Humanity 2.0

A number of years ago I read a little story in Scott Peck’s book, The Different Drum, that has stayed with me. It’s simply called The Rabbi’s Gift.

It’s about a monastery, which had fallen on hard times. Its many buildings once filled were now nearly deserted. The worship had no more life, and people from the town no longer came to worship there. There was only a handful of old, monks who shuffled through the cloisters and praised God with heavy hearts.

On the edge of the monastery woods, lived an old rabbi. One day, with the certain demise of his monastery and his own failing faith, the abbot decided to visit his old friend, and seek his advice.

The rabbi only had one piece of advice — and that was very mysterious: ‘The Messiah is among you’ he said.

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks eager to learn if something could be done gathered around him and asked, “Well what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving — it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is among us. I don’t know what he meant.”

Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by this community. Life had started again. The Messiah was among them.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? Well, if that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation.

On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Eldred is challenging…But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is almost always right. Often very right. Hmm.

But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah.

Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for You, could I?

And, as they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Becoming watchful to opportunities to let Love love them.

Because the woods are the monastery was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to wander its paths and to picnic on its tiny lawn, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate.

As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Brothers and sisters, that story gets to the heart of one of the earliest ways people understood the life and death of Jesus. God had become one of us — and human life had been completely and utterly changed.

If you were with us last week you know we are in our second week of our Lent series focused on what why the cross matters. As you likely imagine, the cross is the defining story of Christianity. It’s the symbol of our churches; it’s the symbol for which we are known around the world.

Red cross means that emergency help is on the way. Perhaps one of the most recognizable symbols of the world.

As I said last week for many of us have only heard one thing about the cross — it was the place where a very angry God sent the son of God, Jesus, to die in our place. And the one thing that happens on the cross is that God’s wrath is appeased — satisfied — and therefore God can now love us since his anger is now abated.

I thought that was the only way of understanding the cross. I was wrong.

The great scholar N. T. Wright has said there are at least 6 understandings of the atonement….just in Paul’s letters!

When theologians talk about the cross they often use the term, Atonement. (And you just thought that was a Ian McEwan book!) Atonement was a word meaning reconciliation, to bring together. Or as many saw it: To make one (at — one-ment) again.

And the first real experience people had was that God had brought us back to who we were supposed to be. Image bearers of the Lord. We who had been split in two were being made one again. One with God and one with ourselves, one with each other.

It’s sometimes called the recapitulation model of the atonement. That 6 syllable word is familiar to musicians and high school juniors. Recapitulation means to return to the theme again — this time with greater understanding and awareness.

The first understanding people had of the cross didn’t separate the cross from the birth. The entire life of Jesus was one fluid atoning moment — from birth to the resurrection. Jesus wasn’t born just so he could die — Jesus was born so God could share in our lives; celebrate our joys; feel our anxiety; weep with our tears. God became one of us! And in doing so, the life of God flowed from God to us.

Almost everyone of the earliest church fathers, Iranaeus, bishop of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, said something like this:

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215)

The Word of God became a man so that man may become god.

God became as we are so that we might become as God is.

I feel like we just have to pause there for a moment. Just take that in. This was one of the earliest consolidated understandings of Jesus life. That God became as we are so that we might become as God is. The Greek word for this is theosis, it’s still the understanding the Eastern church holds — which is an awful lot of people throughout the ages.

But it wasn’t some sort of philosophical meditation — this wasn’t theoretical, it was extremely practical. And while this may sound really strange and perhaps almost heretical to our thoroughly 21st c.western ears, the church saw it coming straight out of the Bible:

Jesus was the Second Adam, as Paul described it. Jesus hit humanity’s restart button. Whatever Adam had done was re-done in Jesus.

Death came through Adam, in Christ we are made alive. Physical through Adam, in Christ we have spirit

They interpreted the events in Christ’s life through this same lens:

For instance, the temptation text — Matthew 4, Luke 4 — that great passage where Jesus is in the wilderness and tempted by power, glory and honor? We read that text and try to apply it to what should we do when we are tempted? Right? Just throw down some Bible verses and the devil will fly away!

But as the great thinkers of the church saw it: Jesus was reliving the experience of Adam. And the experience of Israel. Adam crumbled before temptation. So did Israel in their own wilderness experience. But the second Adam - Jesus - and the new leader of the new Israel – Jesus – is victorious.

Paul especially thinks about Jesus as the second Adam. Not the secondAbraham, but the second Adam. All of us — everywhere — are given a new start in Jesus. It truly is Humanity 2.0.