I’m feeling mostly grateful and optimistic as we all begin to live again at our own pace. At the same time, I do have some concerns as life is starting to “get back to normal.” As awful as the past year has been, our pre-pandemic “normal” wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. I remember many of us feeling perpetually exhausted and stressed, pre-Covid, and as things open up again, it’s becoming clear to me that we haven’t learned our lesson. Unless we choose to do life differently, we will find ourselves back in the pressure-cooker we called life before the pandemic.
So how can we act now to change course before it’s too late? I think it all begins with the way that we think. Most of us have been conditioned to think about our lives in a transactional way. The more I do, we tell ourselves, the better my life will be.
This is also the way that religion works. The universal religious motto could be, “The more good things we do for God and others, the more good things will happen to me.” But as we’ll see in this week’s reflection, the transactional way of life is the road to hardship and hell, and it must be avoided at all costs.
The author of Hebrews sheds some light on this subject by offering hope to overburdened, overextended people like us:
Hebrews 4:9-11 – There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.
When the writer of Hebrews says “works,” he uses the word that refers to Jewish religious practice: going to temple, giving money to the priests, making offerings to God. Those works were supposed to make you right with God. That’s what ALL religious people believe. But here’s the thing about works: no matter how much you do, it’s never enough. A religion based on works is a recipe for unrest, because let’s say you’ve got a problem – your wife is sick, your goat is infertile – so you go to the Temple to make an offering. When you get home your wife has a few good days, and your goat takes a lover, but a week later your wife starts feeling bad again, and your goat’s still not pregnant. So what do you do? You go back to the Temple to make another offering, maybe a larger one, because clearly the one you made didn’t work. God’s still mad at you, so you need to win him over…again. There’s more to be done. More works. More offerings. More religion. It’s a never-ending cycle of unrest. It’s a performance.
So the author draws a distinction between religion and the Gospel of Jesus. He does that by examining the differences between the priests of religion and the priesthood of Jesus.
Hebrews 4:14-16 – Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 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. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Because I’m a pastor, people occasionally mistake me for a priest. One time a guy said to me, “I chose not to receive Communion because I’m divorced, father.” I must have cringed in disgust, because he said, “I know, father; divorce is a sin.” I said, “No man, that’s not it. Just don’t ever call me father again.” There’s a difference between pastors and priests. Pastors teach, inspire, and mobilize. A priest does all that, but he also serves as an intermediary. He speaks to God for the people, and he speaks to the people for God.
For generations throughout Bible times, the priests kept up appearances. They projected perfection on the outside. Their jobs depended on the illusion of perfection, so they couldn’t be real with people. They couldn’t party with people. They couldn’t be real. They couldn’t confess to their own struggles. But Jesus wasn’t pretending; He didn’t have to keep up appearances. Jesus said, “Yes, I’ve been tempted. Yes, I drink wine. Yes, I’ve spent time with prostitutes. Yes I cried when my friend died. Yes, I was afraid of being crucified.”
Because his perfection is authentic, Jesus was free to be perfectly authentic with us. Whereas priests want to look perfect externally while they’re a mess on the inside, just like the rest of us, Jesus didn’t care what he looked like externally, because he was genuinely perfect within.
One of the key differences between priests and Jesus is what they require of us. Priests will always want more from you. Jesus only wants more of you. Priests want more works from you. Jesus wants more rest for you. Priests hope you fear God. Jesus hopes you trust Him.
Jesus wants more of you to rest more in Him because you trust Him more each day. This, to me, is prayer. I know prayer is a mystery to a lot of people because you don’t know how to pray or what to say or if it makes a difference. Prayer shouldn’t be complicated. It shouldn’t be a chore, an obligation, or just one more thing to do. Prayer is more of me, resting more in Him, trusting Him more. Prayer is rest. To pray is to acknowledge it’s not up to you, you are not in control, you are not a machine – you are a child of God, and your Father loves you, even when you’re an inconvenience, even when you couldn’t care less about Him. He loves you. He died to be loved by you.
How often do we sit in our fears, in our worries, and in our doubts, treating God like a stranger? I imagine God looking at us and shaking His head, asking us, “Can’t you see what I’ve done for you?” In our frustration we act as if God doesn’t understand what it’s like to be us. “You don’t know what I’m up against, God. You don’t know what a jerk my boss is. You don’t know how deep my debt is. You don’t know how hot the anger burns inside me. You don’t know how hateful some people have been to me or what I’ve been through. You have no idea what a mess I’ve made of things. You don’t know what I’m going through.”
That’s the mindset that a lifetime of impersonal, transactional religion will earn us. A God who is so powerful that the only thing He’s incapable of is empathy for our situation. But according to the Gospel, that’s not who God is. For in Christ Jesus, “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…”
