As you know, I’m a big fan of Jesus, the man, fully human.. Of course I love his divinity too, but what really gets me excited---day in and day out---is Jesus’ humanity. The fact that Jesus experienced all aspects of the human condition----joy despair, laughter and anger, love and loss, success and failure makes our human condition understandable to our loving Creator God. There’s nothing NOTHING we feel, experience, fret about or rave about that Jesus doesn’t understand. He gets what it’s like to be human because Jesus was fully and completely human. He isn’t just Lord, Jesus is also one of us. It is astounding, overwhelming and, frankly, pretty cool. I love the humanity of God in the flesh: Jesus Christ.
Somehow Jesus being fully human makes his divinity less intimidating to me. It makes his divinity more accessible to me. Jesus is like the perfect conduit…..humanity gets a glimpse of divinity thorough Jesus the Man and the Divine gets a glimpse of the Human through Jesus the Christ. Jesus as human and divine gives a substance to the dance between God and God’s creation which was set in motion at the beginning of time.
No where is this humanity more present than in today’s Gospel when Jesus goes home. We all know that it can be really difficult to go home again. Whenever I return to Chicago the priest at the church I grew up in, the church where my mother and one of my sisters still worship---invites me to celebrate or preach. It is very gracious of her but whenever I do it, invariably one of the older members of the parish will come up to me afterwards and remark, “Well I just can’t get over you standing up there like a priest, I mean it was just yesterday that you were in my Sunday school class, that you and your sisters were sitting so wetly in the front pew ….. I just couldn’t believe it was really you up there…after all, I think of you as just a kid.” Try preaching to a congregation full of people who will always see you as George and Elaine’s youngest, Anne, Elizabeth and Sue’s baby sister. Trust me, it isn’t easy! But it’s ok, because I will never be the rector of that church, I’ll never be those people’s priest. For I know that to them, I will always be a Dempesy girl first and foremost.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, is flying pretty high. It’s early in his ministry and he has started to create quite the stir. People are talking about him, following him----just last week we heard about the woman so desperate to be healed that she clamored to touch the hem of Jesus robe, hoping to get some of his healing mojo to work on her. Yes, as Jesus winds his way up through the Galilee hill country to his childhood home of Nazareth he is flying high, wildly successful after just a few short months of public ministry.
Now maybe we aren’t supposed to think of Jesus in this way, but I have to believe he was looking forward to his return home…to see old friends and family, to eat some home cooking, to relax in the comfort of all the old familiar things…and since he’s been so successful there’s that old “hometown boy makes it big” thing to look forward too. Deep within Jesus’ humanity I have to think there was a part of him really looking forward to his mother, his aunts’ his brothers’ and his sisters’ approval---and maybe even their envy. We may never know what exactly he was expecting, but clearly that’s not what he got. For as soon as he arrived, Jesus realized that his healing powers—his inspirational and life changing preaching….impressed no one in Nanzareth. As one commentator puts it: Up until now, Jesus' version of “Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show and Tent Revival” had been a roaring success. But once he arrives home, nothing worked right!
First, as soon as Jesus arrives we read that they "took offense at him." Can’t you just hear them…”what’s up with Jesus…a few months down in the big city on his own and he gets all caught up in this preaching and teaching thing…a little too big for his britches, don’t you think?”
Then, we learn ”he could do no deed of power there.” That somehow their resentment toward him, their reluctance to accept that he may, just possibly, be something special resulted in his inability to be the Jesus he was elsewhere in Judea.
Which leads to one of the most human portraits of Jesus in the gospels when Mark writes that Jesus "was amazed at their unbelief." He just couldn't believe that their lack of belief was a) so strong and b) so detrimental to what he saw as his job, his calling, his ministry. He was stunned, left with his mouth hanging open. Jesus learned a hard lesson; that there was a limit to his power; it was limited by the people's willingness to receive it.
What Jesus, the Divine learned when he went home again was that the power of his divinity was wholly dependent on the willingness of his human family and friends to accept it.
No matter what incredible gifts Jesus possessed they were rendered useless in the absence of that acceptance.
Jesus had so much he wanted to show his family and friends, so much that he had learned, so much that he had accomplished. But they weren’t interested in who he had become, for they were stuck in who he had been. And until the folks back home were ready to receive him as the Christ, he would remain, Mary and Joseph’s kind of odd eldest child.
You see, Divinity isn’t meaningful if it isn’t experienced. And it can’t be experienced if it isn’t noticed.
It’s the quintessential lesson our faith: we are partners with God, we are companions of Jesus, we are the instruments of the Holy Spirit.
We are in this together.
As I have mentioned before, the Holy and Undivided Trinity is often depicted as a swirling dance of the three in one, one in three. But, if we really take the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ seriously, if we completely accept that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine then that dance of three needs a fourth.
Us.
The work of God, the ministry of Jesus Christ, the grace of the Holy Spirit is dependent upon our willingness to receive it, our ability to accept it and our longing for it.
The dance card of our Creating, Redeeming and Sustaining God is waiting to be filled, by you and by me.
Amen.
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