SNC

Broken for Thee

And he sprung up like a shoot before Him,
and as a root out of a thirsty ground:
there was no beauty in him, nor comeliness:
we saw nothing in his looks that we might desire.
—Isaiah 53:2 Douay-Rheims x Robert Alter crossover edition

A human life is something precious, precious almost beyond compare. To observe a human being at work is a beautiful thing. Every human being is a collection of so many little habits, interlocking patterns that sprawl out into something more splendid than anything that can be architected and which bleeds into all the world. My best comparison for a human being would be either the tabernacle described in Exodus or the temple described in Ezekiel: these baffling places with a kind of geometric logic which is deeply beautiful but also baffling and nigh impossible to put together again. I love the tabernacle and the temple, as I have experienced them in the abstract. But every human being is something more elaborate than they could ever be, more fitting to be a house of God due to their even greater powers of existence. Sometimes this glory of every single human being shines through to me, for one person or for a few, and I love them dearly, because how could I not? How can I not love what seems to me to be precious, precious almost beyond compare?

But a human being is not God. Human beings are perhaps the least finite things I have ever encountered, but they are not infinite—or at least, not absolutely so. It may be that there is no end to how any human life could be elaborated according to its being, which would be a kind of infinity. But a human life is elaborated and perfected according to its being—God is elaborated according to Being as such, and whatever is perfected is perfected in God. The spendour of a human being is a part of creation, of natura naturata, and exists through its deep implication with all other created things: it is ontologically dependent on a great multitude of things, and also, on God. The splendour of God is creation as an act, is natura naturans, which has come to imply everything which exists but which is always prior, never dependent. The pluripotent activity of a human being may speak, in a darkened way, to the surpassing activity of God, and as such may serve as an adequate temple for the same. Yet the difference between the two is nevertheless of the absolute highest degree. God is precious beyond compare, and holy beyond all holies.

Therefore to say that a human being is God is a difficult claim to make. How can a human life possibly be up to the task of being God, of showing what being God means not by analogy, not by inspiration, but by literal identity with God? Even making this kind of comparison risks diminishing what is glorious about a human being as such. There is so much to appreciate about a human being, but to compare them to God is to put them in perhaps the one shadow they cannot hope to lighten. Here is what has sometimes struck me about Jesus of Nazareth. The idea that a 1st century Judean preacher, son of a carpenter, executed by crucifixion in a shameful death not fit for a Roman citizen, has become the most important human being in human history has always resonated with me deeply. Of course he deserved it. How could he not deserve it? Isn't it clear how much more human a man like that is than any of the political schemers and blood-soaked murderers who could otherwise contend for that number one slot? Or even how much more human than artists or philosophers who were in any way esteemed within their time, because which of these can encapsulate the degree of truth of a full human cut off by a murderous world, but who could not be cut off effectively? I think it is very fitting to spend until the end of time addressing ourselves to a humble, loving man who was shamefully put to death. Of course there is no lack of material there, because that was a human being in the flower of humanity, of which there is a great deal to be said. And yet... to address him as God?

What would a human being have to do in their life to be the obvious vision of God? Something quite unlike a human being, no? How could the fullness of divinity dwell in a human community without purging us of the horrible darkness which we have brought into ourselves? From God we have all things; how could God's activity seem to be lacking? I've been thinking about this because of a comment made by Amy Jill-Levine, a historical-critical scholar of the New Testament, who refers to Jesus as a "typical first century patriarchal Jew." If he were not, she says, he would have behaved differently: six of the twelve apostles would have been women, and the existence of women like Mary Magdalene would in fact not have been unusual for a Pharisee at his time. If we don't accept that patriarchy is a God-given way of organizing society—which I do not accept, for reasons it would be superfluous to get into here—then how can Jesus not have broken from it radically? If Jesus is a human being who is not also God, there is no issue here. Human beings do not have to be perfectly adequate, unlike God, who must be so adequate that we subsist entirely on him. Jesus was clearly not a misogynist, having behaved well toward women around him and taught certain things to women's benefit, so there is no reason to defame his character. But to be God, one has to have something quite a lot higher than undefamed character.

Intersecting with this issue is an issue of Biblical fallibility. In another comment by Amy Jill-Levine, she says that we in fact know essentially nothing about the early life of Jesus, with the infancy narratives being very likely fabricated. I have never been someone who believes in Biblical inerrancy or infallibility, so this feeling of "there's no way Jesus fled into Egypt as a child" is very familiar to me. Nevertheless, to argue Jesus was a human being born like any other would make it very hard to believe in the Incarnation; adoptionism is a thoroughly low Christology. And if there is no Incarnation, the essence of God has never dwelt fully on Earth, and the unique resources of Christian theology begin to fade away.

