Posts Tagged ‘fully divine’

Is God masquerading as a human being or is Jesus fully human?

February 20, 2021

Lent 1 – 2021

Mark 1:9-15

Marian Free

In the name of God Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

I am aware that a number of people struggle with the idea that Jesus is fully human. That is not really surprising. It is an extraordinarily difficult concept to get one’s head around and yet the belief that Jesus is fully human and fully divine is at the centre of our faith – as we confess each week in the Nicene Creed. 

The significance of Jesus full humanity is clearly illustrated in two lines from this morning’s gospel. “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Something external – the Spirit of God – drove Jesus the human into the wilderness. There his true mettle was tested. Without food, water, shelter or even human contact would he succumb to the temptation to take short cuts or would he trust in God to see him through? Would he complain and wish himself at home (as did the Israelites did in the desert) or would he have faith that God would sustain him? Would he try to take control of the situation or would he allow himself to be completely vulnerable?

It is precisely because Jesus is human that the wilderness experience has any value. In the absence of any physical comfort Jesus learns that he is able to rely on God for nourishment. Without human companionship, Jesus discovers that God’s presence has followed him into the barrenness of the desert. It is as a human being that Jesus faces the privations of the desert. It is as a human being that he deals with hunger and loneliness and the voices that taunt him. It is as a human being that Jesus confronts Satan.  

If Jesus is simply God – all of this becomes meaningless. The wilderness would not be a test because God would not be impacted by hunger, fear or loneliness. Forty days would be as nothing to God who created time and space and Satan would be no match because God is strongly than Satan and it is impossible for God to be tempted. 

The whole point of the Incarnation, of God’s coming to earth among us, is that God chooses to fully share our human existence, to become one of us. It is only by fully inhabiting the human condition that Jesus is able to redeem the human condition. Jesus can save humanity from itself precisely by being human, by demonstrating in his own (human) life that our human nature is not an impediment to our divinity. Through the human Jesus, we are reminded that are we created in the image of God and we can be restored to our original place in creation. 

It is only because he is human that Jesus is able to reverse the damage done to our relationship with God inflicted by that first human – Adam. Adam was disobedient, Jesus was obedient. Adam desired to be as God. Jesus resisted the temptation to compete with God. Adam sought control; Jesus chose submission. Jesus demonstrated that we, as human beings, do not have to be determined by Adam’s misstep, but that we can choose a different way of being, a different way of relating to God. He demonstrated in his own life that it is possible to transcend the limitations of being human. 

Examples of Jesus’ humanity abound in Mark’s gospel. Jesus eats and drinks and sleeps. He is compassionate (1:41) angry and sad (3:5, 11:14,15). He expresses amazement (6:6). He becomes tired (4:38) and needs to find time and space for himself (6:30f). He sighs and groans (7:34, 8:12) and becomes annoyed (10:14). He gets frustrated and impatient with his disciples (4:40, 8:21, 8:31) to the extent of calling Peter ‘Satan’. He becomes indignant when the disciples send the children away (10:14). His miracles do not always work the first time (8:22-26) and he does not display foreknowledge (he doesn’t know who touches him). He allows the Syrophoenician woman to challenge him and to change his mind. He is disappointed in, critical of (7:9f, 8:15) and rude to the Pharisees (7). 

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was distressed and agitated, he confessed to being deeply grieved and prayed that God might spare him (14:33f). He experienced betrayal at the hands of two of his inner circle and finally, he was arrested, beaten and crucified. Jesus died, really died – if he did not then the resurrection means nothing.

I put it to you that if Jesus is simply God masquerading as a human being then our faith becomes a nonsense. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to believe in a God who just pretends to be one of us, who is play-acting sharing our experience and who does not really know what it is to be one of us. Because if God is just pretending, Jesus’ torment in the garden becomes a farce, as does his agony and confusion on the cross, not to mention his frustration, his exhaustion and his grief. If Jesus is God impersonating us his death means nothing. 

