"only Human"

“Only Human”

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

How many of you watched the Bengals and the Bills game on Monday Night Football this past week?

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin had a cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field in the first quarter after a violent hit.

The game was stopped, as it should have.

Players were traumatized by what they saw as paramedics and other medical personnel gave him CPR to restart his heart.

A number of them openly wept; others were sobbing into towels.

The Bills team formed a circle around Hamlin; several held hands and prayed.

A writer for USA Today wrote the following day that sometimes we “forget that NFL players are human…there are times when we forget their humanity and think of them as drones with numbers on their backs.”

This was an interesting perspective.

And watching grown men—big and tough grown men--bawling on National TV is undoubtedly an eye-opener.

We sometimes forget that all people are just human, like ourselves.

This could apply to people engaged in wars in far-off countries or migrants trying to get into our country.

They are mothers, brothers, fathers, and caregivers.

And it could also apply to Christians.

Sometimes, we expect those who follow Christ to be super-human.

Or maybe we expect this from ourselves, and if we don’t live up to it, we might question our faith or whether or not we are saved.

But, one of the big puzzles in life is to learn to accept and perhaps even appreciate our idiosyncrasies, especially those of others.

This doesn’t mean we revel in self-destructive behavior or things that hurt ourselves or others.

It means that as Christians, as people who are loved by God and love God and are seeking to follow Christ, we accept that we all have things that remind us and others that we are simply human, and therefore, we must trust in God completely for all we are and all we have.

There is a story about a man who served as the British Ambassador to the United States when the Cold War began.

And as Ambassador, he was often in touch, daily, with the US President and the Prime Minister on the other side of the Atlantic.

He often needed to get urgent, essential, and top-secret messages back and forth between Washington and London.

And at this time, there were no cell phones, and it was far too risky to make telephone calls because the line was almost always bugged.

So, when something was confidential, wholly and utterly top secret, and desperately urgent, he would put the message in an ordinary envelope and send it through the regular mail.

And that is how the important message was delivered, in a plain envelope.

(pause)

In our Scripture Lesson for this morning, Paul says that God has decided to put the most urgent and essential message of all time—the greatest treasure in the world—the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in “jars of clay.”

Clay jars were used to carry water and other goods during Paul’s day.

And clay is a common substance that is available almost everywhere, and potters mastered the art of forming clay jars on their pottery wheels.

While some clay jars were beautifully decorated, most were humble vessels.

But whether they were plain or beautiful, they had a life-giving function—gathering, preserving, and transporting water to thirsty people.

Clay jars are also fragile—breaking if dropped or hit by a stone.

Not many clay jars survived a person’s lifetime—and even fewer survived to be passed down through several generations.

And Paul uses the metaphor of jars of clay to represent us Christians who carry God’s message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus—that is the treasure!!!

I think jars of clay are a good metaphor for our brief lives.

We have a few decades to proclaim the Gospel at best.

I also love this metaphor of clay jars because it reminds me of my calling to proclaim the Gospel, but I am also conscious of my inadequacy to do just that.

But notice again what Paul writes in verse 7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

Why is this important?

Well, for one thing, it gives us a good reason for humility.

And humility is absolutely essential for anyone of us who seek to be vessels who carry the message of God’s love to other people who are thirsting to hear and see it.

When we forget that Christianity is not about us, is not about our opinions, is not about our rights and privileges—that is when we start to veer off track and cause the Gospel—which is really no Gospel at all—to look like a bad thing to the rest of society, like a judgmental and “I’m better than you” thing.