For surely it is not angels [Jesus] helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:16-17

Merry Christmas!

Today is, as you know, Christmas day. For millions of people around the world, it is a day of celebration and rejoicing.

It is for me, too, though this will be an unusual Christmas for my family and me. As I shared in last Wednesday’s devotion, my mother died three weeks ago. So, this will be the first Christmas in 59 years that I will not be with my mother.

My mom, in a Christmas sweater, and me, last Christmas, with a couple of Christmas “socks” in between us. Photo used by permission from Mark D. Roberts. All rights reserved.

I will miss my mom for all sorts of reasons. Among them, is her love for Christmas. She threw herself into celebrating the birth of Jesus, whether by taking weeks to set up her elaborate Christmas village, or wearing Christmas sweaters, or creating joyful events for families at church, or filling our “socks” with all sorts of goodies. (Yes, my mother always referred to Christmas stockings as “socks.”) For the last thirty years, since the death of my dad in 1986, my mom and I shared a special Christmas tradition. At some point on Christmas day we would find a private moment and share together with tears how much we missed my dad. This year, that won’t happen. (I’m glad that my mom and my dad are together now. I just wish they were here with us.)

If you’ve lost a loved one, you know that the holidays can be particularly painful. You feel the gnawing emptiness of loss more around Thanksgiving and Christmas than during other times of the year. Yet, the loss we feel in this season can actually lead us into a deeper celebration of the good news of Christmas.

In this holiday, we celebrate Emmanuel, God with us, the Word of God made flesh in Jesus. God didn’t just look down upon us with mercy, but actually became one of us. Hebrews 2:17 clarifies that Jesus became like us, in fact, becoming “fully human in every way,” though, as Hebrews 4:14-15 notes, without sin. The Incarnation makes possible the salvation we receive through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

But the Incarnation also means that Jesus understands what it is like to be us. Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3, KJV). For example, it’s likely that Jesus experienced the death of his earthly father, Joseph, since Joseph appears nowhere in the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life after his birth and boyhood. So, at Christmas we celebrate the amazing truth that God has become human, that God understands our experience, both our joys and our sorrows. When I grieve the loss of my parents today, I have in Jesus someone who gets it . . . who gets me, and who is with me, Emmanuel.

So, today I will rejoice and be glad. And I will weep and be sad. And I will thank God for becoming fully human in Jesus, thus understanding all that I am feeling and thinking this day. And I will thank him for the eternal life that we have because of Jesus, something my mom and dad know in a way I can only imagine.

May the Lord bless you today with his presence, peace, and joy! Amen.

Explore more at the Theology of Work Project online Bible commentary: The Creation Has Become Subject to Evil (Hebrews 2:14–3:6)