The reality is that God does not and did not need to go through the drama of coming to earth if God did not believe that by sharing our experience God could somehow enrich that experience, remind us of our true nature and awaken the divinity that resides within each one of us. God, being God could simply have waved his hands and reversed everything that had gone wrong since creation. God, being God, could simply have bent us to God’s will. From the beginning of time, God has not enforced God’s will, but has allowed us to choose our own way. 

The whole point of the salvation event is God’s identification with God’s creation. God in Jesus became one of us to show us creation at its very best and to remind us of what we were intended to be. As the orthodox would say: “Jesus became fully human so that we might become fully divine.” Can we honour that intention this Lent?

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Embracing our true humanity

January 9, 2021

Baptism of our Lord – 2021

Mark 1:4-11

Marian Free

In the name of Jesus our Saviour – fully human and fully divine. Amen.

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only son of God, 

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten not made,

of one being with the Father,

through him all things were made.

For us and our salvation,

he came down from heaven

was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, and the virgin Mary 

and became fully human.”

The Nicean Creed, which we recite Sunday after Sunday, and which is the statement of faith for all orthodox churches, was born out of turmoil. In the fourth century there were many who considered themselves to be Christians but there was considerable disagreement as to exactly what this meant. Jesus had not spelled out creeds or doctrines, neither had he established any form of organisation for any church that might form to worship him. This left the ground wide open for interpretation – as even the New Testament testifies[1]. There were at this time disputes over the dating of Easter and the consecration of bishops, but the most significant and divisive issue related to the nature of Jesus. The gospels, in fact, the New Testament is silent on this point, meaning that a number of different opinions arose – Jesus was divine and only appeared to be human, Jesus was human but became divine at the resurrection and so on. As there was no central form of governance for the church there was no mechanism for resolving the question. Individual bishops held authority in the regions for which they were responsible, and their opinions usually held sway in the Dioceses. As a result, there was no universally held belief.

In 325CE, the major protagonists were Arius who insisted that Jesus was a created being and therefore did not exist from the beginning[2] and Athanasius who insisted that Jesus coexisted with God[3]. Their disagreement regarding the nature of Jesus impacted churches throughout the Empire.

Emperor Constantine, who, in response to a dream, fought and won the battle of Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God wanted to unite his Empire under this same God. He was troubled however, by the fact that the church itself was divided and did not create a suitable umbrella for the unification of the Empire. He called the bishops together at Nicea and insisted that they come to an agreement with regard to the nature of Jesus[4].

Legend has it that Constantine locked the bishops in to the hall and that one person was killed during the heated debate. Whatever the truth, in the end the Council sided with Athanasius’ view against that of Arius and drew up a statement of belief (Creed) that made it absolutely clear that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human. 

Jesus’ baptism is one of the New Testament conundrums that face anyone trying to come to a conclusion regarding his true nature. Why would someone who is fully divine need to be baptised “for the repentance of sin”? It is a question that troubled even the gospel writers – Matthew has John the Baptist question Jesus’ need to be baptised and John fails to mention that Jesus is baptised. However, Jesus’ baptism is at the heart of the matter. Kavanagh points out (in agreement with Athanasius) that in order for humanity to be saved, Jesus – fully divine – had to be one with us in every sense[5]. In order to reclaim us, God had to fully identify with the human condition, to be one of us in every respect – including our propensity to sin. Only by being identical to us and yet entirely obedient to God, could Jesus redeem us from ourselves. Only by embracing the human condition could Jesus show us how to be fully divine.

Kavanagh actually says that it is the precisely fact that Jesus does not sin, that makes him fully human. Sin, he argues is our refusal to accept our humanity – our desire, like that of Adam to be God. Jesus’ full acceptance of our humanness reverses that trajectory and opens the way for us to become the people God created us to be.

For us, baptism is a different kind of reversal. It is an acceptance of our flawed humanity and an expression of our desire to be restored to our full humanity, which carries with it our full divinity. 

Though not explicitly stated, the gospels are full of hints that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. For him to be either one or the other would not have led to the redemption of the human condition. We are beneficiaries of the wisdom of the fourth bishops who wrangled their way to an agreed statement of faith. Sunday by Sunday, let us say the Creed with conviction and affirm as truth that Jesus who is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God” did indeed “become fully human.”

