Why Did Jesus Need a Body?
We needed a High Priest with skin in the game.
We do not have a High Priest.
Two Names given breaking 400 years of silence:
Jesus,
Yeshua, Savior, for he will save his people from their sins
Immanuel, very God with us.
Who, being in the form of God did not consider it something to be held onto to be equal, at all costs
Who, emptied Himself of His privileges rightly His
(Taking the form of a bonded servant) coming to us in the likeness of humanity
And the WORD
became flesh and dwelt among us: God’s son added humanity to deity uncombined, unmixed, wholly distinct but one.
A feat beyond words or imagination
And dwelt with us First.
Within the womb of women met within that inner sanctum
Of flesh, blood pumping
Hers to His, mingling, unspeakable yet
Added skin to blood to to bowels to hair to hormones
The Word
now fed on the breast of she–
Naked, needy, nursing, rehearsing first
How he would walk among us
Not glory-less, but glory-veiled through dim glass until revealed
(A body growable, knowable–
Him–we saw
Him–we looked upon
Him–we touched, with hands, skin to skin
His life–manifested before us, John recalls,
We saw, now we say, John says of this Word)
He lived in our skin
He did the things bodies could do: hungered, thirsted, bled, scarred, wearied, died
His body was homeless, hiding, detained, imprisoned, whipped, mobbed
Mistaken for another, Forsaken by family, friends, naked, abandoned, executed
He felt with
He dwelt with
We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses
With
At weddings, funeral processions, welcomed and unwelcomed
In haughty homes and humble
In the garden, at the graveside, bedside,
With
At table, on the road, in the marketplace, in the boat, by the water, on the water
With
In synagogues, in the temple, in a tomb
He dwelt with
He felt with
We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses
So when He stands before
that gaping maw of the death house, daring to enter with a Word–
–the Word,
Before He speaks life
Before he commands a soul back to its tent
Before he gives Death a foretaste of Its own End…
…He weeps.
He weeps wailing like women with fellow feeling
Snot tears and dust commingled like
Blood bone flesh of friendship torn
By sin’s wages he weeps
Weeping useless tears: wasteful, extravagant like Mary’s alabaster jar of nard-
Spilt.
When action was needed–
When God was needed — But
Skin and embodied love chose rather to
Wait
And mourn with the mourning many
Wait
And feel with friends
He wept.
John recalls. That detail before a feat
The world had never seen before, he does a thing
so human, so unmemorable, so unremarkable as human
But so remarkable as God
At some graveside
In some town
with his friends
In our skin
Of shared humanity
Jesus wept.
He dwelt with
He felt with
We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses
We have a High Priest who can–who was in all points tempted as we are
(Yet without sin for that Lamb must be perfect and Deity if it is to satisfy Divine Wrath)
So now. A bold entrance we may make to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Are you weary?
Are you heavy-laden?
Are your burdens too big to bear?
There is — there really is–
Deity who gathered skin around him
And a body to die and rise
Who waits to weep with us
All that we need is a mind to need. Now.
