“He is the image of the invisible God…” – Colossians 1:15a
Daily Drama
Today, as always on my walk to work, I am witness to a momentous drama unfolding in the hospital lobby. The cavernous room is filled with the broken off parts of people’s lives – those often desperate, significant moments that we never forget. Every day, these jagged shards of hope and sorrow intersect here before my eyes.
The cast in this real life production are patients and family members who wait there. Some of them cluster in warm circles, sending out laughter from time to time. Elsewhere, despair rules: a man sits alone with his face buried in his hands. Many expressions are blank.
Fatigue is the dominant tone of the lobby. There is no day or night in this sunless world. One gentleman is stretched out unceremoniously across the chairs, snoring before the world. What is it about a sleeper that seems so vulnerable and touching?
The props in this theatre are oxygen tanks, prosthetic limbs, and other testimonies of human frailty. Subtler hints of suffering peek out too, like a scarf, partly covering the hairless head of a pretty lady. Overhead a wayward helium balloon clings forlornly to the ceiling, its cheerful “Get well” message shriveling, as if in mockery of the anguish below.
The Mundane and the Extraordinary
For me this is just another day. But for this mass of my fellow creatures, it is the day – the day their hopes are pinned on, the day an unspeakable burden will lift, or maybe the day their world will come crashing down.
- I may be worried about a challenging case. They fear the loss of dignity.
- I may be tired from an overnight emergency. Many of them have been up night after night with relentless misery.
- I may be rushed for time. Some of them are running out of time altogether.
- I may worry about failing. They worry about dying.
- I am simply walking to work. These men and women are trapped at the crossroads of their lives.
God as Hypocrite?
Is there meaning in this spectacle? Is this just theatre of the absurd? Have you been at your own fateful crossroads with the sickening feeling that your life amounted to nothing? Have you questioned whether God really cared about you or whether he can relate to the trials that beleaguer humanity?
Of course God does see and care about all of this brokenness. But so what? What good is it just to watch – or even to speak or be present? There is simply no way God or anyone else can really understand our pain unless he or she experiences it. Ironically, in God’s case that seems impossible – and not just in spite of his limitless nature, but because of it.
No matter how kind he may be, how can an all-sufficient deity ever truly know the wretchedness of those in that lobby? Being all powerful would make him incapable of empathizing with those who are weak. An eternal spirit could never really know what it is to taste the bitterness of death – or even the delight of bread. Must any message a perfect God sends to broken humanity be tinged with hypocrisy?
The Incarnation of Jesus
Like those waiting in the lobby, Jesus Christ stood at his own crossroads. God became a man and stepped out into his own creation. The incarnation, or enfleshment, of Jesus is the ultimate way in which God communicates to mankind and identifies with us. It is also the definitive answer regarding the dignity of humanity, no matter how broken or fallen.
Here in our culture, when the great stoop to help those less fortunate, they may perform a token act and pose for photos with their arms around a needy person, while smiling broadly. Then they jump into a luxury car and are whisked back to a privileged world.
The incarnation was not a PR stunt. The nativity was not a photo-op. Philippians 2:7 tells us that Christ Jesus did not just dabble in the nitty-gritty business of humanity. He “emptied himself” and plunged in fully.
A limitless being becoming a needy creature represents, by definition, an infinite abasement. Of course, as the nativity details suggest, Christ went even further. If you are thinking that he somehow got off easy because he was the boss’ son, think again.
Mary’s child entered a world of:
- prickly straw
- smelly animals
- Roman soldiers
- unclean water
- disease
- no medical care
He was born into poverty and from a disenfranchised minority. He chose to play fully by our rules.
Jesus has many titles, but during his time on earth he seemed to favor “the Son of Man.” This was not merely an honorary title acquired while flitting by earth on a goodwill tour of the universe.
The Bible tells us that Jesus experienced:
- joy
- sorrow
- anger
- temptation
- fatigue
- hunger
- thirst
That is what he felt. He also did the following:
- walked
- suffered
- rested
- ate
- sang
- worked
- cried
- slept
Do these lists sound familiar to you? They should. This is the script we all follow in the theatre of human life. But how far was God willing to go? Would he play the role out to the bitter end? Would he really undergo death?
The Cross
Yes. The cross proves that he went the full distance in identifying with us. Christ became a man, because God cannot die, but every man and woman must.
Did I say he played by our rules? Thank God, he did more than that! He placed himself beneath all of us, serving us in his sacrifice by bearing the sins of the world, an awful weight that none of us could carry. He bore on the cross the full burden of brokenness – all the sin, failure, suffering, and mortality. He tasted the bitterness of this fallen world more deeply than any of us.
This is the incalculable love of the savior. “We know love by this,” John tells us, “that he laid down his life for us.” (I John 3:16) Christians are not expendable grunts in God’s army, nor is he some fat-cat general sitting back enjoying the show from a safe distance. He himself waded into the thick of the fray and took the greatest blow.
Seeing Christ in Our Suffering
This morning I see a mass of ailing humanity, pricked with the barbs of a guilty world.
- They clutch frantically at sites of pain.
- They sweat from intractable nausea.
- They tremble from anxiety.
- I see the despondency of the bereaved and the haunting emaciation of the dying.
Their frailty helps me see Christ, who endured headaches, bug bites, stomach aches, splinters, fever, coughing, and, of course, the greatest of hurts – death itself.
Fully God and Fully Man for How Long?
Hebrews 12:2 reveals that “for the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, despising the shame.” From this we might gather that the incarnation was a state he simply gutted out until his work on earth was done. Certainly the crucifixion was such a passing tribulation. But the humanity of Christ is another matter.
John Stott, in commenting on 1 John 4:2 (“Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”) observes this about the humanity of Jesus:
“The perfect tense come…seems to emphasize that the flesh assumed by the Son of God in the incarnation has become his permanent possession…Christ actually came in the flesh and has never laid it aside.”
This means that Christ is still a man!
The humanity of Jesus is not something he donned for an unpleasant job and then discarded, like a soiled surgeon’s glove after a distasteful procedure. He has not “moved past” his human identity. He is still Jesus, offering in that name the full expression of grace, the complete demonstration of love, and the final affirmation of our humanity.
He became like us, so that by believing in him, we could become like him. I John 3:2 tells us that: “We shall be like him, because we will see him just as He is.” How is that so? How can we be like him?
Jesus is fully God and he never ceased to be. We cannot be like him in his deity – that was the foolish ambition of our forebears, Adam and Eve, and the ongoing error of all of us who still sin every day against his majesty. How then can we be like him? He is also forever fully man. We can be like him in his humanity!
One day he will “transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” (Philippians 3:21) The splendor will make all our suffering seem insignificant in comparison. At the moment that seems impossible to believe. How could the misery contained within this lobby ever seem insignificant? The idea is almost offensive. For that very reason, pausing here, overwhelmed by the human pathos, it is a wonderful truth for me to ponder!
Face to Familiar Face
Those who have faith in Christ will one day meet the superpower that molded the universe and the majesty that knitted our bodies together in wisdom and uttermost love. In the unapproachable light of his presence we will encounter that glory.
I wonder if we might experience something else, too – a startling recognition. As he flashes a familiar look or makes an “inside” reference that no angel could possibly understand, this truth will dawn again and again through eternity: he really is one of us!
And that makes all of us, who are created in his image, whether Christian or not, priceless in value.
Dr. Bill Maynard