Who is Like Unto God?

One week ago today, I stood in the Wallace Wade football stadium surrounded by almost 5,000 other Duke students.  After being called “intellectually sparkling” and “completely cool” by the Dean of Trinity School of Arts and Sciences in a parting blow in the competition between Trinity and the Pratt School of Engineering, President Brodhead pronounced the ceremonial words that officially designated me a graduate of Duke University. After a fleeting question as to why I hadn’t listed philosophy as my first major instead of economics—I could have had a BA degree rather than one that’s just BS—I realized that I was officially done with Duke.  Ready or not, my undergraduate career was over and it was time to embark on a new adventure at law school.  Of course, first there’s the summer after undergrad—a nostalgic time when we drudge up memories and piece them together into “life lessons” we use to justify the fact that all that knowledge we paid for night after night in the library is rapidly receding from our heads.  This is the first of those nostalgic moments.

A traditional picture of St. Michael defeating the Serpent.

When I received the sacrament of Reconciliation my Junior year in High School, most Catholics take on the name of a saint as a Confirmation name.  Because “Shane” is notably absent from the list of the canonized, I chose “Michael,” after St. Michael the Archangel.  St. Michael is best known as the general of the heavenly host—foretold in Revelation to defeat Satan and throw him into the fiery lake. That I chose a fighter comes as no surprise—fighting comes so much more naturally to me than Benedictine contemplation (as the students in my House Course who had to try to convince me to join the Benedictine order rapidly discovered).  I spent this past year fighting DSG in an attempt to allow religious student groups the freedom to determine their own organizational structure, excessive alcohol use in my Fraternity, and that “Catholic” and “LGBT” are not contradictory on the Blue Devils United blog.  Perhaps I should have taken St. Jude as my confirmation name.

However, a lecture I received on my last full day as a Duke undergrad made me reconsider what it means to have Michael as my namesake.  The outgoing Dean of the Chapel, Samuel Wells, gave this sermon at the Baccalaureate service for graduating Dukies.  I highly recommend that every single person stops reading this blog and go listen to it; you will get so much more out of Dean Wells than anything I could possibly write.

His sermon made me take another look at my Confirmation name.  See, “Michael” means something very particular—“Who is like unto God?”  For all the fact that he is the leader of the army of God himself—actually tasked with defeating evil—his name is not a holy warrior’s name. There is no “The Great” attached to it that is the signatory title of conquerors (eg Alexander, Saladin, Catherine).  Instead, he is, at his very essence, humility.  “Who is like unto God?”

I can hear your reaction now, “Christian humility?  How innovative!  How world-changing! $200,000 and a guy in a fancy red robe and you tell us that Christians are supposed to be humble?  We’ve never heard that one before.”  Yes, we Christians bandy around the term “humility” quite liberally, but in practice it often means demurring when someone complements you.  I’m guilty of this; I’ll admit I am horrible at taking complements. However, Dean Wells’ sermon presents another way to look at humility: rather than trying to solve others’ problems, we should be present with them through their problems.  In this Dean Wells introduced an alternative Christian—or even human—vocation that is countercultural to the one that we are taught to internalize at school.  Directly after Dean Wells spoke, President Brodhead rose and gave the Presidential Commissioning to the graduating class:  essentially, “we gave you the tools, now fix the world.”

Being with people may not seem like humility at first.  But, consider what it means to “be present with another.” Well first, you must first be.  When we merely “be,” we are as God sees us—stripped of our resumes, grades, or any other past accomplishments.  God said, “I am who I am,” not, “I am what I do.”  But that’s really scary to us, because to be who we are is to be broken—fallen.  God sees me as I actually am, and sometimes that’s not a Shane I like to be reminded of.

Next, you must be present.  Not in that embarrassing moment when you went up to hug that person on the quad you swore was someone else (should have listened to Matthew 5:34).  Not in that test you have in three days.  Not three dorms over where your latest crush is.  You simply trust in God, and do as do the birds in the sky and the wild flowers in the field.

Finally, you must do all of this with another.  Now, if you’re anything like me, being truly present with myself is hard enough. Remember the lack of Benedictine contemplation?  To let someone see my entire self: shame and fears along with the joy, to let them see how utterly dependent I am on God (while stubbornly trying not to be), is truly a humbling experience.  It makes hollow even the deepest lies we refuse to let go of ourselves and as the truth sets us free, we participate in the Body of Christ.  For even our deepest secret is not our own—“So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another ( Romans 12:5 ).

But isn’t the above so antithetical to the standard Duke student?  To the effortless perfection we’re supposed to exemplify?  I think back to my Duke experience, and so much of it was finding a problem (/position), setting out to solve it (/applying for the position), and finally duly noting it on my resume, of course glossing over the not-quite-so-successful parts.  However, what were the truly powerful moments? Were they the exhilarations of triumph, when I won a fight? When I got the job?  Or was it when I stopped trying to “fix” my friends’ problem, descended to Earth, and spent time truly with them—in communion with them? 

Few of us will ever have a divine intervention where St. Michael appears wreathed in heavenly light, and, with his flaming sword laws low our clearly Hell-sent competitor (as nice as that might seem in my all-too-frequent less-holy moments).   In fact, most of us will never experience St. Michael in his vocation as heavenly general at all.  But each of us will meet St. Michael.  Perhaps as is fitting for a commander of armies, St. Michael is also the angel of death.  He will be with us as we leave behind all of the comforts we find in this world—friends, loved ones, Diet Coke—as we go on to the next.  In that moment, he can’t protect us anymore, or fix our problems—our battle will be over and our names either in the Book of Life, or not.  But he will be with us as we go face to face with Christ: God’s present to the end.

Take a moment and think about this, the general of God’s army—an archangel whose responsibilities include carrying out the final destruction of evil—will take time to be present with each one of us before we face judgment.  I can’t even find time for family when my greatest battle is a paper for the next day.  I only hope that I will live up to my confirmation namesake, and, even as I fight the battles that are no doubt in my future, remember that it is love that saves, and it is only in å gift of self that that we humans truly find ourselves. 

A gift of self that can only be truly genuine when it is completed with the cry, “who is like unto God?”