Tuesday, 11 May, 2004

The focus of these devotions is switching to Walter Wink’s book “The Human Being.”



Sometimes, on a whim, I pick up a book and try to wade into it because it had enough with the table of contents to make me want to set forth on another adventure. This book is doing that for me.

In the struggle to become human, I find myself returning over and over to ancient texts that, for me, still contain the original impulse of Jesus. That impulse was the spirit that drove Jesus through the villages of Galilee and ultimately to death in Jerusalem. It was the inner fire that impelled him to preach the coming of God’s reign, the spirit that caused him to cry out, “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). Even though that impulse may lie buried under the detritus of routinized religion, I am convinced that we can recover priceless rubies among the rubble.



It is a struggle to become human. It is, for example, a struggle for young military police in Iraq to be human within systems of power that often finds the need to degrade others in order to gain something. I would say the struggle is universal to humanity. In Wink’s book, he will take a look at the concept or title known in scripture as “the son of Man.” He seems to call it “the human being.” I find that it is curious that we can be so afraid to be human that we run away and try to shelter ourselves within the language of religion that is still afraid to be what Jesus was – completely and to its fullest – Human. There is a treasure within the scriptures that brings us great gifts for life that are often lost within the religious games we play…games that are not likely to show the beauty of God’s notion of creating humanity in God’s image. I’m sharing pieces from this book, beginning today, because already it has me looking at me and you differently.



Connection: What makes up the vision of being fully human to you? What are the gifts and qualities that give us the power to become linked with others in a realm of peacefulness and hope? How can that begin to take shape in you…now?



By the power of your Spirit, O God, grasp us again and lead us along the pathway your beloved Jesus. Yes, we may not want to go and we may fight in order to go another way to a place and life we would like to have…but grasp us Lord, grasp us and move our hearts along a new and creative journey of hope. Amen.