Hebrews 4:14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
On Good Friday, my church (Metro Hope in Harlem) talked about the suffering that Jesus underwent on Good Friday and integrated it with our sufferings today. The pastor’s wife has been undergoing chemotherapy, and the pastor argued that Jesus, as our empathic high priest, understands what she is going through in ways that the pastor, nor anyone else, can.
I totally agree with this Scripture, especially through the Christian Scriptures and church fathers, but I found that my pastor’s discussion to be unhelpful, and I submit instead the following considerations.
First, God is not empathic because God is omniscient. My pastor argued that Jesus knows what we’re going through because God is omniscient and Jesus is God. This entire line of reasoning is false. The pastor was right to say that each one of us suffers alone. However, the pastor was wrong to say that God knows what it’s like because of God’s omniscience – no one else knows what it’s like for me to suffer because they know about my disease or about my body. They don’t know what it’s like for me to suffer because they don’t know what it’s like to be me as I experience suffering. Abstract knowledge about something will never put someone else in my shoes.
How might one understand the Hebrew passage then? I believe that Jesus is so important because Jesus became fully human. Allow me to introduce this topic with medieval philosophy. Jesus is the perfect example of what Aquinas termed “concursis” or the coinciding of God and human. The sacraments are specific examples of God’s promise to concur with the physical objects in fulfillment of God’s divine promise. The Catholic Church leaves open God’s work in concurring with other objects or actions or individuals, but the Catholic Church proclaims God’s guarantee of working through the sacraments. Karl Rahner, the most famous Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, said that Jesus is the supreme sacrament, and other sacraments are made sacraments only through their being united with Jesus Christ. I agree with Rahner’s view, and so I conclude that Jesus is so instrumental in being empathic because Jesus is God and God experiences the fullness of humanity in Jesus.
So far, this may seem basic, but deeper considerations arise. Jesus was not a woman. Jesus never had cancer or HIV or shame around being transgendered, so far as we know. Jesus never suffered a slow and agonizing defeat by Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. In fact, Jesus, despite being human, only suffered in particular ways within his Greco-Roman and Palestinian context. How can anyone claim, then, that Jesus is fully empathic with us as our High Priest, undergoing all temptations that we undergo but being without sin, as the verse claims? I have already argued that Jesus’ omniscience is not sufficient, instead claiming that Jesus’ human experience must hold the clue. But there are clearly problems with Jesus’ limited human experience.
I foresee two possible options. First, we could claim that Jesus’ experience of Godforsakenness makes Jesus completely empathic. Throughout Jesus’ life, Jesus experienced all kinds of pain and suffering – betrayal by his friends at his sentencing by the Sanhedrin, catching them asleep at his hour of greatest need in the garden of Gethesemane, frustration at the disciples’ lack of faith, bouts of hunger and existential loneliness, even being tempted by Satan! Jesus experienced all kinds of things that we, too, in our own lives, experience. However, on the cross, Jesus experienced Godforsakenness, crying out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” If all suffering and pain are modes of experiencing Godforsakenness, which I believe one could claim on the basis of Scripture and church tradition, then Jesus, by experiencing Godforsakenness on the cross and entering hell (the realm of Godforsakenness) before experiencing resurrection, then Jesus could be claimed to experientially understand our pain and suffering because Jesus encountered the absolute culmination and fullness of suffering: complete Godforsakenness. I wish that Christians would emphasize Jesus’ descent into hell because this reminds us of Jesus’ experience of Godforsakenness, and if we did, then perhaps we could emphasize Jesus’ empathic love and grace and mercy towards us. Perhaps the focus on Mary and other saints is a necessary outgrowth of a view of Jesus apart from Godforsakenness, for we need other “mediators” or divine images to convey to us a sense of identity, participation, empathy, and grace. I could be wrong, of course – do I love and appreciate Mary in my own spiritual life because I don’t understand Jesus’ godforsakenness on the cross, or do I just need many images to approach the divine life? I don’t know, but it’s a thought.
My second thought is that we can understand God’s empathy towards us by emphasizing the “Jesus within” or the spark of divine life that operates within each of us. Christians are not going to adopt pantheistic conceptions, wherein the argument runs thus:
a) God is the world,
b) I am a part of the world
c) Therefore, I am God
d) Therefore, God knows what my suffering is like because God is me.
However, if Christians embrace a participation in Jesus, wherein all new creatures now are “in Christ”, as Paul reiterated over and over again, then there is a divine spark, a part that recognizes the “concursis” that occurs whenever we allow ourselves to be worked within and through by God. One way of formulating God’s working through us is, I believe, this notion of a divine spark within us. Not that there is a divine spark apart from us, or as if God and humans compete for ontological space (because I don’t believe divine space competes with natural and human space), but rather that God’s work “concurs” with human action, and the divine spark within is, I believe, one way of formulating that concept. If God’s actions concur with ours, then God knows what it’s like to be us because God’s space totally encompasses and transcends our own. We are now “in Christ” as much as a drop of water is “in” the ocean. This may sound pantheistic, which it is, but this is another way in which God can be truly be said to understand us in our situation and in our sufferings. As a pantheist, I find this understanding more appealing, but I believe that both this pantheistic-leaning conception as well as the Godforsakenness idea (which I grabbed from Jurgen Moltmann) are ways of understanding God’s empathy toward us.
And what is the significance of all of this? Well, as the verse says, now we can approach the throne of grace with boldness, that we may know that we will receive mercy and grace in our time of need. And, of course, so that we may hold fast to our confession. Understanding God’s empathy and great love toward us not only keeps us grounded in our faith, which is very important for our spiritual lives, but it also allows us to confront life boldly, with great confidence, knowing that we will receive mercy and grace. Instead of being “tossed to and fro by the winds” of ever-changing doctrines, and instead of being bowed over by a commanding and never-satisfied superego (Freud), we are confident. We do not have to wonder about our goodness being up to God’s standards. Our identity is secure in Christ, and in Christ’s salvific work on the cross.
Amen.
