I’ve been wrestling my entire life with the reality of being human. Much of my 20s was spent wondering why on Earth God would create me to need sleep. “Do you know how much work I could get done if I didn’t need to rest?” I’d lament. Not to mention the growing awareness of the limitations of my body as I wander into my 30s… *texts Mom to ask for Tums in my Christmas stocking this year*
How could God become human? All of the questions swirling around my humanity end up here – especially at Christmas time, when we remember the fulfillment of the promise that God made to His people who longed for a different world: the [human] person of Jesus. I remember holding my newborn baby for the first time. I don’t remember much about the whirlwind of hours that would follow, but I remember how small and vulnerable my daughter was – completely dependent on the care of others. Completely vulnerable and helpless on her own. She couldn’t understand anything about her new reality outside the womb, and it was up to me and her dad to keep her safe. We struggle to think of Jesus this way, don’t we? As a completely finite, dependent, vulnerable human being full of blood and phlegm and organs? I mean, we can put up our baby Jesus scenes everywhere, but to stop and consider the implications of this little baby born to a teenager is another act entirely. Evidently, the Church has struggled with the mystery of Jesus' humanness for centuries, and we're still there. We struggle to know Jesus in his humanness. This could be because of the pervasive, pessimistic narrative that culture sells us about our humanity; for example, “greed is just human nature!” This message, which has unfortunately found itself repeated in the Church (perhaps that's a blog for another day), hardly affirms the "very good"-ness of humanity that God was loudly declaring in Genesis 1. Another reason is that we're simply uncomfortable with our limits. It's why we largely ignore our pending death, completely surprised each time it rears its head, convinced that perhaps we'll just be the first ones to evade it. It seems to me that it would be easy enough to trust a Savior who was unlike us – someone outside of our limitations, right? Then, and only then, someone could 'fix' us. But a Savior who was “like us in every way” (as Hebrews 2 says)? It doesn’t quite compute. I think we’re much more comfortable with a distant, stoic, “somewhere up in Heaven,” stained-glass-window Jesus than the vulnerable, tired, helpless baby Jesus – because of what it means for us.
One thing that Jesus’ becoming human reveals to us is the importance of being vulnerable and living lives of trust before God. Philippians 2 paints the servanthood and vulnerability of Jesus as a pattern for all humanity to emulate: “though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness” (Phil. 2:6-7). Jesus lived as a refugee, he was betrayed and forgotten by friends, and he was ultimately tortured and killed. But as the completely realized image of God, Jesus fulfilled humanity’s original calling to be the representatives of God to the world. The representation He chose to give us was that of a servant. Jesus establishes a new pattern for us to follow – a new kind of human existence. The new pattern is this: living our lives in total vulnerability, servanthood, and full surrender to God. The other thing that Christ’s embodied human life shows us is that, as nonsensical as it seems, all of God’s grand restoration project is being worked out in and through our humanity. No superhuman is coming. Eugene Peterson writes that God’s redemption is happening now, “at picnics and dinner tables, in conversations while walking along roads…at weddings and funerals.” Our human bodies are the very vehicle that are to bring the restoration of God to the world – one step, one day, one conversation at a time. And this is what it means to be human: that we are able, as fragile and limited as we are, to take part in God’s grand plan of setting things right in the world. I’m learning to be comfortable with my humanity – my mental and emotional limits, my need for sleep and food, and my 30-year-old body. No shame here. Because there really is something incredible and freeing about embracing who you were made to be - human and all. Here's hoping that you can slow down this Christmas season to ponder what it meant that our Savior was truly one of us - and that you can embrace the freedom and wonder of simply being human.
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