So, then, it would seem that a human life, even a very human human life, is not enough to the task of being God. The biography of Jesus is not enough for God, because those parts which facilitate a higher view are historically incredible. And the biography of Jesus is not enough for us, because Jesus as a first century patriarchal Jew cannot be expected to do for us everything that we need him to do. We cannot expect to receive from him what we would require of him. "They have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat" (Mark 8:2, end).

I am dark and desirable,
O daughters of Yerushalayim,
like the tents of Qedar,
like the curtains of Shelomo.
Do not look against me, that I am darkened
that the sun has glared on me.
My mother's sons were incensed with me,
they set me as a keeper of the vinyards.
My own vinyard I have not kept.
—Song of Songs 1:5–6

At the time of writing, it is the week of the seventh Sunday after Trinity Sunday, for which the Gospel reading in the Anglican Church of Canada is the feeding of the four thousand, from the Gospel of Mark. I've never appreciated this reading before. When I first encountered it, I thought it was rather silly: it's the same miracle as Jesus performs a little while before, multiplying some loaves and fishes to feed thousands, with several baskets left over. Except, this time, Jesus has more loaves, feeds fewer people, and has fewer baskets left over in the end! One way to read that would be to critique the lack of faith of the disciples, who do not believe Jesus can feed the crowd even though, earlier on, he was more than able. But I've begun, this week, to see the distinctiveness of this account.

First of all, the four thousand which are with him have been with him longer than the five thousand before. Those had been with him only for the day, but these had been with him three days. Second, while both scenes occur in a desert place, there is in the feeding of the five thousand the possibility that the crowd might be sent into nearby villages to buy food for themselves, as the disciples suggest. With these four thousand, Jesus expresses that to send them away would undoubtedly be the ruin of many, and so his motivation for the miracle is love: "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far" (Mark 8:2–3). And third, there is here a numerical concord between the bread handed out and the bread taken back: seven loaves in, seven baskets out.

Both these numbers, three days and seven loaves, have obvious Biblical significance. While here the multitude spends three days without Jesus, they will later spend three days without him, after his dead and before his resurrection—after which, on his return, he again distributes the bread of life to his people at Emmaus. As for seven, all of creation comes about in seven of the days of God. Given the concept of the new creation in Christ, of the Kingdom of Heaven to come, Jesus's distribution of seven loaves might be taken as giving all of creation to the people of God, and then, taking up what is left, arriving at seven baskets—seven new days of a new creation, of the same stuff as the one before yet fuller than it had been.

But as much as I like numbo-jumbo, this numeracy was not what struck me. What strikes me is this moment in which, due to their faithful listening to Christ, this crowd has gotten to the point where they can only rely on Christ, or they will die. It is sort of absurd that they have gotten to this point: who spends so long with a preacher in the wilderness that you are on the verge of death from starvation before you attempt to go home? But these people do, and that is their faith, demonstrated not by their words but by their actions, in which they make visible their need. The disciples see nothing in Christ to suggest that he is able to satisfy them: "And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?" (Mark 8:4). But Jesus does it, reminiscent of God feeding the Israelites in the wilderness with manna from Heaven. Yet he does not feed them in quite the same way, because the food does not descend without a source. In order to feed the four thousand, the bread must first be broken.

Here are three elements that are key in my eyes: dependence, compassion, and brokenness. In their utter dependence on Jesus, the crowds evoke the utter dependence of all things on God, without whom nothing can hope to be sustained. Of course, humans are dependent on other humans all the time, but the difference is that Jesus, in this case, has no worldly might to reassure them with. Jesus does not have great stores of food to assure them with, and has gone three days without giving them anything. They have faith, then, not in what they can see of him, but in what they cannot see, in a source which is enough for them even though it remains covert. That is divine. And what is most divine about it is that, if Jesus is to feed the crowd, his motivation can only be compassion. Only out of compassion can God sustain us, because God is entirely prior to us, requiring nothing of us while we require everything of God.

