Beyond the Baggage--May 27, 2021
"Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. And one does presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was." [Hebrews 5:1-4]
Did you ever have a relationship sour so badly that you needed someone else to be your personal buffer-zone between the two of you? Let's not even get to us and God yet--but just in ordinary, regular human relationships, did you ever have a time where, for whatever reason, you needed someone else to be like a mediator, a go-between, a peacemaker, who could help you get beyond the baggage that had had come between you?
Sometimes it's needing a supervisor at work to intervene when there's bad blood between you and the co-worker who keeps stealing your lunch from the office fridge. Or maybe there's a relative you can't bring yourself to look in the eye any longer, and some other member of the family has cast themselves in the role of diplomat trying to smooth things over and get you all to come to Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe a close friend lost your respect and you can't see yourself being able to trust them any longer, while a mutual friend tries to mend fences for you. Maybe you were the one who disappointed someone else who was counting on you. There are a million ways we let each other down in this life, and that often means we end up knowing what it feels like to be estranged from someone you had once held close... and to need someone else to help repair a frayed relationship.
Whatever the details, if you know what it is to grieve a relationship that has come apart, you probably know the feeling of wishing there were someone who could be trusted to help you work through the estrangement and bring you to reconciliation. This, according to Hebrews, is what we find in Jesus.
Now, before we head off into the realms of theology, let's stay with the image of a mutual friend who helps smooth things over between you and the person you have become estranged from. Ideally, you need this to be someone that you both can trust, and someone who doesn't have their own personal baggage with either of you. It's hard to have someone else vouch for you and promise you'll try better next time if they're known for being pathological liars themselves, just like it would be hard for someone to plead for loan-forgiveness on your behalf if they themselves had a habit of writing bad checks and disappearing into the wind.
And that, it turns out, is where the writer of Hebrews wants to take the conversation next. His point is to say that between us and God, we need the presence of someone who can help us to get beyond the baggage we have put in the way of reconciling with God. But that someone can't do a very good job if they have their own baggage to deal with, too.
In a sense, that was the role of the institutions of the priesthood and temple back in ancient Israel's memory. The people kept breaking relationship with God--sometimes by literally worshiping golden idols and giving them the credit for providing for them, and sometimes in more subtly insidious ways, like not paying their employees enough to live on, or persecuting the immigrants who came to live in their land, or cheating on their spouses, or envying their neighbor's stuff. And so it fell to a group of people called priests who would intercede for the people and ask God's forgiveness--not because God refused to talk to them directly, I don't think, but more because we all know what it's like not to want to look someone in the eye when you know the relationship is broken. The priest's job was to face the brokenness that the people were too chicken-hearted to deal with on their own.
But, of course, the priests were fallible and flawed, too. They had their own issues to deal with--maybe a different set of sins, or different ways of breaking relationship with God, but baggage all the same. The writer of Hebrews points out that this was a problem with the whole system: it was sort of like having the friend who had only let you down five times in the last week plead for you to hug it out with the friend who had let you down ten times in the same seven days. You don't really have a good reason to put your trust in any of them.
And that's the need--we need someone who really can identify with us and speak for us... but who doesn't have to make excuses about their own baggage first. We need someone who shares our humanity, but not our harmful ways of breaking relationship. We need someone who can look God in the eye when we are afraid to--again, not because God hates us, but because our guilt keeps us from facing the ones we have hurt. We need someone who can plead our case who doesn't have to plead their own first.
In other words, we need Jesus. More to the point, God has given us already the very one we need, because God knows we don't have the courage ourselves to own up to our mess-ups on our own, and we keep needing someone who can help us work through the baggage. Even the most pious and proper of ancient Israel's high priests had their own sins to sort out with God. But Jesus, well, that's what makes Jesus different. He doesn't have to try to save his own neck before trying to save ours. In fact, he has surrendered his own own life precisely to save ours.
So, please, remember this today. You never needed to hide or avert your eyes from God; God has always been ready and willing for us to sort through the baggage we have been lugging around. But because in so many ways we are still too fearful to face it yet, God has given us Jesus as the One who breaks the estrangement we were too afraid to even name.
God was never giving us the silent treatment. But since we convinced ourselves God was and put up our own defenses in retaliation, Jesus has come to get through those walls and to make things right once again.
Now maybe we can leave behind the baggage we have been hiding behind.
Lord Jesus, help us to trust your presence that makes things right between us and God. Give us the courage to face our failures so that we can face the already-given gift of forgiveness.
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