Mar 14 - "Wanting Jesus"

"For the One who sactifies and those who are sactified all have one Father. For this reason, Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters..." -- Hebrews 2: 11-18
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One of the functions of my job is to negotiate contracts with customers and suppliers. These contracts are rarely less than 10 pages long, covering all sorts of concepts, but in general, they are meant to protect each party from harming the other in some way. Even those these contracts contain thousands of words, I often find myself making arguements over a few single words. One of the ways I win these arguements is to go into detail about what a particular word can imply if read the wrong way, and negate the other's position.

Unfortunately, at times, I forget to turn this mode off when I step away from work for the day. Greta may make a comment to me about something and I go to work on her, breaking down her point by arguing over a single word. She may start her point by saying "You always...". Of course, my comeback is "Always? You mean 100% of time? You are telling me that there is never an occassion when this is not true?" The trouble with that approach is that I choose to battle the issue unfairly by picking on a poorly chosen word, even though I understand her point and...as always...she is right.

It is sometimes easy to get caught up in the words chosen to describe a certain idea or point of view and, by picking on the word, chose to negate the whole intent of the idea. I find this the case when we think about the things we are "supposed" to do as it relates to our faith and our relationship with God. We hear our religious leaders telling us things like, the only way to the Father is through Jesus, or, we must repent our sins and foresake our evil ways or we are going to Hell. When we hear these direct commands, these directions which seem to obligate us to a certain path, we can often choose to pick certain words and go to battle with them. We say, "The only way to the Father...really? I must repent?".

I believe that a key concept sometimes missing from the messages we hear about the "obligations" of our faith, is the acknowledgement of the importance of choice. When we as humans feel forced into a situation, our natural instinct is to push back. But when we feel like we are given a choice, when we realize that the decision is our own, we take a different point of view. We are able to move from "we have to" to, "we want to".

In today's reading, the author of this letter to the Hebrews is appealing to the logic of the Jewish people at the time who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah. The goal was to convince the reader with evidence that Jesus was aligned with and fulfilled the law. The author intended that once the Hebrews recognized these facts, they would want to believe in Jesus Christ.

So, do you need Jesus? I do. But what is really important is to want to need Jesus. When we want something, when we desire it and choose it, the thing becomes our own and not a forced march. The gift of free will we have received from our Father allows us to open ourselves to all that a life in Christ has to offer; peace, love, hope...which are wonderful things to want.