Saving us emotionally stunted people from having to find actual words to express ourselves for years. With only a small price of cheese to pay for the privilege.
So, in and of myself, I'm a bit snobbish about emojis. I refuse to concede that anyone can crystallize my emotions into one crude yellow circle. I'm uncategorizable. The profound nuances of my moods defy the art of the emoji-maker. Or so I say. I'm still looking for the emoji that says "insouciantly nonchalant and yet responsibly flirtatious, with depths that none can quite fathom, listening to Charles Aznavour in the original French," which is how I would like to be feeling this evening, rather than "a bit flat after a stomach bug, up for a laugh but don't expect any replies to your texts." See, I'm complex, me.
Or not.
But they're still brilliant, these emojis. Which one comes closest to how you feel tonight? When were you last any of the above?
I wonder whether emojis have the whole human emotional spectrum sewn up yet?
And - putting aside the crude ones for a while - I wonder whether Jesus ran the whole gamut?
Most of my recent sermons hang around Hebrews 4 and the confident assertion that:
we do not have a high priest who is unable
to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who in every respect
has been tested as we are.
Let's just untangle the double negative in the first line:
we do have a high priest who is able
to sympathize with our weaknesses
Everything we feel, Jesus felt the equivalent. I say the equivalent because he was patently never pregnant, but I'm imagining a certain empathy between different kinds of pain or pride or passion.
So. Jesus was hungry (in Luke 4, chiefly). Jesus was tired. Jesus needed company (in the garden). Jesus got angry (John 2 is a good start). Jesus laughed (probably at his parables and disciples). Jesus hurt (crucifixion will do that, as will denial and betrayal). Jesus was tempted, possibly by attraction to women or men or both. And there's a whole 30 years with very few clues (but some wild Catholic fan-fic where he's bullied or a gardener or something).
(and he's not a bad Marti Pellow impersonator either)
Oh, and yes.
Jesus wept.
Jesus ran the whole course of human emojis, which means there isn't a thing that we can feel that he didn't. Betrayed by friends? Stabbed in the back? Misunderstood? Abandoned? Grieving? Asylum seeker? Shunned? Lionised? Got a cross to bear?
Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
Got the t-shirt.
No distant God is our God. Among all the proposed deities in world mythology and truth and philosophy, the Christian God alone is the one who submits to human experience. I'd call it slumming it, but God made this world and called it good, and who am I to disagree?
And the point of these sermons becomes the punchline of Hebrews 4:
Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
When you are bleeding, look for someone with scars (said Leela in Doctor Who).
When you are praying, look for a God who understands. Who's lived through it. Who knows, from the inside out. Look for the one and only candidate for Godhead who spent 9 months in a womb, who had his cord cut, who took that first breath, who was weaned and slapped and changed, who survived losing milk teeth, who made it through puberty, who would have had calluses and blisters and sweat and zits and his voice breaking, who lost his dad and grieved him, who was a big brother to many, who didn't become a rabbi's disciple at 14 and who talked sense about life.
Look for a God with dirt under his fingernails. Splinters from work, scars from life, smiles from being one of us. There's not an emoji you can claim for yourself that he doesn't understand.
"What if God was one of us?", asked Joan Osborne. "I was," says God. "I still am," says Jesus.
Draw near to him with confidence - not in yourself but in him.
Draw near to him and you will find mercy. You will find grace. You will.
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