Midweek Faith Lift
July 3, 2019
Understanding Our Humanness
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Good morning and a big thank you to Todd for doing the talk last Sunday! When I read his account of a Sunday school story about sin and not having any relatives named Adam and Eve and not being responsible for their sins, I laughed out loud! RIGHT ON TODD!! It seems like the whole message of Christianity has been that it is a sin to be human. How crazy is that! It is not easy to be human, to make mistakes, screw up, forget to do things, do and say things you wish that you did not do and say. But if we are expressions of God, and made, as it says in Genesis, in the image and after the likeness of God, then how is it that we are so defective in our humanness? Do we really need to think of ourselves as defective and awful, even though we may sometimes behave that way?
Well, no, not really! That is not the message of Jesus at all. That is the message of the religion about Jesus, not the religion of Jesus. The constant message of Jesus was to tell us about our true, divine nature and to invite us to realize it, to make it real and to live into it. He wasn’t condemning us for being human, he was trying constantly to wake us up to the reality of the “more” that is a part of us, beyond our human understanding and perception. He was trying to get us to understand, as Todd called it, our “sack-red-ness” that is there right with our humanness.
We call it the “Christ within” in Unity. Jesus said repeatedly that the “kingdom of God is within in you!” Well, that’s the last place I’m gonna look for it, for heaven’s sake! It is kind of like trying to find a raisin in a bun…whoops, just missed it! Shouldn’t have swallowed that fast! Well, no, maybe it is like the chocolate chips in a cookie! As least I have a greater chance of actually encountering the chips and tasting them! Maybe that is why they call chocolate fudge “Divinity” fudge!?! What is this “Kingdom of Heaven” within you really like? How can we try to understand it? How can we understand our humanness and learn to be ok with it, actually embrace it warts and all?
There are some clues in one of the shortest parables of Jesus. It is in Matthew:
Matthew 13:33
The Parable of the Yeast
33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” (NRSV)
If we look at this metaphysically, it is a short statement that packs a powerful message, a powerful punch! We have three components to this story about the Kingdom of heaven: the yeast, the woman and the flour. Clearly, this is a story about a process, not a thing which is our first clue about our human/divine nature. It is a process! Jesus does not talk about the bread, he talks about the process of leavening the flour, which is essential for the flour to have its full expression as bread. How interesting that it is a woman, because metaphysically, woman is our feeling nature, so it is our feeling nature that is going to open our hearts, not our thinking nature.
The yeast is the active agent that has to permeate all of the flour. Well, that is our innate Divine yeast energy, which has to permeate our whole beingness- Body, Mind and Spirit, the three measures of flour! When you put the yeast into all of the flour, all 4 together, with the yeast of Spirit permeating all of the humanness of us, then you are at a number of completion—the Body, Mind, Spirit of our humanness fully permeated by the leavening of the yeast of our Divinity. All of that is needed for the complete realization of our true nature, which is what the number 4 represents—completion, like the 4 directions, 4 seasons, 4 points of balance.
If you have ever made bread, then you know that this is not an ethereal process, although it can seem kind of mystical. To truly leaven the flour, you also need water, which also represents emotions, or perhaps tears, which I call holy water. And then you punch the dough, turn it over, and punch it again a number of times. Then you let it rise for a time, punch it down again and let it rise again before you bake it. If you don’t allow the whole process, you don’t realize a very good outcome…..some kind of half-baked spiritual goo—not too savory or effective at nourishing and sustaining the “kingdom of heaven” or consciousness of God-ness or goodness. Or you have a lot of air pockets, which are potential spaces of humanness without the softening of compassionate yeasty Divinity to be expressed!
What do we do with this message of Jesus that we are truly ‘Divine’ when we do encounter our human limitations? What do we do with our half-baked divinity? Do we give up on ourselves or others when we encounter the defects of character, the air pockets? I don’t think so. I think what Jesus is telling us is that in order to be fully leavened, to realize the “Kingdom of Heaven” or a consciousness of love within, we need to accept that we are fully human and in that humanity we will punch and get punched. It may not be pleasant, it may not be pretty, it may not be enjoyable, but that is not the point….our humanity fully expressed allows the leaven of divinity to fully permeate our entire consciousness. There is not a short cut. We might want fast acting yeast and a quick way to realizing our true divine nature, but that does not seem to be very effective to me.
Any time I have tried to strong-arm things or short cut my human lessons I have made a mess of things and had to make amends and start anew! It seems things go a lot better when I let the yeast of my divine nature be leavened throughout my human choices and actions. What I am really learning to do is to love and let myself be loved. That is simple, but not easy, because I might get hurt. And that feels risky, uncertain and far too vulnerable for my humanness to endure! It is my Divine nature, the yeast of me that gives me the strength, courage and humility to risk loving what feels unlovable, my humanness. God loves my humanness; who am I to not love what God loves?
In the words of Eric Butterworth on page 45 of Discover the Power Within You;
Christ in you is your hope of glory, for it is that of you that is of God and is God being projected into visibility as you. Christ in you is your own spiritual unity with the Infinite, your health and success….The difference between Jesus and each of us is not inherent spiritual capacity, but a difference in the demonstration of it….Every human is a spiritual being. Every human is innately good. Every human is a potential Christ. But only a few know this and an even fewer number succeed in expressing any marked degree of the perfection of the Christ indwelling.
The Truth is that the full potential of the Christ in us is just like the potential oak tree that is in every acorn. There is an old adage that was put in the form of a question by one of the presenters during the Unity Convention that I just attended: “Can God create a 10,000 year old oak tree in an instant? Yes but it takes 10,000 years to see it!”
For us to be fully leavened, to truly live into our Christed-beingness, we are called to practice what theologian Cynthia Bourgealt calls “conscious love.” This kind of love calls us to love all the inherent contradictions that our humanness embodies. Here is how Richard Rohr describes it in his June 22, 2019 blog, “Love the Contradictions:”
In facing the contradictions that we ourselves are, we become living icons of both/and. Once you can accept mercy, it is almost natural to hand it on to others… You become a conduit of what you yourself have received. If you have never needed mercy and do not face your own inherent contradictions, you can go from youth to old age dualistically locked inside a mechanistic universe. That, in my opinion, is the “sin against the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 23:31-32). It cannot be forgiven because there is a refusal to recognize that you even need mercy or forgiveness. You have blocked the conduit that you are.
John of the Cross (1542–1591) consistently wrote of divine love as the template and model for all human love, and human love as the necessary school and preparation for any transcendent encounter. If you have never experienced human love, it will be very hard for you to access God as Love. If you have never let God love you, you will not know how to love humanly in the deepest way. Of course, grace can overcome both of these limitations.
Embracing both/and, that we are both human and divine, allowing ourselves to be leavened by our expressing our fully human nature so that we can discover our Christ nature is our spiritual journey. In accepting that we will hurt others and need mercy and forgiveness and in turn we will offer mercy and forgiveness as often as needed, we have embraced true humility and stepped into the process of becoming fully leavened, yeasty, Christed-Beings. The keys are love and forgiveness; there is no other way. It is no wonder Jesus speaks of both so frequently in his ministry on earth.
So, can God create at 10,000 year old oak tree in an instant? Yes, but it takes 10,000 years to see it…..may it not take us 10,000 years to see….
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb