-mile journey. At the average human pace, we are talking 13-14 hours of walking. Likely, this journey would have been broken up into 2-3 days. Every time we see Jesus traversing from one city to another, he is walking.
More profoundly, the New Testament speaks about those who Jesus walked alongside. He walked with outcasts, disciples, and family members and he walked their pace (Matt 9:9-13, Jn 2:1-11, Lk 8:1-2). He walked with them through sickness, sorrow, misunderstanding, sin, abandonment, and death. He never rushed, he never sped ahead. Love does that, it walks the speed of another.
But what happens when three miles an hour is far too fast? What about the reality of sorrow and loss? What about the seasons of life where it feels impossible to put one foot in front of another?
God’s taken name in Christ means he is with us (Matt 1:22-23). He does not qualify his name, there are no exceptions to his “withness.” The sandaled God walks with us every step of the way—no matter the speed. He is not just the three mile an hour God, he is the one mile an hour God and even the God that comes to a stand-still.
[1]Kosuke Koyama, The Three Mile an Hour God: Biblical Reflections (New York: Orbis, 1979), 7. “Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.”
[2]He is the “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and end” (Rev 22:13). In other words, he is point A and point B while existing within both points. He never journeys from one to another, he simply is across the beginning, middle, and end. God is fundamentally immediate, he is “occurring without any lapse in time” (Websters). The incarnation is mind-bending when considering the timelessness of God. Taken from another angle, speed is a creature fashioned by God. As everything else in creation, it is was created through him and for him (Col 1:16). Speed serves a specific gospel function and so does its corollary, slowness.
[3]Conservative estimates of the mileage walked by Jesus in the gospels is around 3,000.