Lonely Exile: A Daily Advent Devotional
Part Twenty Three: God Joins in on the Party
“Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.”
-St. Augustine
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
Romans 5:18, NRSVue
Many of us have been taught that the goal of the Christian faith is to help us overcome—to save us from—our humanity. After all, isn’t that our problem? We even use our humanity as an explanation for the moments we fall short, don’t we? When we mess up, we often say, “I’m only human,” and we all know what it means: Don’t expect too much. Put the bar low, and we humans will find a way to slither under it. The picture painted in our Scriptures couldn’t be farther from that understanding.
The story of the Bible begins with God making humans to bear Their image to the rest of creation. We are a combination of soil and spirit, and God called that mingling of earth and divinity “good.” Nothing has ever changed that. The truth is, in our worst and weakest moments it is not our humanity that is the problem. Our biggest challenge is that we, far too often, live beneath our good humanity. When we live together in subhuman ways we end up with the violence, greed, and bigotry that have so marred God’s good world. To put it succinctly, being human is so good that God joined in on the party. That is the meaning of the Incarnation, and it didn’t just begin with Jesus. God has always partnered and collaborated with humans to move creation forward. Yes, we are the source of our problems, but we are also the source of the solutions to our problems.
That is essentially the argument Paul is making in Romans 5. He argues that through Adam, a human, sin and death entered the story, but it is also through Jesus, a human, that sin and death are defeated.1 We have big human-created challenges, and God has decided that we will also be the remedy to those challenges.
Advent calls us to that responsibility, to taking seriously our role in the healing and repair of creation. May we embrace this invitation, this calling, to join God and one another in the work of bringing much needed justice and renewal to creation.
Question for Reflection:
How does the idea that we are the human solution to our human problems strike you?
What does it mean for our understanding of the Jesus story?
What does it mean for our understanding of the human story?
Adam and Jesus both function here as representatives of the whole human family.