Human Lessons

Human Lessons--January 7, 2018

"Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 

   who, though he was in the form of God,

       did not regard equality with God

       as something to be exploited,

   but emptied himself,

       taking the form of a slave,

       being born in human likeness." [Philippians 2:5-7]

I sometimes think that the hardest part of the Christian faith isn't the mind-boggling doctrine that Jesus reveals the very nature of God, but rather the uncomfortable truth that Jesus has to show us how to be human, too.

Divinity, after all, is mysterious and distant and infinite and eternal--we expect it to be beyond our paygrade.  We assume that we would need some additional guidance from an expert to understand what God is like.  But being human?  That is literally our job.  That is--or at least it should be--our bread and butter, our most basic fundamental proficiency.  Being human should be, should be, right in our wheelhouse.  

And yet, if we are really honest with ourselves, we'll admit that we are not terribly good at this thing called humanity, and we really do need someone to teach us collectively how to be fully what we were meant to be.  We need, for lack of a better term, human lessons.  

In addition to revealing what the very face of God is like, Jesus gives us the fullest sense of what it really means to be human.  That's here at the core of these words from Paul's letter to the Philippians, words which Paul is likely quoting from an even earlier hymn source. Jesus shows us what it really means to be human.  And if our way of being human runs counter to Jesus' way of being human, we are missing something important.  That's why Paul can say so bluntly and directly, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus."  In other words, "If you want to know what it looks like to be fully human, start living and thinking, speaking and acting, in ways that echo what we saw and know from Jesus."  Jesus is the teacher of this course in humanity, even if we already think we are experts on the subject.

So what does Jesus have to show us about our own humanity?  What do we have to learn about how to be fully human?  When Paul thinks about it, he puts it in simple terms: others first.  Jesus shows us how to be fully human, not with elaborate displays of religiosity, feats of physical strength, intellectual argumentation, or silent meditation, but in the actual lived practice of putting others' interests before our own.  Paul doesn't see this as a "special" quality of Jesus, reserved only for messiahs or prophets, but basic humanity for all, and essential for all of us in how to truly be human.  

That means, too, that in the moments and situations where we refuse to consider the interests of others as more important than our own, we will be failing to be fully ourselves, fully human.  Where we shout loudly, "Me and My Group First," we are not modeling true greatness at all, but in fact we are revealing how empty and deficient our humanity is.  We were not made to look out simply for ourselves.  We were not made to do it, as the old song puts it, "my way."  We were made for putting others first, as they are also made for doing the same for us in a living, flowing, vital community.  

This is a really important point to be clear about, because sometimes we religious folk seem to think that we are supposed to put others first as a way of impressing God or earning ourselves some "heaven points."  You'll hear folks sometimes talk about being good or being selfless in order to get themselves a "crown" in heaven. But that's not at all how Paul sees it.  The reason to care for the interests of others is not as a means toward some other reward.  The reason to put others first is not so that they'll "owe" us and one day we'll be able to cash in on favors.  We are called to put the interests of others before our own because that is how Jesus shows us how to be human.  To put myself first--my wants, my security, my personal wish-list--misses the point of what we are made to be.

Jesus comes into human history, as human as you and me, not only to bring us face to face with God, but to give us at last a clear picture of ourselves--to show us what it means to be really and fully human.  He doesn't come with an angry look and a furrowed brow to say that if we aren't well-behaved enough we will lose our heaven points and get kicked out of the club--he comes to show us what we were made to be, how we were made to give ourselves away, and how we were made for being filled back up again by the living God in one great, never-ending flow.

One of the things the New Testament writers are absolutely clear on is that Jesus is what it looks like for God to take on humanity.  That is what makes the Good News possible--that God has entered into our existence, that God has embraced us as we are, and that God goes all the way with us even to human death on a cross to save us.  And at the same time, that also means that Jesus shows us what being human was really all about all along, and he offers us the way to be pulled out of our self-centered, Me-First misery, to be fully what we were meant to be all along.

Listen today for the voice of Jesus.  Look today for the way of Jesus.  In the ways Jesus put others before his own needs and interests, Jesus hasn't done anything beyond our ability--in fact, he is showing us precisely what we were meant for in the first place.

Lord Jesus, you who came among us as one of us, give us the ability to live in the freedom of being for others, and to find what we were meant to be all along.