Humanizing Christ

 "and they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him." —Matthew 27:29

"Behold the Man"  by Antonio Ciseri

During Lent I’ve noticed how much oppression and evil in the world is tolerated, ignored, and even supported by those who identify as Christians. There seems to be very little correlation between the life of Jesus and the life of his followers. Sadly, what I and many others see are self-identifying Christians becoming more openly cruel and oppressive under the standard of the Cross. What is going on here? 

I believe it is how we understand Christ, our Christology, if you will. Christology is just a fancy theological term for the nature and work of Jesus of Nazareth. The dominant theology in the West is focused almost entirely on the divinity of Jesus. Unfortunately this understanding comes at the expense of his humanity. And ours. It has taken my entire life to realize this.

During my time in the church, I cannot recall hearing a sermon about the humanity of Jesus. Rarely did I hear a teaching about the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, or Jesus' encounters with outcasts. I heard many sermons and teachings about the fate of "sinners in the hands of an angry god," the evils of the world, the dangers of liberal thought, warnings about sexual taboos, and of course sermons hawking for money. Most of what I heard was fear-inducing and transactional. It was all about "the deal" of accepting Jesus and having my sins washed away. Having read the bible several times and the Gospels in particular, I began to see the human side of Jesus. Seeing the humanity of Jesus made the humanity of others visible to me.

Among his first public acts Jesus touched a leper. In Jesus' day, no one touched a leper. Jesus' touch healed the man. Sometimes we breeze over that passage and fail to see the human connection in that moment. That man may not have felt another human touch in years. When Jesus connected his own humanity with the humanity of the leper, he rehumanized him! The man's healing was social as well as physical. After that encounter and the healing of the centurion's servant, some folks were zealous to follow him. But what Jesus had done was a radically political act. It violated social and religious norms, and as such the action carried considerable risk. Jesus warned his would-be acolytes about the cost, a cost he never failed to fully disclose. He warned them of the consequence of his all-embracing humanity,  "the son of man has no place to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). Note that in calling himself "the son of man" Jesus underscores his humanity. It's a phrase he uses many times in the gospels.

In acknowledging and illuminating the humanity of others,  Jesus confronted power structures that were built on a hierarchy of castes. The caste systems required a dehumanization of scapegoated people and separating them into strata of society. Jesus challenged the system by recognizing the humanity  of outcasts publicly. This was the light of Jesus. So, if Jesus was fully human, if indeed he was the light and life of men, the question arises, did he have a shadow? 

All those we generally accept as heroes, Lincoln, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, and MLK to name a few, were flawed human beings. But their deaths made them martyrs. The passage of time and selective positivity of their biographers obscures our knowledge of the full range of their humanity. All these men, these heroes, had their shadows. They didn’t deny their shadows. Indeed in the light of day, their shadows proved they had human substance. Even Jesus had his shadow, the proof of his human substance.

“Could you not stay with me for one hour?”

“My God My God Why have you forsaken me?” 

When we dehumanize our heroes, we deny their human substance and make them inaccessible. I will go so far as to say we have dehumanized Jesus. Our Christology only sees his divinity and denies his humanity, therefore the substance of Jesus' teachings are ignored. His humanity is inaccessible to us. And when we have dehumanized Jesus, what light is left in our Christian religion?

The dehumanization that precedes all the others is the dehumanization of Jesus Christ. The dehumanization of Jesus is a fact of history, but it is also accepted as Christology (the nature of Jesus). We emphasized his deity at the negation of his humanity. Once we dehumanize our prophets, we kill them. Then we are free to build statues, shrines, and construct religions around them. Their very human biographies are lost and replaced with our hagiographies. We ascribe to them what we want to believe.

When Jesus "let his light shine" he illuminated "the least of these." He saw them. And he didn't just see them, he saw himself in them! So much so that he equated any good or evil done them as done to himself. So what can we do? Can we let our little light shine on the holy in the everyday, the mundane? It is possible to see (recognize) the holy and transcendent that is already here in everyday life:

"We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here, have my seat," "Go ahead — you first," "I like your hat." "  —Danusha Laméris, Small Kindnesses

It's that simple. It only requires us to slow down and look. To place ourselves in the shoes of others. To equate their wellbeing with ours. Then we will recognize the humanity of our fellow human beings. And when we see Christ in others, our kindness becomes a sacrament.

“if you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me [Christ].” 

Conscious recognition of holy moments. Recognition of the humanity of others. All others. Including those deemed to be "The Wretched of the Earth." Jesus has shown us the way, the truth, and the life. 

