THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD (His Humanity)
Well, here we are again. Over thirty years ago I was standing in this very spot while you began a search for a new pastor. I assume that those of you who were around back then are just like me—a good deal older and tad bit slower, but also excited to see what God has in store for Valley Covenant. What impressed me about this church back then was how everyone stepped up and helped out wherever it was needed—teaching, preaching, visiting, praying, whatever. In fact, you actually grew during that period. The experience taught me volumes about the maturity and giftedness of this congregation.
I once heard that in the Covenant denomination the average tenure for a pastor is seven years, so you’ve been very blessed to have had such stability with Steve and Beth. Over the last 40 years at Trinity Covenant Church in Salem, there have been six different pastors, which is fairly close to the average. I mention this because I lived through all six of those pastoral changes, and I learned a crucial lesson: pastors come and pastors go, but the one essential constant in the life of any congregation always remains the same, and that constant is Christ.
I know that sounds ridiculously obvious and even simplistic, but it’s actually a reality that we can easily take for granted, and by doing so we unknowingly reduce Christ to a mere backdrop—a kind of ecclesiastical wallpaper. But when he’s the vital, living center of a congregation’s life, then nothing—not even the loss of a beloved pastor—can shake its focus, joy, and confidence. And so, for the month of July, I thought I would offer you a series of sermons to help all of us center again on that one truth. I would like us to look at our Lord from the perspective of his humanity, his wisdom, his mission, his deity, and his Lordship. Taken as a whole, my prayer is that we might find a renewed awareness of Christ’s amazing beauty.
I realize that’s asking a lot from just a handful of sermons. But all preaching is ultimately an immense act of faith, and so I would appreciate your prayers during this month.
Now it might seem obvious that we should begin today with the humanity of Jesus, but this is actually a very neglected topic. Because we worship a living, resurrected Christ who indwells us individually and corporately—who is with us here, now—because we talk about Christ with such exalted language, we can unconsciously adopt the mistaken idea that, yes, the eternal Son took on human flesh at a point in time, but that’s over and done with. We treat the human Jesus as merely a temporary phenomenon, something we can read about in the gospels, but which is all in the past.
When we start thinking like this, we have unknowingly blundered into one of the earliest distortions of the Christian faith. Way back in the 2nd century there were people who claimed that Jesus’ humanity was just a temporary guise that he took on, and that the Jesus who had walked among us was primarily the divine Son masquerading as human. Some even claimed that his physical presence only “seemed” to be real, and that his body was a mere illusion. This view was called “Docetism,” from the Greek word δοκειν (which means “to seem”). All of these views were roundly rejected by the vast majority of Christians and officially condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.
What the New Testament bears witness to, and what the early church defended so vigorously, was the simple fact that Jesus of Nazareth was fully, authentically, emphatically human and yet divine, all at the same time. He was not God masquerading as a man, or a mere man who somehow became super-charged with God. He was the unique, never-to-be-repeated phenomenon of God becoming authentically human, without ceasing to be God. What’s more, in his resurrection and ascension, Christ took this divine/human unity back into heaven with him, insuring for all eternity that humanity can indeed live in union with God.
Luke, the gospel writer who goes into the greatest detail about the miraculous circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth, also goes to the greatest pains to emphasize his genuine humanity—that Jesus had to grow and develop just like the rest of us do. As we read in his gospel:
And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. [And then later he writes] …And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
In short, Jesus had to develop physically, mentally and spiritually. The process involved the ordinary kinds of learning and maturation, including infancy, pubescence, and adulthood. He had to learn how to co-exist within a family, how to read, how to participate in a larger community (including learning his father’s trade of carpentry). All of this involved asking questions, wrestling with problems, and learning to tackle new responsibilities.
Admittedly, Jesus was exceptionally bright and perceptive. By the time he was twelve, he was already displaying an astonishing insight into spiritual matters, as we see when his family visited Jerusalem and Jesus astounded the rabbis with his understanding. Yet not only did Jesus have to develop like the rest of us, but he also experienced the same physical limitations we all face. Throughout the gospel accounts we witness Jesus enduring weariness, hunger, and physical pain. Three of the gospels describe an event where Jesus was so exhausted he literally slept through a storm at sea.
