A Human God

The part of Jesus that I find so easy to forget is His humanity. I can believe that He was God, that He is Lord of all and existed before time. What's harder to remember is that not only am I to be like Him, but that He actually became like me.

Why does this matter? Because if Jesus wasn't very human, I would find it hard to understand His suffering. To be human would mean that He could doubt, He could fear, He could know what it is to plunge into a bottomless pit of pain and despair. And it means then that He could pay the price for sin with a pain that I could understand.

That is why I found The Passion so powerful. There are always going to be inadequacies and failures in trying to depict Jesus, but I think one thing I think is good about depicting Jesus in movies is that you realize that Jesus wasn't just an abstract nice idea, but Jesus is a human. I could see what it cost Him to lay down His life, to not deliver Himself from each lash of the whip, from the coarse sharp mockery, from the excruciating pain. And this is where His divinity does not lessen His sacrifice, but makes it deeper. He was not helpless in the face of His suffering - He could have ended it at any moment - and yet He chose to endure the pain because He loved those who inflicted the pain on Him. He sought to win for them something they neither desired nor deserved - reconcilement with God. And the blood spilled by Christ - the blood that poured out of the wounds from His body, the pools of it staining the white floor, the blood that spattered and dripped on onlookers - this is the blood that won us life. This is the blood that cleansed us of our sin and freed the earth from the curse. The Passion was gory and it was violent, but the torn up body and oozing blood we see is the self-same blood which we are to remember:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt 26: 26-29)

Last Sunday, my chief thought when we were passing the bread around during communion was how to tear off the piece of bread where every else's germy hands hadn't touched. With the shiny silver sterility and pretty ceremony of the communion we receive on Sunday mornings, it's easy to forget how ugly and visceral Christ's death was. Experientially, it seems more akin to the act of cutting a lamb's throat for the Passover supper, draining it of its blood, and smearing it over your doorway. It's even a little sickening as you read it:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. ..Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old...and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. (Exodus 12:1-10)

It is significant that for the first time, we are commanded to drink blood, and the blood of a human who is God, no less. God had declared, “If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. " (Lev 17:10-11) This time, it is not just God consuming the blood offered on the altars as atonement. It is we who drink the blood. Physically, His body and blood become nourishment as they are incorporated into our bodies. We take His life into ourselves, and it is His blood that runs in our veins, and we are His body.

Jesus was physical, he was a human. And the sacraments which commemorate and make God's work real to us - baptism, the Lord's Supper - are physical acts too, which care and renew our bodies. A burial and washing away of our filthy selves, a rising and blessing with water. A slaking of hunger and thirst through eating His body and drinking His blood. We have a new Spirit because of our reconciliation with God. But Christ's humanity - His incarnation, life, crucifixion, and resurrection - all point to a renewal and redemption of our bodies as well.