Truly Human in a Partially Human World

Easter Sunday A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Alleluia! Christ is risen. (Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!) But that first Easter morning, the disciple’s minds remain shrouded in grief.  We follow Mary Magdalene and the other Mary through the pre-dawn air, rushing along the quiet streets as they head out the Ganneth Gate of the great walled city of Jerusalem. Outside this gate is the countryside, except for a large stone quarry, looking like a huge gravel pit, off to our left.  From this quarry many slaves have hewn great stone blocks for building the city. It is to this quarry the two Mary’s go through the morning darkness.

 It is important that we note these women were leaders within Jesus’ small band of followers. They and other women, like Joanna and Susanna, traveled throughout Israel with Jesus. Scripture says they provided financial support out of their own means (Lk. 8:3). In fact, recent scholarship based on examination of the earliest known copy of the gospel of John, suggests Mary Magdeline rivaled Cephas, aka Peter, the Rock. The name, ‘Magdeline,’ refers, not to Mary’s hometown, but is an honorific title. Mary Magedeline translates to ‘Mary the Tower.’

These independent women of means, are going to the place where their hopes were dashed, where their dreams had died, where their worst fears were realized. Where Empire had, once again, quashed human dignity and love. They will be met there with great good news of seismic proportions. Matthew’s gospel tells us stars swooned at Jesus’ birth; and rocks split at his crucifixion. Now the earth will quake as angels announce Jesus’ resurrection.

We tend to get the cart before the horse.  We put emphasis on the wrong syl-LABle. We miss the meaning of Easter when we tell this story by emphasizing Christ’s divinity and neglect the fact of Jesus’ humanity. The way to heaven is the way of Jesus who shows us that suffering through love unto a higher love is the path toward the fullness of life. “The humanity of Jesus reveals the openness of the soul to the infinite love of God. His humanity is our humanity; his divinity is our divinity as well.” (Ilia Delio, “Truly Human in a Partially Human World,” Center for Christogenesis, April 1, 2026)

The resurrection is deep calling unto deep.  Easter is the love which calls us home. It is the call to embrace and inhabit the indelible dignity God plants within you. It is to become fully human in a partially human world. The life of Jesus is not only a way to live in the present moment; it is a way into future life: “I have come,” Jesus said, “that you may have life, and have it to the full.” (Delio)

We all want the fullness of life but often it eludes us. We are constantly distracted by the false self, to use Thomas Merton’s term, the self that I think I need to be to be successful. The cross of Jesus reveals to us the difficult path of becoming truly human: facing the death of the false self, willing to forgive our enemies, and to ask forgiveness of those we have wronged, and finally, to love unto death because the God with a human face can only be realized in love. Love is only an idea, a possibility, until it is chosen and brought into a new reality. (Delio)

The early twentieth century Catholic artist and writer Caryll Houselander (1901-1954) wrote that as “Christ was in the tomb; the whole world was sown with the seed of Christ’s life…the seed of his life was hidden in darkness in order that his life should quicken in countless hearts, over and over again for all time.  His burial, which seemed to be the end, was the beginning.  It was the beginning of Christ-life in multitudes of souls.”  It was the death of death.

Jesus went to the cross to teach us how to be human in a partially human world.  In a world where a U.S. president threatens his enemies with war crimes; in a world where our neighbors are ‘disappeared;’ in a world where the routine of daily life threatens planetary life with extinction, Jesus shows us that it is precisely our fragile, human limits that define our humanity. “We fail, we do bad things, we make wrong decisions — and the tech industry promises to relieve us of these burdens. Yet it is precisely in failure that we begin anew. In the world of capitalism, we are products for consumption and algorithms for manipulation. But the core of our human identity is not appearance, usefulness, or success. It is the true self before God. This is the earth-shaking great good news. Being human is what Jesus was about, and it is what we are called to embrace.

The gospels say Jesus was not the first incarnation of divine love but the second one. The other Mary, Jesus’ mother, whom Orthodox Christians call theotokos, the God-bearer, is a symbol of the cosmos itself. She first said yes to accepting divinity into the chaos of humanity. “Divine love must be received, and receptivity requires space within. Nature does this without complaint, bending its roots toward the life of God. But humans are conflicted, tortured by an ongoing conflict between ego and freedom. To be human does not come naturally; it is a choice for love beyond measure, and such love requires absolute freedom” (Delio).

Ultimately, it was this divinely-inspired love that got Jesus into trouble. He lived into the freedom of the resurrection before he died. He refused the limits of the law that excluded people, stretched the law to include people left out, and showed us that the spirit of love is the highest law to follow. To live, authentically, according to Jesus, is to follow the compass of the heart, even when the direction goes against cultural, ecclesial, institutional, economic, or political demands.

If Mary was the first incarnation of divine love, and Jesus the second, then today we are called to be the third. When we walk the path Jesus walked — choosing love over power, vulnerability over control, forgiveness over vengeance — we do not merely imitate Christ; we become the body of Christ in the world. The divine love that was received by Mary and embodied by Jesus seeks a third dwelling place: the human person who says yes to the fullness of life, even when that yes leads through suffering.

The cross of Jesus is the symbol of this becoming. But the cross is also where God is most fully revealed — not only in the form of love but in the entropy of death itself. Creativity thrives on entropy; only when things break down does life find a way to break through. Evolution is a via dolorosa, suffering through the tragedies of existence into something higher and more wondrous. And we, by taking up this path, become part of that cosmic unfolding — the third incarnation of a love that will not stop until it fills all things.” (Delio)