What’s more, his interactions with other people produced the same wide range of emotions we all know so well—surprise, joy, sadness, anger, humor, longing and disappointment. The New Testament does not give us a static, ghostly Jesus who hovers above our ordinary struggles. Instead, we read of Jesus weeping at the death of a close friend, enjoying a wedding feast, becoming angry at people who refused to admit they are wrong. Jesus knew loneliness and misunderstanding (even from his own family). He had a wide range of acquaintances, from all walks of life, and yet retained a coterie of especially close friends. And in his greatest hour of need he wasn’t ashamed to lean on them (as in Gethsemane).
But in order to really understand the humanity of Jesus, we first need to ask ourselves: What it is that makes us most human? What does it mean, in practical terms, to be human at all? Philosophers, scientists, poets, and theologians have labored for centuries to isolate key characteristics that separate us from mere animal life. Usually the list includes things such as our rationality, creativity, moral awareness, spirituality, and so forth. We are thinking, creating, praying, choosing, self-reflective beings. We have basic instincts that we share with the animal world, but we are also capable of critiquing and controlling them.
But does this capture the essence of our humanity? Another way to approach this question might be to ask: What is the opposite of being human? Or to use its antonym, what does it mean to be inhuman? Our dictionaries use adjectives like cruel, savage, heartless, which all describe how a particular (inhuman) person treats another person. These adjectives assume that being human (or inhuman) has something to do with how we relate to other persons.
Or take the word “person” that I just used, and which we often employ as a synonym for a human being. To be a person means that I possess certain qualities, but specifically I am one person among other persons. This explains why we often use the term “impersonal” to describe behavior that is detached, remote, cold, and less than fully human.
What all this language conveys is that a core dimension of being human is that we are beings who are designed to live in relation to others. We possess the gifts of language, perception, reflection and moral choice specifically for the purpose of living in meaningful way with others. Indeed, such relationships are essential to our very existence. There is ample medical evidence that people who have become disconnected from other people do not function well physically and psychologically. Without the participation of other humans in our lives, we begin to atrophy mentally and emotionally.
What all this boils down to is that we are beings who need to be known deeply by others and to know others deeply in response. And in this process of disclosure and discovery—this exchange of understanding—we hopefully develop what we call “love.” That is, we develop a deep and practical concern for the other person, as well as receiving that same concern back.
And we see this powerful impulse throughout Jesus’ life. He wasn’t some solitary hermit or mystic who lived primarily alone. He came from a large family and had numerous friends. He traveled with twelve very close companions. He enjoyed the company of people even in festive ways. In fact, his enemies called him a drunkard and profligate simply because he was willing to participate in gatherings where alcohol was consumed and people were sometimes of questionable morality.
But nowhere was this deep human need to “know and be known” as fully satisfied for Jesus than in his communion with God. This, for him, was the tap root that fueled his every waking moment. As he said to his closest disciples: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
Jesus understood (far better than most of us) his utter dependence on God for every breath he took, every thought he had, every effort he made. Jesus was a God-obsessed man. This explains why prayer played such a huge role in his life. There was a profound “knowing and being known, loving and being loved” that existed between Jesus and God that shaped everything else in his life. Consequently, when asked what was the greatest of all the commandments, Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment.”
But having God at the center of his life didn’t protect him from experiencing temptation, conflict, misunderstanding, hostility, and a whole array of moral conundrums. As the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus was tempted “in every way just like us.” We instantly want to spiritualize that verse and assume that his temptations must have been on some exalted level, but the author of Hebrews was correct—his temptations were just as mundane as ours. For example, take his famous “temptation in the wilderness.” In Matthew 4 we read:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Now the setting here may seem overly dramatic, but it actually captures one of the most ordinary, mundane trials of human existence. Jesus was led by God to a desolate place in the Judean wilderness where food was not accessible. I have walked in this same locale in Israel, and it’s hard to imagine a more God-forsaken place on the planet. What’s more, Jesus was clearly directed by God to remain there for a long period of time. We have records of other people fasting for forty days, and the impact it had on their physical bodies was devastating. You are literally undergoing starvation, reduced to the barest level of existence. Various bodily functions are at the point of shutting down. So when the text says, “he was hungry,” we need to understand what an understatement this is. He was starving to death.
Consequently, it’s no surprise that precisely at this point the most common-sense, logical, and natural suggestion should present itself to him. “Jesus, if you are God’s son, if he truly loves you, then your suffering like this can’t possibly be from God, can it? Food is a God-given necessity. It’s a normal and essential ingredient to life. Consequently, there is nothing morally wrong with eating to sustain yourself. So in the name of all that makes sense, Jesus, feed yourself!”
