how to hold a human

 

The Old Testament reading set for Holy Communion today is Genesis 9.1-13. It picks up the account of Noah after the Great Flood. These are the survivors, human and animal, of a traumatic event. The sea level had risen and flooded the Fertile Crescent along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Cradle of Humanity, from horizon to horizon: what today we would know as Kuwait and Iraq, hemmed in by the mountains of Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Syria and Jordan to the west. Every settlement washed away. But Noah and his family and their domesticated livestock survive, delivered by the god Yahweh, in an ark.

Like so many survivors who carry trauma in their bodies, and who lives with survivors’ guilt, Noah will attempt to numb his pain by drinking himself to oblivion. But Yahweh blesses Noah and his traumatized family. He informs them that the animals will be in dread of them, hardly surprising for they are traumatized too, but that they are given into the hands of Noah and his sons. They will be good for them, but food without lifeblood.

We all live downstream of the Great Flood, and no one gets through this life without experiencing trauma, whether a broad and shattering event such as natural disaster, or bereavement or living with dementia or suffering at the hands of an abuser. And it is this idea of being in someone’s hands that is significant here. For we are all given into one another’s hands, and the question God asks is, What will we do with the trauma survivors who are given into our hands as gifts?

Will we re-traumatize them with further mistreatment, as the Father gave the Son into the hands of his people and they had him tortured and executed?

Will we dehumanise them as objects of our altruism?

Or will we receive them as divine gift, as human with the dignity that is ours as those who bear the very likeness of God? Will we recognise that we, as community, are nourished by their being fully part of our community, that we are fed by them (that is, that we are fed by one another, for we are all simultaneously and paradoxically the one who receives in our hands and the one who is given into the hands of others) without bloodshed, without their life being consumed by us in some zero-sum game where there is only one winner so it had best be me?

May we receive one another in our hands, and be found worthy of the gift, by the Giver.