  

The Shadow of the Cross

"It was now about noon, and darkness came over the land..." Luke 23:44-46 

In the Gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion, we are told it became very dark from mid-day until three in the afternoon. During the three hours leading up to Christ's death, the cross cast no shadow! So how can we speak of a Shadow of the Cross? What might that darkness be? Perhaps that darkness is our shadow, the collective shadow that is cast by all of us. 

The Crucifixion was human darkness made manifest, the culmination of a plot by religious leaders to turn public opinion against Jesus and persuade the political rulers to use the force of law to execute him. The religious leaders were envious of Jesus. They hated him. They feared him. But it the end, they came up with a pragmatic reason to do away with him:

“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” —John 11:47-48

They thought they were going to lose their temple and their country. (They lost them anyway). 

The desire to preserve an identity, a status, a way of life, and a social order can motivate human beings to take action. But the fear of losing these things can move human beings to do awful things and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others in the process. Fear drives the dark side of humanity. It is humanity's dark side. Humanity's shadow if you will. And the shadow is not just a general darkness of humanity, it is the dark side of each one of us!

We like to consider ourselves "good-hearted" and most of the time we are. However, we may carry a hidden and deep-seated resentment. Or more often, a deep seated sense of self-importance. It’s the kind of thing we slide through much of life not even noticing it until something brings it to the surface. We have a shadow, but it is hidden until something brings it to light. Often the trigger is something mundane. Someone cuts us off in traffic. Or takes too long at the self-checkout. Or disagrees with us in front of others. And then our "dark side" comes out. For me, impatience and anger are the shadows I know I've cast. But there are others: 

The Shadow of Misogyny The belief that the male is the provider and protector and controller of the agency of women whether they be his employees, his spouse, or his daughters. If there is an issue of his anger, his lust, his temptation, then fault must lie with the women in his life. The man projects the shadow of his flawed relationship with himself onto women.

The Shadow of Poverty The belief that I had complete agency over the station in life I inhabit. That my success had nothing to do with my birth, my upbringing, my race, my family's wealth, or that all these factors had nothing to do with my success. If on the other hand someone is poor, that is their fault. My shadow accuses poor people of making bad choices and ignores the environment in which they are forced to make those choices. Society's shadow is how wealth is built at the expense of the poor:

"The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you." —James 5:4

The Shadow of Racism This is really the shadow of our caste system as marked by race. We don't believe we are racist, claim people of other races as our friends, and we would probably vehemently deny it confronted. Yet we are quite comfortable at our place in the social hierarchy and more often than not, vote for people who promise to secure our place in it, even if it means oppression for others. Our shadow is the darkness we project on others:  

"The white man's unadmitted and apparently, to him, unspeakable private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro" —James Baldwin

The Shadow of The Market  The shadow of "the market" is its amorality. It is the economic framework of social Darwinism. The market assumes winners and losers and if you lose, too bad for you. The other shadow of "the market" is it's failure to account for externalities, the costs it keeps off the books. Things like damage to the earth wrought by extraction, industrialization, the discarding of waste to the damage done to humans by robbing us of the time we need for social reproduction, our capacity of "birthing and raising children, caring for friends and family members, maintaining households and broader communities" —Nancy Fraser 

The Shadow of The Valley of Death  Our shadow believes in "eye for an eye" justice. We may venerate the "Stations of the Cross" pondering the steps that led to the execution of Jesus, and yet support the death penalty and an ubiquitous gun culture which kills more children than any other cause. Our shadow enables a profit-focused agribusiness that drives family farms out of business, poisons land and water, and manufactures cheap, unhealthy food for the masses. Our shadow enables a for-profit healthcare system that charges exorbitant fees and denies care. If we are privileged with wealth, we can choose to eat healthy and exercise, shielded from the most pernicious consequences of this system, which fall like a consuming shadow on the working poor.

We are formed by these shadows, but we also form and reinforce them. Our shadows multiply as the sum of all of us into what we call "society":

"If you don’t know how your mind reacts, if your mind is not aware of its own activities, you will never find out what society is . . . because your mind is part of society; it is society. . . . It is not distinct from your culture, from your religion, from your various class divisions, from the ambitions and conflicts of the many. All this is society, and you are part of it. There is no “you” separate from society."  —Jiddu Krishnamurti [1895–1986] 

Society defends its image by punishing those who would make its shadow visible. The Roman Empire used crucifixion on a cross as both a punishment and a warning to would be disrupters. In those days Roman roads in Judea were lined with crosses on which hung malcontents, zealots, murders, and thieves. In an arid and sunny land the shadows of crosses testified to the brutality of men. The last thing the condemned would see was their own crucified shadow. But on the day the Son of Man hung on a Roman cross, there was no shadow. The darkness of what humanity had done was overwhelming. 

