By nature, we understand the concept of “vicariousness”. We understand stories - they are our first and most potent means of experiencing a world outside ourselves.

Sports and entertainment are, at their top tier, two of the highest-paid professions. We idolize our sports and movie stars. This is because vicariousness is in our DNA.

When “our guy” catches a long-bomb football, turns, and fights his way into the end zone for a touchdown, it is as though we did it. When “our team” wins, we win. We identify ourselves with others all the time - even if sports is not your thing, I promise you, you see yourself in someone or something else, outside yourself.

Maybe it’s the main character in a novel. Or the brief appearance of an “extra” actor in some movie grabbed your heart, because you somehow saw yourself in her - even though all she did was look down with that blank “one person in the crowd” expression, as she was crossing the street.

Often, someone purchases a piece of my art, because they see their own story in it.

Jesus Christ identified with us. This is fact, not the vivid imagination of the Godhead. It was the plan, all along. It was how we could be restored. Christ literally embodied a profound vicariousness. He took our place as humans alienated from the fellowship of God. The Truth is that -

This is why stories and sports and music and movies move us so profoundly. We see ourselves in every image, storyline, song, or fight to the finish. The human experience is vividly portrayed in these so-called “leisure pastimes”. We were created to understand how to put ourselves in the place of another.

So why is it we fight our Redemption Story? Why do we doubt that was the plan of God to “earth” Himself in the form of a man, live life as a man, subject to every pain, sorrow, and temptation of men, “yet without sin” - so that we can forever be bodily represented, and eternally set right, and warmly included in the wisest, most wonderful relationship of our life?

This was a lavish and brilliantly strategic thing, God being born as a human! It makes possible our genuine, actual participation in friendship with the Creator of all things. In Jesus Christ, the Living God became “Sheila Atchley” (He became you, too) and He removed my alienation, and made a place for me at the table of heaven.

To live life at any lower state is the essence of tragedy.

And do we not also identify with tragedy - even if our only emotion is that we fear it so deeply? But calamity would not be so calamitous to us, if there wasn’t something inside us that knows that we were made for glory. Our human experience of pain or joy, our capacity to feel it all, is rooted in the reality of this identification between us, and that member of the Trinity - Jesus. The connection between He and I, and He and you is real, and it has imparted to us all a sense of identity. The logic of this inborn identity is the basis of our reality - though many do not even know it or completely understand it.

All they know is certain movies make them weep. Or certain stories make them go home and reconnect with their mother. Certain songs make them want to be better daughters. And a hard fought basketball game can give an old man courage to fight cancer.

We were made to be bound up into the life of another, with His right-ness given to us as a gift, and also placed upon us like the finest robe in the world. We can live with courage and selfless nobility, when we know where we came from and where we are going, and why.

I just want to strongly advise and encourage you tonight:

Search out the stories of faith and redemption. You will find yourself inside them. See what Jesus did and who He was. Understand that you are meant to see yourself in Him, as well as in the people He surrounded Himself with. How He felt about them is how He feels about you. How the Father felt about Jesus {…”this is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased…”} is how He thinks about you.

Because Jesus took on flesh, and lived our stories, and took upon Himself our fears, failures, sins, sickness, and disease - fair and square - He was qualified to defeat all that used to divide you and me from friendship with God. The whole goal was to make it so that we can look to Him for salvation - whatever happened to Him, happened to us. (“We died with Him”) Whatever will happen to Him, will happen to us. (“We also were raised with Him”)

Now, the Bible tells us we can approach God boldly and directly, at His throne, and obtain grace to help us when we need anything at all.

It sounds like the intricate plot of a blockbuster movie series. But it’s every word true. Believe it!