When the road is rough and steep

“We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”

Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4: 14-16

If you were one of the original hearers of this letter - a Jewish Christian of the 1^st century – the symbolism of High Priest and sacrifice would have been as familiar to you as anything we know today. The problem for me is that the imagery here needs an awful lot of explanation.  And an illustration that needs to be explained generally loses its punch.

So, here’s another starting point. 

When I was in Sunday School, there was a chorus that we used to sing.  Maybe if you’re old enough you’ll remember it.  “When the road is rough and steep, fix your eyes upon Jesus.”

It’s certainly true that for many people today the road is rough and steep. 

I was talking the other with a friend who had had a terrible trauma in her life.  It was one of those times when a pastor wisely listens much and says little, for in truth there is little to say and Biblical promises can sound like platitudes. I avoid people who have too many answers or who trot them out with a glib certainty. Anyways, talking with my friend, she asked me if I ever doubted that God is there.  Because, for her, God seemed absent and she felt like just walking away from the Christian life.

Walking away can seem a tempting option when our belief in God is stretched too far by life’s events or by the inner struggles we face.  In such times, we come to think that God doesn’t care.  Or that even if he cares, he won’t do anything about our situation.  At that point, we see only the costs of the Christian journey and none of the benefits. 

What things might make you think about quitting?

High in the list I guess would be the times when we seem to be talking to the ceiling.  We pray and our prayers are met by silence.  Or we have persevered in our Christian journey and we have given up what may seem such a lot without always receiving the promised peace or answers in return. When we have tried hard to lay down some of the foul-ups that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet but, as soon as we have kicked them off, there they are - back again.

Or we have reached a point where we feel boxed-in by life or circumstances or by our own repeated failures. Most of us know exactly where are faults lie, because we are daily confronted with them.  As the biblical King David writes in Psalm 51 after committing murder and adultery, “Wash away all my wrongdoing and cleanse me from my sin. For I know what I have done wrong and my sin is right there in front of me.” 

Yes, we may go to church. We may read the Bible. We do the things that we ought to have done and we have tried hard to avoid the things we ought not to do but, as the Book of Common Prayer has it so poetically, “there is no health in us.”  No spiritual strength.

You are not alone, walking your rough and steep path. The Jewish Christians who first heard these words had just those kind of those thoughts (the same kind that we face, though their world was so very different to ours). Jesus, who stood in their place and ours, showed us what a life totally dedicated to God was like.  He did what in the Old Testament only the high priest could do, offered the sacrifice to wipe out the penalty for all our sins.  But, unlike the early high priest, who had to make that journey into the holy of holies at the back end of the temple each year on the day of atonement, Jesus did this once and for all people and for always.

Without Jesus we are alone with our failings.  Without God taking the initiative there’s no hope of forgiveness.  But understand what a hope we now have.  Because of Jesus, born as one of us, we are now given a fresh start.