The ultimate evidence of our shadow is our denial that we even have one. Western civilization tells a flattering story about itself that lists its achievements in the arts and sciences, technological prowess, but downplays and denies its darkness. If the darkness is not denied outright, then it is spun into something good. The annihilation of the indigenous becomes "discovery." War becomes "liberation." Separation becomes "equality." Religion is particularly adept at this. The Crucifixion of Jesus becomes our salvation. Baptism becomes our citizenship. Confession becomes absolution. But none of these things, nor our beliefs about their efficacy, confront our shadow. The only solution is to admit to our shadow. But our ego gets in the way:

“We can patiently accept not being good. What we cannot bear is not being considered good, not appearing good.” —St. Francis of Assisi

In order to appear to be a good person to others, we deny, suppress, and try to hide our darkness:

“Abstract speculation can create an image of God that is foreign to the human heart. . . [A God that does not contain our shadows.] Then we try to live up to the standards of a God that is purely light, and we can’t handle the darkness within us. And because we can’t handle it, we suppress it. But the more we suppress it, the more it leads its own life, because it’s not integrated. Before we know it, we are in serious trouble.” —Bro David Steindl-Rast, The Shadow in Chrisitanity

We cannot purge out all our darkness. The best we can do is humbly admit that we have it and integrate it into the wholeness of our being. 

“Consider Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, Martin Luther King Jr. Add to them Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, César Chávez, and many unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world. Most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many lesser-known persons who exhibit the same presence. I can’t say how one becomes such a person. All I can presume is that they were all called.

They all had their Christ moments, in which they stopped denying their own shadows, stopped projecting those shadows elsewhere, and agreed to own their deepest identity in solidarity with the world.” —Fr Richard Rohr

So when will we stop denying our shadows? And the shadows of society? Because when we do, we will have our “Christ moment” and a true salvation will be at hand.

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Jesus Enters Our World

Today is Palm Sunday, when the Christian world observes Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem. Jesus was welcomed into the city by the common people, but he was feared by the religious leaders.

The symbolism of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was understood as the fulfilment of Scripture, “Your king comes to you meek and riding on an ass..."(Zechariah 9:9). But it was understood differently, depending on which group was watching the event unfold. 

The people, oppressed by a foreign power, were looking for relief. They saw Jesus as their liberation. 

The leaders, looking to keep their grip on power, were looking for threats. They saw Jesus as their enemy.

“Where you stand changes what you see” — Gustavo Gutiérrez

Jesus was causing quite a stir even though many people were not aware of who he was.  

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred.
People asked, "Who is this?" (Matthew 21:10)

But the religious leaders knew. The High Priest comprehended that the very presence of Jesus in their city was "rocking the boat" of their precarious power alliance with the Roman government. The leaders soon conspired to apprehend Jesus out of public view, present him as a criminal influence to the Roman governor, turn the common people against Him, and finally accuse Him of sedition to have Jesus condemned. 

“The unholy alliance of religion and politics collaborated in finding Jesus guilty.”
—Eugene H. Peterson

The centers of religious and political power were doing what they have always done, divide the people up against each other and crush any prophetic voice that would challenge their position. People in power always rely on the same tools against their enemies: lies, slander, and accusations. Too often, we fall for these deceptions.

Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, the remembrance of  Jesus' final week, his betrayal, crucifixion, and as Christian believe, the Resurrection. We are taught that this is the week that Jesus died to save us from our sins. But what sins? Having an impure thought? A flash of anger or jealousy? Failing to observe the sacrament? Missing services? Not dropping money in the plate? What sins? What sins was Jesus dying for that week? Perhaps it is this one:

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.” —Shusaku Endo, “Silence”

In the service of power and profit, our society walks brutally over the life of others. While the powerful deliberately harm the dignity, the humanity, and the voices of others, more often we stand aside in silence as it happens. Can we accept that not only did Jesus' die to save us from that sin but the manner in which in died shows us what that sin looks like?  

Jesus showed us what this sin really looks like when we desecrate the Image of God in others. May we be so revolted by the ugliness of dehumanization that we truly repent of it, our participation in it, our  quiet complicity in it. May we resolve to follow the example of Jesus, to re-humanize those that others have rejected, to bring encouragement and joy to their existence. 

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