[1] See for example the disputes recorded in Romans and Galatians.

[2] If Jesus came from God, he could not have pre-existed with God.

[3] If Jesus was not fully human, he could not save us.

[4] For one version of events see https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/nicea/

[5] Kavanagh, John, SJ. https://liturgy.slu.edu/BapLordB011021/theword_kavanaugh.html

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The God-child, the child-God

December 22, 2012

Baby Jesus

Baby Jesus

Advent 4

Hebrews 10:5-10

Marian Free

 

In the name of God, who as Jesus, became fully human in order to fully redeem human beings. Amen.

There is a television programme which I do not watch, but which I have caught glimpses of in advertisements. It is called something like: Our embarrassing bodies. From what I can glean from the promotions it is about ghastly and disfiguring afflictions and, I presume, it is about ways to deal with them. It is a reminder that the human body is a fascinating and complex organism and it has many parts, functions and characteristics that we tend to consider unspeakable, embarrassing and even disgusting.

Somehow, it is much easier to believe that baby Jesus is a real baby than it is to accept that the adult Jesus was flesh and blood like us.  It is difficult to accept that God could really inhabit a human body, to believe that Jess really did experience all the bodily functions. It would be more palatable to imagine that Jesus, even as a human being somehow occupied a different plane form the rest of us, that somehow his humanity was tempered by a body that didn’t behave in the same way as ours – that Jesus had no primal urges, that he didn’t sweat or burp or do anything that might be considered improper or unbecoming.

The problem of Jesus’ humanity is not a new one. The early church was torn apart by controversy regarding the nature of Jesus. There were some who thought Jesus was just a supremely virtuous person whom God adopted as the “Son of God”. Others believed that Jesus remained God even though he appeared to be human. Still others thought that it was only when he was resurrected from the dead that the human Jesus became God.

In the fourth century matters were brought to a head by a popular preacher from Libya called Arius who denied the divinity of Christ. His ideas were so compelling that they convinced many of the bishops of the time. The Emperor, Constantine was so dismayed by the disunity in the church that he called the Council of Nicea and demanded that the bishops come to some agreement as to what Christians believed. The result was the declaration expressed in the Nicean Creed that:“ We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father through him all things were made … he was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human”.

Jesus’ fleshly nature was already an essential component of New Testament theology – it was not an invention of the Council of Nicea. Writers as different as the apostle Paul, the writer of the gospel of John and the author of the book of Hebrews all attest to an early belief that Jesus truly inhabited human flesh, just as he was truly God on earth.

That Jesus was fully human, that he did really take on human flesh is important for a number of reasons which are different but complementary.

It was only as a human being that Jesus could work salvation for humankind. The obedience of the human Jesus’ was the only way to undo Adam’s disobedience. In the flesh, Jesus was able to redeem the flesh. By taking on human form, Jesus demonstrated that it is possible for human beings to be all that God created us to be. If Jesus as fully human can submit to God, we know it is not our flesh that prevents us from being obedient, but what we choose to do with it. Jesus’ humanity reminds us that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, human beings, inhabiting human flesh can be truly godly.

The fact that Jesus became fully human means that Jesus redeemed human flesh with all its weaknesses, its urges and its passions. Jesus’ humanity is evidence that our whole person is redeemed not just that part of us which might consider untainted and sinless. Our whole person is redeemed not just a part of it. Jesus’ being fully human demonstrates that God values our physicality as well as our divinity.

Jesus’ becoming human confirms that we cannot pay God off or placate God with sacrifices. God wants us – heart, soul and body not our deeds or our gifts. Jesus as a human being gave his whole self and showed that we should give nothing less.

As we come to the end of Advent and enter into the season of Christmas, we come face to face with the child in the manger. It is not difficult to identify the baby Jesus as a real baby.  The challenge that faces us year after year is to accept that the real child in the cradle grows into a real human being – a human being with longings and desires, weaknesses and strengths, just like us.

As Jesus became one with us, so we should strive to become one with him, and through him become agents of redemption in the world.

 

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