Me Too

There is not a doubt in my mind that Jesus was God in the flesh. Not a doubt. In John 14, he said it himself; “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” In other words, when God looks in the mirror, he sees Jesus. Not Buddha. Not Mohammed. Not Moses. Jesus. He was, as they put it back in Nicea in 325 A.D., “very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Amen.

Here, though, is what’s hard for me to grasp. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin,”(Hebrews 4:15). I don’t doubt the “without sin” part. He could not have died for our sins had he been burdened with his own. Nor am I troubled by the “sympathize with our weaknesses” part. Stories of his empathetic nature are woven one after another through the Gospels. It’s the “tempted in every way, just as we are” part that I find almost too hopeful to believe.

I must hasten to affirm just here that I believe this passage to be as inspired and infallible as any other in the Bible. I do not doubt it intellectually. It’s a little old school, but if God said it, I believe it and that settles it. The passage isn’t what gives me pause. My own susceptibilities, proclivities and proneness to wander, however, do. I know my own heart and while it isn’t bent only on evil all the time, it is often a pretty sorry mess. Does Jesus really get what it’s like to wrestle with the demons I (and you, too, I bet) face?

The Docetists and Gnostics of the second century didn’t think so. Neither, apparently, did the writer of the Christmas classic, Away In a Manger.

The cattle are lowing

The Baby awakes.

But Little Lord Jesus

No crying He makes.

Really? Baby Jesus didn’t cry? As hard as it is for me to fully embrace an earthy Jesus, one who faced the temptations the flesh doth surely hold, the kind of spiritual tests that make your arm hairs stand up, your loins ache, your brow break out in a cold sweat, I don’t even want to think about trying to follow a Christ who lived even a foot above the scum and scuffle of a planet groaning under the weight of sin.

I need to believe that Baby Jesus bawled his eyes out, that he kept Joseph and Mary up all night. That he had ear infections and diaper rash. That when old Simeon took him in his arms in the Temple, Jesus puked up on his tunic. I need to believe that his adolescent voice cracked, that he knows what awkward feels like, that he chaffed at authority.

It may be difficult to accept that Jesus truly identifies with the virtually irresistible tug of temptation, but it is even harder to accept that he doesn’t. Because if he isn’t very human of very human, if he wasn’t made like you and me in every way, if he wasn’t tempted in every way just as we are, then he can’t say the two most merciful words one person can speak to another.

“Me too.”

Were you born in poverty with questions about who the father was? Jesus can say, “Me too.”

Are you more comfortable with the rabble than with the righteous? Do you fit in more with the failures than the faithful? Are your kind of people the sinners, not the saints? Jesus can say, “Me too.”

Are you ever tempted to use your position, power or authority for your own benefit? A shiver runs up Jesus’ spine as he remembers a cage match with the Devil in the wilderness. Then he says, “Me too.”

Some days, does it feel like you’re not just a sinner, but that you have become sin? Like your sin sticks to you like skin – that you’re rotten to the core and revolting to God, so filthy he turns away and can’t bear to look at you? Do you know what it feels like to be separated from God by sin.

Jesus lifts his hands, palms up, and you see the scars.

“Me, too,” he says.