God’s Humanity and Ours
3 possibilities
When the virginal Mary
thinks her conception of a son is impossible because she does not know man, an
angel stands before her (Lk 1:26-38).
When Zachary thinks that pregnancy for his wife Elizabeth (who is both sterile and advanced in age) is
impossible, an angel stands before him (Lk 1:5-19). The name of the announcing
angel standing before these two impossibilities is Gabriel ("the Power of God"). And what he announces is two possibilities: fruitful virginity
and productive old age, because "Nothing is impossible with God" (Lk
1:37). But
Christmas announces a third and even greater possibility: the possibility of God's humanity: "Nothing is impossible with
God," not even humanity; not even
becoming flesh.
Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, reacting to the
theological liberalism of his day, in 1918 wrote his famous essay: Epistle to the Romans. It fell like a
bomb in the Protestant camp. In the essay, the idea of a God overwhelmingly
powerful, lofty and distant” (“totaliter
aliter,” “wholly other”) fascinated him. Fifty years later, realizing his
lofty and distant God looked more like the God of the philosophers than of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Barth apologized for “his mistake.” He wrote another
essay: The Humanity of God. In it he declared, “We were wrong exactly
where we were right, for God’s deity (i.e. God’s almighty
powerfulness) includes God’s freedom and power to be human.
<<Barth becomes
downright poetic about it -- God’s
freedom and power includes
God’s power to be:
Not
only tall but also small.
Not
only exalted but also exhausted.
Not
only in the heights but also in the depths.
Not only our heavenly king but also our earthly brother.
but
also "God-with-us" (Emmanuel):
God-with-us-shivering in
the frigid cold of human existence;
God-with-us-homeless in the
room-less inn of uncaring society;
to escape the inhumanity of
humans like Herod yesterday,
and Milosovic today.
Nothing is impossible with God,
not even humanity, not even
becoming flesh.
The
Humanity of Humans:
(“They” need it.)
One day a lawyer (a teacher of the Law), trying to
trick Jesus, asks, “Master, what must I do to gain eternal life?” In turn Jesus
asks, “What does the Law command?” The
lawyer responds with the quote from Deuteronomy commanding love for God “with
all thy heart, all thy soul, all thy strength,” (Dt 6:5) -- and also with a second quote from Leviticus
commanding the love of neighbor “as
thou loveth thyself” (Lv 19:18). When, the lawyer asks, “But master, who is my
neighbor?" Jesus responds with the Mother of All Parables: The Good Samaritan. “Once upon a time a man was going from
Jerusalem to Jericho, and was waylaid by robbers who beat him to a pulp and
left him half dead. Along…” (Lk 10:25-37).
The parable answers two
questions for us: First question: “When am I a neighbor to someone?” Answer:
Whenever I stop and pour the oil of
compassion upon someone in need of my humanity. //Second question: “When is
someone my neighbor?” Answer: Whoever
needs my humanity -- that person is my
neighbor, whether I like it or not. Hungry people need my humanity; victims of war
need my humanity; HIV people need my humanity; elderly people need my humanity;
the medically uninsured need our humanity; homeless people need my humanity;
people stranded on the highway of life need my humanity. Whoever needs my
humanity is my neighbor. Simple but a
bit disturbing.
(I need it.)
But here is something even more important: No
one needs my humanity more than I do. The very first beneficiary of my
humanity (of my being a human being) is myself. It makes me be what I’ve
been conceived to be: a human being being human. The very first person for whom
I am a Good Samaritan always turns out to be myself. -- Just as this is also terribly true: the very first victim of my
non-humanity or my inhumanity is myself; I am the very first to suffer. Behind
each of the six million victims of the Holocaust stands a first and original
victim: a human being who lost his or
her humanity or who never rose to it in the first place. <<Behind all the
victims, living and dead, of the school-massacre in Middleton, CO, there stand
two original victims: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who, somewhere along the
line, lost their humanity. Time magazine featured them on the front
page and labeled them “The monsters next door. “The Mother of All Disasters” is
this: to be conceived and born of a human
womb but to come forth as monster, i.e. as non-human or sub-human or inhuman.( Just this past week one of the fathers, no
doubt in self-defense, quoted Shakespeare: “Bad sons from good wombs.” If that
is indeed possible, then another disaster of disasters is to have a good womb
but bring forth a bad son.)>>
(Even God “needs” it.)
