WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?
THE CALL TO REACH OUT
TO THE DIVINE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “What Makes Us Human? The Call to Reach Out to the Divine.”

Paraphrasing today’s gospel: Go up Bestgate Road or down Bestgate Road and you’ll come to a light at Ridgley and Bestgate. Turn there and go down about 150 yards and then turn into St. John Neumann’s complex. Park and come into church – and you’ll find a large room furnished and ready for worship.

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?

The other day on All Things Considered, a program on NPR radio, Jacki Lyden interviewed a Harvard Anthropologist named Richard Wrangham. He has a new book coming out entitled, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.”

That’s his thesis – eating raw meat can take an enormous amount of time, so cooking our meat sets us apart from the beasts. It’s the difference between 8 hours and 1 hour. Cooked food is easier to digest. Cooking also forced people to protect the food – which Richard Wrangham holds became the job of the males – the stronger ones – while the females did the cooking. He says this started some 1.8 million years ago and established roles amongst males and females.

It’s a theory. Others would say what makes us human is our ability to make advanced tools, to stand tall, to contemplate, to feel, to think, to be self aware, to develop a morality – as well as freedom – to collaborate with others – to develop music, humor, art.

Lower animals use tools and sing – the morning birds and the crickets of night. They feel loss and hurt – but humans do all this much deeper. We have a bigger brain – and we are a lot more complex.

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s readings bring out another thing that makes us human: building places so we can worship and reach out to the divine.

I’ll have to look at the movie, “Planet of the Apes” again, to see if they do any worshipping. I don’t think so.

In today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus, Moses has a God experience and comes down the mountain and builds an altar with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel. They offer up holocausts – animals – they have slain and then cooked. They made offerings to God and put half the blood in bowls and the other half he splashed on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it aloud and the people said, “All that the Lord has said we will heed and do.” Then he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.”

That’s liturgy. That’s worship. That’s an attempt to reach God so God can help us.

Humans do this kind of stuff – primitive as well as advanced peoples.

We have to reflect upon these scenes in order for us to understand ourselves as humans, as Jews as well as being Christians.

In today’s second reading from The Letter to the Hebrews we hear more about worship – coming here to this sanctuary, sprinkling blood, and experiencing a new covenant – a new stage from our roots in Judaism.

In today’s gospel from Mark, we have Jesus giving directions on how to set up the upper room – so Jesus can celebrate the new Covenant Meal – with and for us. He meets to eat with his 12 apostles – his 12 pillars – at a table.

As we heard in today’s gospel and at every Mass, Jesus took bread and wine, and said this is my body and this is my blood. Then singing a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives.

To be human is to worship – to build places of worship – and if you search the world, there are places of worship – as well as ruins of temples everywhere – signs of what human beings did to reach the Divine – a power beyond themselves.

THE SOURCE

I remember reading James Michener’s book, “The Source”. It was close to 700 pages.

There is a scene in it where a woman planted a whole field of wheat or some crop. Humans were moving from just being hunters and gatherers to becoming farmers.

She almost has this whole field partly finished – planted – and she looks up and sees storm clouds headed her way. She has in her garments a lot of seeds for more planting and she instinctively yells out to the power in the storm. “Here take these hard earned seed that I picked and I sacrifice them if you save my field!” And she throws the seeds toward the storm clouds and the storm moves away in another direction.

James Michener is imagining what primitive people did in their search to control life and suffering.

He says that’s what’s behind all the sacrifices people make to try to get God to do good stuff for us, to protect us, to save us.

If we look at our lives, we do these same primitive things as well – to try to tell God to do what we want.

Worship makes us human. Building altars make us human. Prayer makes us human.

When someone in the family gets sick, we get to church. We get to God. We get praying. To be human is to pray.

I remember coming here to St. John Neumann for the 12:10 Mass one weekday and a family were just coming out of their car and they asked me if the church is open and if they could go in and pray. I said, “Great. Is everything okay?” “No,” they answered, “our mom is quite sick and we said, ‘We better go to church and pray.’”

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?

What makes us human?

We can go to the zoo or watch Animal Planet on television – and see how animals do things that seem human. To some people, their cat or dog is their best friend.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, deals with all this: there is Adam with all those animals – but he can’t find a suitable partner – till Eve is formed.

Dogs and cats – domesticated animals – are neat – and serve us – but we are called to evolve towards God – in whose image and likeness we are made – to be in communion with God.

I would posit that relationships with each other as well as with God are what make us the most human.

CONCLUSION: EATING TOGETHER

And one key human moment is eating together

Today is the feast of Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ. The Mass is basically a meal – a sacrificial meal – the Passover Meal and we want troubles to pass over our families and our homes.

The night before Jesus died he had a last meal, a last supper, with his disciples.

On the table would be the cooked Pascal Lamb – along with bread and wine. He chose bread and wine and said he was the Pascal Lamb that takes away the sins of the world. Take and eat. Take and eat.

This meal – this Jesus – makes us fully human – fully divine.

Take and eat. Take and eat.