Monday, October 1, 2012

Did Jesus ever phone it in?

Wonder if Jesus ever phoned itt in? I mean got up in the morning with a killer cold, or flu, or pneumonia or something or other and didn't feel like today was a day for miracles.

Just rolled over on the ground or where ever in the heck he slept and said, "you guys go ahead, I'm sleeping in."

He was fully human. He must have suffered from the sniffles. He must have gotten a hangnail or two or three. He must have known what it was like to have to go to the bathroom so bad it hurt, yet look out and see more than a 1,000 persons looking back at him.

Call me crazy, but the greatness of the plan of the Father to me is the completeness of Jesus' humanity. That he felt what we feel, dealt with what we deal with, been where we've been, walked a mile or two or three in our shoes often lifts me in ways nothing else can.

They taught me early on in the ministry not to say "I know how you feel," for very, very often we simply don't. I didn't know what it was like to lose a loved one till I lost a loved one. I didn't know about funerals till I did one. I don't know this and that, and there are things I can never know.

But I can sympathize, rather than empathise. (Or is it the other way around? Never said I learned, I said I was taught.)

Jesus, fully God, couldn't. Jesus, fully man, can. I believe this to be true. It's like, I can know what a cut feels like on my arm, but my child's cut hurts even more to me than does my own. That's sorta-kinda what I mean. God could certainly know what our pain feels like, Him being God and all. But to really know, you have to have a sliver of blood coming from a cut you've inflicted upon yourself.

Or worse.

The pain of loneliness on a summer's night. The pain of helplessness as a step-father dies. The pain of friends going to sleep when you needed them the most. The pain of the whip, the thorns, the nails. The pain of a friend betraying you in front of everyone. The embarrassment of having to die naked and seemingly lost.

He didn't have to know this pain, but for us He suffered it.

So, did he get up with a cold one morning and phone it in? These Gospels are not diaries, by the way. I suspect He wouldn't. But he probably did.

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