People out there need my humanity. I need my humanity. Here is something startling: Even God in some sense needs my
humanity. Nothing in human history so calls into question the humanity of God,
as does our inhumanity toward each other. Nothing so calls into question the
God-with-us dimension of God (the Christmas dimension of God) as does our inhumanity toward each other. For
out of WW I and II, out of the GULAG, out of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, out
of Oklahoma City, out of Jasper TX and Middleton, CO -- out of all these rises a question even more stark than: “Is
God with us or is God not with us?” This question asks, “Is God at all!”
ggt the other side of the coin is equally true: nothing so helps our belief that God is, and that God-is-with-us (is Emmanuel), as does the humanity of us humans towards each other.
(story about the teacher
and kidney transplant)
This time of the “rolling year” scripture likes to tell one story after another: “Once upon a time….”And this time of the rolling year we too like to tell stories especially about our humanity towards each other.
These days editors and TV anchor people are always on the lookout for a good Christmas story about human beings being human. And this past week they found it!
The story begins as all
good stories do: Once upon a time there was a school teacher who chided one of
her students as he was going out for
recess. “Will you please pull up those sagging baggy pants of yours,” she
nagged. “The loose pants feel more comfortable,” he said. “You see I am on
dialysis. I have no kidneys, at least
no working kidneys.” At that she said
“Oh, I have two. Do you want one of them?” (Fayetteville, N.C. Teacher: Jane Smith – white. Student:
Michael Carter – black. Color belongs to the story.) The boy’s whole family had
been checkedout to find a
compatible donor but none had been found. Then the teacher was checked, and
“low and behold,” she was found to be a perfect match. Said the teacher
herself: “The message is simple: God is at work and miracles do happen.” Said
the mother of the black youth: ”Through
my 35 years of living, I have never had
anyone reach out as far as that.
Look at what the humanity of that teacher does for
Michael: It gives
him not some electronic toy for
Christmas but the very gift of life itself. Look at what the humanity of that
teacher does for her: It makes
her a human being of the first order.
Look at what the humanity of that teacher does even for God:
It helps bring God back to life for us
(“God is at work and miracles do happen”), and it makes it easier for us
to believe in Emmanuel, the Christmas name of God. That’s what makes it a Christmas story.
(The glory of God)
When the ghost of old Jacob Marley appears to him
on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge tries to console his former business partner who
is filled with with so much regret of
his past life. "Oh but Jacob, you were such a good man of
business!" The ghost cries out:
"Business!
Humanity was my business.
The
common welfare was my business:
Charity,
mercy, forbearance, and benevolence
Was all my business?
The dealings of my trade
Were but a drop of water
In
the comprehensive ocean of my business."
(Dickens, A Christmas Carol)
Yes, indeed, humanity was old Marley's business, but it was his humanity that was first and foremost his business. Jacob Marley needed his own humanity more
than all the poor people in London Town did. Just as Scrooge needed his own
humanity even more than crippled Tiny Tim did. Just as the priest and Levite on
the road to Jericho needed their own humanity more than the poor man waylaid by
robbers did. All of them had lost their humanity, and all of them were in dire
need of regaining it. And with humanity regained comes great rejoicing.
As the curtain is going up on A Christmas Carol, old
Scrooge is grouching "Bah Humbug,!"
is boiling people in their own pudding, and is piercing their hearts
with stakes of holly. But as the curtain
is going down, the new Scrooge,
turned into the full human being he was created to be (by the spirits of
Christmas Past, Present, and Yet-to-be), is jumping up and down with joy in his
heart and tears in his eyes. And he's shouting out this promise to all: "I
will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year round."
Some master of the past (I forget who he is) uttered this theological dictum: “Man (Woman) fully human is the glory of God (repeat). The glooory of God: a huma nbeing being human!“That’s why
when the curtain goes down on A Christmas Carol, even God is jumping up
and down with joy.