“Nothing human is alien to me.” These words were written by a Roman
slave named Terrance, a playwright, around 160 years before the birth of
Jesus. These ancient and wise words express something essential about
the human condition/community. Despite the many ways we may divide
ourselves into tribes of color and creed and country, we are all essentially
human. No matter how much we may deny anther person’s humanity by
labeling them alien or vermin, we cannot escape our shared connection
on this planet. No matter how much I may find myself struggling to
comprehend another’s worldview, nothing human is ever, really, alien to
me.
One of the assertions in our faith tradition is that Jesus was both fully
divine and fully human. We have tended to focus on Jesus divinity
while ignoring the meaning of his humanity. In Jesus, we have both the
expression of what it means to be fully human and the very sacredness of
that humanity. In other words, Jesus was a sacred humanist!
One cannot read the gospels without bumping into the reality of Jesus
essential humanism. He welcomed/embraced/loved the humanity in all
kinds of people from the unclean to the unrepentant; from the leper to the
leaders in the temple; from the Samaritan to those labeled sinners. Jesus
did not shy away from confronting the injustices of those in power, but he
did so by striving to remind them of their own shared humanity.
As we live into this day filled with words of division and alienation, we are
called to the way of Jesus, a sacred humanism, that stands for justice and
peace honoring the humanity in all of us. We must seek to live out those
words written thousands of years ago – nothing human is alien to me.
Grace and Peace,
Alex