As I tried to get my thoughts in order for what I wanted to write, I was scrolling through my social media page, a process that took quite awhile, since I have admittedly been avoiding it, on the whole, over the past few months. While this is perhaps not the most effective way of gathering ones thoughts for writing, I did happen upon a post that showed a picture of the planet Mercury with the caption “This is going to be intense. Mercury is about to go into retrograde.”
I admit that I don’t know what that really means nor do I have any plans to figure it out, but it reminded me of that week, way back in March, when everyone was talking about the full moon that was going to occur on Friday the 13th. Popular opinion was that we should all steel ourselves for the wild week that was coming. Little did we know how the weeks, now months, following that event would look. Pandemics, murder hornets, protests, and riots have fundamentally changed how our lives will likely look going forward. As the month of June has progressed, however, our area has reached the second phase of a three-phase re-opening plan, and life is starting to feel a little more like “normal” again.
As Murphy (of the infamous “Murphy’s Law) would have it, my family has now found themselves in the midst of a season of multiple trips to the emergency room, along with all the follow up appointments that go with the things that led to those trips. We tend to be fairly healthy, on the whole, but it seems that once one person ends up in the ER, more will inevitably follow. It started with a mild concussion for my husband at the end of May, followed by a feral cat attacking my youngest son (which necessitated stitches and multiple follow up visits to get the care he needed), and then, on our first overnight trip away from home since February, my oldest son fell a distance from a play structure and fully broke a bone in his arm.
Anyone who has taken a child to the ER knows that it can be a difficult experience. The pain and discomfort they are feeling, the new and different (and often frightening, for them) surroundings can make for a very upset kiddo, and when you add chronic anxiety to the mix, it becomes a very big job just to try to help them stay calm. As my son with the broken arm and I waited for the doctor to come see us, I debated about how much information to give him about the possibilities. I wasn’t convinced it was broken at that point, but it was clear something was wrong. He went for X-rays, and when the doctor came with the results, she informed me that it was, indeed, broken, and that it would have to be “set,” as the bone was out of place.
Of course, this information set off a stream of tears and emotion for my poor son, and I knew we were in for a rough ride. Through the next hour of getting ready for the procedure, leads were attached to him to monitor him throughout the sedation, and even those proved to be very upsetting. He saw a pair of scissors hanging from the side of a cabinet, and he began to cry because he thought they were going to use them ON him. It about broke my poor mama heart to see him so distressed, and I tried my best to alleviate his fears, and to make sure the hospital staff and I were all communicating with him so that he felt like he knew what was going on instead of waiting for the next “surprise.”
As we began to need to tell him more and more about what was happening to him, I noticed something. All of the adults in the room were reassuring him by telling him that they, too, had been through the various elements of the treatment he was receiving, letting him know that not only had they survived it, but that it had helped them to heal and feel better. Their efforts to comfort and reassure him were comforting to ME, as well.
In the midst of the upset and difficulty I felt as I watched my child endure treatments that caused pain and scared him, I was reminded by the staff’s reassurance, empathy, and understanding that this support was a picture of what Christ has become to us as our new High Priest.
Sympathizing High Priest
Over the past 2 months, Nikki Stevenson and Colleen Tinker have been walking through the book of Hebrews in the Former Adventist podcast (you can find the first episode of that series here). Listening to these episodes has been affirming and encouraging to my heart as we have walked through this pandemic and all of the things that have come up in my mind and heart during that time. It has also made me increasingly aware of the wide difference between the Levitical priesthood of the Old Covenant (including the 10 Commandments) and the new priesthood of the New Covenant. I have read Hebrews several times on my own, but hearing it walked through, piece by piece, has been helpful and encouraging. For this reason, the book of Hebrews has been on my mind a lot lately. As I watched my son, looking so big when I think about how he has grown, yet so small and helpless, on that hospital bed, the words of Hebrew 4:15 came to my mind:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (ESV)
Just as the hospital staff and I were able to sympathize with my son out of their own experiences of the same treatments, so the Lord Jesus is able to sympathize with each of us out of His own experience as a human being, being met with the same struggles, pain, and loss that we experience. While this verse is speaking specifically to temptation, these temptations were borne from living the human experience, occupying a human body complete with all the love and pain (physical and emotional) and joy and loss that comes with it. Just as He could relate to the physical and emotional pain my son was experiencing, he could relate to the emotional pain that I was experiencing watching my child suffer, if only for a little while.
Later that week, I turned in my Bible to review the passage that those comforting words came from, and read this:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Growing up, I viewed Jesus as a High Priest mediating for us in heaven, but I viewed him as very much the same as a Levitical priest, a human being, doing the duties in the sanctuary to provide the atonement for the sins of the people. But Jesus is not “just” another high priest, selected from among the people, as Hebrews 5 goes on to discuss. He is the Son of God, eternal and “slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). His existence is outside of time, and thus far supersedes our minute ability to understand from where we sit on this little piece of the universe.
While He is, as God, far above us in rule and authority, in wisdom and knowledge, all knowing, all powerful and GOOD, the next verse reminds us that He also existed in the confines of space and time for a brief period, and as part of His humanity, He experienced everything we do. While I don’t know if He ever broke a bone or injured Himself as a child, I do know that, as we all do, He felt the full range of the human experience, all the joy, sorrow, pain, and love that it entails. Finally, He faced the ultimate injustice of losing His life for crimes He did not commit, allowing Him to die the innocent death that brought sufficient payment for the sins of all mankind.
What a full comfort it is to know that while He is able to offer FULL sympathy to us in our trials and temptations, He is ALSO able to offer us FULL and complete grace and mercy, full atonement for our sins, as we, unlike Him, ultimately succumb to the temptations we face. A human priest offers empathy to those he serves but is unable to offer full atonement for sin (Hebrews 9, 10). The gods that have been imagined and created throughout the history of the world have been purported to offer tolerance and even benevolence towards their wayward human followers, but they could never offer empathy. In the God-man Jesus Christ, we have full sympathy, full understanding that comes from shared experience, as well as full atonement, forgiveness, and cleansing from sin.
What, then, does this mean for us, those who have been born again, trusted Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin, and indwelt with the Holy Spirit? The end of this passage gives us the answer. BECAUSE of this great High Priest, one who is simultaneously able to offer us sympathy AND forgiveness, we can now approach His great throne, the seat of the authority of the Universe, with CONFIDENCE, knowing that we will receive from Him the grace and mercy that only He can give.
We do not serve a God who is far off, one who sits on a lofty throne, judging with indifference and apathy. We serve a God who lowered Himself to our plane, subjected Himself, at the hands of His own creation, to the same sorrow and suffering that we experience, and ultimately bore the pain of the death we deserve on the cross.
As I sat in that ER room two weeks ago, I felt deeply the pain of my son. I, too, have experienced broken bones that required similar treatment. I, too, have had IV’s started (too many to count, and I STILL hate the process). I, too, have felt the anxiety and uncertainty of not knowing what is going to happen next for me in a hospital room. As I tried to reassure my son with my experience and survival and watched the hospital staff do the same, I hoped it would bring him at least a little comfort. We knew what he was going through because we had walked through it, ourselves.
What an amazing thing it is to serve a God who is not only able to rescue us and give us mercy and grace in our times of need, but One who also knows deeply the pain and difficulty we are in, and not only to serve this God, but to be loved and fully known by Him. †
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