Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday June 7, 2026 – 2nd Sunday After Pentecost
Scripture Reading: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
What does it mean to be human? What
makes us human? How are we different
than, say, a robot powered by AI? These
are some of the existential questions that I like to ponder, but they are also
questions that have been in the front of my brain in the past week or so.
What makes us human, and what defines our worth as humans?
If you were to listen to politicians, you might get the impression that it is
paying taxes that makes us human, that makes us matter. Politicians of every party like to refer to
us as “taxpayers.” “Elect us, and we’ll
make the standard of living better for all taxpayers.” “Canadian taxpayers have been telling me that
these are the issues that are important to them.” “Our taxpayers deserve better.”
That doesn’t work for me though. What
about people who don’t pay taxes, either because they are too young, or who are
unemployed, or who are underemployed? Do
they not count?
Capitalism gives us another option for defining worth or human-ness. Under the capitalist-consumerist system that
we live in, the more that we spend, the more worthy we are as humans. Loyalty points or loyalty status rewards
those who buy more. YouTube and TikTok
videos attempt to make us jealous of the lifestyles of the creators, and you
too can have that lifestyle if only you buy these products that we are
promoting. Give us your email address so
that we can send you opportunities to spend more. I shop, therefore I am.
But do we really want to be defined by our possessions, by what we buy, by what
we spend? To me, consumerism makes us
less human, not more, because we are defining ourselves not by our human-ness
but by our bank account and our credit card.
Social media tells us yet another story – who we are is what we post. The pictures and videos that show the
highlights of our lives, passed through the filter of our phones; the memes and
articles we choose to share; who we follow and who follows us – Social media
tells us that this is who we are as we live out our lives online.
But am I more than what I post? It’s a
bit of a joke, but like all jokes it contains a kernel of truth – if something
hasn’t been shared on Facebook, has it really happened at all?
What does it mean to be human? How do we
define our worth as humans?
I heard a beautiful interview this week on CBC radio with actress and comedian
Andrea Martin, and she told a story about taking her 10-year-old granddaughter
to meet an actor-friend. She told her
granddaughter that she should prepare some questions that she wanted to ask the
actor, and no, they couldn’t all be about the time that this actor had worked
with Leonardo DiCaprio! They had a
lovely dinner in a restaurant together, and her granddaughter asked insightful
questions, and listened to the answers, and asked follow-up questions.
And when they got on the subway to go home after the dinner, Andrea Martin
looked around the subway car, and every single person on the car, except she
and her granddaughter, every person was staring down at a cell phone. She told her granddaughter: you want to grow up to be the person that you
were at the dinner table this evening, not like the other people on this
subway.
It was the connection with another human that made her granddaughter more human
that evening.
In the story from the gospel of Matthew that we heard this morning, we have
three beautiful stories of Jesus helping people to become more human.
The third of the stories is probably the most obvious. A young girl is raised back to life. She goes from being a former-human to being
human-once-again. Jesus gives her the
gift of breath, the gift of a heartbeat, and she is restored to her family.
The story that comes before that one – the story of a woman who was healed
after 12 years of hemorrhaging – there are a couple of layers of restored
humanity here. There is the physical
healing that happens – her human body is made more whole. But I think that maybe the more important
healing that happens, the healing that may not be obvious from the story, is
that she is restored to her community.
You see, for 12 years this woman would have been an outcast from her
people. The hemorrhage that she was
suffering from would have made her ritually unclean, and because the bleeding
was ongoing, there was nothing that could make her ritually clean again. And this ritual uncleanness would have meant
that no one could be near her, no one could touch her, otherwise they would be
made ritually unclean too. For 12 years,
this unnamed woman hasn’t been fully human, because she hasn’t been able to be
in relationship with other humans. And I
believe that part of what makes us human, like for Andrea Martin’s
granddaughter, is our connection with other humans.
The first story in that reading from Matthew was the story of Jesus calling the
tax collector named Matthew. I think
that there might be a couple of layers of becoming more fully human in this
story too.
First of all, as you may have heard me or other preachers say in the past, tax
collectors weren’t exactly beloved in the time and place of Jesus. They were colluding with the oppressive Roman
Empire, collecting money from their neighbours, sometimes like squeezing blood
from a stone. And so they generally
didn’t have very robust social lives, rejected by their family members and
neighbours for what they chose to do.
And by choosing to dine with Matthew, Jesus is restoring Matthew to the
humanity of community and relationship.
Matthew is no longer alone.
But I think that there is another layer to Matthew’s restored humanity. As a tax collector, like the politicians I
mentioned a couple of minutes ago, Matthew has learned to value people based
only on what they give. A rich man who
can pay more taxes is more valuable than a poor widow who has to be squeezed to
get just the smallest coin.
Jesus can see this dehumanizing attitude in Matthew, and chooses to call him
anyways. “Follow me, and I will show you
a different way.” Matthew gets up and
follows Jesus, and he is going to see a different way of being human – a way
where the first are last and the last are first, a way where love is the most
important value of all, a way of relationship and community and care.
So here we have three stories of people that Jesus healed so that they could be
more human, healed in the places where relationships and community and love had
been broken.
A couple of weeks ago, Pope Leo released his first encyclical since he was
chosen to be pope a year ago. You are
excused if you missed this news, but it was all over my social media feeds in
the past couple of weeks, and was a hot topic of conversation when I was in
class in Toronto. An encyclical is a
circulating letter that popes write – not addressed to any one person, but
addressed to the church as a whole, teaching about how Roman Catholic doctrine
can be interpreted in the context of the time in which it is written.
And I think that this encyclical has a great deal of wisdom, even for those of
us who aren’t Roman Catholic. It is
titled “Magnifica Humanitas” – I don’t speak Latin, but I’m told that
this translates as “Magnificent Humanity” – with a subtitle, “On Safeguarding
the Human Person in the time of Artificial Intelligence.”
He opens by talking about the context of today, and the role of
technology. He acknowledges all of the
good that technology has brought to the world, improving the living conditions
for so many. Remember that even something as simple as a shovel was new
technology once upon a time! Technology
is value-neutral – in its own, it isn’t evil.
But then he goes on to talk about the harm that technology has caused
when the user doesn’t intend it for the good.
He sets out his argument in the very opening paragraph:
Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.
And then towards the end of his introduction, Pope Leo comes to the point that
connects with the stories we read today:
In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. True progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.
What does it mean to be human? What
makes us different than a robot powered by Artificial So-Called Intelligence?
AI can never be human. AI can never be
in a genuine reciprocal relationship. AI
can never feel love. AI can never know
God or be known by God. But we can.
What makes us human? I believe that it
is our ability to create, as we are made in the image of the Creator. We create music, we create art, we create a
meal to share with a friend, we create gardens, we create poetry and novels and
essays, we create quilts and blankets and buildings.
What makes us human? I believe that it
is our ability to love; to love one another and Jesus loves us; to love God, to
love all of our neighbours, to love all of creation on God’s behalf.
What makes us human? I believe that it
is because we are guided and transformed by the Holy Spirit, transformed more
and more into the Body of Christ, the literal presence of Christ in this time
and in this place.
You are loved by God – loved deeply in the essence of your human-ness. God
wants you to be as human as you can possibly be – loving and connecting with
other people, living in community, and in relationship with the people in your
lives, and always finding ways to help other people be more fully human
too. Just as Jesus reached out to the
three people in today’s story, Jesus is reaching out to you too, longing to
restore you to your full humanity.
And may it be so. Amen.
Image Credit: ThaQeLa on flickr
Used with Permission
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