Not far from the entrance to the reconstructed Library of Celsus in ancient Ephesus, Türkiye, there is an inscription on a stone slab. It’s etched in ancient Greek, a language I never learned in divinity school and wouldn’t remember now even if I had. What was written is less important to me than how it was written.
Our guide, Ekin, who had an impeccable handlebar mustache, pointed out the engraved slab, noting how “incredibly human” it was. The precision with which the letters were carved is undoubtedly impressive.
They were perfectly uniform and spaced until the message outgrew its intended stone slab. The letters become shorter and thinner as they approach the bottom.
In a world with no whiteout, eraser or blinking cursor, it’s the best that could be done. It was, as Ekin told us, incredibly human.
An archeological dig site, once home to many wealthy Ephesians, is located in front of the Library of Celsus. The mosaic tile and intricate wall paintings are breathtaking, and their survival for more than two thousand years is even more remarkable.
Ekin allowed us to take in everything and “ooh and ahh” at its history and beauty. Then, he drew our attention to a dwelling in the middle of the archaeological site.
If you looked closely enough, you could see what appeared to be soot on the stone walls. A fire had engulfed the home thousands of years ago.Because Ekin was not only an excellent guide but also a gifted archaeologist who had helped excavate portions of the site, he had the inside scoop.
When the burned house was first excavated, archeologists found a trail of coins from the back room to the front door. According to Ekin, this was an “incredibly human” finding.
What would a sensible person do when his home was burning? Of course, he would grab as many coins as he could carry while escaping the flames, dropping the ones that overflowed his hands as he ran. Once again, incredibly human.
As part of the Roman Empire, all the coins in Ephesus would have been imprinted with the emperor’s face. Like other ancient rulers, Roman emperors were customarily worshipped as gods, often while they were still living. Because of the emperor’s earthly power, it would have been easy, if not comforting, to believe he was equal to a god.
But there’s a fatal flaw when an imperial ruler who is worshipped as a god–or worse, believes they are one–forgets they are merely human. When this occurs, it is difficult, if not impossible, to be incredibly humane, marked by compassion, sympathy or consideration for humans or animals.
Those of us trying to live a life faithfully modeled after Jesus, that wandering Jew from Palestine, often forget or willingly ignore his humanity and his humaneness. We aren’t alone in this struggle. The church has wrestled with understanding Jesus as both fully human and fully God since its earliest days.
An early Christian controversy called Docetism claimed Jesus only appeared to be human, but wasn’t. According to Docetism, Jesus was purely divine and his body was just an illusion.
Centuries later, Arianism emerged, arguing that Jesus was created by God but wasn’t fully divine. Then came Nestorianism, which tried to resolve those tensions by claiming Jesus Christ had two distinct natures, one human and one divine, rather than coexisting.
It’s easier to worship a disembodied god than to follow one who became human for love’s sake. A god who is also human does incredibly human, humane and inconvenient things like showing compassion for folks with sick children (Matthew 17), sympathy for the stranger (Matthew 25), and consideration for the ways we treat and interact with one another (Luke 6).
A god who becomes human doesn’t just invite us to follow. He expects it.
Remarkably, while Jesus never demanded worship in scripture, more than twenty-one times, he called people to follow. If only Jesus weren’t so incredibly human.
Gregory of Nazianzus, the archbishop of Constantinople in the late 4th Century, is remembered as the “Trinitarian theologian.” He refused to separate Jesus’s humanity from his divinity, saying, “That which has not been assumed has not been healed.”
In other words, if we are not joined with Jesus in every part of our humanity, we are not saved. And if there is ever a time we need saving, it’s now.
I’ve led groups to UNESCO World Heritage sites and ancient world wonders. But it’s the incredibly human pieces that stick with me long after the trip is over–things like misjudged font sizes, coins that slip through fingers as a person runs to safety, and errant tile placement.
These are reminders that the buildings, businesses and bureaucracies we build may one day be seen on a group tour or read about in guidebooks. More likely, they won’t.
Our Jewish siblings have a saying in times of death and grief: May their memory be a blessing. This isn’t an effort to sugarcoat the reality of death or disregard the mistakes and tragedies of the deceased’s life. It is a recognition of the good, the bad, and all the in-betweens. It is an expression that memory will be a blessing in the midst of the realized humanity of it all.
Our modern world changes and moves much more quickly than the ancient world. Our memories are episodic and hyper-focused on sound bytes and highlight reels. We can edit, augment and generate a version of ourselves and our preferred reality that erases mistakes and flagrant contempt as we create God in our preferred image.
But, we must be honest with ourselves. Is all that worth losing our humanity over?
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Tori Hastings is the Associate Pastor at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
