There is a subtle but powerful theme about humanity that runs through both Old and New Testaments. We don’t always address it. I’d like to call it out this morning. This may sound a little odd, but after almost sixty years of following Jesus as a Christian, I now see a most powerful thread running right through the Bible from Genesis to the close of the New Testament.
The theme I see all through scripture is our human tendency to prefer violence, physicality, and revenge rather than gentleness, forgiveness and self-restraint. In today’s shorthand, we admire jocks more than nerds. The consequence is that humans value self-reliance and independence more than passivity and contemplation. There’s a lot of good in self-reliance and action. But the dark side of self-reliance is it makes it hard to be reliant on God. We think we can go it alone. We see this all through Bible history and human history right down to how we live today.
However you understand the Bible as ‘The Word of God”, it’s usually easy to agree the Bible is about God. The books of the Bible were written down by Hebrews, and as seen through Hebrew eyes. No cosmetics. Warts and all. Rebellious, sinful and slow to learn. Sometimes we talk about the Bible as if it is about, “The Jews.” Not so. The Bible is a book about God and God’s nature. It was written for all peoples, all humanity, to help us understand our human nature and God’s plan to transform that human nature. The Bible uses the tiny, insignificant Hebrew people as an example to help us all understand ourselves. To see ourselves and our natural human inclinations, and learn how God has sent us help. Help in shedding our old human natures and developing a completely new nature, an unnatural nature.
Let’s face the truth. Christianity is unnatural. And that’s what’s great about it. It’s a change for the better. Better for us. Better for humanity. But we resist. We don’t like change since it’s our human nature to think we are just fine just as we are. But you don’t have to look far to know humanity as a whole is not just fine just as we are.
We learned in Genesis humanity was created in the image of God, but we were not quite the finished product. God uses a process of development from primitive to subtle, simple to complex. The first human couple challenged God and the first human brother killed his younger brother. Human nature just as we are. Things went further downhill until Abraham finally listened to God’s voice and believed it was the voice of God.
Then the Bible story takes a new turn - one of following God’s direction, direction that upends our natural inclinations. Genesis tells us that through God’s agency Abraham chose his younger, meeker son Isaac over his wild hunter of an older brother Ishmael. Isaac, in turn, again through God’s agency, blessed his younger son, ‘momma’s boy’ Jacob over his ‘man’s man’ of an older brother Esau. God chose Jacob’s youngest son, the dreamer Joseph over his rough and ready older brothers. All in defiance of human nature.
In the book of Kings, in defiance of God, the people choose a king over their prophet, Samuel. Very tall Saul, a handsome jock becomes the first, and terrible king of Israel. Saul is followed by God’s choice, David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, a poet, a harp-playing shepherd. And King David becomes the most beloved king of Israel - until Jesus.
Jump forward to today’s reading from Acts. Peter reminds the crowd whom they chose to be released over Jesus: an assassin, the violent Barabbas. Barabbas was an insurrectionist, a revolutionary, determined to make the Romans pay for their occupation of Israel. Barabbas was a jock if there ever was one. The crowd chose this jock over Jesus, a gentle person who came into Jerusalem riding a baby donkey like a child on a pony ride. How nerdy can you get?
The crowd went with human nature, they went with the big strong guy who’s got the power. The Hebrew scriptures told them time and again that God works through the meek and smart, not the powerful and self-reliant. God even chose to show and explain his Word directly. In Jesus, God entered human history in person, no longer speaking through the prophets. Jesus taught an inhuman message of love and humility, forgiveness and mercy, reliance on God the Father. An inhuman message that’s a straight line from the older scriptures. Jesus came to open our minds to understand the scriptures. And God’s voice was heard, This is my son, my beloved, Listen to him!
Yet human nature prevailed. Crucifixion. Darkness, despair.
But then came Easter. The darkness and emptiness of pure human nature is overcome in the resurrection. Jesus, with his unnatural message of love, is raised to life. We, as Christians, share in this unnatural life.
