Who and Whose

Remembering we are made in the image and likeness of God

11/14/2018

Luke 17:11-19 As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."

I have a priest-friend, Fr. Warren Harvey, who has a penchant for saying: “Never forget who you are, and whose you are.” Not only is that a very catchy saying, it is also a very profoundly true saying, and the two elements – who and whose – are closely connected to each other, and shed light on each other. Who we are are human persons endowed with intelligence and freedom, while whose we are indicates we are children of God, created in God’s image and likeness. We are not only the final product of the long, slow process of evolution, where we climbed out of the muck and mire of the primeval matter to stand erect and rule the world and reach out to the stars. But we are also given all our greatness by the hand of God, who fashioned the first man and woman out of the dust of the earth, but also bestowed his own breath – in Hebrew ruah – his spirit, in us. As a result, we achieve nothing without him, we belong utterly to him as a baby belongs utterly to the mother while in her womb. We must strive every day to recall not only who we are, but also whose we are. Both components are critical for us to find peace and joy.

The French philosopher, Etienne Gilson, suggested that the fault of the first sin, and indeed every subsequent sin ever committed, has this failure to remember who we are and whose we are at its core. He wrote in densely philosophical language, “Thus the radical contingence of the finite being (that’s me and you) brings it into absolute dependence on necessary Being (that’s God), to Whom all must be principally referred as to its Source…” He continues, and here’s the take-home message: “If we forget this the original transgression [of Adam and Eve] is re-enacted in ourselves, or rather it is just because its effects continue that we forget it so easily” (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 129). That is an extremely elaborate way of saying the same thing Fr. Harvey said: “Never forget who you are and whose you are.” In a sense, that forgetfulness was at the root of Adam and Eve’s sin, and that same amnesia belies all of our sins. We forget whose we are; and that even our every breath comes from the divine lungs, like a first responder giving a dying man CPR.

In the gospel today, ten lepers are cleansed by Jesus. But only one of them returns to give thanks and to glorify God. It seems remarkable that the other nine should so soon forget the source of their blessing, namely, Jesus, the Son of God. But then again maybe it should not surprise us that so many forget who they are and whose they are. Could that proportion of one to nine be the approximate number of those who choose to remember the Source of all blessings, and those who foolishly forget? And notice it is a “sin of omission” – they failed to do something, they did not remember. The other nine did not kill anyone, they did not rob a bank, they did not lie or cheat. They simply forgot who they were and whose they were. That forgetfulness lies at the root of all human sin and frailty.

I believe that modern-day atheism is a collective and coerced amnesia that is being inflicted on our society. Slowly but very systematically, God is being removed from the public square and from the public dialogue, and being relegated to the closet and to an after-thought. Now, when we pray in public, what do we do? We observe a moment of silence, we stare into a void, where no one is listening and no one is answering. Radical atheists like Richard Dawkins argues in his book The God Delusion that religion is to blame for humanity’s greatest miseries: wars, oppression, racism, genocide. I know that some of this movement is well-intentioned and there is some truth to the arguments of the atheists. But the bottom line is that we are forgetting who we are precisely because we are ignoring whose we are.

If we are not the children of God, whose children will we be? Like the ugly duckling in the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, we will go around asking aimlessly, “Are you my mother? Are you my mother? Are you my mother?” That is, until we find our way home to God, and realize we are made in his image and likeness, and far more splendid than even a beautiful, white swan.

Praised be Jesus Christ!