The Divinity of Our Humanity

June 05, 2016

Third Sunday of Pentecost

“The secret cause of all suffering is mortality.”

 That is what Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers during conversations which resulted in a 6-hour television series and a book entitled “The Power of Myth.”

 “The secret cause of all suffering is mortality, the mortality of our humanity.”

 Last week’s Gospel reading and this week’s Gospel reading juxtaposed in Luke take us into mortality, that “secret cause of all suffering” and into the ways in which Jesus in all his divinity enters that suffering with us. It was the suffering of a Roman centurion in Capernaum whose slave was close to death—the suffering of possibly losing his most precious slave—that prompted the centurion to send servants to Jesus with petitions to rescue his slave from death.

Jesus went with the servants to the centurion’s home but was stopped before he got there by friends of the centurion who delivered another message, informing Jesus not to trouble himself. “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof;” the message began, “therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

It was the second petition the centurion sent that astonished Jesus. Normally in the gospels Jesus does and says things that surprise or amaze people— this is one of the few places where Jesus is surprised. And he is amazed by the sheer quality of the centurion’s faith. The centurion’s faith is grounded      in the simple, clear belief that if Jesus commands something be done, it will be done.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear of the suffering of a widow in Nain whose only son has died.  With the loss of her husband and now the loss of her only son, this woman has no source of income. The life she has known is gone forever. So where is the faith in this narrative? The centurion’s slave was healed because of the centurion’s faith but in this narrative, the only one who has faith that the dead son can be raised is Jesus himself! Jesus sees what others know but do not speak. He sees the suffering that will be the core of this widowed mother’s life. He watches her as she walks with the bier. He sees the professional mourners and wailers who are there to make plenty of noise so that friends and relatives—and particularly the widowed mother—can cry without the embarrassment of making a scene.

Jesus approaches as the procession makes its way to the family burial plot, a little way outside Nain—where her husband had been buried. Luke writes that when Jesus saw the widowed woman there to bury her son, something stirred within Jesus… and he had compassion for her.  Jesus said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he stepped forward and touched the bier which in and of itself was a shock to those who were present. Touching the bier would make you unclean. But the greatest shock comes when Jesus tells the young man to rise—and the young man, this widow’s son, sits up! The whole funeral procession was astonished, filled with delight and disbelief.

They did not know who to look at: the no-longer-dead boy, his amazed and ecstatic mother, or this stranger who has done what the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, used to do. In last week’s gospel reading Jesus is invited to heal a slave facing certain death    by the petitions of a Roman centurion. In this week’s reading, Jesus invites himself into the funeral of a widow’s only son, unnoticed until he speaks and his words restore life. Jesus responds to the spoken needs of the centurion and to the unspoken pain of the widow.  His actions are miracles in response to the dead and dying—and yet, the divine reality of his action is in response to the heart and soul of the living suffering from the realities of mortality.

In Zealot, a book exploring the humanity and divinity of Jesus from the perspective of a skeptic, the author Reza Aslan claims that“how one in the modern world views Jesus’ miraculous actions is irrelevant. All that can be known is how the people of his time viewed them. “And therein,” claims Aslan, “lies the historical evidence.  For while debates raged within the early church over who Jesus was—a rabbi? the messiah? God incarnate?—there was never any debate, either among his followers or his detractors, about his role as an exorcist or miracle-worker” (105).

And that means for us today that there was never any debate about the extent to which Jesus lived into the divinity of his humanity—the extent to which he denied his humanity and chose his divinity for the sake of others. Granted Jesus is believed to be fully divine and fully human—unlike the rest of us who are fully human and, to varying degrees, divine.

As we continue through Pentecost reading and hearing narratives of his experiences and interactions with those who traveled with him and with those he encountered, we will be witness to the ways in which he enters into and lives into the divinity of his humanity. Jesus is present to others like the centurion those who seek on behalf of others those on the outside of the community those who understand their unworthiness Jesus is present to those like the widow those whose loss blinds them from hope    those whose grief distorts any semblance of grace those whose darkness allows no sliver of light. And in being present he exemplifies what it is to live into the divinity of humanity.

Campbell offers definitions that I find clarify the celebrity of humanity and the hero of divinity. There are those in society Campbell names celebrities—those who live for self-aggrandizement, those who promote themselves in order to appear important or powerful, those who claim to have all the answers in order to be heard, those upon whom we place our trust only to find they are not enough.

We recognize those who fit Campbell’s definition— in local and national politics, in the workplace, in our families, and, yes, even at church      those whose words and actions are self-serving. And then, there are those in society Campbell names heroes—“someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than himself for the betterment of others; one who acts to redeem society.”

Heroes do not depend on the faith others have in them. A hero’s actions are not self. A hero’s actions serve others. A hero’s actions make a difference. And we see heroes in this place, this Cathedral—those who feed the hungry those who visit the sick and dying, those who greet newcomers, those who care for our children, those who check in on each other, and those who strive to make a difference in their neighborhood, their city, their country, their world in all they say and do.

And Jesus—he fits Campbell’s definition. Jesus lives into the divinity of his humanity. Jesus lives for the betterment of others. Jesus lives to redeem society. And at the same time, Jesus understands that our mortality is the secret cause of our suffering. He experienced it as the day of his death drew near. He knew it as he shared his divinity with those who tried but could not fully grasp his wisdom.

It is the way Jesus lives into the divinity of his humanity that nudges the possibilities within ourselves. He gave himself, his humanity, for the benefit and betterment of others. He lived the inevitable mortality of being human and shared the possibilities of the divine. I wonder . . . What this world be like if we woke each morning and released the suffering caused by the mortality of our humanity and chose to live that day, purposefully and as completely as we can,

in the divinity of our humanity? What would our actions, our interactions, our reactions, look like? How would our relationships change? How would what we say and do be different? Would we feel the hidden sorrow and grief? Would we see through the invisible to who is really there?

Would we recognize disguised pain? Would we hear what isn’t said? I wonder . . .knowing that to live in the mortality of our humanity so I ask God to extend our boundaries and territories and guide us into the divinity of our humanity.

AMEN