The Resurrection was an unbelievable event. In Luke’s Gospel we see everyone either had trouble believing or flat-out rejected the reality of what had happened after the crucifixion. From the appearance in the garden, to the conversation on the road to Emmaus and dinner at the inn, even those who knew Jesus in the flesh at first failed to recognize the risen Jesus with their eyes. Human nature said this couldn’t be. When they finally recognized him, they were so awestruck and fearful Jesus had to calm their fears and open their minds before they could truly see and believe what had happened. Not natural!
And now, in today’s reading, the two disciples who had dined with the risen Jesus join the eleven apostles in Jerusalem. They tell them how they said to each other, “’Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” They related how Jesus had guided them to see and believe the truth. They had sat together at a meal, and listened as Jesus opened the scriptures to them, and minds newly opened immediately believed - and then Jesus was suddenly gone.
Now, while they were still talking about this with the eleven, “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ ‘Peace be with you.’” The risen Jesus presents his doubting, frightened friends with the gift of Shalom, the calm serenity of assurance, wholeness, and divine protection.
Then, after proving his material presence by encouraging them to see his wounds and touch him, after eating a piece of fish, he reminds them of all he told them, what was written about himself in the Torah, the Prophets and Psalms, all that had to be fulfilled. Luke says, Jesus ‘opened their minds to understand the scriptures.’ God’s message, Jesus’ unnatural message, has been there all along.
This is such an important idea that we hear it twice in the same chapter of Luke’s gospel. Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures about him. It’s not a surprise that we don’t immediately really get the wholeness, the delicious fullness in the message of scripture about Jesus. It’s not natural. It needs to be opened up for us.
I think that like the travelers who meet the risen Jesus, scripture gets opened up for us as we meet with Jesus ourselves. How do we meet with Jesus today? We meet with Jesus in quiet prayer. We meet with Jesus in Bible study. We meet with Jesus as we wrestle with God through fears and disappointments. We meet with Jesus as we do works of charity in faith. And, very importantly, we meet Jesus as we forgive, really forgive one another, and we especially meet Jesus when we learn to forgive ourselves.
The most unnatural act for our old human natures is forgiveness. Forgiveness, restraining ourselves from aggressive reaction or seeking vengeance or just holding a grudge is a key to understanding our foreordained new nature. Forgiveness overcomes our tendencies toward revenge, power, taking everything into our own hands. We meet with Jesus when we forgive, when we release our human instincts for reaction, when we lean into our new, unnatural life. Meeting Jesus helps us see those in need of forgiveness are acting naturally. Our new, unnatural Jesus nature leads us to pray for their maturity into faith. And we overcome our natural desire to condemn those who hurt us, to exact vengeance or justice on them. As God does with us. All of us.
In releasing those who harm us through forgiveness, feeling this release in our hearts, we ourselves are freed from the prison of our own old human natures. And we meet with Jesus as we truly allow our own past sins to unearth themselves, be recognized and released. And when we have also truly forgiven ourselves for what we have been, we are then freed to experience what it means to be created in the image of God.
We begin to understand why God upended the birth order and chose the weaker and younger. Meekness, self-restraint allows us to forgive, and let God work. But as we watch God work we also see God’s apparent meekness in his self-restraint. Yes, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. But God holds himself back, he restrains his own limitless power to avenge. God not only forgives, God restrains his power to punish, He allows us freedom of choice. God does not want or need to coerce his children. God has limitless patience. He patiently waits for us to ripen and open. He mercifully allows our stupidity because he loves us and knows what we have been, what we are and, most of all, what we will become.
Meeting with Jesus will open our minds to recognize a new spiritual maturity in ourselves and lead us to rejoice when we see it in others. When we do as the law of love prompts us, when we do what comes unnaturally, we’ll find as we practice love of enemy as well as neighbor, what was unnatural to our old self becomes the new natural to our newly transformed soul.
When meeting with Jesus opens our minds to understand the scriptures, we see we are becoming like Jesus, the image of God, the children of God. It’s the unnatural shape of what’s to come for us all.
As Jesus preached on the mount, Blessed and happy is the person who hears these words and acts on them.