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August 15. 2010 "Holy Humanity" Scripture:
Hebrews 11:1-16 |
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There is a man I love. A man in which I'm in debt for some of the best things in my life. A man who has undergone great joys and great sorrow.[i] I have never heard his voice, seen his face or the clothes he wears. Yet he teaches me to love. To forgive. To question and to journey. He has asked me to leave everything behind. He has promised to never desert me. And he invites me to his table so that I can be fed. And yet...just when I think I know him, just when I think I can pigeonhole him to fit my ideal, he says and does something that shakes up my view, making me wonder if I can every truly know him at all.
There is a man I love. His name is
Jesus... Today's reading has one of those scenes that shows the
complexity of Jesus and of being a Christian. To get an idea of what's going on,
we go to the beginning of the chapter. Jesus is speaking to the
disciples, a crowd gathers, trampling each other. Jesus teaches: do not fear those
who harm your body; God's eye is on the sparrow; it's better to be rich
towards God then in worldly items; don't worry about the food you eat or
clothes you wear. It's all so wonderfully pastoral of Jesus. He calls the disciples "little
flock" and tells them that worrying will not add an hour to their
life. But then he seems to go
on this tangent. "What stress
I am under! I did not come to
bring peace! I brought fire
and division and will not stop till its completed." What happened to just a few
moments ago when he said "Don't be afraid little flock, don't worry about
food or clothes, God won't forget about you"? Is Jesus wishy-washy? A hypocrite? B-polar? Or is Jesus simply human, like you
and I?
One of the mysteries of our faith is just who Jesus is. It is proclaimed that Jesus is
fully human and fully divine; fully like us and fully God. But how can this be, and how human
is human? We see this
wrestling in the Gospels. For
instance Mark and John don't bother telling about Jesus' birth or
childhood. He just appears,
fully formed. Matthew tells us a bit of Jesus' birth, but Luke tells us
the most: Jesus had a family with an aunt, an uncle and a cousin; Jesus
was placed in a manger because there was no place to stay. He was circumcised, dedicated in
the Temple. As a pre-teen he
was lost and sassed his parents.
Luke tells us that Jesus was tempted, rejected and was aware of his
own mortality at an early age.
All of this can seem inconsequential until you put them together
and realize how much Luke does to make Jesus seem human, that Jesus
didn't fall from
the sky or was impervious to economics, rituals or teenage rebellion like
you and I. But Jesus had very, very human traits, which we see in
today's reading. For almost
12 chapters things appear to be going very well. Jesus heals, preaches and
leads. He fields questions,
encourages loving one's enemies, reaches out to women and outsiders. He forgives, calms a storm and
brings a family back together.
He feeds folk, sends people out, demonstrates how to pray, attracts
large crowds, stands up to the Pharisees and lawyers... ...and then it seems as if he
begins to crack, even if just a little bit, under the pressure. As one writer stated, it's a rare
glimpse into the heart and mind of Jesus as he approaches Jesus is impatient, wanting to kindle the fire now. He talks of feeling stressed and trapped. Forget about sparrows and lilies of the field, his motor's running and he wants things to start now, this instant, this time and place! He disregards peace and talks about causing sons and daughters to fight against fathers and mothers. This is Jesus on a roll, and I wonder if afterwards he felt as if he may have put his foot in his mouth or if he had been a little rash and quick to judge. Can you imagine Jesus processing the event with Peter over a drink: "Umm, Peter, do you think I may have been a little rough back there?" Or Peter replying "You know, that thing about not worrying? You may want to think about following your own teaching from time to time." For me, this scripture reminds me about the humanity of Christ, and if Jesus could be this human, if Jesus could admit to feeling a bit stressed out, what does it mean for us?
...There is a man I
love. A man in which I'm in
debt for some of the best things in my life. I've never heard his voice, seen
his face or the clothes he wears.
He teaches me to love.
Yet at times he got angry.
He teaches me to forgive.
Yet he spoke about unrest.
He teaches me to question and to journey. Yet he could be impatient and feel
trapped in. There is a man I love because he refuses to let me put him
on a pedestal. Yet we try,
don’t we? We imagine Jesus as
this perfect person who said all the right things, always spoke in a calm
voice and had perfectly quaffed hair. But what happens when we put
people on a pedestal? We
always, without fail, find a way to knock them off and lose our faith in
them. What is your image of Jesus? What do you think about him? Do you ever get tired of those
perfect images of Jesus?
Because perfect isn't human, and if Jesus wasn't human, then his
time on earth, his journey to Jerusalem, his suffering on the cross means
nothing. I love Jesus, and
because I do, I want to know that he had a bad hair day. I want to know that after a rich
meal he was bloated and gassy.
I want to know that when ate pasta he sometimes got spaghetti sauce
on his white tunic.
I may not be entirely comfortable with what Jesus says in
today's reading, but I do like knowing that he could feel anxious. It makes me feel...at peace. I like knowing he could be
impatient. I like knowing he
may not have been the complete pacifist people try to make him out to
be. I like knowing that
without lifting a fist or brandishing a gun Jesus could talk tough and
from time to time he felt the need to light a fire under people's
backsides. Because that is
what it means to be human. And guess what: if Jesus could be human and express human
traits, well what does that mean for us? It means that we are human
too. And if we are human,
then it certainly means our spouse is human, our friends, our children,
our neighbors, are all human as well. And what does it mean to be
human? To be imperfect. To not know all the
answers, to not get it all done at once, to make
mistakes. But it also works the other way. To be human means that sometimes
our man doesn't put the lid down.
To be human means our wife may sound as if she's sawing lumber when
she sleeps. To be human means
our children may not get the perfect grades or be the perfect golfer. And to be human means we can't
expect golfers to be perfect role models. Cause guess what? We are human. We are flawed, fragile, broken,
incomplete, finite. And yet,
and yet, we are wonderful, we are complex, we are unique. We may not be
perfect, but we are strong. We each carry the mark of our Maker and when we open
ourselves up to Christ we invite the Spirit to enter in. And through the Spirit's heavenly
fire we become polished, refined and shaped into better version of
ourselves. In Christ we
remain wholly human and a holy human, aware of our flaws, and more
accepting of others'. Because
no matter what, we will never be perfect; that is what we were never meant
to be... ...There is a man I love. A man in which I'm in debt for
some of the best things of my life.
A man who has undergone great joys and sorrow. I have never heard his voice, seen
his face or the clothes he wears.
Yet he teaches me to love.
To forgive. To
question and to journey. He
has asked me to leave everything behind. He has promised to never desert
me. And he invites me to his
table so that I can be fed.
And yet...just when I think I know him, just when I think I can
pigeonhole him to fit my ideal, he says and does something that shakes up
my view, making me wonder if I can every truly know him at
all. There is a man I love.
His name is Jesus. His
humanity teaches me to accept my own, his humanity teaches me to accept
others. All thanks be to God in whose image we were created, for
Jesus who reminds us of what it means to be human, and the Spirit whose
fire burns bright. Amen and amen. i This intro is greatly inspired from The Clowns of God by Morris West, 1981, pg. 171. ii Homiletics magazine, July/August 2010, pg. 57 |