Can you identify with this? I can. And in that powerful and yet subtle temptation we come face to face with the core temptation of our own human existence: Does God know what he is doing—especially when he takes something away from us that is perfectly normal, healthy, and innocent? Can God be trusted? Who really knows what is best for us—we ourselves or God? Is our physical existence the supreme good, or is life more than just this brief span of years?
And because Jesus was truly human, this temptation was intensely real. Which also means he possessed the capacity to make a free choice. And choose he did: Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
In short, Jesus chose to trust God in every aspect of his life, even in the hard times.
Now at this point someone might complain that the gospel accounts never show Jesus failing to do the right thing, and thus he isn’t truly “just like us.” For if there is one thing that characterizes our humanity as a whole, it’s our staggering capacity for committing all sorts of evil, large and small. And people are right that Christ displays an astonishing level of moral consistency. He shares in our basic humanity, but he also demonstrates a capacity for always doing the right thing at the right time. In fact, at one point he challenged his enemies to find any fault with him.
But does this make Jesus other than truly human? This question is crucially important, since it begs the bigger question of whether the essence of being human requires that we exhibit a propensity to do evil. Or is our own humanity actually a broken vestige of what we were intended to be?
There have always been people who justified their hurtful actions by claiming, “Well, I’m only human.” Such an attitude assumes that to be authentically human is to do hurtful things. And yet, if we happen to be the victim of that person’s hurtfulness, we might reply that such behavior is actually “inhuman.” And by doing so, we are indirectly bearing witness to the fact that words like good and evil are actually grounded in something real. Certain acts are intrinsically wrong, while others are right. And while virtually all of us are more than willing to admit that “none of us are perfect,” that very admission assumes that this is a flaw and not a virtue.
In other words, while it’s true that none of us are perfect, at the same time we know that we ought to be. In fact, our very humanity depends on it. The minute we allow our darker, hurtful impulses to control us and become the norm, we do not become more human but less. And so, when we run into someone like Jesus, who demonstrates an unblemished version of our humanity, we are shaken. We think, “Who is this guy? Is he for real?” This was precisely the reaction of those closest to him. But it’s also the very thing that kept them following him.
And here’s the best part. In spite of his extraordinary moral consistency, Jesus also demonstrated tremendous patience, compassion, and hopefulness toward his fellow human beings. The outcast, the morally confused, those crippled by their own awareness of how broken they were—these are the people Jesus sought most to reach and heal. The only people he reacted negatively toward were those who refused to admit how broken they actually were.
So what is my point in all of this—what does the humanity of Jesus actually mean to me and to you? At least two things. First, Jesus is not primarily a cosmic symbol or paradigm. He is not some religious ideal we’ve cooked up to inspire us. Nor is he an avatar, in the sense of a deity masquerading as a human. He was a fully historical person, and consequently, he is truly one of us. He knows the whole range of human experience and can relate to each of us as a human being. He knows our joys, sorrows, frustrations, and fears.
But second, his humanity is not crippled like ours. He demonstrates a quality of life that we are drawn to precisely because we see in him what our humanity should be. What makes Jesus beautiful for me is that he is human in a way that I long to be human. He displays a humanity that is complete and healthy, fully consistent within itself, a humanity that can display both mercy and justice, confrontation and tenderness, all at the same time and without any compromise; a humanity that is devoid of arrogance, greed, selfishness, fear, self-hate, and all the other ills we deal with daily. He displays a beauty that I long to know and share in.
Yes, Jesus was emphatically human. And yet, he was so much more. What this “more” involves we will explore in the weeks ahead. But ironically for some people, it’s his very humanness that often prevents them from taking him seriously. A tragic example of this can be seen in our gospel reading today, when he returned to his home town of Nazareth after having attracted a great deal of attention throughout the rest of the country.
The old saying, that “familiarity breeds contempt,” had come true. Because Jesus’ life was so patently human and ordinary in most respects, the people in his home town couldn’t see beyond that. They had seen him as a boy, they knew his whole family (who were certainly not perfect people). They were offended because they assumed his humanity was just as broken as theirs, and thus he had no right to act like their teacher. I can just hear them thinking, “After all, who does he think he is?” And the closing verse in that text captures the tragic result: And [Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.
And yet, for those who saw in his humanity something beyond their own brokenness, his beauty led them into a whole new way of life. And this is my prayer for us all. “Come, Lord Jesus—come and help us all to see your beauty once again.”
Amen