But the most crucial element is brokenness. The people cannot be fed except if something visible is broken—something obviously insufficient, but still an apparently simple thing, mere bread. Having broken the bread in the manner he broke it, in a spirit of compassion for his dependent people, Jesus turns the mere bread into something inexhaustible, which does not truly run out. When he recollects it, he has more than before, as a basket is more than a loaf. The substance of the bread remains the same before and after, and even the number of units of bread is unchanged, though the unit has changed. But still, the bread is now broken, and had to be broken so that it could be enough. Something small and simple which is broken out of love for the needs of others proves to be more than enough.

Obviously, I am thinking about the Cross, and about Jesus's apparently too-insufficient life. How can the life of a single man in first century Judea suffice to be God for every generation to come? Because we needed him to be, and because he was broken for us, so that we could be filled. And of course, I am thinking about the Resurrection too, because the bread which is broken does not run out, but is gathered back, still broken, but greater than it was before. Jesus was not recognized as divine before his death, but he was recognized as divine afterward—but not only divine after the crucifixion, but before it. The same substance, the same life, is seen in a transfigured manner through its brokenness, and so that life retroactively acquires a quality through the Cross which we could not perceive before. Yet we also, through the Cross, know that the life which we recollect cannot possibly be everything. The bread which is returned can only be a portion of that which there was to eat, as it does not include all that of that which four thousand people took. Before they were broken, the limits of the loaves seemed clear; now, we cannot fathom what they ever were. "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen" (John 21:25).

The life of Jesus, as I have received it, is broken, and given for me. As such, it proves to be enough when by all rational accounts it should not suffice. "What truth can there be in the implausible stories of the Gospels?" There is truth, because of that paramount truth: that Christ was broken for me. "How can the life of Jesus, a typical first century patriarchal Jew, be expected to speak to all times and all peoples?" Because he was broken for me. I cannot set his limits. I cannot find them. I hope to delve deeper in his life for all my life, and hope for an eternity of the same in the world to come, and still I will never find his border. Why? Why? Because he was broken for me.

Broken because I was in a desert place, in a broken and a fallen world, full of a dark and heavy fog which choked me with despair and strangled me with weeping. Broken because I took that brokenness into myself, and acted horribly, and reflected a horrible world, and have sinned, and have erred, in thought and in word and in deed. Broken because I cried out to be saved, though God had given us a good creation, because we had found something awful in its place by means of our going astray. Broken because he knew what I needed. Broken because he loved me.

Dependence, compassion, brokenness, and resurrection. And by compassion, I can only mean perfect compassion, as the minimum article of faith. There are many martyrs who have given their lives out of love, some prior to Christ, and all of these, I think, really have been made fuller for having done so, in some mystical way. But only Christ appears as God in his sacrifice, because it is Christ's love that is unreasonably pure, an unfathomable self-giving love. Seven loaves may become seven baskets, or five loaves may become twelve baskets, but the source of an infinite and broken love must have been an invisibly infinite love, one in which the semblance of limits was torn away in the moment of the Passion. Therefore Christ cannot have become God, and must always have been God, because unreasonably perfect love can only be found in the nature of God. There is here not transformation, but revelation.

Yet if there was transformation, how would it go? It would begin, "Give, and it shall be given unto you" (Luke 6:38), and with the prayer of a human being, a first century Judean, who wished to give a truly perfect love. A man, a human being, whose prayer was answered, who received a truly perfect love to give—received the essence of God, communicated to him, that it might be poured forth. Received the essence of God, and therefore the eternity of God, and so received it outside the order of time, and so was always God. And so the man, by his prayer, would have begun not as man, but as God, and not as having been made God, but as having been made man. Therefore, a transformation of God into man, the taking on of the flesh in the Incarnation, eternally revealed and justified by the moment of the Passion.

This is the only point I can ever take on faith. I cannot be convinced of any source of authority but this singular unreasonable love, which I know because it has been reported to me, because I have heard it not as logical exposition but as good news, and have accepted it. I accept the love, and so I accept the only reason that love has become known to me, in the broken life of Yeshua ben Yosef, and so by his Passion, his Resurrection, and his Nativity. Had I not received his life in brokenness and compassion, nothing on Earth would suffice to prove his divinity, or any of the extraordinary details of his life. Not the Bible, not the Pope, not any supposedly infallible authority. Only the love suffices, but the love does suffice, and there is no need for anything else at all. Of the unbroken life, I could accept nothing. Of the broken life, however, I can set no boundary, and accept the fullness of that life in faith. Some I find in my baskets, and some I find in my mouth, and this portion is infinitesimal to that part which I do not know. Into those regions, only Perfect Love can take me.

Even so, come quickly, Lord. Maranatha!