Day Sixteen: Hypostatic Union, Part One

“What does it mean to be ‘fully human’”? I ask my students at the beginning of class. They have a minute to respond, but I already know what over half of them will say. They will likely say thinks like “To be fully human is to make mistakes”, or “to be fully human is to be selfish” or “to be fully human is to suffer and die”. My favorite are my more morbid and despondent students. I make a note of them and email the counselor later. I listen to their murmurs as they respond to this question, even though they are not supposed to speak, and occasionally I am surprised by a profound answer. But I wait until after we pray for them to share.

Trinitarian Abbey in Adare, Ireland. As God, Jesus could certainly have done without the Crucifixion. As human, He definitely was tempted to do so. But to be "fully human" may have more to do with letting go of our temptation or fixation on comfort, pleasure, power, honor, etc... The Crucifixion may be a sign of what it means to be "fully human". (photo P. Smith)

I call on students to read verses from Luke 4:1-13. Most of my students are somewhat familiar with the temptation of Jesus, but almost no one has ever read it. They haven’t even heard it at Church. Every year the number of students I have whose parents never took them to Church goes up. Unfortunately, it falls to their religion teacher to introduce them to Scripture. It’s not ideal, but it is where we are now. As we read, they witness Jesus being tempted in the desert. I challenge the to use their imagination to “see” and “hear” and even “feel” that temptation.

To be fully human, many of my students will argue, is to suffer temptation and even to sin. In class today my students will encounter the term Hypostatic Union, but the main point I want them to get from the lesson is that Jesus is not only fully human…He is the epitome of what it means to be “fully human”. So as we read the passage, I point out that, yes, it is human to be tempted, but it is “fully human” to NOT surrender to that temptation. There is more to this theology, but I hold off. I want them to actually take notes on this concept later.