Open to the search bar on the internet and type in the question: “What does it mean to be human?” and one of the top listings is the Smithsonian invitation to become involved in “The Human Origins Initiative.” If you submit a response it may be featured on the webpage. http://humanorigins.si.edu/about/become-involved or in the exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History.
Other listings begin with the biological response – to be identified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens; still others turn to answer from the three angles of evolution, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Today, we see two other answers that are much more defining and easier to access.
The first answer has us focusing on the diagonal sash filled with Boy Scout badges, some are required to advance through the ranks to the highest honor of Eagle Scout, with a minimum of 22 specific badges needing to be earned from a total of over 135 covering 120 different areas of knowledge and skills.
Look at a Boy Scout’s rank – seen in a patch on the left pocket – and advancements through earned badges displayed on a diagonal sash, and see a Boy Scout’s answer to: “What does it mean to be human?”
is: to live by the knowledge and the experience each of the badges represents.
This makes me think of the story my husband, a Wood Badge earning Scout leader with 25 years in Scouting tells about a camp out. scout was assigned to cut and gather wood for the fire and get it started to cook the evening meal. He didn’t like that assignment and in protest climbed up a tree and sat out on a branch. An adult leader climbed up after him with saw in hand, ordered him to come down, or he’d cut off the limb.
“Go ahead,” said the scout, “I’m not coming down.” Off came the limb and down came the boy.
Before you have thoughts of bringing charges, it was a safe drop and the boy’s parents, often exasperated by their son’s stubbornness, appreciated the lesson.
Several years later all of them chuckled as they wondered if that “flight” was what influenced the scout to join the Air Force as well as the merit badge he went on to earn…and applied to living as a very responsible human being.
There is a second way that relates to many of the Boy Scout badges, but can, and really should be, earned by everyone.
This “Being Human Merit Badge,” like the badges in Scouting, could be represented in a patch that shows a small shallow clay bowl, filled with oil, and a wick that hangs over the side which may be pinched to cradle it.
As in Scouting, there are requirements to earn that badge, which we heard Jesus name in one of His teaching moments: You are the light of the world. and then He gave what is both an example and an incentive: A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
The reminder that this badge is meant to be visible for all to see, all the time, and not like that shell-like lamp Jesus’ first listeners used in the typical one-room homes in Jerusalem, with only one circular window that was not more than eighteen inches across.
In that dark room a lamp was essential, but the wick floating in the oil in the clay bowl was not easy to light; there were no matches, and so, the wick was kept burning , and when the family was sleeping or was away,
an earthen bushel container was placed over the lamp so that nothing would catch on fire. When the family was at home and awake, the lamp was placed high on a stand to shine its light into all the corners of the room.
The explanation that brings meaning to Jesus’ charge: No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Notice want is implied: the light must come from a source; we don’t make it, we can only receive it.
And so, the “Being Human Merit Badge” invites a tracing of the word “light” as it appears in the Bible, beginning on the first page where God speaks and orders, “Let there be light!” on into the hymnbook/prayer book of the Hebrew people, called the Book of Psalms, where God is confessed to be a human’s guiding “light and salvation,” a lamp to show the way to knowledge and safety and peace, and the light that shines in the face of Jesus.
THE Light every human is made to receive, not by earning, but by accepting as a flame meant to shine forth on our lampstand-like life, and bring to light all that God has made, beginning with us human beings.
For forty years a small village in Illinois placed two illuminated crosses on their water tower during the Christmas season, until the town council was threatened with a legal suit, based on the separation of church and state. When officials begrudgingly took them down, the citizens decided to put illuminated crosses, nativity stars, and manger scenes on their lawns that could be seen from the interstate freeway and a hundred miles away. They decided to move the lights from the town’s water tower to their own property.
The question is, “When they did that, did they see that it was not crosses on a water tower, or illuminated decorations on their lawns, but they themselves were meant to be a lamp stand created to reflect the light of the life of Jesus ?” – which prompted a street person when attending a retreat where a prominent New York City minister preached, to pray, “Now blot him out, Lord, that we may see only Jesus!”
Just what our world needs now! People who receive the flame of Christ’s life as light raised to shine into the darkness within us and around us and illuminate all that is good in God’s creation.
The “Being Human Merit Badge” which moves us to praise God and then plea:
“This little light of mine, let it shine, let it shine” –
shine on You, O God, and not me! Amen.