For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. – Hebrews 4:15

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 3, 2018): Hebrews 4

In the final Chapter of the Iliad, Homer makes this statement; “such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals, that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows.” It is not an unusual sentiment in the ancient world. Similarly, Aristotle criticizes Plato’s suggestion that humans should look at the Ideal Good or God. According to Aristotle, the gods cannot be an example for human conduct for the simple reason that the gods are gods, and gods come complete with a mode of existence that is far removed from human life.

But the author of Hebrews argues that this is not us. Homer’s description of the gods is not the common experience of the Christian. God is not some far away concept that has no connection with our reality because our God stepped down from the plain of the gods into our reality. It is the miracle that we celebrate every Christmas in the idea of the Incarnation. For me, it is a concept that is perfectly summed up by Jim Croegaert’s lyrics in “Here By the Water.”

                        I know it was stormy, I hope it was for me a learning

                        Blood on the road wasn't mine though

                        Someone that I know has walked here before.

Sometimes, I wonder if we sing those words too fast to let them impact us, that we miss the story that the author of the song was trying so desperately to tell. There is something in this life that keeps moving us forward. There is always seems to be a storm in front of us. But as we walk down the road, we notice the blood in front of us that isn’t ours. Someone with nail prints in his feet has walked this way before, marking the path for us. And so our response can only be the one that Croegaert describes in the song.

So here by the water

I’ll build an altar to praise him

Out of the stones that I’ve found here

I’ll set them down here, rough as they are

Knowing you can make them holy.

Grace has arrived. We serve a God who is forever El Roi, the God who sees me. But he doesn’t see me with this gaze of non-understanding that Homer describes. He sees me through eyes of the love of someone who has already walked the same road that I walk. This is the essential message of both our Christmas and Easter faith. We believe that God understands what it is like to be scared and cold, and he understands pain and unemployment. He no longer lives on a different plane of existence. He is lives on our plain. He isn’t a Christmas “Elf on a Shelf” who we cannot touch or interact with – instead he invites us into interaction. Things may not always go our way – but then things didn’t always go his way either, and yet he is not a God who goes and sulks when he doesn’t get what he wants. He stays engaged with us as our high priest. In deference to Plato, this is God who we can use as an example because he stepped out of his plain of existence and into ours. He was tempted and did not sin. But that does not mean that he doesn’t understand when we are tempted and sin. Someone that I know has walked here before. And because of that grace has entered the equation; it had never been there before.

Part of the Christmas Drama is the coming of the Wise Men. If you are a purist, you know that they don’t belong at the manger where we usually find them. Matthew talks about Jesus living in a house instead of a manger by this moment in time. The period of the Christmas Magi is probably somewhere between a few days after the birth of Jesus maybe up to two years later. But what seems significant is the gifts that the Magi brought. Gold was costly, and it was the possession of Kings. The gold recognized that this child was the king of the Jews. Frankincense was a perfume, most notably it was a perfume that was often burned in the incense of the priests. It was a fragrant scent intended for God, and it recognized that Jesus was divine.

But Myrrh, a bitter perfume, was used in the embalming a dead body. Myrrh was a reminder that this Jesus must die. That his lot would be one of suffering and that suffering would be the blood on the road that goes before me. He is the suffering servant of Isaiah. God has come. Jesus proves that Homer was wrong when he argued that “the gods themselves have no sorrows.” Our God is a God who knows our sorrows.

And our response is to build an altar to him out of our lives which resemble the rough stones that no one has taken the time hew and shape. It is with grace that God honors our lives, and with our lives that we honor God – and so we can live here by the water knowing that our high priest understands.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hebrews 5