The Second Sunday after Christmas

John Muir said, "Most people are on the world, not in it - have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them - undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate." Sympathy is a glue that holds all of our relationships together, yet it is very difficult emotion to foster because usually requires that we share the pains, suffers and trials of others. A safe and sanitized world, like the world we inhabit, that encourages rigid individuality will lack sympathy because sympathy requires individuals to look past themselves and share and experience the sufferings, pains and temptations of others.

A safe and sanitized world cannot explain the actions of Kevin and Craig Sharp, whom you meet last week and who showed great sympathy to us in one particularly difficult pinto bean harvest. Combining pinto beans is a very pleasant and easy job if the weather is hot and dry, but if the weather is cool and damp combing pinto beans is a nightmare. If the pinto beans are damp the dirt kicked up by the combine sticks to the beans. Dirty, muddy beans do not move through the combine and end up plugging the combine's augurs. Furthermore, pinto beans are sold by looks, so if there is dirt or mud stuck to the beans they are unsellable and worthless. In 2005, we had a pinto bean nightmare. The beans, which are supposed to be ripe in early to mid-September (when it is usually hot and dry), did not ripen until mid to late October (when it is usually cool and damp). To make matters worse the forecast predicted an early blizzard. To add insult to injury the temperatures were hovering around 20 degrees and the heater in the combine didn't work. To avoid plugging up the combine and ruining the beans I had to do two things: first had to combine slowly, but I couldn't go to slow because I had finish before the blizzard; second, I had to get out of the combine every few hours and clean the dirt and mud off all the accessible moving parts in freezing temperatures. Kevin and Craig Sharp saw me frantically combining beans - at a slow pace - and brought their two combines out to help. The Sharps and I combined eighteen hours a day and in two days and we finished combining our beans - twelve hours before the blizzard. The Sharps sympathy was not limited to their willingness to work; it had been a poor financial year for everybody so all the Sharps charged my dad for their two grueling days of work in 20 degree weather was a tank of diesel fuel for their combines and twenty-five dollars. I suppose there are many reasons I could list explaining Kevin and Craig Sharp sympathy, but I would like to focus on one. We have been neighbors with the Sharps for many, many years and have shared in the same pains, trials, temptations and sufferings of farming. Because of our shared experiences, it was not hard for Kevin and Craig to have sympathy when we were struggling to combine our beans.

Shared experiences could be one of the largest factors in sympathy. For this reason, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus shared the same struggles, trials and temptations as his contemporaries. Matthew does this by showing how Jesus' life was a re-telling or a recapitulation of the story of Israel. This might seem a little odd to us, but when Jesus was born all Israelites identified their lives with their great story. To have sympathy with an Israelite someone must re-live all the events of their story and that is what Jesus did. Just as Israel was called out of Egypt, so was Jesus. Just as Israel was baptized and subsequently tempted for forty years in the wilderness so was Jesus baptized and tempted for forty days. Just as Israel was taken off into captivity in the northern kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon by wicked kings so was Jesus sent into captivity into Galilee, the northern most part of Israel because of Herod's wicked son, King Archelaus. Finally, just as every Israelite would have to face death, humanities great weakness, so Jesus faced death. Jesus' life was a recapitulation of the story of Israel therefore Jesus could sympathize with the troubles, trials, weaknesses and temptations of his people. Jesus' sympathy is not limited, however, to just his Jewish contemporaries for the themes of Israel's great story: slavery, redemption, exile, sin, idolatry, exile, rejection and oppression are the same problems and experiences of all people.

The author of Hebrews mentions one glorious application of Jesus' sympathy when he said, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in very way, just as we are - yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Because Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses, sufferings and pain we can approach him and because we can approach him with boldness we can find mercy and grace. We can find mercy and grace because of Jesus' sympathy. Because of the incarnation, Jesus is not like Marie Antoinette, who was supposedly so obvious and unsympathetic to the needs of her people that when approached about the poverty, hunger and lack of bread she is rumored to have said, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Let them eat cake. Jesus is not Marie Antoinette; he is not oblivious and unsympathetic to our needs and troubles and will graciously help us when we approach him.

In our sanitized, sophisticated world we take great pride in our abilities to separate ourselves from people and to look upon others with disinterested objectivity. Therefore we are offended by the incarnation when God the Son took upon flesh and joined himself with humanity so that he could look upon our weaknesses, trials and temptations with sympathy. We find it unpleasant and repugnant that Jesus would live through and experience the same temptations and weaknesses that we face. Particularly, we find it barbaric to believe that Jesus so accommodated himself to humanities weakness that he would face and experience death. In our haste to create a god who is safe, in our desire to create a god in our own likeness, a disinterested and unapproachable god, we have created a god who resembles Maria Antoinette; a god blind and oblivious to our problems and a god who refuses to save us. If we are to find mercy, we must have a messiah who has lived like us. If we are to find grace, we must have a messiah who has lived through our weakness and temptations - and lived through them without sin. If we are to find the sting of death removed, we must have a messiah who has experienced and conquered death. Therefore, since we do have a messiah who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses and has been tempted in every way we are, let us approach his throne of grace with confidence, knowing that he will not flippantly give us an unrealistic command to go out and make our own cake, but will give us the bread of heaven that will nourish us with his presence and sustain us through our trials and temptations with his grace and mercy.