Here’s some theology for you. It’s pretty simple to say, but incredibly hard to understand. I know I still struggle with this concept. Okay, here it is: Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.
The big theological term is “incarnation.” That means that God himself put on flesh and lived like a regular person with us. We celebrate it every Christmas, with baby Jesus and the manger and the shepherds and the angels. We put together a nativity scene and set it up next to a Santa Claus, maybe.
But in that simple scene is a powerful principle. I can’t figure it out. One way it doesn’t work is to take the Gospels, all four of them, and start cutting them up. “Okay, here is where Jesus was a man. And over here he was definitely God. This story he’s a man, but maybe he’s God in that story.”
In every story you read, he is fully God and fully man. Both at the same time. It’ll make your head hurt if you think about it too long.
But here’s one way that it doesn’t really hurt. I think it sort of clicks for me when I read that story of Jesus touching the leper (Mark 1:40-42). We read that story this week. When he reached out a human hand he sparked a divine opportunity.
If you were around in Jesus’ day, and you touched a leper, you would be considered unclean. Those were the rules laid out in the Old Testament, in the book of Leviticus. But when Jesus did it? He didn’t become unclean, the leper became clean.
A human action, a divine reaction.
A human gesture, a divine opportunity.
We are not divine. In any percentage. But we do bear a divine mark of salvation. Paul explains that it is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. But make no mistake, we are not in any way divine ourselves.
But what we do can start that same divine spark that Jesus had. Our human gestures have the power of divine opportunity. Our human actions can reflect divine reactions. Our human hands can be the hands of God.
When we reach out and touch the untouchable, we are not just doing what Jesus did. We are acting on his behalf. We are doing it by divine order. He didn’t touch the leper and say, “Stand back, disciples. Don’t touch this leper. Only I can.”
He was inviting us to touch the untouchable. He was showing the way for his followers to go. He was making the path clear – you have the same divine calling to go where God leads.
We don’t have the power to make the unclean clean. We don’t have power to forgive sin on God’s behalf. Not like Jesus did. But we do have the responsibility to touch on his behalf.
We can be the hands of Jesus when we reach out to those who society around us consider unclean. Who are outcasts, who are the lowest of lows, who are put on the bottom rung. Who are forgotten or overlooked. Who are made to feel less than.
And when we reach out, we are pulling them up. Never getting pulled down. We put them on the same ground as us, level ground. We treat them as equals even when the world wants to put us all in separate categories.
So this week, find those who are needing a hand, needing us to reach out. To pull up. To confirm and affirm. To say, “You belong with us, on our level. All of us, on the same ground.”
And when you do that, you are being divine.
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